Daily Medieval

John of Brienne never expected to be a king, or even a lord. He was born about 1170 to Count Erard II of Brienne and Agnes of Montfaucon, a ...

Isabella II was the daughter of John of Brienne and Maria of Montferrat. Maria (1192 - 1212) was the daughter of Isabella I, Queen of Jerusa...

When Pope Gregory IX started what came to be called the War of the Keys , he thought he was secure because his target was the Holy Roman Em...

The War of the Keys was called that because of the image of crossed keys (keys to the Kingdom of Heaven) on the papal flag. The war was betw...

The first thing we should establish is that "anti-semitism" is the wrong term for what happened to Jews in Western Europe and else...

The Talmud [late Hebrew talmūd , "instruction"] is the body of Jewish civil and ceremonial law. It includes the Mishnah (exegeti...

[I am on a brief vacation, so here is a post from the past. This post first appeared 23 August 2012.] In Dante's Inferno , the eighth ...

Daily Medieval has frequently mentioned the importance of Arabic texts in the transmission of knowledge to Western Europe. Arabic, however...

Frederick II of Sicily (1194-1250) has crossed the path of this blog more than once, but has not yet been featured. He declared the Edict ...

Salerno, located on the lower "shin" of Italy's southwest coast, has been occupied continuously since pre-historic times, freq...