Daily Medieval

The Tribe of Dan, one of the 12 Tribes of Israel, was compared to a lion's whelp by Moses, signifying strength (Deuteronomy 33:22). Numb...

Beta Israel (Ge'ez for "House of Israel") is the name for Jews who established a presence in the Kingdom of Aksum, supposedly ...

The subject of Jews and their treatment in the Iberian Peninsula has cropped up several times in this blog, regarding individuals like Isaac...

A cataract is a medical condition where the lens of the eye becomes increasingly cloudy, leading to blindness. You would think that the Midd...

The Spanish Inquisition had more concerns about converts than the regular Roman Inquisition , because the Iberian Peninsula had a larger pe...

While the Roman Catholic Church established the Inquisition in the 12th century to root out heresy, etc., some countries felt the need to c...

"Know that we, in the sight of God, and for our souls, and for the sake of our predecessors and heirs, have granted and confirmed by th...

Eleanor of Castile (1241 - 1290) was not always well-liked by the English. Although she was performing the expected duty of providing childr...

Despite Muhammad's treatment of the Jewish tribe the Banu Qurayza , he was not opposed to tolerance of the Jewish religion. He felt the ...

Once the Confederacy gave up the Battle of the Trench because of discord and mistrust in the alliance, Muhammad turned his attention to th...

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 first case in England of " blood libel " (although more precisely it was only child sacrifice) was the case of William of Norw...

Yesterday was Palm Sunday, so let's talk about a terrible Palm Sunday (18 March) event in 1190 in the English town of Bury St. Edmunds. ...

In the second half of the 12th century there was a monk in the town of Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk named Jocelyn de Brakelond. He became cha...

The death of Hugh of Lincoln led to the arrests of so many Jews because of the belief in "blood libel": that the Jews stole/kidna...

The murder of a child is a particularly heinous act that tugs at the heart strings. In the eyes of society, the murderer of a child must be ...

When Simon de Montfort wanted to kick off the Second Barons War , he needed funding. One of the easiest ways for most medieval Europeans to ...

The king of Poland from 1333 to 1370 was Casimir III, later called "the Great" (the only Polish monarch to be given that title). W...

When Jews were expelled from England (1290) and Sephardic Jews from Spain (1492) and other locations in Europe, many of them wound up in Nor...

In the earliest days of this blog, there were no illustrations. I eventually decided there were some posts that would be enhanced by an appr...