Daily Medieval

Hartmann von Aue (born c.1160) started as a member of the lower nobility in Swabia. We don't know precisely where he was born; the "...

Although you wouldn't suspect that the life of Fergus of Galloway  (who died in 1161) would lend itself to the Arthurian Romance cycle, ...

Giovanni Boccaccio played around with titles, and not only for his own works. Dante Alighieri's magnum opus was called by the author C...

Just like the Matter of France , the Matter of Britain is a collection of legends and literature involving kings and heroes. King Arthur was...

Lord Edward returned from the Ninth Crusade to a country that had not had a king in residence for a couple years. His father, Henry III, ha...

The location of Wales on the south-western part of the island of Great Britain protected it somewhat from the pagan Germanic invasions that ...

Something about the 6th century British monk Gildas inspired later writers to create elaborate biographies for him. The first is referred t...

The 6th century British monk St. Gildas, also known as Gildas the Wise, is known by different biographies with wildly different claims and d...

Geoffrey of Monmouth may have been born in Monmouth, Wales, since he refers to himself that way (in Latin, he writes it "Galfridus Mone...

The Welsh Triads are several statements that group things in threes. They can be basic knowledge, such as "There are three primary musi...

I've mentioned before that this blog is about discussing the things about the Middle Ages that are outside the mainstream, so no talking...

After Germanus defeated the Pelagians in Briton (through sheer force of his rhetorical skills, apparently, having studied eloquence and havi...

In Part 1 we learned that the first mention of the grail was as a miraculous serving dish. The day before we learned that Robert de Boron ...

When it comes to stories about the Middle Ages, the story of the Holy Grail is, you might say, the Holy Grail of stories. The first mention ...

Robert de Boron was a French poet of the late 12th/early 13th centuries. There are two texts in Old French that are definitively attributed ...

In 1184, Glastonbury Abbey was devastated by a fire in the monastic buildings. A new Lady Chapel was consecrated in 1186, after which progre...

rom a 14th century Welsh Book of Hours, this is thought to depict Maximus [ link ] Yesterday we introduced Magnus Maximus, a general wh...

This is the 500th post on the Daily Medieval blog. In its honor, let us look at the year 500 CE and how it overlaps some of the previous ...

Today is the 543rd anniversary of the death of Thomas Malory. While the year 1471 might be a little late for the Middle Ages, Thomas Malory...

Page from Chapter CXXIII Everyone is familiar with the story of Marco Polo , who traveled to the Far East, had amazing adventures, and r...