Daily Medieval

It was expected that kings and other nobles would try to gain alliances (and therefore security) by marrying their sons and daughters to imp...

Isabella, Countess of Gloucester, was married to the King of England for a short time, making her technically a queen, but she was set asid...

Paul in the First Epistle to the Corinthians calls a woman's hair her "glory" and says it must be covered, because no one shou...

Early Irish Brehon Law, so-called because it was administered by Brehons (from Old Irish breithem ("judge"), was more interested ...

When Pope John XXII became the target of an assassination attempt using poison and witchcraft, he decided that witchcraft should be labeled...

The word for a Slavic epic hero is bogatyr . One of the best-known was patterned on Prince Vladimir's uncle, Dobrynya . His battle with...

  When King Edward III sent his son Lionel as viceroy of Ireland, there were issues on the agenda regarding the presence of the English in I...

The word "consanguinity" comes from Latin consanguinitas ["blood relation"], and refers to having a close kinship with s...

Debate during the 4th Lateran Council Despite Peter Lombard's Sententiæ  making the case for marriage not needing an officiant or consum...

Peter Lombard (c.1096 - July 1160) was the Bishop of Paris and the author of Four Books of Sentences  which became the standard theological ...

I mentioned yesterday that, although Richard and Gunnor had several children, when one of them as an adult and Richard tried to make him Arc...

Recent posts on the Tutbury Hoard led to a discussion about Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, who is the likeliest candidate for losing such an ...

Part 1 tells how Zoe Porphyrogenita had one fiancee die, how she rejected another, and how her first husband died. Part 2 tells how her...

To Froissart she was "the most beautiful woman in all the realm of England, and the most loving"; in her own right she was the ...

Philippa of Hainault, finally becoming Queen of England Philippa of Hainault has been mentioned as a minor part of the story of the Bat...

Gebhard, the Count of Calw, was born about 1018 into an illustrious family. Holy Roman Emperor Henry III (1017 - 1056) recognized him as ...

19th c. painting of William [ link ] The Battle of Damme (mentioned yesterday) was led by the 3rd Earl of Salisbury, a man named William...

A medieval marriage, from a British Library ms. The Christian churches that have survived until the modern era (Roman Catholicism, Easte...

There is a lot more to say about Trial by Combat than can be put into a brief post. The history includes interesting anecdotes and surpri...

To round out the Merovingian/Carolingian week we've been having, let's take a look at some of the other women and children whose liv...