Daily Medieval

Pope Innocent III was determined to assert papal authority over every area possible. He made sure that kings, although they had their ...

Ghazan Khan (1271 - 1304) was not the first Mongol leader to communicate with Christians, but he set about to firm up an alliance to deal wi...

One of the Keepers of the Wardrobe for five years (1290 - 1295) under Edward I was Walter Langton (1243 - 1321). He used the surname Langt...

In 1095 CE, Gaston of Valloire (or of Dauphiné) founded a religious order, sanctioned by Pope Urban II (who also called for the First Crusad...

Pope Boniface VIII had a grievance with Dante Alighieri . Dante at that time was a politician, having been in the very important position of...

The Guelphs and the Ghibellines were two Italian political factions in the Middle Ages, offering more and less support for the papacy, respe...

I like to link items in each post to previous posts that offer more info on those items. I have frequently referred to the time when the po...

Excerpt from the Taxatio; see the word "Census" upper-right Today is the birthday of  Pope Nicholas IV; you can read a brief ...

The week, as you can imagine, is very hectic around the world for many people, and I am no exception. In  lieu of a regular post, here is a ...

Władysław the Elbow-high was honored with a 500-Złotych gold coin in 2013 You may remember the story of the Carolingian king Pepin the S...

Today picks up from the previous post . Although canon law did not apply to non-Christian populations, that attitude changed when Europe ...

Part 1 showed how Christian writers eventually came to the conclusion that the State was not the result of Man's sinful nature, and had ...

Yesterday we looked at some of the history of political philosophy analyzing the proper relationship between the spiritual institution of th...

Augustine of Hippo (354-430) had very strong feelings about the difference between spiritual and temporal authority and structures. In his...

Yesterday referred to the resignation of Pope Celestine V, and that there was some confusion about it. It was not common for popes to resig...

When Pope Boniface VIII wasn't excommunicating people for treating corpses in unapproved ways , he was very busy doing lots of other thi...

[ In memoriam : William Shaw, 1917 - 2012] Have modern funerary practices always been in place? Were there different methods (and reasons...