Daily Medieval

Gregory of Tours tells the story of the 3rd century Pope Fabian sending seven bishops to different parts of Gaul. One of them, Martial, wen...

When Pope Clement VI wanted to build a new chapel connected to the papal complex in Avignon and have it lavishly decorated, he called on Ma...

Clement VI (1291 - 1352) was a different pope from some of his predecessors. One of his first acts was to promise gifts to every cleric who ...

One of the major events during the reign of Pope Clement VI  (1291 – 6 December 1352) was not of his making. He had been pope for four years...

Pierre Roger was born in 1291 into a noble family; his siblings all had successful careers and marriages. Roger, however, entered the Benedi...

The Plague, also called the Black Death, spread across Sicily shortly after the arrival of a fleet of a dozen Genoese galleys bringing go...

The Glory of the Roman Empire was seen by the Middle Ages as a Golden Age. Petrarch lamented the loss of learning and art between the peak...

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 ...

Everyone has an intercessor in Heaven, even lawyers. Ivo of Kermartin (17 October 1253-19 May 1303) was born in Louannec, in Brittany. H...

A university meeting Today is the birthday of the founder of the Sorbonne. The Collège of Sorbonne is arguably the best-known college in...

The Black Death, estimated to have killed up to one-third of Europeans from 1347-1351, caused changes in society that we cannot imagine. Som...

I have written about the Oxford Calculators , four men at Oxford University in the second quarter of the 14th century who made great strid...

We so often study famous people in isolation, forgetting that their lives and successes probably overlapped other well-known people. Imag...

Rabbi Levi ben Gerson, also known as Gersonides, lived from 1288-c.1344. He was from a family of scholars: his father, Gerson ben Solomon of...

The history of medicine includes many brave and progressive thinkers who were not willing to follow the herd or be content with what was alr...