Daily Medieval

The Provisions of Oxford , reorganizing the government of England with a series of checks and balances that removed power from King Henry II...

Richard of Cornwall was only two years younger than his brother Henry, who became King of England. He rebelled against Henry a few times, u...

We're going to look at the life of Manfred (1232 - 1266), who became King of Sicily. He was originally called Manfred Lancia, after his ...

While Charles of Anjou was consolidating his rule over the counties of Provence and Forcalquier between 1250 and 1252, events elsewhere wer...

Charles of Anjou became Count of Provence and Forcalquier by his marriage in 1246 to Beatrice of Provence. His attempt to rule them was cha...

The Benedictine Confederation is an alliance of monastic orders who follow the Rules of the Benedictines. Some of these orders were founded ...

The Second Council of Lyon decided the ending the Interregnum was best done by selecting Rudolph I as King of Germany (and therefore Holy ...

Margaret of Wessex was almost 50 years old in 1093 when her husband, King Malcolm III of Scotland, and her eldest son went to war against t...

Marco Polo is known for traveling to the Far East from Europe and observing things unknown to Europeans, but there were many travelers from ...

As the western world was turned to Christianity from paganism, there was one area that did not rush to baptism. In 1009CE, there is a refere...

Speaking of surgery recently, we need to take a look at Theodoric Borgognoni, who pioneered some practices that were ahead of their time. B...

St. Augustine of Hippo (354 - 430) was one of the most influential writers in Christianity in its first few centuries. He believed that Jews...

Innocent IV (born Sinibaldo Fieschi) had a busy decade. He lived longer than that, of course, and was consequential, but there is a lot of u...

In 1244, allies of the Egyptian Mamluks, retreating westward from the advancing Mongols, stopped at Jerusalem long enough to recapture it f...

Saint Isabella, at a church in Paris Isabella of France (1224 - 1270) was the daughter of King Louis VIII and Blanche of Castile. Her b...

Although Pope Gregory IX felt it his duty to protect the Jews , he had issues with their Talmud, the collection of Jewish laws and practice...

In the post on short-lived reigns, I mentioned John I of France, sone of Louis X and Clémence of Hungary, who reigned five days because he ...

Afonso (1210 - 1279) was the second son of Afonso II of Portugal, and so never expected to inherit the throne. It was supposed to go to h...

Marco Polo was not the only, or the first, western European to travel to the East. When Pope Innocent IV wanted to send a letter to the G...

Ögedei Khan, who never got the letter Relations between the East and West have always been strained, generally because of radically dif...