Daily Medieval

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...

The remains of Lewes Castle King John wasn't the only English monarch who had his barons turn against him (forcing him to sign the...

We've talked about torture before, regarding the Templars , and the "ultimate" torture of being hanged, drawn and quartered...

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