Daily Medieval

When Marco Polo returned to Venice after two decades of traveling in the East, he signed up to join the war between Venice and Genoa. Incarc...

Marco Polo was not the first European to visit China—far from it—but he was the first to write a detailed account of his time there. And he ...

Christine de Pizan (1364 - c.1430) was considered the first professional woman of letters in Europe, first writing after the death of her h...

John Arderne (1307 - 1392), of whom I first wrote many years ago , has been called the father of English surgery. He earned this by producin...

The German knight-poet Hartmann von Aue wrote epic poetry, some of which was about the Arthurian Cycle. He also wrote an early "rags t...

Clonmacnoise Monastery was an important place in the Middle Ages. Occupying a major travel route in the center of Ireland, it grew to a comm...

The scholar R.I.Best examined the penmanship of the Lebor na hUidre , the early Irish Book of the Dun Cow , and determined that there were t...

I'm not referencing the novel based on the "Nun's Priest's Tale" from The Canterbury Tales  by Geoffrey Chaucer writt...

The British Library contains a unique manuscript, acquired from the Cotton Library , labeled Cotton Julius B XIII. It is the sole known cop...

Gerald of Wales (c.1146 - c.1223) provided us with extensive information on  Ireland and Wales and England of his time. Serving several Pla...

The modern Italian word for a notebook is taccuino . It comes from the medieval (and later) popularity of the Tacuinum Sanitatis . That name...

Margery Kempe (c.1373 - c.1438) was a middle-class woman who went through a traumatic eight months after bearing her first child, after whic...

Galen was one of the primary sources of medical expertise in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, often to the neglect of other authors. The...

The 1st Duke of Lancaster, Henry Grosmont , the wealthiest and most popular peer of the realm, wrote a book about his sins and the way to he...

Unlike his contemporaries, Henry Grosmont was very forthcoming about his feelings about religion by writing an autobiographical treatise ca...

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313 - 1375) was eight years old when Dante died, but he revered the man and wrote a biography about him. He even gave ...

Yesterday I mentioned that you would know who Jaʿfar ibn Yaḥyā al-Barmakī, an Abbasid vizier, was, even if you did not recognize the name. Y...

Matthew Paris (c.1200 - 1259) was a Benedictine monk at the Abbey of St. Albans, known to us for his numerous illustrated written works. We ...

Nikephoros Bryennios the Younger (1062 - 1137) was a Byzantine noble. As a general, he defended Constantinople when the army of Godfrey of B...

Isidore of Seville was probably born about 560, in Cartagena, Spain. His devout parents were both members of influential families that were ...