Daily Medieval

Bread was so important to daily life, as food and even as tableware . Not every household had the time and resources to make its own bread,...

In 1194, Richard I of England created a system by which all financial transactions by Jews would be documented by the Crown. This system cre...

Current estimates of the richest people living today show Elon Musk topping the chart at 200+ billion dollars, but I'm going to tell you...

It all started when a knight, Ritter Ramm, was sent by Emperor Otto I to find game while visiting Harzburg. It was winter, with snow everyw...

The Roman Empire was a far-reaching entity that gave the northern Mediterranean and Western Europe access to resources from the East and Afr...

The franc was coined by King John the Good in 1360 to help stabilize the currency in France and try to generate the millions he needed to pa...

King John the Good of France was captured during the Battle of Poitiers in 1356 and taken to England as a hostage, hosted by King Edward. He...

This is the story of Philip of Courtenay (1243 - 15 December 1283). He was one of the Latin Emperors of Constantinople—the empire was establ...

"Mortgage" is a Late Middle English word from Old French, and literally means "dead pledge"; folk etymology will say the...

I've talked about different jobs here and here . What could you earn in different professions? First, we need to know the currency: 1 ...

When I taught high school English Literature, students were aghast at the small sums (a few hundred pounds) that a successful poet might hav...

Let us talk about coinage, specifically the solidus . Its plural was solidi ; also known as the bezant  (named for Byzantium, the earlier na...

Roman hoard found at St. Albans Speaking of digging up old things... Every once in awhile we hear of someone finding a hoard of coins...

One of the very first posts on this blog years ago was about the collapse of the powerful Florentine banking corporation, the Bardi . One o...

There were many Khans in the Mongol Empire, but none quite like Tëmur. Tëmur was a grandson of Kublai Khan, born on 15 October, 1265; his...

Among the western Europeans who traveled eastward and wrote of the wonders of "The Orient," we have mentioned William Rubruck  ...

This past Saturday, the 21st of June, was the anniversary of the death of Enrico Dandolo, the 42nd Doge of Venice. His tenure as Doge had...

Medieval Occupations [ source ] In the Middle Ages, the lack of machinery meant any job that needed doing required someone to "get ...

Liuvigild on one of his campaigns detail from an ivory reliquary, 11th c. Liuvigild was mentioned yesterday as the Visigothic King in t...

King Æthelbert of Kent (c.560-616) was first mentioned here in an explanation of wergild , the price paid by law for a man's death by...