Daily Medieval

There are several collections of medieval recipes in existence, both in printed form and online; this blog has referenced them before. A n...

In a document of 1051, the former Queen of Poland, Richeza, grants to her nephew, the palatine count Henry I, the possession of Cochem Cas...

The Middle Ages loved stories about saints finding God. Here is one of them, that was repeated through the centuries: Many inhabitants o...

I mentioned here that, after the Battle of Hastings, another claimant to the throne of England had to flee to Scotland in the face of Wil...

Clement being thrown into the sea, by Bernardino Fungal of Siena (1460-1516) If Clement truly was the second pope, following Peter (the...

When we think of the Viking invasions of England, we usually think of the destruction of villages and people's lives. This is understa...

Deer park at Kentchurch Court, UK A royal prerogative in many eras and cultures was to be able to hunt where and when the ruler wished. ...

Orderic Vitalis (1075-c.1142) has been mentioned here and here for his history writing. The 13 books of his Historia ecclesiastica [&qu...

The port at Benghazi, where it all began Benghazi has been much in the news lately. As with any part of the Eastern Hemisphere, it has b...

...and by "true story" I mean "the myth." Today is the anniversary of William Tell's famous feat in which he sh...

Albertus Magnus and a hermaphrodite from  Symbola aureæ mensæ We haven't talked about Albertus Magnus since his birthday last year....

from a Latin copy of  Gynæcology by  Soranus of Ephesus Hysteria describes two different states: exaggerated or uncontrollable emotion o...

The word "iconoclast" today usually denotes someone who challenges tradition, but the origin of the word was in the religiously ...

St. Theodore of Stoudios (759-11 November 826 CE) was a highly educated member of a well-connected family in Constantinople. His father an...

The term parchment is often applied to any animal skin used for writing on, but historically it was used for sheep or goat skin. Cow or c...

We know that books were rare prior to the development of the movable type printing press, but they weren't unknown. They could be a st...

Woodcut showing meteorite coming to Ensisheim. Today is the anniversary of the first meteorite the exact date of whose fall to Earth has...

A friend dared me to comment on this article on vulgar scenes from illuminated medieval manuscripts. Never one to avoid a challenge, I pi...

St. Felix of Valois Among other accomplishments, the Crusades created a large number of Christians held captive by non-Christians. These...

Recent stamp commemorating al-Khwārizmī Algebra—a method for doing computations using non-number symbols (such as " x " and &q...

Yes, marshmallow. (Maybe Halloween has put me in mind of sweets.) Althaea officinalia (the "marsh mallow") is a perennial tha...

Well, not exactly. It is the first recorded witch trial. That is, the first whose details are written down, rather than a terse "ha...

Even those of us who have studied some classical Greek would be surprised when first running across a pattern/practice called antistoichia...

William Thorpe before Arundel, 1407; a case of heresy Yesterday's post discussed Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, and sugg...

Thomas Arundel, Lambeth Palace Collection Let us talk about the "Worst Briton" of the 15th century, according to a 2005 poll o...

The 25th of October 1400 is the date of the death of Geoffrey Chaucer. Based on the records that exist from 14th century England that refe...

Diagram of an eclipse from a modern translation of Hipparchus It is not always easy to figure out dates from classical or medieval writi...

Albrecht Durer's illustration for a copy of the Lexicon The Catholic Encyclopedia says of Soudas/Suidas: Author of, perhaps, the m...

I shocked myself the other day when I mentioned Duns Scotus in the post on St. Ivo and found that I had nothing in this blog to which to ...