Daily Medieval

Ivar the Boneless, played by Vaclovas Kiselevicius in the TV show "The Dark Ages" The post on Vikings in Ireland mentioned I...

A sign of Viking presence in Ireland: a Viking ship built in Dublin c. 1042 As alluded to in the post on King Edmund I , Ireland was th...

from a  genealogy of the kings of England Edmund I Edmund the Magnificent Edmund the Just Edmund the Deed-Doer It isn't often...

Because medieval universities were often designed as breeding grounds for educated clerics, clerical robes were a standard form of dress....

[ source ] Yesterday we mentioned Dr. Sharon DeWitte of the University of South Carolina, who examines skeletons from the Middle Ages ...

When learning about people in the Middle Ages, you can only go so far with records and archaeology. Sometimes you have to go to the peopl...

Month of May from British Library MS Harley 2332 I don't mean locating a mate, but the practice of locating a particular event some...

Sancho in a contemporary manuscript King Sancho IV of Castile (1258 - 1295), also known as Sancho the Brave, ruled the combined Iberian...

Ælfgifu on the Bayeaux Tapestry Ælfgifu of Northampton was once mentioned here as the wife of King Cnut. When King Svein Forkbeard of ...

Confidentiality is expected in many relationships: doctor-patient, lawyer-client, ... and priest-penitent. The so-called "Seal of th...

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

Box that held Richard's heart. The inscription reads: "Here is the heart of Richard, King of England."  Once Richard the ...

Richard's tomb at Fontevraud Abbey Richard the Lionheart (1157 - 1199) died from complications after being hit by a crossbow shot b...

The vineyards of Cognac Today is the 823rd wedding anniversary of King Richard I of England, called Lionheart, and Berengaria of Navarr...

How to keep your head? In you hands! Saint Solange was born in the 9th century near Bourges, France, to a family of poor but very devout...

In the 5th century, a very short man was born in Egypt to a poor Christian family; he became known as John Kolobos, from the Greek Ιωάννης...

Lovely ceiling tiles at Cleeve Abbey with asbestos in them Pliny the Elder has a chapter in his Natural History on something he calls ...

Tomb of Remigius, Lincoln Cathedral [ link ] A "ship list" exists of the ships used by William of Normandy when he conquered E...

Madonna of the Recommended, Lippo Memmi (c.1291 - 1356) Cosmetics were known as far back as early Egyptian culture, so it is no surprise...

Baking, pulled from a neat food history site for kids The Earl of Bradford once produced a cookbook . That makes it sound more historica...

Explanation of cross-in-square from this  fascinating site. Today is May Day, and the anniversary of the consecration of the Nea Ekklesi...

The scholar Steven Runciman tells us of the founding of the group now known as the Assassins. A Persian called Hasan as-Sabah (1050s - 11...

[ source ] On 28 April in 1192, Conrad of Montferrat was assassinated. Conrad was an interesting character, a well-born European caugh...

In England there are still many "Commons" that are accessible by locals for grazing their animals. Their origin can be summed up...

St. Mellitus, converter of Anglo-Saxons We have the story, handed down from Bede, that Pope Gregory I sent a mission to England in 597 t...

Queen Isabella of Castile had a reputation for harshness when it came to crime and corruption. A Spanish writer and contemporary, Hernando...

First page of the Textus Roffensis. The water damage is from the early 1700s. The Textus de Ecclesia Roffensi per Ernulphum episcopum  ...

Wedding portrait of Isabella and Ferdinand (1469) Everyone knows about Isabella of Castile and how she financed Columbus' excursion ...

A memorial in Lisbon* We touched on the Lisbon Massacre, in which between 1000 and 2000 (and maybe more) Jews were slaughtered, in the p...

Cannabis sativa from the 6th-century De Materia Medica of Dioscorides I was contemplating a post about Easter, which takes place this Su...