Daily Medieval

Vladimir the Great (also Vladimir I, also St. Vladimir/Volodymyr) was Grand Prince of Kyiv and ruler of Kievan Rus from 980 to 1015. He was ...

The Varangian Guard  were personal bodyguards for Byzantine emperors from the 10th to 14th centuries. The guards were primarily hired from N...

Several of the Norse Runestones are part of a subset called Greece Runestones. These refer to Grikkland (Greece) or Grikkjar (Greeks), an...

Of the thousands of runestones created up until the 12th century, 20 fall into a special category because they were all raised by or on beh...

When King Harald Bluetooth chose to be baptized in the 960s, he decided to commemorate the radical change he was instigating for the Danes ...

North and west and south of Scotland are numerous islands, the Shetlands and Orkneys, the Hebrides, and the Isle of Man, respectively. From ...

William of Newburgh tells the story of a bishop whose actions were contrary to what was expected by a man of God. More recent research offer...

William of Newburgh (c.1136 - c.1198) criticized Geoffrey of Monmouth for his inaccurate History of the Kings of Britain , but Newburgh...

Geoffrey of Monmouth may have been born in Monmouth, Wales, since he refers to himself that way (in Latin, he writes it "Galfridus Mone...

A major victory of Saxons in England over the native Britons took place just south of Chester in the early 7th century. Æthelfrith, the king...

Much is made of Augustine's 597 arrival in Britain to christianize the island, but the Synod of Chester, where he expected to assert au...

The Venerable Bede tells a story of Pope Gregory I in the Roman slave market, seeing some fair-haired and light-skinned slaves from Britain ...

Christianity came to Britain early. Tertullian and Origen, writing in the early 3rd century, mention Christian figures there. What is now Ch...

The earliest reference of the Vision of Tnugdalus  comes from the Scots Monastery in Regensburg, Germany. Why was it called "Scots...

The 12th century saw a burgeoning of literature by figures whose names we actually know, like Marie de France and Chrétien de Troyes (menti...

St. Ruadán was one of the Twelve Apostles of Ireland. Born in Tara and educated at Clonard by Finnian , he later founded his own monastery o...

Prophetic death is a staple of mythology and legend. One classic trope is the "threefold death" in which a prophecy claims three d...

There were two significant designations for kings in Ireland. Of the several different kingdoms on the Emerald Isle, only one of them had po...

There are two titles given to kings of Ireland: King of Tara, and High King of Ireland. These are not the same thing. "High King" ...

Adomnán of Iona (also known as Eunan) was born about 627 CE in what is now County Donegal. We do not know a lot of details of his life befor...

The Protestant Reformation in the 1500s undermined the authority of and people's faith in the pope and the Catholic Church. This was a b...

The Byzantine Emperor Justinian I had many accomplishments, but establishing the Corpus Juris Civilis ("Body of Civil Law"), oft...

You are Frederick I, offspring of two of Germany's most powerful families. As a young man, you went on Crusade and distinguished yoursel...

Personalities and politics prevent progress. When Barbarossa received letters from the Holy Land asking for help in fighting Muslims, he re...

Born about 1122-23, Frederick (Friedrich) was born in France to the Duke of Swabia. He grew up learning the noble arts of hunting and riding...

Yesterday we discussed the problem of decay when a corpse had to be transported over a long distance. A medieval historian named Boncompagno...

Yesterday I raised the question of how a body was treated, such as that of  Louis IX of France dying on Crusade, when immediate burial was n...

Louis IX of France (1214 - 1270) was crowned at the age of 12 after his father Louis VIII "The Lion" died of dysentery coming back...