Daily Medieval

Ramon Llull was a 13th century Catalan mystic and theologian whose controversial writings made him many enemies. One of his more interestin...

Since "infant formula" was not invented until the 20th century, breastfeeding was the standard way to get nourishment into a baby....

A "wet nurse" is a woman hired to breastfeed a baby when the baby's own mother is unable or unwilling to do so. The mother may...

Alexander Neckham (1157 - 1217) was an abbot in Cirencester Abbey who left us several writings, including De naturis rerum  ("On the na...

Alexander Neckham was a theologian and writer from St. Albans whose birthday gave him a surprising status. He was born on 8 September 1157, ...

The Rasulids were a Sunni Muslim dynasty that ruled what is now Yemen and the Red Sea Coast of the Arabia peninsula from the early 13th cent...

I mentioned yesterday that Abu Yusuf Yaqub al-Mansur had an interest in building and re-building mosques. One was the Kutubiyya Mosque, the...

Yaqub al-Mansur ruled the Almohad Caliphate in North Africa and part of the Iberian Peninsula from 1184 until his death on 23 January 1199. ...

The Almohads were a North African Berber group who founded an empire in the 12th century. By 1159 they had extended their power over the Ma...

Alfonso IX of León cared enough about his country that he summoned what can be called the first Parliament in Western Europe to hear from a...

King Alfonso IX of León (1171 - 1230) may be noted for calling the Three Estates together to advise him—the first such gathering in Western...

The word "parliament" is from the French parlement,  first seen in the 11th century to mean "parley" or "conversati...

John of Brienne may have been intended for the monastery by his father, but circumstances turned him into a far busier player in the politic...

John of Brienne never expected to be a king, or even a lord. He was born about 1170 to Count Erard II of Brienne and Agnes of Montfaucon, a ...

Isabella II was the daughter of John of Brienne and Maria of Montferrat. Maria (1192 - 1212) was the daughter of Isabella I, Queen of Jerusa...

When Pope Gregory IX started what came to be called the War of the Keys , he thought he was secure because his target was the Holy Roman Em...

The War of the Keys was called that because of the image of crossed keys (keys to the Kingdom of Heaven) on the papal flag. The war was betw...

The first thing we should establish is that "anti-semitism" is the wrong term for what happened to Jews in Western Europe and else...

Ugolino di Conti's birth year is suggested as somewhere between 1145 and 1170, but there are suggestions that he was in his 90s at his d...

Inspired by Francis of Assisi , Clare of Assisi  (16 July 1194 - 11 August 1253) founded a new order for women, the "Order of Poor Ladi...

Similar to St. Francis of Assisi , St. Clare of Assisi (born Chiara Offreduccio) was born to a wealthy family—her father was a count—but she...

In 1224, Francis of Assisi was on the mountain of Verna, enduring a 40-day fast prior to Michaelmas . He had a companion, Brother Leo, who ...

One of the most familiar mental images of Francis of Assisi is his connection with Nature. While traveling through the Spoleto Valley, Fran...

Francis of Assisi , prior to his episode on the Fifth Crusade , traveled to Rome with his followers to request of the pope permission to fou...

When Francis of Assisi  looked for inspiration about how he should be organizing his new-found life of devotion to God—and because he was d...

When young Francesco di Bernardone realized he wanted to live a more devout and pious life, the change did not happen all at once. His enco...

About 1181 in Assisi in Umbria, Pica di Bourlemont gave birth to a son. Her husband, the cloth merchant Pietro Bernardone, was in France on ...

Marco Polo is known for traveling to the Far East from Europe and observing things unknown to Europeans, but there were many travelers from ...