Daily Medieval

Until fairly recently there was an idea that "childhood" as we think of it today did not exist in the Middle Ages. You can see thi...

Imagine a world with no clocks or calendars in the homes. You lived by the cycle of the seasons and the annual religious festivals and holy ...

In a message for the World Day of Creation (27 June, 2024), Pope Francis said of Joachim de Fiore that he  "was able to propose the ide...

Ubertino de Casale felt so strongly that the proper spiritual life for a Franciscan and other prelates required a life of strict poverty th...

St. Francis of Assisi insisted on personal poverty for members of the order he founded, the idea that one should have no possessions and li...

The Council of Vienne (1311-1312; seen here in a painting in 1880 by Paul Lacroix) has been mentioned before, and produced some positive dec...

After the successful spread in the Low Countries of the simplified Christian lifestyle of laywomen called Beguines , a similar trend appeare...

The Beguines were a 12th century movement in which ordinary Christian women decided to live a more simple and pious life, rather than forma...

I wrote two parts about this topic previously ( Part 1  and  Part 2 ), but the research for yesterday's post on just plain hair led me ...

Let's talk about hair in the Middle Ages; not hairstyles, but hair itself. Hairstyles were important, of course, because there was cultu...

Charlemagne's son and successor as emperor, Louis the Pious , had several children. Several of them were with his first wife, Ermengarde...

John VIII was a Roman who, as a young man, witnessed the 846 CE raid against Rome by Muslims. According to the Liber Pontificalis  ("Bo...

Jean de Mailly was a Dominican chronicler working in Metz in northeast France in the middle of the 13th century. He wrote a history of the D...

After the story of Gregorius  by Hartmann von Aue , I became curious if there ever was a pope who was the product of incest. The only pope I...

The German knight-poet Hartmann von Aue wrote epic poetry, some of which was about the Arthurian Cycle. He also wrote an early "rags t...

Hartmann von Aue (born c.1160) started as a member of the lower nobility in Swabia. We don't know precisely where he was born; the ...

It was mentioned that John de Coupland was made a "knight banneret" after service to King Edward III. What was the significance o...

When John de Coupland apprehended King David II of Scotland during the Battle of Neville's Cross  in 1346(see illustration), his future...

During the Battle of Neville's Cross , when King David II of Scotland heeded France's request to attack England as part of their Aul...

Scotland's relationship with England has always been an issue on the island of Great Britain. They were "friendly enemies," si...

In 1127, while King David of Scotland was hunting in the forests east of Edinburgh, his horse was startled by a hart and bucked; David was t...

When David I became King of Scotland, little did the world know that the previous three decades of short reigns and rebellions would be rep...

The fifth son of Malcolm III and Margaret of Wessex , Alexander got to be king of Scotland after Malcolm's death only after his uncle ...

Donald III of Scotland grabbed the throne, then lost it to his nephew Duncan, then grabbed it again. This second time around, Donald was in...