Daily Medieval

I mentioned yesterday that the Winchester Bible was made at the Priory of St. Swithin in Winchester, and I thought it would be interesting ...

Because Henry of Blois was Bishop of Winchester, the richest cathedral in England, and because he was known to be a patron of the arts and ...

Life was good for Henry of Blois. His brother Stephen was the king of England, Henry was not only Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey and Bishop of W...

Count of Blois Stephen II and Adela of Normandy  had several children who have appeared in this blog. One of them, Stephen of Blois , became...

This is the story of Richard Whiting , a faithful steward of Glastonbury Abbey , chosen by Henry VIII's most faithful servant (Cardinal ...

Richard Whiting (1461 - 15 November 1539) was educated as a young man at Glastonbury Abbey, then furthered his education in Cambridge at the...

We started on Glastonbury yesterday . Glastonbury was popular and wealthy and a target for others' attempts at acquisition. The bishop o...

I've mentioned Glastonbury Abbey before, most notably here  and here , but it was important for more than its legend as the dubious disc...

I mentioned yesterday the earthquake of 1275 that brought down St. Michael's on Glastonbury Tor. It was a wooden structure of which we ...

I told of a specific earthquake  that was particularly destructive 11 years ago (and could happen again, eventually ), but there were many r...

The Earthquake Synod was held on 21 May 1382 in London, England. It was called by Archbishop of Canterbury William Courtenay to address 24 o...

After getting in trouble for his writings and being told officially not to discuss the points he raised, John Wycliffe decided he would rai...

The Middle English Bible translated from the Vulgate (supposedly by John Wycliffe ) wasn't in itself controversial. But Wycliffe wrote ...

John Wycliffe (c.1324-1384) was one of my very earliest posts (before I started to include illustrations because they were boring). My post ...

Tanakh is the Hebrew Bible. Christians might ask "isn't that just the Old Testament?" Well, yes and no. They contain many of ...

Halakha  comes from the Hebrew root halakh ,which means "to walk" or "to go." Halakha  therefor means "the way to w...

European Jews were not accustomed to contemplating either Arabic philosophy or what they called "Greek wisdom," the works of Arist...

Recent posts have talked about different individual's attitude toward Maimonides and what they did about it—sometimes with radical conse...

Yonah Gerondi had an Italian student in Barcelona named Hillel ben Samuel (c.1220 - c.1295) The grandson of a known Talmudic scholar, Hillel...

Yonah Gerondi, or Jonah ben Abraham Gerondi (c.1200 - 1263), was a 13th century rabbi from Catalonia in Spain. He was a cousin of Nachmanide...

Born in 1235 in Barcelona, Shlomo ben Avraham ibn Aderet became known as the Rabbi of Spain because of his reputation for knowledge and wisd...

Yesterday we started looking at some of the predictions about the Jewish Messiah appearing in the 12th century. The 13th century had its ow...

Yesterday's post explained how Abner of Burgos ' conversion to Christianity from Judaism may have started with doubts after treating...

Abner of Burgos (c.1270 – c.1347) converted to Christianity from Judaism around 1320, taking on the name Alfonso of Valladolid or "Mast...

Scholars and philosophers of the later Middle Ages became interested in the mysticism found in the Jewish Kabbalah and tried to blend it wit...

The mention of Jewish mysticism likely evokes the Kabbalah, but there were other forms. I suppose you could argue that it begins with Adam, ...

Technically, the title of this post is the same as yesterday's , because Sefer Yetzirah translates as "The Book of Formation....

There is a much-studied document in Jewish literature whose origin is unknown. It has been considered the work of a 1st-century Rabbi Akiva,...