Daily Medieval

We talked yesterday about preparing and preserving blood for culinary use, now let's look at some more specific uses in medieval cuisin...

There's a scene early in The Name of the Rose  involving barrels of pigs' blood. It was autumn, and time to slaughter the pigs, but ...

One of the most famous cases of anti-semitism took place in Lincoln in 1255. On 31 July 1255, a nine-year-old named Hugh disappeared in Linc...

The  Lindum Colonia fell into decline after the departure of Roman Legions from Britain, but remained a viable community with a church dedi...

After 1066 there was more fighting to do. Once William the Conqueror took over England, he had to go about the island defeating various resi...

In the pipe rolls (the records of royal finances in Medieval England) for 1166 is a mention of £616 12s 8d owed to Aaron of Lincoln by King ...

The Exchequer of the Jews was created in 1194 by King Richard I of England in order to keep track of all records of debts owed to Jewish mon...

The catalyst for the 1189  tragedy in York after the coronation of King Richard I was three men who wanted to criminally erase the debts t...

Licoricia of Winchester, the second wife of David of Oxford  (one of the wealthiest financiers in England in the 13th century), was a succes...

When David of Oxford declared that he was divorced from his wife, Muriel, little did he know the furor it would cause. In Jewish law, a wif...

Asher of Lincoln had a son, David, who married a local woman, Muriel, and at some point moved to Oxford, where he lived in a house on St. Al...

Moses of Oxford was one of the most prominent scholars and legal minds in Anglo-Jewry of the 13th century. Born in Oxford to a four-generati...

Just as London had a Jewish presence after the arrival of William and the Norman French, Oxford started to see a significant Jewish popula...

In the City of London there is a street still called Old Jewry, currently dominated mostly by financial offices. In 2001 the remains of a mi...

The difference between different groups of Jews starts with the Jewish Diaspora, the displacement of Israelites outside of the Southern Leva...

The first book printed in Hebrew with a date on it was printed in Italy and dated 18 February 1475. It was a commentary by Rashi on the Chu...

An exegete is someone who interprets a text, especially religious texts. One of the leading Jewish exegetes in the Middle Ages was Shlomo Yi...

"Apostasy" is the abandonment or renunciation of a religious (or political) belief. Yesterday's post on Canon 70 of the Fourt...

After the past few entries concerning the anti-Jewish Canons of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, we come finally to Canon 70, dealing wi...

The attempt to limit contact with Jews in public and keep their public authority diminished forced them to wind up being more crucial than e...

Continuing our look at the final four Canons of the proceedings of the 1215 Fourth Lateran Council , we come to Canon 68, which wanted to ma...

Today we look specifically at the institutional racism against Jews established by Pope Innocent III in the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215...

Modern ideas of race and racism are largely based on skin color, but the Middle Ages saw many other factors. To quote ( again ) Regino of Pr...

Not everyone believed that race and ethnicity were purely a result of being descended from the sons of Noah. Some felt the natural world/en...

What did medieval people think about different races? How did they distinguish one ethnic group from another? This question occurred to me w...

Although Charlemagne is a famous name, and we know a lot about him, his descendants and the events of the Carolingian era are not always wel...

In Saint-Omer in France there was a Benedictine abbey called the Abbey of St. Bertin , founded in 638 and existing right up to the late 18th...