Where the Middle Ages Begin
Was Thomas Arundel a ruthless persecutor or a defender of the English Church? Chris Given-Wilson’s new book revisits one of the most powerful—and controversial—figures of late medieval England, revealing a far more complex man behind the reputation.
What everyday objects did people use in the Middle Ages? From clothing and household necessities to tools for work and warfare, these 25 medieval items were essential to daily life and shaped how people lived, ate, and survived.
Delve into the pivotal figures of the Middle Ages whose enduring legacies shaped the course of history. From visionary leaders and profound scholars to prolific writers and formidable warriors, these individuals left an indelible mark on medieval society.
Discover the 50 most significant events of the Middle Ages, spanning the years 500 to 1500.
Here are seven vivid facts about colour in the Middle Ages
In medieval times, many unique jobs, such as Ale-wife and Groom of the Stool, were essential but have since vanished. Discover these obsolete occupations and how historical changes led to their disappearance.
Are you wanting to talk more like someone from the Middle Ages? We have a list of 30 great sayings and proverbs that you can use in your conversations.
Have you wondered what a medieval king did on a typical day? Thanks to Christine de Pizan, we have an account of what daily life was like for King Charles V of France.
Some of our most popular phrases have a long history, including some that go back to the Middle Ages.
Want to know what kind of jobs there were in the Middle Ages? A unique source from the 15th century gives us some beautiful images of medieval people at work.
Historians have tended to give more weight to sources such as governmental and legal records than to chronicles, not least because so many survive. They open up areas of history impossible to access through chronicles alone, and they also provide a much more precise and detailed political narrative.
There is perhaps no better medieval example of the phase ‘Truth is in the eye of the beholder’ than these two versions of the death of Simon de Montfort, the leader of the crusaders during the Albigensian Crusade.
To celebrate the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, the British Library has created the Magna Carta: My Digital Rights project to examine what people think about in the issues of freedom and control in the digital age. The public can vote on their favourite clauses and on Monday 15 June, Magna Carta Day, the library will publish the results in the form of a ‘Magna Carta for the digital age’.
The face of a man who lived nearly a thousand years ago in Anglo-Saxon England has been recreated by experts from the University of Dundee.
The 3 papers featured here looked at the development of the civic identities of Florence, Genoa and Rome through art, architecture and foundation legends.
Its narrative of cross-dressing, male prostitution, gay sex, clerical promiscuity and the like seems to offer a rare window onto late medieval sexuality and sexual mores.
Learn all about the intellectual hallmarks of the Renaissance!
I suspect that the Norse invaders of Orkney and Shetland didn’t just overwhelm’, or ‘submerge’ the native population: I think they killed them.
Fashion fan? Interested in medieval and early modern textiles? Then this was your session. 2 papers from opposite ends of the spectrum: Early Medieval weaving and Early Modern Tailoring.
The full list of speakers for the 2015 Richard Hall Symposium has been announced, with new research and discussions concerning women in early medieval history included in the programme.
If you think it’s hard to keep up a beauty regime now, wait until you see what lengths the Venetians went to in order to be beautiful!
Archaeologists working in northern England have uncovered a stone-lined cess pit that was filled with dozens of bones from deer. The evidence suggests that they were dumped here by poachers.
This article provides a critical examination of the politico-religious content of the highly successful television series Game of Thrones and Vikings.
George R.R. Martin’s fantasy epic A Song of Ice and Fire brilliantly illustrates a number of basic principles of political economy.
Find out who you’d be in Westeros, in the Song of Ice and Fire series.
We have five stories – funny, strange or just creepy – from the Middle Ages that are (probably) not true – vote on which one is your favourite!
While 99% would really be peasants, you can always dream! Answer these six questions and find out your job in the Middle Ages :)
This article asserts that Owain Glyn Dŵr was neither the instigator nor, initially, the sole leader of the revolt for which he has become well known. It also challenges the idea that there was just one rebellion and casts doubt on the notion that he proclaimed himself Prince of Wales on 16 September 1400.
Between 541 and 543 AD, the Plague of Justinian, traditionally regarded as the first of three human plague pandemics, spread from either central Asia or Africa across the Mediterranean basin into Europe, killing an estimated 100 million people according to the contemporary scholar Procopius
The vast majority of surviving evidence for health care, medicine and attitudes to illness in early medieval northern Italy comes not from traditional medical texts, but legal, hagiographical and archaeological sources.
Here are five things we read this week, including about the Black School in Wittenberg, a ransom demand of pepper, what Vikings carved into the walls, what ivory can tell us about medieval walrus hunting, and strange ideas about skin colour in the Middle Ages
This presentation will begin by briefly summarizing the text, presenting evidence for its intended audience and purpose, defining Biblical numerology and outlining its role in Jewish and Christian textual traditions up to the early medieval period. Then the presentation will provide a handful of examples in the use of Biblical numerology in Nauigatio.
This adaption of Shakespeare’s tragedy stars Michael Fassbender, with Marion Cotillard portraying his wife, Lady Macbeth.
In his article, ‘What really caused the Viking Age? The social content of raiding and exploration’, Steven P. Ashby, a medieval archaeologist and lecturer at the University of Cambridge, outlines the many factors that would have prompted Norsemen – both the elites and the regular men – to conduct their raids across Europe.
This hagiographical work recounts the life of Othmar, the first abbot of the Abbey of St. Gall. It describes his leadership, his imprisonment and death, and the miracles later attributed to him.
Though often regarded as one of the most important battles of the Middle Ages, the Battle of Tours remains shrouded in uncertainty. In this episode of Bow & Blade, Michael and Kelly explore the limited evidence to uncover where the battle may have been fought and what might have taken place there.
A conversation on three twelfth-century heresiological texts, the challenges of publishing and studying them, and the ways their central concerns can be presented in a museum exhibition.
On Byzantium & Friends, a conversation with Alessandra Bucossi on the preoccupation with heresy in the twelfth century, which resulted in the production of a number of massive anti-heretical treatises.
A conversation with Marica Cassis about the archaeological study of the east Roman world and how it interfaces with traditional, text-based historiography. What can archaeology see and what not? What challenges has it faced to emerge as a field and what are the prospects that it faces today?
A conversation with Alicia Walker on the pseudo-Arabic inscriptions that appear on a number of tenth- and eleventh-century churches in Greece, most notably at the monastery of Hosios Loukas. What did the Arabic script signify in Orthodox culture at the time if not tension with Islam?
After Henry V’s death, the Hundred Years’ War flares back to life as a Franco-Scottish army confronts the English in Normandy. In this episode of Bow & Blade, Michael and Kelly dig into the Battle of Verneuil—one of the war’s bloodiest clashes—and why it mattered.