Is this the face of the Slavic pagan Goddess Mokosh? If so, it would be one of the only remaining images of the powerful fertility deity whose influence eroded with the arrival of Christianity among the Kievan or Kyivan Rus in the 10th century. Much about this period is unknown, but the Kievan/Kyivan Rus […]
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Let’s talk about apotheoses in domes in art, shall we? This term comes from Ancient Greek and means “to make into a God.” Some heroes of Classical myths ended up ascending into the heavens to be with the other Olympians, such as Hercules. In Ancient Rome, emperors beloved by the Senate could be given the
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I adore Medieval flora and fauna mistakes! When they got things wrong, they were so extra about it. So here’s an example of a made-up species that Medieval people thought existed, called the “Barnacle Goose,” or “Branta leucopsis”. Much like the “Lamb of Tartary,” which I did a different post about, the Barnacle Geese
This lovely ship was one sight you’d not want to have been privy to if you were a French person from the 14th century. The black hulls and the red sails were the mark of ships belonging to Jeanne de Clisson, aka “the Lioness of Brittany,” a noblewoman who became a pirate in the name
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This is a late 12th-century illustration of “the Witch of Endor,” a prophetess from the Bible who could raise the spirits of the dead and talk to them. Artists have enjoyed illustrating her almost as much as religious people have enjoyed debating about her powers. In the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament First Book of Samuel
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Moses Maimonides is not only fun to say (alliteration!), but also the name of one of the most important philosophers of the Middle Ages. Born around 1135 in Spain, Maimonides was influenced by the great mix of religious cultures that made the Medieval Iberian peninsula unique. And this brings me to one of his most
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After the Roman Empire collapsed in Western Europe, the literature that had flourished went into abeyance. For instance, the entire genre of playwriting just went out of existence. It was finally a tenth-century woman named Roswitha of Gandersheim who revived this art. Her plays today read charmingly clunky, like fourth-grade presentations. As with much about
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Last evening I had the pleasure of hosting my former history student Andrew Shriner, as well as Shippensburg University’s fencing instructor and coach Nickolys Hinton, as speakers. They gave presentations on Medieval sword-making and the development of Spanish swords from the 17th century to the present. My undergraduates, the Shippensburg fencers, and folks from the
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Volodymyr Zelenskyy has emerged as a heroic leader in no small part because of his willingness to endure the dangers and hardships of the battlefield for a cause that seems larger than him. In this, he parallels the popularity of another unlikely ruler of the Middle Ages: King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, aka “the leper
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We’ve probably all seen pictures of the Bayeux Tapestry at some point, that amazing almost 70-meter /230 foot-long embroidery from the 1070s showing in cartoon-panel format how the English were vanquished by the Normans at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. But few of us have had the opportunity to examine the embroidered figures up
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This is a picture of Hvalsey Church, a Norse ruin from a settlement in Greenland that was abandoned in the 1400s. Scientists and historians have recently amended their ideas about what caused the collapse of this culture. In the late 900s, some Vikings from Iceland migrated to Greenland, setting up small communities that lasted
Today is April 20, aka 4/20, which has been associated in the US since the 1970s with marijuana. Here, we are in a transition phase regarding weed’s medical and recreational legalization, with some states allowing and others forbidding. But in the Middle Ages no regulation or moral questioning of the plant existed. Medieval Europeans
In the Khentii Mountains of Mongolia, the almost 8,000 ft-peak Burkhan Khaldun lies: it is the legendary burial place of Genghis Khan, one of Eurasia’s most ambitious and brutal rulers. From a distance of 800 years, it is easy to allow awe rather than horror to surface as the primary estimation of the Mongolian warlord.
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Everyone knows that the Medieval aristocracy was famed for the way they promoted the military prowess of knights on horseback. Gargantuan sums of money were spent selecting, breeding, and caring for war horses that could show off the status of their aristocratic riders. There is, therefore, a certain amount of glee to be taken by
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This is a post about a Medieval folktale that has come to be known as “the Green Children of Woolpit”. It’s also about how sources from the different past can be interpreted in such wildly different ways.Here is what the two Medieval sources dating from about 1189 and 1220 roughly agree upon about what happened:.Sometime
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Here’s a humongous Hellmouth harvesting hardened humans! This 15th-century depiction of tortured souls was a common artistic motif and gets at the real fear that permiated Medieval society about what one’s place in the afterlife would be. Notably missing from the damned, here, were children. And yet, folks did worry. The general view was that
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Ah, the poor doomed philosopher Giordano Bruno. Whereas Galileo had been allowed to live after recanting his astronomical views that ran counter to Roman Catholic teachings, Bruno — himself a Dominican friar — was executed by the Church in 1600. His death and his willingness to buck the Catholic Church’s stranglehold on acceptable views about
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Take a guess as to what this Medieval illustration is a drawing of: upside-down fallopian tubes? Sea-creatures? Mirror-image diagrams of some planetary motion? The answer is below, but before you look — ask yourself how you are arriving at your guesses. The process of investigative inquiry to figure out the nature of reality is something
Hasan Ibn al-Haytham and the Scientific Method Read More »
So, I was looking up some information about the 13th-century thinker Roger Bacon the other day (as one does), and I came across a popular legend associated with the scholar in the Early Modern Period. It was a story about a magical automaton made of brass in the shape of a man’s head that could
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I don’t play videogames like Assassin’s Creed, but I am extremely grateful to them for drumming up enthusiasm for history and even getting concepts about the Middle Ages into popular culture. So this post is not intended to diss Assassin’s Creed! (Which has a very engaging plot and awesome graphics IMHO). But, historians will be
