“Born with a silver spoon in one’s mouth” is a common expression that means your family is rich. The origins of this saying go a long way back, and are connected to a tradition of giving silver spoons to infants getting baptized into the Christian faith. Wiktionary traces the first recorded statement to a 1721
Silver Baptismal Gift Tradition Read More »
This is a re-creation of the nomadic Seljuk Turkish dynasty’s tents, as they maybe looked in the late 11th century. The Seljuks are most well known for destroying the powerful armies of the Byzantines, inspiring their emperor to request military forces from Western Europe, and hence, kick-starting the Crusades. However, this is not the most
The Seljuk Turks and the “Plain of Testicles” Read More »
Oh, boo! Now I have to get walled off in a building surrounded by my own gold and given nothing to eat until I starve! — this might as well be the caption of the illumination here from the early 1400s, illustrating the death of the last ruler of the Abbasid Dynasty, often called the
The Death of the Last Abbasid Caliph, al-Musta Read More »
One of the most fascinating monsters in human cultures is the ghoul — here, you see a particularly nasty one about to be done in by the hero Shah Namah in a 10th-century Persian manuscript. The legends of ghouls extend back in time to the pre-Islamic Arabian Peninsula, but have persisted into modern times, much
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So if you’re into certain video games, Swedish metal bands, or the Young Adult fiction writer Rick Riordan, you may have heard the name “Naglfar.” Regardless, you can say you read about the most hideous ship in all of human history here. And that’s because Naglfar was a boat from Viking mythology made up entirely
Naglfar the Viking “Nail-Ship” Read More »
One of the more bizarre expressions of Christianity comes from the Early Medieval Carolingian world. It is a poem we call “The Heiland,” probably written in the courts of Louis the Pious or Louis the German in the 800s to an Old Saxon-speaking audience. The Heiland is an epic poem (much longer than _Beowulf_) telling
The Heiland, a Medieval Germanic Rendition of the Gospels Read More »
A new article from the science journal _Nature_ throws another wrench in the mystery about the origins of the greatest pandemic in history, the Black Death. Here you see the Chüy Valley in modern Kyrgyzstan and one of the tombstones involved in the recent study. Dating to 1338, and written in Syriac, the stone’s translation
Oft I have I featured in these posts fabulous animals that Medieval people thought existed, but never actually did. The Bonnacon is yet another example, and boy oh boy it’s a doozy. Here — and in the following two images — you see illuminated paintings of various Bonnacons that appear in Medieval Bestiaries, writings that
If I had more time, I would read original treatises in mathematics. The reason is because — when I do get a chance to go over such writings — it is so much clearer to me that math isn’t just a bunch of static pronouncements that everyone agrees about, but a conversation built on emergent
Bhāskara II and the Pythagorean Theorem Read More »
The Catholic Church had a tremendous influence in Medieval society. This did not mean that folks didn’t write about sex, however. These two figures from a 14th-century manuscript show a monk and a nun canoodling with each other. They weren’t supposed to be doing that, btw. The writings about sex undertaken by Constantinus Africanus (died
Medieval Studies on Sex Read More »
These skeletons are part of a massive burial discovered in 2008, a find that put some metaphorical meat on the bones of our knowledge about a notorious state-sponsored killing known as the “St Brice’s Day Massacre”. Corroborated by two written sources that date from the time of the deaths, the St Brice Massacre happened on
St Brice’s Day Massacre Read More »
This humble assemblage of metal has been the subject of fierce debate among historians — it is a 10th-century viking-age stirrup found in England. Horseback riding today would be unthinkable without this contraption, but it was not always that way. When the stirrup was introduced to Western Europe on a broad scale and what difference
The Introduction of the Stirrup to Western Europe Read More »
My daughter Gabby and I got lucky enough to visit France this summer, and found this jewel of a Gothic cathedral — Saint-Etienne Cathedral of Bourges — to be stunning. Work started on it in the last years of the 12th century and mostly finished in 1230, making Saint-Etienne highly unusual in its architecture. The
Saint-Etienne Cathedral of Bourges Read More »
The Medieval city of Bourges in France is known for its many half-timber framed houses. The layout of the town’s streets is circular, with the cathedral at the epicenter. Typical of these wooden structures is that they get wider on top, so that they make use of more space even as the ground floors have
Architecture of Bourges Read More »
The region of Ardeche in south-eastern France has a long history of exporting its produce. The Chestnut trees that grow here amazed me, because they are practically non-existent in the U.S.. Here I am standing next to a famous Chestnut tree over 300 years old — the trunk was massive. Grapes for wine (second picture)
Notre-Dame in Thines, France, is a jewel of a Romanesque church that I will definitely incorporate in my Medieval class this coming fall. It sits high up the hillside of Thines. Cars can’t go into many of the town’s tiny streets, so we walked along a dirt trail for about a kilometer to see it.
Notre-Dame at Thines Read More »
In Province, France, some amazing ruins from Ancient Rome provide testimony to the wealth and engineering skills the empire’s elites commanded. The Pont-du-Gard still exists as part of the once-enormous aqueduct that brought water 50 kilometers away into the town of Nîmes. Built around 50 CE, it had to have an extremely low gradient to
Roman Ruins at Province Read More »
From 1309-1370, the central office of the papacy was not Rome, but the French city of Avignon. Petrarch bitingly referred to this situation as “the Babylonian captivity” of the papacy because he thought it was such a displacement. Although the Catholic Church was extremely powerful by this point of the Middle Ages, the King of
Papal Palace at Avignon Read More »
This view of the southern French city of Uzés is taken from the top of a Medieval tower that now forms part of the town’s Medieval garden. The photos that follow show some of the many plant specimens that were grown in this region in the Middle Ages for all sorts of medical and alimentary
Romanesque architecture (dating from about 1050 on) is my favorite style of them all. Romanesque buildings are rare, their interiors are shadowed and their stone heaviness is evocative and mysterious, and the sculptures are whimsical. The latter quality is clearly evident in a tiny church from the 13th century Ardeche village of Chambonas. This church,
Romanesque Architecture in Village of Chambonas Read More »
