In the northern mountains of Spain in the region of Aragon lies the tiny Medieval village of Trasmoz. Once it held 10,000 people, but now there are fewer than 100: except for June, when a festival called “Feria de Brujeria” celebrates the fact that the town is known for its history of witches and being
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This lead Viking-era pendant of Norse God Thor’s hammer was unearthed this past summer of 2023 near the Swedish town of Ysby. Similar to others such as the 10th-Ödeshög pendant shown in the second image, it speaks to a continuity of the Norse religion in an area where Christianity was steadily encroaching. Like the crucifixes
The Italian Renaissance produced some of the greatest artwork of all time, but its glassware doesn’t get the spotlight that it should. It was valued throughout Europe and beyond from the late Middle Ages into the Early Modern period for its beauty and unique qualities. After the fall of the Roman Empire, glassmaking went into
Slavery is a horrible human invention that has been around at least since the development of cities. And probably just as ancient were slave rebellions by those discontented with their situation, many of them ultimately failures, but nonetheless important for understanding the history of resistance to oppression. The Zanj Rebellion of 869-883 is a fascinating
Poor little toads of the Medieval period, getting stuck with horrid associations of despicable things — putrefaction, death, and lust. And did you notice how all three of those adjectives were lumped together? That’s because the Christian Church at the time intentionally set about trying to make carnality associated with disgusting things, because church doctrine
The Chateau of Montségur might look Medieval, but it was actually built up on the destroyed ruins of the Medieval fortress where about 210 people belonging to the Christian Albigensian sect were burned as heretics in 1244. In the early 1200s, Pope Innocent III enacted an Inquisition — a legal investigation — to determine who
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The way cutting-edge technology lets us see into the distant past is so cool. Recently, a technique called “photometric stereo workflow” enabled Medieval historian Jessica Hodgkinson take a fresh appraisal of the pages of a manuscript written in south-east England in the first half of the 700s. The historian discovered that the name of a
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This is a sword by Goro Nyudo Masamune (c. 1264-1343), considered to be the greatest swordsmith in Japanese history. His swords have a recognizable set of characteristics, one of the most famous being his skill in producing a quality called “nie” an appearance in the blade of Martensite (hard steel in crystal formation) embedded in
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Scholars think that the diameters of these various circles on the wall of this church of San Nicola, in Pisa, Italy, were an intentional representation of the famed Fibonacci sequence made in the 13th century. (They represent the first nine numbers: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, and 55.) Leonardo Fibonacci was from
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If you look carefully, you will see a corpse dressed in white lying in a coffin in this illustration of the Laws of Hamburg from 1497. This painting shows the Medieval practice of _cruentation_, a type of jurisprudence where someone convicted of murder would put their hands on their alleged victim – the idea was
These are elements of the necklace that is making news headlines today: the “Harpole treasure” discovered back in April of 2022. On December 6, news was officially released about the burial dating from 630-670 CE that archaeologists from the Vistry Group unearthed in Northamptonshire. One of the most significant of its kind, it contained a
The Clash of Claymores 2019 happened this weekend at Shippensburg University- it was a weekend of Historic Eurpean Martial Arts (HEMA). The workshops and tournaments were fascinating, professional, and intense!
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Cthulhu was orange in the Middle Ages, evidently. (Jk this is Hildegard of Bingen – a famous mystic – being inspired by the Holy Spirit. Totally different primordial mind-influencing force.)
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In the mood for a Medieval ghost story? In 12th century Europe, tales dealing with a procession of the dead (often aristocratic soldiers), who are doomed to wander the earth to atone for their sins and often appeared to be suffering,, became popular. One of these sorts of tails was recorded by an Englishman named
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The Goddess Diana above a group of women all reading. From “The Book of the Queen,” by Christine de Pizan, one of the most famous women authors of the Middle Ages, about 1410. Source: Digitised Manuscripts http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Harley_MS_4431
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Try as I might, I can’t find any sources that definitively link the “Upside-down” world of the show _Stranger Things_ to early Scandinavian myths about the land of the dead, but there are so many similarities it seems hard to believe that the content creators weren’t deliberately borrowing. To take the words of ethnographer Tim
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Potential happy post-extinction post! The drawing you see here is artist Nirupa Rao’s rendition of a plant that some believe to be an extremely rare survivor of Silphium (also known as silphion), an Ancient Mediterranean species so valued that it was hunted to extinction — but maybe, believe some plant historians, it’s been rediscovered. I
Here’s a Burning Man party of a completely different nature: this “Bal des Ardents” (Ball of the Burning Men) happened in late January of 1393, and the story encapsulates the place of French Medieval aristocratic culture with all its quirks. The event involved a big party, during which the French king staged a performance with
Holy hand miracle! On this Christmas Eve Eve, I thought it would be great to share a Medieval Christmas legend. Like Christians today, Medieval Europeans celebrated “Christ’s Mass” with community festivities that were connected to the story of Jesus’ birth. Illustrated here in this late fifteenth-century miniature painting is a special moment that with a
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So it’s Christmas Eve, and in the U.S., the green Grinch monster invented by “Dr. Seuss” is a well-known figure who tries to destroy Christmas. But in the 1640s, there was an actual Grinch-movement to ban the holiday. Most British people put the blame for this unpopular episode on the English military leader-cum-religious zealot Oliver
