Group items tagged

" The map of the medieval world was constantly changing, as various kingdoms, principalities and states fought each other and redrew borders. In Europe and western Asia there were many states that rose to power and then later fell. Some of the most well-known ones include the Holy Roman Empire, the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Abbasid Caliphate. Here, we take a look at 10 of the lesser known kingdoms that no longer exist."

Today's Swiss politics dimly reflects a very odd birth seven centuries ago, in 1291. The beginnings of the radical Swiss Confederation are impossible to unravel, without being struck by the political impact made on Europe by this poor, tiny alliance.

n film and in literature, medieval life seems heroic, entertaining, and romantic. In reality, life in the Middle Ages, a period that extended from approximately the fifth century to the fifteenth century in Western Europe, was sometimes all these things, as well as harsh, uncertain, and often dangerous.  What was it really like?

Dr David Starkey's complete history of the British Monarchy, which reveals the epic and bloody stories of our Kings and Queens and charts the course of the oldest surviving political institution in Europe

Dr David Starkey's complete history of the British Monarchy, which reveals the epic and bloody stories of our Kings and Queens and charts the course of the oldest surviving political institution in Europe

"Resources in Medieval History"

Weelcome to RoyaList Online, a guide to the royal genealogy of Britain. As its name suggests, the core of the web site is a "royal list": a database that provides biographical details of thousands of individuals who have either belonged to, or been connected with, the royal family of England and Scotland during more than 1,000 years of history.lthough the primary focus is on British royalty, the web of intermarriages amongst the royal houses of Europe is such that many representatives of continental royalty are also featured. The intention has been to include all known members of the immediate family of those who are either in or close to the English and Scottish royal lines.

This article discusses human demography in Europe during the Middle Ages, including population trends and movements. Demography was an important feature of historical change during the Middle Ages.

The word 'Assassin' was brought back from Syria by the Crusaders, and in time acquired the meaning of murderer. Originally it was applied to the members of a Muslim religious sect - a branch of the Ismailis, and the followers of a leader known as the Old Man of the Mountain. Their beliefs and their methods made them a by-word for both fanaticism and terrorism in Syria and Persia in the 11th and 12th centuries, and the subject of a luxuriant growth of myth and legend. In this book, Bernard Lewis begins by tracing the development of these legends in medieval and modern Europe and the gradual percolation of accurate knowledge concerning the Ismailis. He then examines the origins and activities of the sect, on the basis of contemporary Persian and Arabic sources, and against the background of Middle Eastern and Islamic history. In a final chapter he discusses some of the political, social and economic implications of the Ismailis, and examines the significance of the Assassins in the history of revolutionary and terrorist movements.

The international effects of Black Death Death and disease were familiar features of life in the Middle Ages, but previous epidemics were dwarfed by the arrival of the Black Death. It erupted out of central Asia to create a pandemic greater even than the Plague of Justinian 800 years earlier. Present in bubonic, pneumonic and septicaemic forms, the Black Death had killed millions by the time it finally declined. Europe may have lost a third of its people, China perhaps half. Besides death, the disease brought fear, panic and very often a complete breakdown of society.

In 1347 news reached England of a horrifying and incurable disease that was spreading from Asia through North Africa and Europe. The Black Death struck London in the autumn of 1348. No one knew how to stop the disease. During the next 18 months it killed half of all Londoners - perhaps 40,000 people.

"In the Navigatio sancti Brandani, the ocean voyage is imagined as a liminal phenomenon, suspended between earthly life in the terrestrial world and paradise, envisaged as an oceanic island, beyond it. Many famous medieval maps, such as the late thirteenth-century Hereford Map and its near-contemporary, the no longer extant Ebstorf world map, can be adduced to support the ocean's conceptually peripheral status in this period. Nevertheless, the genesis of the paper on which this article is based lay in a simple observation: that in a corpus of detailed world maps drawn in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries - the same period in which the Voyage of St Brendan and texts like it were circulating across Europe - the notion of the ocean sea as a   peripheral phenomenon is repeatedly and graphically counteracted."

1066: Battle of Hastings. Summary from GoHistoryGo site

"The Northern Italian cities achieved wide autonomy by the end of 10th century and chosen their sovereigns or elected their own chief of state - the doge. Besides Venice that elected doges since 762, doges also ruled Genoa and Amalfi. German Kings who were weakened by the Investiture Controversy were unable to subdue the Northern Italian cities which gained great wealth during the economic progress in the 11th century and the period of Crusades."

"Explore 1120 pages in the manuscript New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, M. 905, better known as the Geese Book. Use the drop-down calendar to locate feasts and saints' days. Hear and see selected chants with transcriptions and translations."

"Barney Sloane, author of The Black Death in London, said: "An emergency cemetery is a really uncommon find: they were open for a very short while in response to a disease that wiped out 60% of London in months. "They give us a snapshot of the health, lifestyle and demographic make up of London - and since the plague killed indiscriminately there should be a good cross-section.""

"Abstract: Peter the Hermit: Straddling the Boundaries of Lordship, Millennialism, and Heresy demonstrates how eleventh and early twelfth century wandering preachers established millennial spiritual lordship over their popular movements. Peter the Hermit's Popular Crusade exemplifies this."