In many countries, laws prohibit employers from discriminating based on sex. However, exemptions to this law are often made for religious orders. The Roman Catholic Church is adamant that women...
The tale about a huge ship (of Biblical proportions) that enabled the survival of all of the species of animals around the world sounds impressive, but also quite unbelievable. Nonetheless, its...
St. Margaret of Antioch is a Christian saint venerated in both the Churches of the West and of the East. In the latter, she is known as Saint Marina the Great Martyr. Little is known for certain...
Israeli archaeologists have announced the discovery of a hoard of rare Byzantine bronze coins from a site dating back to 614 AD. The coins were discovered during excavations for the widening of the...
Traditions relating to the dark and fascinating practices of witchcraft in Iceland are as old as the first human settlements on the island. Countless people paid for these practices with their lives...
In the 14th century, the nine worthies were a list of nine men who were identified as paragons of chivalrous behavior, which included courage and honor in battle. The nine worthies consisted of a...
Today, the predominant religion in the Middle East is Islam. Christianity, however, has also played an important role in the history of the Middle East and at one point was the largest religion in...
More than 100 sets of ancient human remains have been excavated from four cemeteries near the ruins of a medieval Christian monastery in Sudan. Researchers were surprised to find that many of the...
It may come as a shock to learn that ancient peoples enjoyed making lists of greats as much as we do. Just as websites make Top 10 lists about topical items today, so too did the Hellenistic Greeks...
The tomb of the Biblical matriarch Rachel became the basis for many Christian, Jewish, and Muslim stories. The remarkable chamber located in Bethlehem is not only a part of cultural and historical...
Until the Age of Enlightenment, it was widely believed that every land creature had its counterpart in the sea (and perhaps even in the heavens). The classic example of this belief is the horse,...
The most widely used calendar around the world today is called the Gregorian calendar. It was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in the 16th century CE and was a modification of an ancient Roman...
Rooted in the cyclical pagan year, Christmas can be linked back to the celebration of the Winter Solstice around December 21st, a time when the night was at its longest, and the coming of the “light...
Virgil, in his Aeneid , describes Deiphobe, better known as the Sibyl of Cumae, as coming from “a hundred perforations in the rock, a hundred mouths from which the many utterances rush” (43-5, 163)...
Rauðskinna is a legendary book that was more terrifying than most of the black magic documents ever produced. It was so dark, that most people could not believe it was written by a Christian bishop...
Mary Magdalene is one of the most fascinating people from the times of Jesus. Although every year there are more and more people who follow her as if she were a super-heroine, her story has been...
Devil or angel? Sometimes it’s hard to tell. The concept of demons is an old one, harking back to the confiscation of pagan nature deities by the Roman Empire, which turned them into something more...
Archaeologists in Serbia have discovered the first known golden curse tablets in ancient Roman tombs in Serbia. The tablets contain inscriptions in long-forgotten languages with strange magical...
Even though there are hundreds of thousands of followers of pagan religions, the old beliefs haven't survived enough to be included in the group of the five major religions of the world. Officially,...
Fascination with the Danish ballad Agnete og Havmanden , or "Agnete and the Merman", has long been prominent in the Scandinavian countries. In spite of arguments over origin and dating, the poem has...
(Read Part I) The "Golden Age" of artisan efforts at the Tarbat monastery did not last nearly as long as the monastery of Iona; the industrial locations were burned in a site wide fire in the eighth...
Situated on the edge of the Tarbat peninsula on the northeastern coast of Scotland, Portmahomack carries a legacy of a long buried Golden Age of religious industry that was devastatingly altered by...
Saint Menas (spelled variously as Minas, Mina, Mena and Mennas) is an Egyptian saint and martyr, and has the epithets of the Wonder-worker and the Martyr . St. Menas was one of the most well-known...
Queen Tamar was a ruler of Georgia who lived between the 12th and 13th centuries AD. This monarch presided over what is today known as the Georgian Golden Age . This was a period that began in the...
