The island of Rhodes which now forms part of Greece, has a long and dramatic history dating back 12,000 years to the Neolithic era. In the medieval period it was the headquarters of The Order of...
Cruel. Courageous. Scheming. Chivalrous. These are just some of the contradictory words that have been used to describe King Richard I, a ruler with a ‘Lion heart.’ But lions are not always majestic...
Not all of history’s tales have a happy ending. In fact, most of them are rife with sad fates and great turmoil, with the ruthless passage of time erasing entire nations. One of these tales it that...
Prester John (known also as Presbyter John or John the Elder) was a legendary figure in Europe during the Medieval and Early Modern periods. Europeans living at that time believed that Prester John...
An Israeli archaeologist has identified the long-lost battlefield of Arsuf. This was a battle that took place during the Crusades between the legendary figures of Richard the Lionheart and Saladin...
Our journey begins with the Freemasons . This late sixteenth century group occupies a strange, almost mythical place in modern popular culture and, while evoking many conspiracies, the self-...
The ‘Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon,’ more commonly known as the Knights Templar, or the Templars, was one of the most renowned military orders during the Middle Ages. The...
By Aleks Pluskowski, Alex Brown & Rowena Banerjea / The Conversation The Forest of Białowieża, which straddles the border of Poland and Belarus, is unique in Europe: it is incredibly ancient...
The Crusades were a series of holy wars between the Christians of Western Europe and the Muslims of the Middle East. Traditionally, there were nine major Crusades, which took place between the 11th...
On Christmas Day, 1119, the king of Jerusalem, Baldwin II persuaded a group of French knights led by Hugh de Payne II to save their souls by protecting pilgrims traveling the Holy Land. And so the...
Richard I (more commonly known as Richard Cœur de Lion or Richard the Lionheart ) was a king of England who lived during the 12th century. He is arguably best-known for the role he played in the...
The Baltic nation of Estonia is one of Europe’s least crowded countries and has two UNESCO World Heritage sites, one you may never have heard of. The Struve Geodetic Arc , which Estonia shares with...
The Children’s Crusade is one of the more unusual events that occurred in Medieval England. In the year 1212, tens of thousands of self-proclaimed, unarmed crusading children set out from northern...
What if the Crusades’ history was told from an Arab perspective? In fact, in 2016 al-Jazeera TV did just that. It released a four-episode documentary on the Crusades, and the trailer introduced the...
By Cam Rea / Classical Wisdom Any weapon can be deadly when properly used, so by no means is this list all inclusive. The timeline of the Crusades spans from 1096 AD to 1272 AD, with the 9th Crusade...
When market trader Tina Gayle was banned from selling mugs featuring Knights Templar logos in a Loughborough Market, Charnwood Borough Council ruled that they were offensive to Muslims. A story in...