In early medieval art and literature fluffy white rabbits, bunnies, and hares were typically motifs of innocence, venerability, and purity. However, more in sync with these animals’ rate of...
In 2020 construction workers in the Netherlands made a gruesome discovery. While working in the city of Vianen they came across an enigmatic mass burial. Were the 82 skeletons victims of war, a...
Every country in the world has its own rich folklore , every city and village has its own legends about fantastic creatures and supernatural beings told by grandparents to parents to children,...
Popular depictions of castle moats in film and television usually involve hungry crocodiles , flesh-eating piranhas or dangerous sharks. While most of these depictions are fanciful, one medieval...
Ermine de Reims was a relatively inconsequential peasant woman who moved to the town of Reims, in northeastern France, from rural Vermandois with her elderly husband in 1384. She was a pious woman,...
It is hard to imagine that the gruesome topic of bodysnatching and the ghastly, gory and gorgeous world of relics would be a main focus of religious veneration throughout the Middle Ages. Through...
In the Middle Ages, animals were put on trial just like human beings. A wide range of crimes could be committed by these animals including murder, being an accomplice in bestiality , and damage of...
People in Europe in the Middle Ages boosted libidinal sexual intimacy through the use of medieval aphrodisiacs, some of which are truly bizarre. Dr. Eleanor Janega, a medieval historian based in...
It has long been assumed by historians that medieval English royals consumed a heavily meat-based diet. But a new bioarchaeological study proposes that, before the arrival of the Vikings, Anglo-Saxon...
Out on his daily constitutional, a dog in Poland unexpectedly struck gold, or rather, silver. The dog was being taken for a walk by his owner near the city of Wałbrzych in southwestern Poland when he...
One of the largest ports in the Baltic Sea, Estonia’s Tallinn Port is also one of the oldest in northern Europe, famous as trade center between Rurik Novgorod and Viking Scandinavia. Yesterday, a 700...
When Barry and Lola Haughian purchased an historic old castle on the outskirts of Galway in west Ireland in 2017, they had no idea that one day they would be opening the castle doors to people...
For many years in an obscure back corridor of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City of Jerusalem there was a large stone slab leaning against a wall. The eight-feet-by-five-feet (2.5 meter...
On the 16th of September 1560, in the small rural French town of Artigat, a man named Arnaud du Tilh was put to death by hanging for a most unusual crime: for over three years, he had assumed an...
The world’s most expensive spice by weight, saffron, has been valued and coveted by many ancient civilizations for a multitude of purposes, and debates over its origins still continue. Worth its...
If you find the term ‘bollock dagger’ too crude, you could rightfully call this weapon a ‘kidney dagger.’ But that’s how the Victorians attempted to mask the true nature of this horrendous invention...