Archaeologists in the Czech Republic recently made an unusual and exciting discovery that dates back many centuries. While digging up a medieval house in the historic center of Nový Jičín in the...
An amateur explorer has released a video of himself exploring a hitherto lost underground “souterrain” chamber. But the journey he filmed inside this strange place is not for the claustrophobic among...
A 1,000-year-old “Boleslaw sword” (i.e., from the glorious reign of Boleslaw the Brave; lived 967-1025 AD) dated to the beginning of the 11th century and believed to have belonged to a knight working...
A crowd of almost 88000 filled the stands to watch the finals of the Women’s Euro 22 soccer championship on Sunday, July 31 at Wembley stadium, most cheering madly for the English team. The...
Throughout history, two things have remained constant. First, the intermingling of cultures has produced countless local variations of original ideas, be it cuisine, or language, or fashion. Second,...
The next time you’re looking through an illuminated manuscript, keep an eye out for images of medieval knights fighting off snails. Of all the villains in the world, these may not have been the first...
A burial practice among elite medieval Europeans was to be interred on their beds, a rite which archaeologists call “a bed burial.” An English researcher has now completed an analysis of 72 bed...
The daily life of a medieval peasant in England and elsewhere was extremely difficult, long, and busy. They faced endless days of manual labor working on farmland starting as early as three in the...
The Middle Ages had its fair share of terrible jobs, from cesspit cleaners to rat catchers and even royal bottom-wipers , but few were as soul-destroying as the job of a sin-eater, who carried the...
An English couple in Australia are selling a home. But this is not your typical suburban semi-detached house, it’s a full-blown English-style medieval castle , complete with a moat… the last thing...
The jus primae noctis , droit du seigneur , or “right of the first night,” is an alleged medieval custom which permitted lords to engage in sexual intercourse with the brides of their male subjects...
One surprising quirk about life in medieval times is that people could, and did, take animals and insects to court and try them as if they were humans. While there is scant verifiable evidence on the...
The medieval jester has become an iconoclastic figure in society, regularly appearing in the TV shows, films, and video-games of the modern era. The classic jester, replete with flamboyant colorful...
The use of private duels as a way of settling questions of honor spread through Europe from Italy in the end of the 15th century, though the institutional practice was much older. These encounters...
In November 2013 archaeologists from the University of Durham in northern England found two mass graves near Durham Cathedral. At first the archaeologists thought the bodies belonged to the Cathedral...
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...
