Medieval (4th-15thC)

Richard Almond has trawled medieval and Renaissance sources for insights about ladies’ riding habits in the Middle Ages and what they reveal about a woman’s place in that society.

The Maid of Orléans was born on January 6th 1412: she has been an incarnation of French national identity and pride for six centuries.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a masterpiece of Middle English literature, which narrowly escaped destruction in the 18th century. Nicholas Mee examines the poem to discover both its secret benefactor and the location in which its drama unfolds.

Clovis I died in Paris on November 27th 511, aged 46.

Sean Cunningham welcomes a recent re-issue.

David Hipshon outlines the career of the most controversial king ever to have occupied the English throne.

A sea voyage in the 12th century was a perilous undertaking, as a Spanish Muslim courtier’s account of his crossing of the Mediterranean demonstrates. Yet, explains David Abulafia, it was also a test of one’s religious devotion, whether Muslim or Christian.

Courtly love, celebrated in numerous songs and poems, was the romantic ideal of western Europe in the Middle Ages. Yet, human nature being what it is, the realities of sexual desire and the complications it brings were never far away, says Julie Peakman.

Louis XII came to the throne in 1498 and ruled France for sixteen years. According to Howell Lloyd, he was a 'ruler in transition': images of Louis XII elevated royal power to divine status, paving the way for the ideology of absolutism to flourish in the era of the Sun King.

Though their appeal seems bizarre to the modern mind, relics and reliquaries reflected an entirely logical system of belief bound up in the medieval worldview, explains James Robinson, curator of a new exhibition at the British Museum.

Richard Cavendish provides an overview of the life of the French monarch who was nicknamed 'the Universal Spider'.

On May 30th 1431, Joan of Arc was burnt as a heretic in Rouen. In this article from our 2006 archive, Richard Vinen ponders the political significance of one of France’s most potent female icons and finds there is more to her than meets the eye.

During the seventh century the Arabs invaded North Africa three times, bringing not just a new religion but a language and customs that were alien to the native Berber tribes of the Sahara and Mediterranean hinterland. Eamonn Gearon looks at the rise of the first Islamic empire.