Medieval

Louis IX carrying the Sceptre and the Hand of Justice, from Registre des Ordonnances de L’Hotel du Roi, c.1320.

We are Family

From alliances, to open warfare; from tense meetings on bridges, to collective mourning at family funerals: French and English royalty were united by marriage and divided by war.

Stained Glass Window

When Did the Medieval Period End?

As conventional wisdom has it, Europe began to see the light at the end of a dark age sometime around 1500. Four experts try to date the birth of modernity.

Kilkea Castle

Statute of Kilkenny

The parliament of Kilkenny, which passed the eponymous Statute, opened on 18 February 1366.

A cooking scene, from The Luttrell Psalter. English, c.1330 © British Library Board/Bridgeman Images.

A ‘Creative Microhistory’ of a Medieval Manor

The distant past is not often illustrated with plentiful descriptions of everyday life. Instead, the picture has to be put together from different sources, piece by piece, like a jigsaw. But there are often still gaps, which can be filled with historically informed creativity. 

Sisters Window

Take me to the Church

The medieval parish church was the meeting point of many different things, both sacred and secular.

Ira attacking Patientia, from Prudentius’ Psychomachia, English, 11th century.

Women at War

How did women experience warfare in early medieval Britain?

William II, ‘Rufus’, kneeling before Archbishop Lanfranc, from the Chronique de Normandie, French, 15th century.

The Sin King

The court of William Rufus, son of the Conqueror, was known as a ‘brothel of male prostitutes’.