Life in the Middle Ages

 The thirteenth century is strangely neglected by modern scholars. How can you say that? cry medievalists. After all, Charles Homer Haskins,...

Popular movements, social revolts, heresies:  it is really hard to distinguish them for the Middle Ages.  It used to be that historians woul...

It's easy to think of medieval priests and monks and nuns as other-worldly, focused on spiritual issues, above the normal strife of life...

"In the Middle Ages, everyone was middle-aged!"  Umm, no. As I noted in my earlier post on medieval life expectancy , the "...

Saint Patrick's Day was this week, a day celebrated with much more gusto in the US than in Ireland itself.  The Irish note that it is th...

Of course we know that the day has twenty-four hours.  Ever since the ancient Babylonian astronomers announced that there were twelve hours...

A cathedral is not merely a big church.  It is the church of a bishop, the head of the church in his region. When the Roman Empire became Ch...

Welcome to the C. Dale Brittain blog, "Life in the Middle Ages." Between "Lord of the Rings" and "Game of Th...