Yale University Library
This late-medieval document is written in encoded text that has yet to be cracked. But its numerous illustrations provide clues about its content.
Richard II became king of England when he was 10 and was deposed at 32.
British Library/Wikimedia Commons
Medieval Europeans thought about politics in terms of leadership and often criticized rulers for ‘tyranny’ − both in government and in the church.
Medieval scholars linked celestial occurrences, such as Halley’s comet, to events at home, such as the arrival of William the Conqueror in England.
DIT Archive/Alamy
Medieval scholars connected celestial events to changes that happened on the ground, such as the overthrow of the king.
Women spinning and socialising. From Augustine’s La Cité de Dieu.
Museum Meermanno
The Distaff Gospels is a collection of advice around pregnancy, childbirth and health. It was shared between French women while spinning flax.
Class, gender and religion influenced health care in early modern Spain and Latin America.
Diego Velázquez/The National Gallery
Early modern societies in Latin America and Spain saw a convergence of traditional medical knowledge and the professionalization of medicine. The resulting differences in access to care endure today.
A miniature of the Erythrean Sibyl, writing.
British Library, Royal 16 G V f. 23.
While the wider literature tells us that medieval women were silent and passive, their letters and embroideries tell a different story.
This 15th-century medical manuscript shows different colors of urine alongside the ailments they signify.
Cambridge University Library
Your doctor’s MD emerged from the Dark Ages, where practicing rational “human medicine” was seen as an expression of faith and maintaining one’s health a religious duty.
Southampton’s Itchen Bridge.
Katharina Brandt|Alamy
Court leet records provide a vivid picture of the disagreements and disputes which pre-occupied medieval townspeople.
Wikimedia
The medieval is part of the mosaic of modern Australia. Our nation’s heritage on this island continent is full of it: in aesthetics, institutions, laws, languages, identities, moralities.
A Bryde’s whale.
worldclassphoto/Shutterstock
The gaping maws and great belch of the Norse ‘hafgufa’ may well have been a humpback whale simply engaging in trap-feeding.
A stone statue of Dewi Sant inside St Davids Cathedral in Pembrokeshire.
Peter Barritt/Alamy
Much of what we know about the life of the sixth century monk, St David, comes from medieval texts written several centuries later.
An artistic impression of how the Newport Medieval ship may have looked .
David Jordan/Newport Museums and Heritage Service
The Newport medieval ship is the most complete section of a 15th-century European vessel discovered to date.
Getty Open Collection, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles,
Many people gathered and slept in a shared warm space in medieval times.
a drawing of the Italian poet and court writer Christine de Pizan writing.
BNF Archives
Tiny drawings, such as knights riding snails, and random lines and squiggles were common in medieval books.
Does a painting from 1400 depict one of Jesus’ torturers as suffering from ‘saddle nose,’ a common effect of syphilis?
Detail of an Austrian painting c. 1400 of the Passion of Christ, The Cleveland Museum of Art
The idea that Europeans brought new diseases to the Americas and returned home with others has been widely accepted. But evidence is mounting that for syphilis this scenario is wrong.
krugloff/Shutterstock
The objects buried with people provide important clues about their lives.
Scientists still struggle to agree on what ball lightning is caused by.
Wikipedia
A 12th century sighting of ball lightning has been discovered in a medieval monk’s chronicle.
Amid the pandemic, confetti fell on an almost-empty Times Square last New Year’s Eve.
AP Photo/Craig Ruttle
Today most societies take the A.D. time system for granted. That wasn’t always the case.
Was Chaucer a toxic misogynist, or a staunch women’s ally?
Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Chaucer’s career as a secret agent helped him assume different disguises in his writing. Some scholars interpret this role-playing as Chaucer being sexist and anti-Semitic.
An eclipse of the moon as illustrated in a 13th-century English manuscript. British Library, Harley 3735, f. 81v.
British Library Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts
When it came to making sense of lunar eclipses, medieval Christians did not necessarily resort to superstition, magicians, and moon-eating monsters.