Medieval History

Mention "Medieval knights" and people may think of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table. But these warriors weren't just heroes from fables and legend. They were real men who strapped themselves into heavy armor and bravely charged into battle. Learn what life was like as an elite armored-warrior in Medieval Europe.

The crucial importance of education in China, a prized virtue instilled in the population among all classes by beloved teacher and philosopher Confucius in the 6th century BCE, generated an unprecedented and long-lived golden age of literature and art. It also gave rise to a cornucopia of transformative innovations and groundbreaking technology, particularly following the dawn of the Common Era.

For more than 1,000 years, Christians and Muslims lived side by side, sometimes at peace and sometimes at war. When Christian armies seized Jerusalem in 1099, they began the most notorious period of conflict between the two religions. Depending on who you ask, the fall of the holy city was either an inspiring legend or the greatest of horrors. In Crusaders, Dan Jones interrogates the many sides of the larger story, charting a deeply human and avowedly pluralist path through the crusading era.

A young pretender raises an army to take the throne. Learning of his father’s death, the adolescent, dashing and charismatic and descended from the old kings of the North, vows to avenge him. He is supported in this war by his mother, who has spirited away her two younger sons to safety. Against them is the queen, passionate, proud, and strong-willed and with more of the masculine virtues of the time than most men. She too is battling for the inheritance of her young son, not yet fully grown but already a sadist who takes delight in watching executions.

The reign of Richard III, the last Yorkist king and the final monarch of the Plantagenet dynasty, marked a turning point in British history. But despite his lasting legacy, Richard only ruled as king for the final two years of his life. While much attention has been given to his short reign, Michael Hicks explores the whole of Richard's fascinating life and traces the unfolding of his character and career from his early years as the son of a duke to his violent death at the battle of Bosworth.

Much of what we know about the greatest medical disaster ever, the Black Plague of the fourteenth century, is wrong. The details of the Plague etched in the minds of terrified schoolchildren the hideous black welts, the high fever, and the final, awful end by respiratory failure are more or less accurate. But what the Plague really was, and how it made history, remain shrouded in a haze of myths.

Step into the world of a scholar whose influence spans over a millennium, shaping not just the church, but the very fabric of Western civilization. Meet the Man Behind the Knowledge Isidore of Seville was more than just a bishop; he was a visionary who saw the power of knowledge to transform society. His life and work offer a window into a time when the preservation of wisdom was nothing short of heroic. This book invites you to explore the mind of a man who became the intellectual backbone of the early Middle Ages. Unlock the Secrets of the Etymologiae Discover how Isidore’s greatest ...

In May 1315 it started to rain. It didn't stop anywhere in north Europe until August. Next came the four coldest winters in a millennium. Two separate animal epidemics killed nearly 80 percent of northern Europe's livestock. Wars between Scotland and England, France and Flanders, and two rival claimants to the Holy Roman Empire destroyed all remaining farmland. After seven years, the combination of lost harvests, warfare, and pestilence would claim six million lives - one eighth of Europe's total population.

The Goths are the most enigmatic of all the ancient German tribes. Their name today is still widely in use for a variety of cultural and artistic movements. But unlike other famous German tribes whose names are still descriptive of nations they founded - the Franks, the Lombards, the Angles, the Saxons and the Alemanni - the Goths simply disappeared. The subject of Henry Bradley's splendid short history is tracing the rise, the migrations, and the impact of the Goths on European history along with their spectacular fall.

In just over a hundred years - from the death of Muhammad in 632 to the beginning of the Abbasid Caliphate in 750 - the followers of the Prophet swept across the whole of the Middle East, North Africa, and Spain. Their armies threatened states as far flung as the Franks in Western Europe and the Tang Empire in China. The conquered territory was larger than the Roman Empire at its greatest expansion, and it was claimed for the Arabs in roughly half the time.

Down swept the Vikings from the frigid North. Across the English coastlands and countryside they raided, torched, murdered, and destroyed all in their path. Farmers, monks, and soldiers all fell bloody under the Viking sword, hammer, and axe. Then, when the hour was most desperate, came an unlikely hero. King Alfred rallied the battered and bedraggled kingdoms of Britain and after decades of plotting, praying, and persisting, finally triumphed over the invaders.

The book provides a detailed chronological history of early Western Europe through the lives of the nobility, their marriages, wars, rebellions, and betrayals. The book has original source documentation embedded. This book was compiled from 20-plus years of research combined with an interest in the history of western civilization. By putting all the events in chronological order, I was able to show the impact of relationships between the various factions, and how these relations helped shape Western Europe.

Best-selling author Richard E. Rubenstein brings the past to life in this engrossing story of social, religious, and scientific revolution during one of the darkest periods in European history. When a group of Dark Ages scholars rediscovered the works of Aristotle, the great thinker's ideas ignited a firestorm of enlightened thought. This is the endlessly fascinating account of the pivotal period in history when the modern era took root.

An engineer finds himself in an alternate reality, Cornwall, in the year 715 A.D. He awakens in the body of a young Baron. James Fletcher, now the Count of Cornwall, is facing new adversaries in the Franks. They try to assassinate him and his family, precipitating a full-out war.

With subtlety and exceptional sensitivity, historian Zoë Oldenbourg analyzes the complicated tangle of currents and ideas that motivated the Crusades. As Oldenbourg describes them, the Crusades were not simply a religious phenomenon, nor were they motivated by pure aggression. They were the result of a religious climate that led people of all walks of life to leave their homes and follow the unattainable ideal of heaven on earth.

GLYNDŴR 4 When Warriors Go To Die is the sequel to GLYNDŴR 1 The Foretold son, GLYNDŴR 2 Glorious Shall Their Dragon Be, GLYNDŴR 3 My Child's Child to weep ‘As you and Mortimer said. Those within the garrison will be safe.’ ‘Unless the English break through and if they do God help them.’ Glyndŵr looked inward on a world of violence he drew on from memory and Ieuan could only guess at. Ieuan was almost afraid to ask. ‘Will you stay in Harlech?’ ‘No. I received reports this morning that Prince Hal has commissioned bands of his troops to raid the countryside, strip it bare ...

In Search of the Dark Ages is an unrivalled exploration of the origins of English identity, and the best-selling book that established Michael Wood as one of Britain's leading historians. Now, on the book's 40th anniversary, this fully revised and expanded edition illuminates further the fascinating and mysterious centuries between the Romans and the Norman Conquest.

The Pastons were members of the English gentry, a group of roughly 1,000 households sandwiched between the ruling nobility and the peasants and a rough analog for the contemporary “middle class.” Their existence was fairly typical, except for the fact that it was recorded in an extraordinary collection of nearly 1,000 letters that have survived to this day. Through these letters, which cover the years from 1421 to 1484 and the lives of three generations of Pastons, historians Frances and Joseph Gies provide a rare window into the day-to-day life of this family.

The Harz Mountains in the late Middle Ages. Young Dorith is found raped and badly beaten in the forest. To protect her from a church exorcism, her mother hides her in a distant cloister. There, she slowly regains her strength and her mental state improves. To secure her future, Dorith trains to be a cook and soon learns she has other abilities too. She is given secret scrolls to study, writings from Hildegard von Bingen and Paracelsus who hid much of their knowledge from the church. When she is accused of witchcraft and forced to flee the cloister, she begins a long adventure to become a ...

Strasbourg, 1518. In the midst of a blisteringly hot summer, a lone woman begins to dance in the city square. She dances for days without pause or rest, and when hundreds of other women join her, the men running the city declare a state of emergency and hire musicians to play the Devil out of the mob.