All posts tagged: medieval

5 Medieval Romances (and a Bonus Renaissance Romance)

5 Medieval Romances (and a Bonus Renaissance Romance)

Published by Jenni Sidey

To “go medieval” on someone usually means to be savagely violent (though many historians would argue that’s an outdated stereotype). Medieval romance doesn’t usually indicate intense violence in the same way as the idiom, but there’s some interesting resonance there. A medieval romance usually includes very intense circumstances: war and knighthood, divides between nobility and serfs, plague and famine. The intensity of the setting leads to intense, highly dangerous, and exciting romances. A lot of millennials like me grew up rewatching The Princess Bride, A Knight’s Tale, and Ever After, so maybe that is part of my affinity for the medieval romance subgenre. Medieval romance generally refers to the Middle Ages: the fifth century to the early fifteenth century C.E., the pre-Renaissance years when feudal lords dominated the European continent, and the unquestioned divine right of kings reigned. Stories of traveling knights and maidens dominated. Scottish highlander romance also takes up a noticeable share of medieval historical romance (although this is true of all historical romance). Recent years have seen an uptick in more diverse …

Danish town plans for underground parking garage, finds long-lost medieval convent

Danish town plans for underground parking garage, finds long-lost medieval convent

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time. Archaeologists in Denmark have finally pinpointed the remnants of a long lost 13th-century monastery, although its location may dismay local sports fans. With the help of ground-penetrating radar (GPR), researchers confirmed that traces of St. Clare’s Convent still exist roughly six feet beneath a soccer field in the town of Roskilde west of Copenhagen. “We knew that St. Clare’s Convent had been located here, but not how much of the complex from 1256 [CE] had been preserved,” Jesper Langkilde, an archeologist at the Roskilde Museum (ROMU) recently told the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research. Roskilde served as a religious and royal power hub during the Middle Ages. By the 16th century, the Protestant Reformation ushered in the dissolution of many local Catholic …

How medieval Scottish kings kept unrest at bay with populist policies

How medieval Scottish kings kept unrest at bay with populist policies

Published by Sam Flores

Governments have always had to strike a balance between actions that are unpopular but thought to be necessary, and laws and policies that win them support from the public. In the UK, the new prime minister Andy Burnham has set out to grab the news agenda with a string of genuinely popular announcements. Back in the middle ages, unpopular governments did not need to worry about the ballot box – but they did often face popular uprisings. The most famous of these was the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt in England – a serious of riots across the country against the corruption of government and local landlords. This is the most studied revolt of the middle ages, but there were many other uprisings across medieval Europe. But one country where these uprisings were uncommon was Scotland. In my book, Protest, Resistance and Popular Politics in Late Medieval Scotland, I investigated why this might have been the case. One reason was the relative alertness of the Scottish state when it came to passing laws that eased the consequences …

Andy Burnham’s No 10 North has a precedent – in medieval York

Andy Burnham’s No 10 North has a precedent – in medieval York

Published by Sam Flores

Andy Burnham’s decision to establish No 10 North, a permanent northern base for the prime minister’s office, has been hailed as an ambitious shift in state power. Supporters see it as a long-overdue attempt to rebalance political power away from Westminster. Critics have questioned the practicalities of moving part of the machinery of government beyond London. The idea that England has always been governed from a single political centre is surprisingly recent. Westminster may now appear almost inseparable from the state, but for much of English history, government was far more mobile. The royal household, senior officials, courts, records and administrative departments moved with the monarch, creating what historian J.E.A. Jolliffe called “a government of the roads and the roadsides”. The scale of this movement could be extraordinary. At the height of his reign, King John (who reigned from 1199 to 1216) relocated his court and government on average 220 times a year. Other historical centres of power include Winchester, which served as the political heart of pre-Conquest England. During the English civil war (1642-1651), …

60% of medieval knight tales lost to time

60% of medieval knight tales lost to time

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time. Before the invention of the printing press, the only way to make a copy of a text was by hand. Whether intentionally or by accident, the copy wasn’t always identical to the original, and the differences carried over into all the other copies made from the new version. This is also akin to how genetic mutations spread in populations across evolutionary history. People first noticed the similarities between the genealogy of species and the genealogy of manuscripts in the 19th century, Julien Randon-Furling, a mathematician at Centre Borelli in the  École normale supérieure Paris-Saclay, tells Popular Science. Randon-Furling studies the intersection of mathematical sciences and humanities, among other disciplines. Following in the footsteps of polymath Michael P. Weitzman who, in the 1970s and …

Medieval masterpiece Bayeux Tapestry arrives in London

Medieval masterpiece Bayeux Tapestry arrives in London

Published by Sam Flores

The Bayeux Tapestry has arrived in London for the first time in more than 900 years after a highly secure and complex journey from France to the British Museum, as FRANCE 24’s Rochelle Ferguson-Bouyahi explains. The 11th-century masterpiece depicting the Battle of Hastings will be displayed from September 2026 to July 2027, in a historic loan hailed as a symbol of Franco-British ties. Keywords for this article Source link

How Russia turned to medieval saints in its push for ‘traditional values’ – and more babies

How Russia turned to medieval saints in its push for ‘traditional values’ – and more babies

Published by Sam Flores

(The Conversation) — One Saturday afternoon in May 2026, families gathered on Poklonnaya Gora, a hilltop war memorial park in western Moscow. They came for a procession and a “moleben,” an Orthodox prayer service, for the well-being of Russian families. Church media billed it as the first Day of the Sanctity of the Family. May 30 is the feast of St. Evdokia of Moscow, a 14th-century princess who took monastic vows late in life after being widowed. Her husband, St. Dmitry Donskoy, a prince who led a victory over the Mongols, is commemorated on June 1. The church joined the two into a single couple’s feast in 2015, with a decree stressing that they were “parents of twelve children.” Just over five weeks later, Russians will celebrate another “holy couple.” July 8 honors Sts. Peter and Fevronia, a 13th-century prince and princess venerated as patrons of marriage and famed for their devotion to each other. First celebrated in 2008, the day became an official national holiday in 2022, though not a day off from work. …

Italians are beating the scorching heat inside ingenious medieval homes

Italians are beating the scorching heat inside ingenious medieval homes

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time. Adapting to the ongoing climate crisis will require architectural innovation, but not every problem requires a cutting-edge solution. Amide deadly, record-breaking summer temperatures, some residents in southern Italy are sidestepping the heat inside revitalized medieval buildings. Although out of fashion for generations, a type of home known as the trullo is gaining popularity once again for its ingenious, temperature lowering design. The first trulli (plural of trullo) were built during the mid-14th century. The buildings are traditionally one-room structures topped with a large, conical roof. Assembled using limestone removed from farmlands, each trullo features thick walls measuring anywhere from five-to-10-feet-deep.  One of the secrets to the trulli’s natural cooling lies in the stones. Limestone’s hygrothermal properties means that it acts differently depending on …

Odd-shaped vessel hints at alchemy in medieval German castle

Odd-shaped vessel hints at alchemy in medieval German castle

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time. Archaeologists in Germany say a uniquely shaped ceramic vessel discovered inside a castle was potentially used for much more than simple distillations. According to the Saxony State Office for Archaeology, the over 1.5-foot-tall jug’s origins are “presumably” tied to medieval alchemy. But before anyone conjures images of magical rituals, experts say it’s far more likely the container’s creators intended the vessel for more grounded research trying to turn dull metals into gold. Located in southern Saxony, Germany, Gnandstein Castle’s earliest iteration was built during the 13th century to overlook the Wyhra Valley. Generations of modifications eventually transformed the fortification into a manor, although many medieval architectural elements are still visible throughout the former residence. Gnandstein Castle received around a decade of renovations between …

Russian and Kyrgyz Scientists Explore a Drowned Medieval City

Russian and Kyrgyz Scientists Explore a Drowned Medieval City

Published by Jenni Sidey

Russian and Kyrgyz scientists are exploring the ruins of the medieval trading center of Turu-Aygyr, submerged in the waters of Lake Issyk-Kul in Kyrgyzstan for centuries. Their findings were first reported by the Russian Geographical Society (RGS) last November, when it launched a joint archeological mission with the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) and the National Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz Republic to study the drowned city. An important stop on the Silk Road between China and the West, which flourished between the 1st century BCE and the 14th to 15th centuries CE, Turu-Aygyr was destroyed by an earthquake at the beginning of the 15th century and subsequently disappeared under the lake’s surface. According to researcher Valery Kolchenko, head of the Kyrgyz contingent, while the city may have already been abandoned by then, the region’s population changed drastically following the earthquake, with medieval settlers being replaced by nomads. Related Articles From the 10th to the 13th centuries, the Issyk-Kul Lake area was under the control of the Karakhanids, a Turkic dynasty, …