Medieval Life: Did you mean...?

Heraldry, which is the use of inherited coats of arms and other symbols to show personal identity and family lineage, began on the mid-12th century CE battlefield as an easy means to identify medieval royalty and princes who...

Medieval trades were essential to the daily welfare of the community and those who learned a skill through apprenticeship could make a higher and more regular income than farmers or soldiers. Professionals like millers, blacksmiths...

A medieval monastery was an enclosed and sometimes remote community of monks led by an abbot who shunned worldly goods to live a simple life of prayer and devotion. Christian monasteries first developed in the 4th century in...

Monasteries and other religious institutions such as priories and nunneries were a quintessential part of the medieval landscape and an important component of a community's social fabric. Providing spiritual guidance...

The medieval tournament was a forum for European knights where they could practise and show off their military skills in activities such as jousting or the mêlée, indulge in a bit of pageantry, display their chivalrous qualities...

The knights of medieval Europe were meant to be the finest fighting men of their age, even more important, they were expected to be pure in thought and deed, as exemplified in the chivalrous code which they (usually...

Thanks to their favoured position in life and the labour of the peasants on their estates, nobles in an English medieval castle had plenty of leisure hours which could be frittered away by eating, drinking, dancing...

Medieval folklore is a body of work, originally transmitted orally, which was composed between the 5th and 15th centuries in Europe. Although folktales are a common attribute of every civilization, and such stories were being...

The popular view of life in ancient Egypt is often that it was a death-obsessed culture in which powerful pharaohs forced the people to labor at constructing pyramids and temples and, at an unspecified time, enslaved...

People in the Middle Ages have acquired something of a bad reputation when it comes to cleanliness, especially the peasantry. However, despite the general lack of running water and other modern amenities, there were common expectations...