Medieval manuscripts: Did you mean...?

Trade and commerce in the medieval world developed to such an extent that even relatively small communities had access to weekly markets and, perhaps a day's travel away, larger but less frequent fairs, where the full range of consumer goods...

The Constantinian Excerpts, or Excerpta Constantiniana is the conventional name given to the mid-10th Century Byzantine palace encyclopedia commissioned by the scholar emperor Constantine VII ‘Porphyrogenitus’ (reign 945-959). It was a work...

September 22, 2011, The Getty Center Illuminated manuscripts from the Middle Ages are significant for the literary texts they preserve. But they are also important, historically and culturally, for their illustrations of the life of Christ...

Early medieval Icelandic government, or Viking Iceland, has been termed an incipient form of democracy or democratic parliamentarism, however, the system was actually nothing like its European counterparts, be they medieval or contemporary...

In the wake of the downfall of the Western Roman Empire and the intellectual collapse of Athens, Byzantine scholars engaged in preserving the Classical Greek language and its literature. Thus they became the guardians of a vanished culture...

Feudalism in medieval Japan (1185-1603) is the relationship between lords and vassals where land ownership and its use were exchanged for military service and loyalty. Although present earlier to some degree, the feudal system in Japan was...

The medieval toilet or latrine, then called a privy or garderobe, was a primitive affair, but in a castle, one might find a little more comfort and certainly a great deal more design effort than had been invested elsewhere. Practicality...

West Africa was one of the world's greatest producers of gold in the Middle Ages. Trade in the metal went back to antiquity but when the camel caravans of the Sahara linked North Africa to the savannah interior, the trade really took off...

Sara Plumbly, Head of Islamic & Indian Art at Christie’s London, discusses the breadth of Islamic calligraphy. For Muslims, the Qur’an constitutes the very word of God. As Sara Plumbly, Head of Islamic & Indian Art at Christie’s London...

An English medieval castle, if a large one, could have a household staff of at least 50 people, which included all manner of specialised and skilled workers such as cooks, grooms, carpenters, masons, falconers, and musicians, as well as a...