Tristan and Isolde – King Arthur’s Round Table
Tristan and Isolde, in a German woodcut (1400s AD) In the story, Isolde was a princess in Ireland, and a great healer. She was the best doctor in the land. One day this guy [...]
Tristan and Isolde, in a German woodcut (1400s AD) In the story, Isolde was a princess in Ireland, and a great healer. She was the best doctor in the land. One day this guy [...]
Lancelot to the rescue! Notice the importance of his strong steel sword. (Knights of the Round Table) A framing device In the early Middle Ages, poets and story-tellers were telling a lot [...]
King Arthur and the Lady of the Lake Morgaine, or Morgan, first appears in written stories about 1150 AD. There are different stories about her, but most of them agree that [...]
King Arthur (Flores Historiarum, 1200s AD) Mordred first shows up in writing as early as 960 AD. His name's in the Annales Cambriae, in the entry for the year 537 AD. He [...]
Guinevere and Arthur Queen Guinevere first appears in written stories about 1325 AD in the Welsh story Culhwch ac Olwen, as Arthur's queen. In later medieval stories, she's the daughter of King Leodegrance, and [...]
Medieval Book (Cluny Museum, Paris) In the Early Middle Ages, as the Roman Empire was collapsing, the new power of Christianity inspired Augustine, in North Africa, and Pope Gregory the Great in Italy. They [...]
King Arthur hunting, 1300s AD (British Library, London) Stories about King Arthur may be based on a real man who ruled southern England about 450 AD, just after the Romans left, but nobody knows anything [...]
Like the people King Arthur was fighting: Sutton Hoo invaders' helmet (500s-600s AD, now in the British Museum) The end of Roman Britain When Constantine III revolted in England in 406 AD and [...]