Peter and Paul, in a mosaic from Ravenna (500s AD) In the later Roman Empire and the Middle Ages, the Pope was the leader of the Catholic Church. Whenever there was a question [...]
Mary's tunic, preserved in a glass case in the treasury of Chartres cathedral in France Romantic story of Mary's dress About 800 AD, Empress Irene was ruling the Roman Empire in Eastern [...]
Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II The new emperor of Germany and Italy, Frederick II, was only two years old when his father died in 1197 AD. So there were several civil [...]
Early medieval Italy: Lombard shield boss (to make spears slide off it) (Metropolitan Museum, New York) Northern Italy and France In 774 AD, Charlemagne conquered northern Italy from the Lombards. Soon after that [...]
Louis the Pious (ca. 820 AD) After Charlemagne died After Charlemagne died in 814 AD, his son Louis inherited the empire, and then Louis's three sons divided his empire between them. One son [...]
Early Middle Ages: Interior of Hagia Sophia When is the Early Middle Ages? The Early Middle Ages comes after the fall of Rome, about 400 AD. But all the way through the [...]
The Lombards: a Lombard Christian altar (700s AD) (University of Alabama) Where did the Lombards come from? In 568 AD, a Turkic people, the Avars, pushed the Indo-European Lombards out of their home in Central [...]
Holy Roman Empire: Otto the Great (on a seal) What happened after Charlemagne? After the death of Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Emperors got weaker and weaker. By 924 AD, a hundred years later, nobody [...]
Who was Charlemagne? This is Charlemagne, or possibly his grandson (now in the Louvre Museum) What's Charlemagne's real name? Charlemagne's name is really Charles le Magne, or Charles the Great. [...]
Grasslands of Central Asia - the steppe homeland of the Avars Ruled by the Rouran The Avars were a mostly Turkic group of people. We first hear of them living [...]
