Francis of Assisi gives his father back his clothes (Giotto, in Assisi) Who was Francis of Assisi? By 1200 AD, the Catholic Church was very powerful. Bishops and popes were often rich men. They cared more about [...]
Christian monks: A monk shaving another monk What is a monk? Sometimes when a little boy seemed especially smart, his parents would take him to a monastery and leave him [...]
Madonna and child (Donatello) Medieval families The way people thought about each other in the Middle Ages, everyone was involved in complicated systems of relationships with each other. The first relationships [...]
Burying people who died of plague - the Late Middle Ages The Mongol Empire In the Late Middle Ages, the Mongol Empire brought peace to most of Asia, and encouraged trade along the Silk [...]
Bronze horses of St. Mark's, Venice In 1204 AD, Venice agreed to help European soldiers on the Fourth Crusade. They would use their great navy to get the Crusaders to Egypt. But in exchange, the Venetians got the [...]
King Louis XI of France The Hundred Years' War During the Late Middle Ages, with the Crusades and the Hundred Years' War over, the French kings fought mainly to get control of more and [...]
St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice, Italy (about 1100 AD) The Seljuks destabilize Europe's neighbors In 1071 AD, the Byzantine Empire lost most of Anatolia (modern Turkey) to the Seljuk Turks at the Battle of Manzikert. [...]
Saladin (Salah al-din) When the Mamluk general Imad-ed-din Zangi died, he was succeeded by his son Nureddin, who added Damascus to the land his father had gathered together. And after Nureddin died in 1174 AD, [...]
Castle of Edessa After the First Crusade After the First Crusade in 1096 AD set up Christian kingdoms all along the coast of Israel and Lebanon, of course the Fatimid caliphs who had ruled that area before [...]
Roland blows his horn for help and tries to break his sword on a rock (Chartres Cathedral) As soon as the Moors had conquered Spain in 711 AD, the descendants of the Visigoths and the Romans [...]
