Heloise and Abelard Who was Heloise? The story of Heloise (HELL-oh-ees) and her husband Peter Abelard is one of the saddest stories of Western history. Heloise was born about 1100 [...]
One of the earliest images of Jesus, from St. Callisto catacomb in Rome (ca. 250 AD) Around the time of the beginning of the Roman Empire, a new religion began among [...]
Simone de Beauvoir was a philosopher Simone de Beauvoir's childhood Simone de Beauvoir's family lost most of their money after World War I. But by the early 1900s, even struggling families [...]
French Revolution: French women revolutionaries march on the king's palace at Versailles Why did France want a revolution? All through the 1700s, Enlightenment philosophers in France had been figuring out new ways [...]
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 [...]
Egyptian caves where early monks and nuns lived The first Christian nuns, like the first Christian monks, lived in Africa - they lived alone in the desert in Egypt in the 300s and 400s AD, where they [...]
Eleanor of Aquitaine (Cloisters Museum, New York City) Eleanor of Aquitaine was fifteen years old in 1137 AD, and not yet married, when her father, the Duke of Aquitaine, died suddenly. [...]
Sherwood Forest, where Robin Hood lived In the Early Middle Ages, most people did not pay any money taxes to the king. Instead, they gave chickens, honey, or work days to their own [...]
Cloister at Moissac (ca. 1100 AD, southern France) Where do cloisters come from? Cloisters were a medieval kind of building that developed out of Greek and then Roman peristyles. What is [...]
Caen - Abbaye aux Dames What is the Abbaye aux Dames? Matilda of Flanders ordered her architects to build this Christian church about 1050 AD in her capital at Caen. (Find out why.) The Abbaye [...]
