Medieval Italy: Matilda of Canossa (ca. 1100 AD) Matilda of Canossa By about 900 AD, the Holy Roman Emperors started to lose power over Northern Italy. The Counts of Canossa controlled most of Northern [...]
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 [...]
Medieval Hungary: Stephen, the first Christian King of Hungary ca. 1000 AD The Magyars invade Hungary When the invading Magyars conquered land in Eastern Europe from the Slavs about 900 AD, and started the [...]
Empress Agnes of the Holy Roman Empire holding Henry IV Agnes and the Pope After the death of Henry III in 1056 AD, his widow Agnes ran the Holy Roman Empire. With the [...]
Matilda of Canossa (Vatican Museum) Northern Italy around 1000 AD By 1000 AD, the invading Lombards had married local rich men and women of Italy. They mixed their families together. A few rich families, [...]
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. [...]
The Magna Carta Why did they want the Magna Carta? Since the time of Edward the Confessor in the 1000s AD, the kings of England had been getting more and more powerful. That [...]
Mary Magdalene and Jesus by Fra Angelico (Louvre Museum) Who was Fra Angelico? Fra Angelico was born about 1395 AD in a small town in northern Italy. Like his older brother, he learned [...]
Aachen cathedral (begun 792 AD) One of the first ambitious buildings in Western Europe after the fall of Rome was Charlemagne's chapel at his capital of Aachen (now in northern Germany) about 792 [...]
