When knights and castles served kings and queens, a feudal system employed peasants and vassals. Uneducated people used art to learn stories they could not read for themselves. This collection is about life in the Middle Ages.
John Ball, a priest who encouraged peasants to revolt in 1381, would ultimately pay for his words and deeds with his life.
When she was just a child, Katharina von Bora was sent to live in a convent (at Brehna, north of Leipzig) after her mother died. She later became the ...
A miniaturist, working around 1200 in the southern part of England, illuminated a commentary of the Psalms of David. This image depicts a page f...
John Lackland, the English King who agrees to the Magna Carta, acknowledges that Kings and Queens are subject to the rule of law just like everyone el...
This clip - narrated by Dr. David Starkey - provides background on the Duke of Northumberland's attempt to put Lady Jane Grey on Britain's throne.
History tells us that King Charles VI, of France, ultimately "went mad." In one episode, displaying his lack of reasoning, he turned on his own knight...
Observations and descriptions about terrible acts help to get the collective mind of the people to oppose the atrocities.
After close relationships with two different kings - Francis I (of France) and Henry VIII (of England) - Mary Boleyn marries twice. Some historians be...
A breviary, once owned by Mayer van den Bergh, is sumptuous in the extreme (meaning that it is very rare and priceless book).
This image - one of the Ghent-Bruges workshop illustrations in the Mayer van den Bergh Breviary - portrays daily chores framed by strewn flowers in a ...
Composition of bodies: Elements and Humors - a miniature for On the Properties of Things [a thirteenth-century book translated into French during the ...
This illumination on parchment, by an unknown Italian miniaturist who was likely working in Florence during the 14th century, is from the Villani Chro...
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