Shaan Sarode Ms. Davis English IV – Per. 3 20 October 2010 Impact of Medieval Medicine Imagine when a friend gets sick or catches a “bug”, they may have two different reactions to it. The first is the realistic approach, which re-visits their recent actions and pinpoints the cause of the symptoms. The other is the non-realistic, which tends to blame supernatural causes. People during […]

People have these romantic notions that the medieval time period was full of knights in shining armor and fairytale princesses, when in all reality, the medieval time period was a bloodthirsty and violent time period. Government and religious officials used sadistic torture to punish suspects and obtain confessions. Torture is the deliberate and cruel infliction of mental and physical suffering to obtain information or for […]

A common story plot in modern day films portraying Middle Age themes is a damsel in distress being saved by a knight in shining armor. For instance, the popular animated children’s movie, Shrek, follows the story line of Shrek and his partner, Donkey, going off on a journey in order to save a princess imprisoned in a tall castle tower and guarded by a fire-breathing […]

Lewis, after having been granted Chair of the Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University in 1954, presents his first lecture to shed light on this new responsibility by drawing on a latent misnomer that could perhaps be created by the title of his present position, particularly by placing the terms “Medieval” and “Renaissance” side by side to connote a concurrence in meaning, which according […]

Medieval Pilgrimage In this essay I will discuss how medieval pilgrimages were considered to be a cultural phenomenon. Overall there were many motivations for pilgrims to participate in the act of a pilgrimage. Elaborate excessive artwork led to competitions at pilgrimage sites. Medieval pilgrimages changed Christians along with other religious people, spiritually and emotionally. Pilgrims went on journeys that were over long distances that proved […]

The religious practice of Islam is oriented in a fixed time and space. The faithful will pray in the direction of the Ka’ba five times a day, but how did astronomy take part in determining this? The Islamic calendar says that the day begins at sunset and the five prayers start from that time. Adjusting times for prayer grew out of observing the heavens, a […]

In the chaos and danger of post-Roman Western Europe, Soon, grants of land were made so the young soldiers could receive an income from those lands and afford the high cost of outfitting themselves with the accoutrements of war, such as horses, armor, and weapons. The era of the medieval knight had begun. knights began to treat their land grants as hereditary rights (usually transferring […]

Development of the Medieval Church Christianity transformed trot a persecuted, unrecognized group of believers into a hierarchical, dominating church over the course of seven centuries, developing alongside the changing political environment of post-Roman Europe. The development of the Institution of the Catholic Church and the spread of Christ throughout Europe during these seven centuries directly impacted every aspect of late-antiquity and early-medieval life, especially politics […]

Every society has been molded by historical structures in political, economic and social aspects. These structures which influenced people in their actions and interactions caused a progression that would soon yield to changes in the status quo. However while we speak of multi-level changes, much of it is triggered by power struggles and the question of who rules- such is the essence of politics. It […]

Sports in the Middle Ages The sports of medieval Europe were less-well-organized than those of classical antiquity. Fairs and seasonal festivals were occasions for men to lift stones or sacks of grain and for women to run smock races (for a smock, not in one). The favourite sport of the peasantry was folk football, a wild no-holds-barred unbounded game that pitted married men against bachelors […]