John Lydgate is more than a bit of an oddity and I have looked into his career with considerable interest. It is true that he was a Benedictine monk at St Edmundsbury from 1382, but his career took an unusual path as he began to take Holy Orders and was made a subdeacon in 1389 - the first step on t...

Brenticus, On the one hand monks would be unlikely to be outside their own monastic cloister, since their vows included one of "stability" (meaning to remain within the walls for life). On the other hand, there were a number of reasons for monks to be out and about with express permission....

Incidentally, regarding you "have been told the Pricker, or as referred to above Spike, was only used for hunting purposes". The people telling you this are clearly confused, since they are referring to a completely different object. Known in Middle English as a tind(e) , this was a forked...

Medieval tableware has been covered in many threads on this forum, but the origin of "nef" may not have been explained before. A nef was originally (early 12th century) a type of warship, or simply an Anglo-Norman term for any ship or boat. It came to the table by 1170 as a boat-shaped win...

Tanning on the one hand and "keeping it white" on the other are sadly incompatible - unless you know some historic Native Americans who can do brain tanning in the old way. Apparently the Crows of the Northern Plains made the softest, whitest buckskin and buffalo hides - but nobody today c...

As for supertunics (fur lined or otherwise), this is certainly covered in the Rule of St Benedict. Chapter 55 (again) says: "Let clothing be given to the brethren according to the circumstances of the place and the nature of the climate in which they live, because in cold regions more is needed...

You do not specify which type of monk you are interested in - nor the precise time period. "Personal" items were expressly forbidden by the Rule of St Benedict which governed the lives of all European monks, but that Rule was often less closely observed as the medieval period progressed (f...

From the use of peasant bowmen at the Battle of Standard (1138) where the worth of the English Longbow was first realised The Battle of the Standard certainly did see the use of militia archers, mentioned by several contemporary and near-contemporary writers. Putting longbows in their hands is a st...

You need to specify a time period. In England there were no apothecaries or alchemists before the 14th century and witchcraft was not really acknowledged before the 13th. Remedies, treatments and medicines in the 12th century came from monastic infirmaries, from local midwives and wise women, from h...

Medieval English people knew the difference between a spade (for digging) and a shovel (for moving stuff around), but this knowledge seems to have been lost today. Medieval shovels were very odd until the end of the period when metal shovels were introduced. They were all-wood construction, with a s...

It's probably worth expanding on the previous thread with some more tools and details. First, it is necessary to dispel a few misconceptions - this will sound a bit negative and critical, but it is meant to be helpful so bear with me. It would be incorrect to think that "these things probably h...

This drawing may help to explain some of the points made above, illustrating Templar lance pennons and just a few of the known shield designs: Templar shields2.jpg Pennons: 1 is from the Templar frescoes at Cressac-sur-Charente, France, dating to about 1163 - it is associated with shield B. The cros...

The Templar banner from 12th and 13th century sources:




The Italian Templar banner and shield, about 1270:

Ne'erdowell is right about heraldry not being prone to symbolism, but even people at the time might occasionally see some meaning in the design even if it was not intended. The French canon regular Jacques de Vitry describes in his Historia Hierosolymitana of about 1220 how the black over white flag...

Here's a few scholarly points to consider: (1) Any connection between Freemasonry and the Templars is relatively modern and tenuous at best, despite what the Freemasons claim (their first lodges date to the 18th century), so treat their opinions with an articulated lorry load of salt . . . In the wo...

In my former living history roles I came to the conclusion that there are many factors at work here and the answer is far from simple. There is the MOP who thinks they can "see through" what's being presented as if it were a conjuring trick: I heard one lady turn to her friend during a par...

Having followed developments on the publication of this book over the past three years, it has today been confirmed to me by Catheryn Kilgarriff at Prospect Books that publication of "Zinziber: Sauces from Poitou" has now sadly been cancelled. I am aware of the reason and suffice it to say...

I admit to being extremely sceptical about the majority of the so-called Anglo-Saxon recipes given in this document, for a number of reasons: [1] It is copied directly from another web page (http://www.tjurslakter.nl/viking%20recepten.pdf) which gives "recipes found on the Internet" as its...

Whichever route you decide to go down, you first need to decide on a particular type of chest and how much decoration it will have. "Medieval" is far too generic a term - is it 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th century? Will it have pin hinges (the earlier method) or metal strap-hinges (later)?...

Very little has been written about peasant diet and the foodstuffs available on campaign or during garrison duty in the period you mention - there seem to be more sources for the 12th/13th centuries and I have been in correspondence with a prominent and helpful environmental archaeologist regarding ...

No, it means that at least some of the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Frisians and others who settled in England were very well versed in Biblical and Classical history - the classical authors were often translated into Old English, as was the Bible. "Fish dye" refers to the Hexaplex trunculus, He...

This is a 1993 reprint by Anglia Publishing (ISBN 1-897874-01-4) of the original 1940 Catalogue by J B Ward Perkins. To say the book is dated would be stating the obvious - "it does not reflect latest thoughts on the dating or significance of medieval objects", to quote the appreciation at...

The first Knights Templar Preceptory (house, or more precisely a monastic or administrative complex) in England was established in High Holborn, London in the middle of the 12th century. These premises were soon to prove too small, so construction began in about 1165 on the famous Temple "churc...

Consider first what medieval paints would have been used and how they might stand up to being bashed with any kind of weapon. Egg tempera was used on parchment, pigment mixed with linseed oil (just like modern tube oil paints) was used on wood and pigment mixed with wet lime plaster was used on wall...

By way of evidence, this is the relevant calendar entry from the Westminster Psalter of about 1200:



It reads 18C, 16 days before the Kalends of March, [feast] of Valentine, martyr. This is the standard manuscript way of expressing 14 February.

No English king needed to make any decree - various saints named Valentine were part of the Roman Church calendar long before Henry VIII or any of his ancestors. The Feast of Valentine (February 14) goes back to at least 496 AD when Pope Gelasius added Valentine of Terni to the list of Christian Sai...

Not a castle, but Canterbury's late 14th century city wall and drum towers (a rebuild over earlier walls) were built with loops for hand cannons - I have heard that this is the earliest example of such a feature in English towns and cities. The earliest mention of the guns themselves is in 1403/1404...

My error - too much research into tithes has fuddled my thinking. This is from Mark Bailey's useful little book "The English Manor 1200 - 1500": By the fifteenth century it was increasingly common for both leet and manor courts to be amalgamated into one magna curia, a move which partly re...

Tithes were the prerogative of the Church of Rome, first established in England under Ethelwulf in 855 and eventually given formal legal validity by the Statute of Westminster in 1285. So the Dissolution of the Monasteries by 1540 (and the end of the Catholic Church at that time) also meant the end ...

Middle English often provides clues to the earlier pronunciation of words - in this case "dawn" is ūghten in ME, which is said ooKHten (KH is a guttural in the throat). So the Old English uht is ooKHt. Ceare has that same ea diphthong mentioned in another thread, starting with e as in &quo...