By pigeonduckthing

1. Pillars of the earth 1135-1154
   
2. Ivanhoe 1997 version - 1194
   
3. Robin hood- Ridley Scott 1200
   
4. Pilgrimage 1209
   
5. Ironclad-1215
   
6. YT- King john: walking through the history behind englands most controversial monarch. 1204-1216
   
7. Braveheart 1280-1314
   
8. Outlaw king 1304-1307
   
9. Name of the rose -1327
   
10. World without end 1327-1361
    
11. Black Death 1348
    
12. YT- 1360–1415: How the Tyrannical Reign of Richard II Plunged England into Chaos
    
13. YT- Richard II: englands most king Doc 1377-1399
    Instead of Hollow Crown since it was difficult to get into. This ends with Henry IV becoming king and Richard II being killed by Henry
    
14. The king 1403-1415
    15a. Joan the Maid -Battles 1424-1429
    15b. Joan the Maid - 1430-1431
    
15. YT- Joan of Arc: Gods Warrior. Helen Castor
    
16. Podcast: BBC Forum- Joan of Arc: Making of a Martyr
    
17. YT- Kings and Generals - Wars of Roses
    
18. YT- War of the roses : Yorks vs Lancasters by History mapped out Stop at 1464
    
19. White Queen -1464-1485
    
20. YT-Dan Jones- Brittains Bloody Crown
    
21. BBC documentary Henry VII: Winter King-1500

Let me know if I missed any!

This is from the Euro comic 1212 - Las Navas de Tolosa, an excellent historical comic (if only there was a proper English translation).

The context of this image is the vanguard of foreign crusaders and militia riders led the first charge against the Almohads and the islamic cavalry avoid the charge and hit the vangard with arrows and javelins in the flanks, only for it to barely make a dent in the formation and the narration cites a historical chronicle where some of the knights looked like hedgehogs.

Were Medieval Knights that invulnerable to missles even before plate armor existed?

This is in regards to early music notation referred to as "neumes", "chant notation", or "square notation".
 
I've been watching some videos from the *Gregorian Chant Academy, but the videos are extremely dry and disconnected from the music. The gentleman seems very knowledgeable, but he describes what types of things the notation indicates which, along with the barrage of Latin terminology he rushes through, makes for a difficult watch. He tells instead of showing. It's the sort of video that would be more digestible if you were already familiar with medieval notation and simply needed a refresher as opposed to an introductory crash course. It would be helpful to hear examples either sung by the person to show the effect each marking is widely understood to indicate, or reference portions of historically accurate recordings (to the best of our knowledge) to showcase how the music may be interpreted. This would help crystalize the concepts into something more tangible as well as make for an easier watch.
 
Ultimately I plan on doing more "score study" following manuscripts while listening to recordings from performers who strive for historical accuracy, but am hoping to find a video that can act as a sort of introductory primer first. Worst case scenario, I'll just continue on and try to brute force it, but wanted to know if there's a more pleasant way in. Does anyone have a good resource that acts as a solid primer to neumes (ideally with actual musical examples)?
 
*the Gregorian Chant Academy is a channel on youtube, but I apparently can't post the link without triggering the auto-mod.

Als eher leichte Strafform im Mittelalter gilt ja die Verurteilung zum Stock - also diesem Pranger für die Füße. Auf Veranstaltungen wie Mittelaltermärkten etc. wird das hin und wieder als eher „lustige“ Bestrafung präsentiert. Das schlimmste, was einem passieren könnte, wäre wohl das Kitzeln der wehrlosen Fußsohlen (was ich mir über längere Zeit aber definitiv schon hart vorstelle). War das im Mittelalter aber tatsächlich eine eher leichte Form der Bestrafung oder gibt es hier Aspekte, die man schnell vergisst?

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_(Fessel))

The entire thing can be viewed here: https://uurl.kbr.be/1332800

First one is from folio 132, second from folio 180.

Would love to know from someone who is familiar with Carolingian/Post Carolingian era miniscule what these could mean, whether they're capital letters, or just serve a decorative purpose or something else.

How useful were siege towers really? How well does media like movies games etc describe them?

Screenshot by me from total war attila 1212 ad mod

Tho it was made in the 1250s could it be used as a valid source for armour in the 1190s. I know it represents some pieces like coat of plates and great helms which wouldnt have existed in the late 12th century but for mail and weapons is it mostly good(with further research)

The knights Templar invented the modern banking system, that King Philip IV of France was deeply indebted to. Gérard de Villiers, Précepteur de France, was the master banker at the Temple of Paris until he disappeared from records in June 1307. Hugues de Pairaud stepped down from his superior office of Visiteur de France and stepped into the office Villers vacated. Jacques de Molay was the last official Grand Master of the Knights Templar in France, as the grand master de Molay was in full contact with his officers. While King Philip IV, and his Chief Minister Guillaume de Nogaret were paying gold for ex-Templars and false witnesses, the gold they were paying them with came from the Knights Templar banking system. Villiers realized what was going on and fled as Brother Jean de Châlon described in the trial records. On September 14. 1307 King Philip IV drafts the arrest orders, writing that the Templars were guilty of an “execrable evil” and a “thing most inhumane”. Those orders were leaked, and preceding the leak, Villiers disappeared. On the morning of October 12, 1307, Jacques de Molay arrives in Paris as an invited pallbearer. De Molay is often viewed as an unsuspecting guest, blindsided, having no idea the orders for his arrest were already signed. Jacques de Molay was the Grand Master (Commanding General) of the Knights Templar, he was in full contact with his officers, he knew very well what was going on. Jacques de Molay did not arrive at the funeral unaware; he arrived as a masterful chess player. Jacques de Molay stood tall in public on Main Street while Huges de Châlon was carting off Pairaud’s treasury down Front Street. Jacques de Molay remained in Paris to be arrested and serve as a human lightning rod (the grand masters always lead from the front never the rear) along with numerous others while the main body and assets disappeared into the night. Jacques de Molay was no fool. He was, as I read the playing field, the most underrated player on the field in October of 1307.

On May 15, 1293, the Battle of St. Mahé erupts; and King Edward I’s privateers send King Philip IV’s navy into a rout. This was the beginning of the conflicts in Flanders and the English Channel that tied up Edward’s and Philip’s navies. While the king’s battled on the waters, the entire western seaboard was a military blind spot. On the day of September 14, 1307, King Philip IV issues orders for the arrests of the Knights Templar and the seizure of all assets thereof. The orders were given under penalty of death, not to be open until the dawn on October 13. These orders being sent to all of Philip’s bailiffs, seneschals, and royal patrols. With specific, orders to open at dawn, the men enforcing these orders would be gathering (pre-staging) at their command centers awaiting the reading of the orders. With all the bailiffs, seneschals, and royal patrols held up at the commandries, the cities, residences, temples, and docks; the coastal ways north and south of the Port of La Rochelle were complete military blind spot. The only Ships on the Atlantic were the ships belonging to the Crown of Castile, and the Crown of Aragon; both military allies with the Knights Templar. If an 18-ship fleet were to sail into these waterways outside of La Rochelle, they would have an entire western coast of Europe to sail out of, under the extreme threat of a-sunburn.

Was the ghost fleet a myth, or did GÉRARD DE VILLIERS who disappeared from public records 4 months prior stage a masterful evacuation?

Modern descendants of the Villiers family frequently claim that after the initial raids on Friday, October 13, 1307, the Précepteur de France, Gérard de Villiers, simply "went over to the Knights Hospitaller" to find safety.

It is a clean, comfortable family myth because the Villiers family did hold ranks within the Order of the Knights Hospitallers. But it completely falls apart under raw, tactical mechanics and institutional physics.

First, look at the strict structural rules of the era. In 1307, the Templars and Hospitallers were fierce institutional rivals, competing for favor of King Philip IV, and Pope Clement V. The Rule of the Order of St. John explicitly blocked them from taking in defectors or high-profile fugitives from another military order. If the most wanted man in France showed up at a Hospitaller commandery gate in 1307, harboring him would have been an open declaration of war against King Philip IV. The Hospitallers wouldn't have hidden him; they would have detained him instantly to secure political favor from the Crown, that the Hospitallers and the Templar contended for.

Second, look at the timeline math. Pope Clement V did not authorize the Hospitallers to absorb the Templars' assets until May of 1312—a massive 4.5-year (54-month) bureaucratic lag after the initial raids.

Any military evaluator or modern commando will tell you the same thing: hiding out on a heavily fortified European mainland, under an intense royal dragnet, for four solid years without leaving a single paper trail, arrest record, or signature is an operational impossibility. For 4 months? Yes, a master operative can disappear in the initial chaos. For 4 years? Absolutely not. The King's network of spies would have squeezed the region until he surfaced.

Furthermore, Villiers was not a spy trained in deep-cover anonymity. His face was instantly recognized as the high-ranking, elite Templar that he was. He could not simply "blend in" to a local crowd. It would be like trying to hide John Wayne or Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson in a crowd on Main Street; he would have been instantly identified and reported for the massive royal rewards on his head.

He wasn't hiding in a French cellar, and he didn't check into a rival monastery. Gérard de Villiers' only path of escape was the Atlantic Ocean. Because he could not stay on the mainland, Villiers exited the theater entirely by pulling out onto the open, unpatrolled waters of the Atlantic Ocean—vanishing from the European map.

If King Philip’s arrest orders turned up little more than a handful of men and little assets, where did they go, and how did they get there?

The church was hacked to its foundations

Henry II wanted to find lands for his son John, his brothers (Geoffrey, Richard) objected and went to France and launched a rebellion.

By ‘Smoking Gun’, we mean a piece of evidence which proves that Thomas Arundel was guilty of counterfeiting a religious sacrament.

Arundel was everywhere directing events in 1399 but, 600 years later, we would like something concrete that shows how far he was willing to go to achieve his goal, and happily we have evidence that he was willing to commit a crime to reach it.

Perhaps he thought that his heavenly patrons would forgive him his trespasses on the basis that he was working for the good of the church – she needed him back as archbishop of Canterbury to lead the fight against earthly evils of Wycliffism. The fact that all had gone so smoothly would have confirmed his belief that they were on his side.

Arundel needed a mystical flux to turn his chosen one into the true king so he, like an ecclesiastical Merlin, magicked up a holy oil to anoint Henry with at the coronation.

This oil was given by the Virgin Mary to St Thomas Becket who hid it. It was discovered by Henry of Grosmont and kept in a royal lumber room in an ampulla, attached to which was a piece of paper on which St Thomas Becket had written the whole story.

The oil was awaiting a righteous king: ‘This is the oil with which the Kings of England must be anointed, not those who now reign because they are evil, and will be, and because of their sins they have lost much, and will lose, but they who will reign after’, Annales p298.

The crime.

What was written on the paper that went with this marvellous unguent was a forgery. As Arundel was in charge, and as he used this oil himself, and as the words on the paper suited his purposes so perfectly, he must have faked it himself.

How do we know for sure that Arundel faked this, and, we might ask: what else did he fake? Richard II’s renunciation for example?.

We can be sure because there already existed an oil with a story that contains all the major elements, except those that spoke of a Lancastrian heritage. The Vatican archives hold the copy of a letter sent by Pope John XXII to Edward II in 1317 in response to a letter from Edward II. The papal letter repeats the information in the royal letter and then gives a response.

Edward II wanted to know if he could be anointed with an oil brought to him by a mystic. This oil had been given to St Thomas Becket by Mary and was destined for the 5^th king from Henry II (Edward II) to help him against his adversaries. The mystic had decoded what St Thomas had written on a metal plate – words that only the mystic could decipher, and written them out on paper. The pope’s verdict was, yes, he could be anointed with the oil but only in private, and nobody must know about it.

Thomas Arundel repurposed Edward II’s oil as a new Lancastrian oil that was waiting for a righteous king to be anointed with it.

Those already familiar with the holy oil of Lancaster will surely be familiar with the factoid from a chronicle in which Richard II, vainly thinking he merited the sacred oil, would wear it on his breast in the pathetic hope it would do him some good, which it couldn’t as he was so unworthy.

Here’s the Monk of St Denis and a report from ambassadors in 1399: ‘The ambassadors reported that the king (Henry IV) was superstitious, as were all the English, and that he had a marvellous trust in this eagle, and had decided to carry it on him always in the hope it would bring him victories over his enemies.’ The ‘eagle’ is the oil-filled ampulla.

Caught red handed?

My collection of silver coins from the so-called 'Anarchy,' a civil war in England where between 1138 and 1153, King Stephen fought against his cousin Empress Matilda for the crown.

The top coin is a penny minted in the name of Empress Matilda. This particular piece was minted in Bristol. A bit fractured, but otherwise the most treasured piece in my collection.

The bottom two coins are a penny and halfpenny respectively minted in the name of King Stephen. The penny was minted in York. Sadly no idea where the halfpenny was minted.

Although Thomas Arundel believed in church exceptionalism, he compromised his principles by drawing the church and state together. His Convocation of the Southern Clergy, which met in October 1399, drew up a list of 67 reforms: one is about heresy, and all the rest are a micro-manager’s list of improvements, apart from this one -

1. Item, quod festum Sancti Georgii Martyris … Likewise, that the feast of Saint George the Martyr, who is the spiritual patron of the entire English army, and whose memory is held more devoutly and confidently in the ranks of arms than in the memory of other saints, be established throughout all of England to be celebrated and honoured festively and solemnly, just as other nations honour the feasts of their patrons. [Bray, p. 200.]

Is it true that during large scale medieval battles, the death toll amongst front line soldiers was high in the first few days of battle but then dropped significantly as those that remained were the ‘hard to kill’ type?

Norman invasion ends the Anglo-Saxon era

For the purposes of the question let’s say the 14th century specifically, because from what I gather that was an especially chaotic time for nobles because of the expenses of the hundred year war, labour shortages from the black death, and the peasants revolt of 1381.

I’m guessing upper aristocracy had quite a few safety buffers eg owning multiple estates that would make truly losing all land/wealth extremely unlikely if not impossible.
But what about members of minor nobility, e.g landed gentry or a knight with only 1-2 manors? Would they just become a landless knight and take up mercenary work, or work in another household?
What about members of nobility that werent knights but had other administrative skills/literacy? And what happened to the daughters + younger sons?

Were they generally considered a capture or killed? Were there guidelines about their treatment vs fully knighted individuals?

Hello, can anyone here help me by giving a breakdown of how to estimate what century of the middle ages a peasant village house, manor house, or town house might be from based on its construction? Pictures would be greatly appreciated. I am particularly interested in telling the difference between 12th and 13th century houses vs Late Medieval and pre-1066. This is for an art project and I am trying to find references I can know are historically accurate.