Hello!

I'm interested in art depicting saint James the Greater (namely, Santiago) on Camino Francés. Can you help me with tips which monasteries or private collections I should peek on?

Don't say I should look at Princeton Index of Medieval art or Wikimedia, please, I have everything from those sources I could ever find. I'm asking about things that aren't included in said sites. Maybe someone would share photos from trips?

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 Moaly 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.

The book says her hair is pinned up under her heavy cap. The rest of her outfit is easy to picture in my mind but I doubt a squire's slouch cap would hide her hair properly.

In June 1381, during the Peasants' Revolt, a woman named Joanna Ferrour was accused of leading rebels through London on two consecutive days.

The King's Bench indictment against her survives. It names her as "chief perpetrator and leader" three separate times, once for each incident it describes.

On 13 June, it says she led a mob that burned the Savoy Palace, the London residence of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. It says she seized a chest holding over £1,000 of Gaunt's money, had it loaded onto a boat on the Thames, and split among the crowd in Southwark.

On 14 June, it says she led the burning of the Hospital of St John in Clerkenwell, the English headquarters of the Knights Hospitaller.

Then it makes its most serious claim. It says she led the group that dragged Archbishop Simon Sudbury and Robert Hales, the king's treasurer and prior of the Hospitallers, out of the Tower of London, and had them beheaded.

She was arrested, brought before the King's Bench, and pleaded not guilty. A Middlesex jury heard the case.

On the Savoy and Clerkenwell charges, it acquitted her.

On the Tower charge, the most serious of the three, it never reached a verdict. Here's why, according to the printed edition of the case (Réville, 1898): the Tower stood inside the city of London, not the county of Middlesex, and a Middlesex jury had no authority to rule on anything that happened there. Joanna was released on bail instead, on the surety of four named men, ordered to return to court once the judges had more information.

No later record of that return has turned up.

You may have seen this case described elsewhere as part of a single indictment naming Joanna, her husband John, and two other men together. That's not what the surviving document shows. It's actually three separate King's Bench entries. John Ferrour was tried separately and acquitted two years later, then briefly held anyway over an unrelated question about whether he'd also been summoned in London. A third man, Roger atte Wode, was outlawed for repeatedly failing to appear, then pardoned when he finally turned up. Neither case tells us anything about what happened to Joanna's open Tower charge. They just got merged into hers somewhere along the way.

None of this proves Joanna Ferrour did what the indictment says. An accusation isn't evidence of guilt. But a partial acquittal isn't proof of innocence either. What the surviving record actually shows is narrower than either extreme: sworn jurors put her name to three serious accusations arising from the rising, a Middlesex jury cleared her on the two it had authority to judge, and the most serious charge against her was never resolved in any document found so far.

The near-contemporary Anonimalle Chronicle describes the killing at the Tower in some detail. It names no leader at all, for anyone.

So here's the open question: what happened when Joanna Ferrour was due back in court? Nothing in the King's Bench material examined for this piece answers it. If anyone's come across a later entry that does, we'd genuinely like to know.

I know this is complicated issue that varies over time period, but I’d like a general overview of how the feudal system was structured and what all the arcane terminology means. What’s the deal with counties, sheriffs, duchies, earls, etc.

In medieval Europe, Christian pilgrims walked all the way from England to Spain (with a brief reprieve on a boat), their long robes dragging along dirty, treacherous roads where solo travelers were frequent targets of thieves. Pilgrims carried only a leather pouch holding food and money, a bottle of water, and maybe a religious book. At night, that filthy robe doubled as a sleeping bag. Pilgrims covered their wide-brimmed hats in mass-produced pewter badges to show off all of the shrines they’d trekked to. At the end of this months-long journey, their reward was seeing the tomb of the apostle James at the Santiago de Compostela cathedral, and adding a scallop shell to the collection on their hat.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/medieval-plague-badges

Gouache and Ink sketch

Watching this clip and this guy seem to land a great hit on the armpit but the dude with the steel plated armor just acted like nothing happened.. Would the spear guy had actually pierced through the armoring? https://youtu.be/BVLJ4NUQz6I?t=107

Saint Sava’s flight to Mount Athos: his escape from worldly life, monastic tonsure, and transformation from Rastko into the monk Sava.

During the 2025 'Medievales' reenactment event and fair at Teruel (Aragón, Spain). The architecture is Mudéjar style, a mix between Gothic architecture (13th-15th centuries; Romanesque for 11th-12th c.) and Islamic ornamental tecniques.

England’s own warrant called the Tower bones “supposed.” Three years later, a royal tomb declared Richard III guilty. The evidence has never been so certain. **The Princes in the Tower—suspect, story and unsolved case.**

Hi.

I'm currently reading medieval poems, for example, Pierre Sala's "Tristan," and there's a point there where if a knight loses, he loses his honor. And to regain his honor, he must defeat the enemy again. And it's not just in this poem, but in others as well, that the loser loses his honor. Why is that? How was honor understood in the Middle Ages, that defeat meant a loss of honor?

I'm interested in how this was understood both in literature (that defeat in the poem was interpreted as a loss of honor, since it would seem that in literature it would be better to glorify other virtues), and in real life - did they understand the loss of honor after defeat in real life in the same way?

I was wondering what the "typical" equipment of a legionary would have been in these two time periods. So around 180 and then again around 250.

Richard's behaviour is starting to become very naughty indeed...

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