Mediaeval History
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Mediaeval History’
Christ’s cross promises to take away the fear of Judgment Day.
In ‘The Dream of the Rood’, Cynewulf (possibly the 8th century bishop of Lindisfarne) imagines the Cross of Christ finding voice and recounting the experiences that great Friday. Here, the Cross speaks of the Day of Judgment and the comfort and assurance the very thought of it brings to mankind even at that late hour.
Samuel Smiles explains how Tudor England was transformed from sleepy backwater to hive of industry.
Samuel Smiles has been writing about England’s sluggish economy early in Elizabeth’s reign, with London acting as little more than a trading post for prosperous merchants in Amsterdam and Antwerp. Something needed to change the culture in England’s declining market towns.
The Pope and the King of Spain decide that the time has come to rid England of her troublesome Queen, Elizabeth I.
In 1558 Mary I of England, a Catholic married to King Philip II of Spain, died. Her crown passed to her Protestant half-sister Elizabeth I, dashing the hopes of Philip and of Pope Pius V for a united Catholic Europe. When Elizabeth began helping persecuted Protestants in the Spanish Netherlands, it was the last straw.
Two young English princes were banished to the court of Yaroslav the Wise, and one returned to claim the crown.
Edward the Exile was one of two princes, sons of Edmund Ironside, driven to Kiev after the Danish warrior-king Cnut the Great took their father’s crown in 1016. In 1054, Edward returned to England with his wife and young son Edgar, encouraged by his uncle King Edward the Confessor to believe that he was about to regain his lost throne.
For a hundred years after William the Conqueror came to England, four strong women named Matilda shaped the nation’s history.
From 1066 to 1154, England saw no fewer than four royal women named Matilda, including the wife of William the Conqueror, and the daughter of Malcolm III of Scotland. It can be a little confusing working out which one is which, so here is a short guide.
A succession of religious leaders came to Kiev, hoping to win the wild barbarian Prince to their cause.
The Christianity that spread across England in the 7th century spread to Kiev in the 10th, but there it had to compete not just with paganism but with Islam, Judaism, and other flavours of Christianity — and also with Vladimir, Grand Prince of Kiev (r. 980-1015), who liked his religion spicy.