Medieval sword manuals survive—but their techniques are hard to decode

Modern swordsmen still are trying to figure out how medieval knights fought

There's no line of succession for the secrets to fighting like a medieval European knight. All the primary sources of information on the art are either dead or trapped in vague manuscripts. But that doesn't mean people aren't trying to piece the martial art back together. This article explores one group's attempt to revive the world of historical European martial arts.

Swords from around the world: an encyclopedia

Swords may have fallen out of favor as the go-to method of warfare, but they once were a common choice worldwide. Scroll through this online encyclopedia to learn about and see swords from ancient to modern times. The ubiquity of swords and their...

Medieval monasteries preserved ancient knowledge through hand-copied books

Medieval monks and nuns lived in religious communities devoted to work and prayer. Still, their script-copying traditions had a lasting impact: through illuminated manuscripts, monasteries preserved hundreds of ancient texts that might have otherwise been lost.

Gladiator training is known mainly from art, not ancient texts

Since literary sources provide little information about gladiator training, scholars rely on visual evidence. This illustrated essay draws on artifacts from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, including an oil lamp from Cyprus showing a gladiator practicing against a wooden stake.

Read how Roman writers described gladiators

This article, drawn from an older classical dictionary, synthesizes the views of ancient Roman authors on gladiators. While archaeological knowledge has advanced, the core textual evidence remains the same, with links to translations of the sources.

The lost history of Fredegund and Brunhild

In the Middle Ages, there were many powerful queens who ruled their kingdoms with strength and determination, two of the most notable examples of which were Fredegund of Neustria and Brunhild of Austrasia. Unafraid to use murder and intrigue to maintain their power, they played a significant role in shaping the political landscape of their time—but have largely been lost to history.

Gladiators fought in specialized armatures designed only for the arena

This illustrated guide breaks down the most common gladiator armatures, showing how each was highly stylized for spectacle rather than warfare. This explanation suggests why gladiators generally made poor soldiers when drafted into the legions.

What did the earliest swords look like?

That depends on where you draw the line between daggers and swords. According to current evidence, the first swords appeared 5,000 years ago in what's now Turkey. Unfortunately, evidence of the earliest swords is colored by survivorship bias; It's...

A 15th-century university student documented a surprisingly detailed fitness plan.

A sample of quirky medieval era-book titles

The medieval book publishing industry wasn't quite so robust as our modern era's, but the mystical and satirical tomes coming out at that time still needed a name. Peruse this list of some of the quirkier of those titles, which reflects the era's literalness, theological interest, and downright silliness.

The true power of being a medieval fool

The stereotypical image of a court jester – their jagged, jingling tunics, donkey-eared hoods, and exaggerated expressions – belies their influence and power in medieval European courts. Jesters mocked their masters and communities through performances that could include witty ripostes, musical instruments, dance, juggling, and more. This gallery offers commentary on the fool’s role and power during the Middle Ages.

A look at historical ciphers, from the Spartan 'scytale' to the Navajo Code Talkers

From the Greek word for "hidden writing," cryptography in Ancient Greece took the form of batons around which a long strip of leather or parchment was wrapped, after which messages were written. Recipients needed a scytale of the correct width to encircle received ribbons and reveal the message. Members of the Navajo Nation created a code that remained unbroken throughout its use in World War II.

Medieval bestiaries blended real animals with myth and moral lessons

Medieval bestiaries combined observed animals with fantastical creatures, using vivid imagery to convey symbolism and moral meaning. This lecture explores England’s Worksop Bestiary (c. 1185), showcasing over 100 illustrated beasts from the Morgan Library’s collection.

Maps of murder across medieval England

These interactive maps show the sites of murders across York, Oxford, and London during the 14th Century. Explore the data by clicking site pins or experimenting with map filters, including crime scene type and murder weapon. Each pin includes a blurb on what researchers concluded about the attack, such as how a fight between the London fishmonger and skinner guilds during August 1340 ultimately left one man dead.

The Middle Ages, the roughly 1,000-year period between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance, shaped the political and cultural foundations of modern Europe.

Medieval European winters were colder than ours, but peasants stayed warm

Medieval winters were colder than ours today while the continent was mired in the so-called Little Ice Age. Without modern technologies, peasants survived with simple, sometimes genius, solutions, including central, chimney-less fireplaces (vented by small, draftless vents) and decorative handwarmers.

Roman gladiator referees wore tunics and carried switches

Drawing on visual and textual evidence, a Roman social historian shows that referees were a constant presence in gladiatorial combat. Rather than armor, they wore striped tunics and used long switches to signal fouls and control fights from a safe distance.

An illustrated guide to constructing a Viking ship

Using saga descriptions, museum consultations, and physical evidence, this guide tries to imagine what kind of ship Harald Hardrada would have sailed into Constantinople in 1034. The contemporary illustrations suggest technically precise craftsmanship.

Explore a map of Medieval Europe, which was a patchwork of hundreds of competing states.

Exploring the link between history, art, and anatomy

Throughout centuries, art has played a vital role in sharing—and furthering—scientific understanding. This largely began in 1543 when physician Andreas Vesalius worked with an artist and engraver to transform learnings from his dissections into...

Hear how gladiator fights were funded, judged, and sometimes fixed

In a wide-ranging interview, Professor Michael Carter unpacks the business of gladiatorial games—from advertising and fighter merch to referees, match rules, and a code of conduct that often pushed gladiators to spare defeated opponents.

Even medieval teachers sometimes complained about their students

Although it's tempting to assume that the youngest generation has gone astray, it's important to remember that older generations throughout history have been annoyed, and even dismayed, by the behavior of the youth. Look no further than this collection of medieval teachers complaining about their students, including one father who complains that his son prefers "license to restraint and play to work and strumming a guitar while the others are at their studies."

Using AI to rewrite and revive Aztec tales

Despite being vanquished by the conquering Spaniards in the 16th century, the Aztecs' culture endured through their descendants and rituals, as well as texts that escaped destruction at the hands of the Europeans. These texts, known as codices and preserved in part by Christian monks, revealed intimate details of life as an Aztec in the Middle Ages. Today, AI programs allow students to learn the Aztec's language, Nahuatl, further preserving their heritage.

How ancient Roman gladiators got ready to rumble

Before they could lay the smackdown in the arena, gladiators were professionally trained, combining a physical regimen with an education in the rules of the ring. Contrary to popular belief, archaeological evidence suggests most gladiators weren't killed in the action, and women may have fought on rare occasions. This article breaks down a life of a Roman gladiator.

Six myths about the Middle Ages

The Middle Ages, or medieval era, refers to roughly 500 CE to 1,500 CE. Contemporary opinion perceives this era as "dark" or backward because it was the time between the fall of Rome and the rise of the Renaissance. But much of the era was vibrant, and many myths are just that, including the idea that most people believed the Earth was flat. Watch this video to debunk more myths.

The Middle Ages produced inventions that still affect our lives today, like coffee houses and improved agricultural techniques.

What did it take to eat like a gladiator?

If you think gladiators were all rippling muscle, think again. Evidence suggests fighters weren't as cut as we've been led to believe. This article dives into the diets of ancient Roman gladiators, who may have eaten mostly vegetarian. Archaeological evidence gathered from the skeletons of 68 gladiators found in a 2,000-year-old Turkish grave suggests the fighters' diets mainly relied on barley and legumes, with little animal protein.

A thousand medieval dog names

In the Middle Ages, hunting was more than a sport—it was a vocation. Hounds were a crucial element of hunting, and wealthy landowners owned hundreds of them. A scribe in the late 15th century recorded more than 1,000 authentic names given to dogs, prompting a historian to speculate this showed just how well dog-handlers knew their animals. See the names here.

Where were the Middle Ages?

Many have equated the Middle Ages to European culture and an era beyond the reach of science and art. This false equivalency minimizes, if not erases, the culture and scholarship that flourished worldwide during this time. Medieval history exists in and across many countries, including China, India, Iran, Sudan, and Ethiopia. In this article, a classical archaeologist details evidence of medieval life around the world.

Trade and conquest carried chess into Europe by the 11th century

After spreading through Persia, chess traveled along Islamic military and trade routes into North Africa and Moorish Spain by the 10th century. By the 11th century, it had taken root across much of Europe, flourishing in courts and monasteries.

A medievalist explains how romantic love emerged as a cultural concept

Many long-form stories written in English were originally considered "romances," a term derived from the Old French word for "the speech of the people." But changes in medieval culture, triggered by a number of 12th-century church reforms, led to a new interest in what we now consider romantic love, including a new view of marriage as a pursuit of love rather than a transaction. Those new perspectives were then reflected in the period's popular stories, including stories in Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales."

Unraveling the charred remains of the only known library from antiquity

This article details the quest to decipher the charred remains of a library buried during Mt. Vesuvius' volcanic blast. In 1752, nearly 2,000 papyrus scrolls were found in Herculaneum. According to this article, this collection is the only complete library that has survived from antiquity. In the last decade, scientists have made strides in decoding the crumbling texts.

See unused gladiator helmets discovered in Pompeii.

Scientists used mass spectrometry to determine the materials in a 1690 painting

Previously used to map the distribution of molecules on biological tissue samples, researchers combined the technique with machine learning to uncover six layers of pigments, binders, and a thin gold leaf layer within *The Marriage of the Virgin*, from a collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The technique may help identify and track artists' material use to learn about pieces of unknown provenance. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

How Byzantine scholars supercharged Renaissance Italy

A brief survey of how Byzantine scholars changed the course of the Renaissance by introducing Classical Greek literature to Italy. These scholars and their students were responsible for translating, interpreting, and printing many of the most fundamental texts in the Western tradition. Without their efforts, the Italian Renaissance and Western thought would have been immeasurably poorer.

Gladiators followed a mostly vegetarian, high-calcium diet

Analysis of skeletons from a gladiator cemetery at Ephesus by researchers at the Medical University of Vienna found little meat consumption but unusually high calcium levels—likely from drinking wood ash mixed with water to promote weight gain and protect vital organs.

The human cost of creating medieval monsters

The concept and creation of monsters have been used since time immemorial to communicate social norms and the consequences of breaking them. Some so-called monsters were judged as such solely due to having features that would be considered birth defects in modern times. This in-depth article explores the human cost of creating medieval monsters, many of whom were defined by a physical appearance that deviates from the expected.

Get lost in these historical libraries

The internet has changed a lot about how we learn, explore new ideas, and conduct research, particularly when it comes to the spaces we learn in. While few of us would trade our smartphones for a walk in a historical library, a walk through some of the beautifully designed cathedrals of learning could remind us to put them down sometimes. Explore 10 of the world's magnificent libraries with this quick video survey.

Some Colosseum fighters battled wild animals instead of other humans

Not everyone who entered the Colosseum was a gladiator. Learn about the bestiarii—who ranged from trained animal fighters to condemned prisoners—and how their encounters with wild beasts became one of Rome’s most lethal spectacles.

Europe’s first universities emerged from medieval church school

The modern university can be traced back to the Middle Ages, when schools in Italy, France, and England initially trained clergy before expanding to include lay students. By the 10th and 11th centuries, they taught law, medicine, and theology across Europe.

12th-century English monks claimed discovery of King Arthur's bones

The medieval legend of King Arthur and his Queen, Guinevere, is one of the most popular to endure into the modern era. The legend regularly evolved during the Middle Ages, as is seen in this story where a historian from King Henry the Second's court claims the bones of Arthur were discovered at Glastonbury Abbey.

The Greeks weightlifted using massive stones and admired strength—but they viewed muscles differently

Prehistoric hunter-gatherers performed amputations and appear to have provided post-op care, according to analysis of a recent fossil discovery from almost 31,000 years ago.

The female samurai of feudal Japan

This article examines the role of Japan's female samurai throughout history, specifically the Battle of Aizu, a deadly civil conflict between traditionalists and reformers in 1868 in which one side had halberds and swords and the other had guns....

Blake's 'illuminated manuscripts' blended poetry and painting

Blake's poetry was often accompanied by the author's complementary illustrations. They’re masterful works of art, pieces that were unlike anything else in Blake’s time—or in ours. Thankfully, The William Blake Archive has scanned all of the original manuscripts, allowing you to see the majestic books in their entirety.

Bad Ancient: a site to fact-check claims about the ancient world

Peruse popular questions about ancient Rome, Egypt, Greece, and more, from whether Greek boxers were ripped or to what extent Alexander the Great conquered the world.

The bloody history of the true crime genre

The true crime genre appears to have crawled out of an unlocked closet between 1550 and 1700. Rising literacy rates and printing technologies during this period led to leaflets and ballads-turned-broadsides that graphically regurgitated the findings. These products often included woodcuts of the crime's "unsavory acts.". Such content was snapped up by the "artisan class and above" as poorer classes lacked the funds to fuel the hobby.

A recently discovered fresco in Pompeii depicts gladiators fighting

Archaeologists uncovered a gladiator combat fresco beneath a shop staircase in Pompeii. Its location suggests it decorated a low-end tavern near the gladiator barracks—possibly a hangout for fighters themselves.

Feudal landholding organized medieval Europe’s economy without relying on slavery

From the 10th to 13th centuries, Europe’s agricultural system relied on localized hierarchies. Lords granted land to knights for defense, who in turn mainly oversaw free peasants paying rents in labor, goods, or money rather than living under slavery.

A Roman mosaic records the outcome of a retiarius–secutor fight

Displayed at the National Archaeological Museum, this mosaic depicts the classic retiarius–secutor battle. The lower panel shows the bout under referees’ supervision; the upper panel declares Astyanax vicit, with a symbol confirming his opponent was killed.