108
Poland wasn't actually "spared", it was merely less affected than the rest of Europe. That graphic is incorrect (or rather, incomplete), since a substantial number of both Poland and Milan's population did in fact die of the plague. Their death rates were only "low" in comparison to the rest of Europe - if it happened today, it would be horrifying to us.
...
47
Quite a bit, actually. Graeco-Roman mythology was a significant part of the education curriculum. Much of the educated elite would have been broadly familiar with ancient Greek mythologies through its Latin form, albeit overlaid with a Christian point of view.
In High Medieval England, an anthology of six works known collectively as the Liber Catonianus (...
30
The Nun's Priest's Tale from Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales:
Lo heere Andromacha, Ectores wyf,
That day that Ector sholde lese his lyf,
She dremed on the same nyght biforn […]
He wente for to fighte natheles,
But he was slayn anon of Achilles.
It would seem that Chaucer doesn't feel the need to give a lot of background on who ...
25
There are three types of plague, Pneumonic, Bubonic, and Septicemic all of which are caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. People infected by fleas get the bubonic form of the plague. However, if the bacteria reaches the lungs, it becomes pneumonic plague which is more virulent spreading via person to person by coughing then no rats are needed since the ...
21
The historical answer is pretty much the same as the answer that you got on RPG - it depends on the type and construction of the pack. These ranged from simple cloth bags designed to be worn on the back, such as this one from one of the panels at the church of St.Wolfgang in South Tirol, Austria...
...to full on back boards and baskets made from wood and ...
16
Here's a lengthy recent paper entitled "Liberties and Customs of the City of London – Are There any Left?", that seems to answer the question in great detail and with lots of citations:
http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/ilr/article/download/28685/17142
The core points:
in exchange for frequent loans and gifts of
money, the City would often ...
16
In this period, the Mongols had a nominal strength of around 100,000 to 130,000.
According to the Secret History of the Mongols, Ghengis Khan had an army of 105,000 strong by A.D. 1206. This number grew to 129,000 by A.D. 1227, according to Rashid-al-Din_Hamadani in his Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh. Of the latter figure, 27,000 were new units raised from Manchuria. If ...
12
In the case of Conway (and most other places on borders) - it's more a castle than a town.
There is no point in having a well fortified castle, if around it you have an undefended town to give your attackers a base to live in while they attack you. The walled part of the city is really just the first line of castle defence for a siege.
Conway s part of ...
11
I think that your answer is Angel and Royal Hotel.
From the history fact sheet:
Widely regarded and fondly known as the oldest surviving English Inn,
the main façade of the building that stands today was built
approximately 600 years ago. The site then, however, had already been
an Inn for 200 years, and was built as a hostel for the chivalrous
...
11
I am sorry this is the only thing I could find.
because the royal court was constantly moving, Frederik's library was dispersed in many different places;
the part that he carried with him, so presumably the dearest one, was seized by his enemies, and thus likely divided as loot between different factions;
parts were left in his different residencies; of ...
10
Japan did have naval forces at the time, and they probably fought the Mongolians a few times.
The samurai Takezaki Suenaga, a gokenin from Higo in central Kyūshū, was a veteran of both wars. To showcase his valour in battle (to request rewards from the government), Takezaki commissioned the Mōko Shūrai Ekotoba, an illustrated account of the Mongol invasions....
9
These guys in Nepal carry loads up to about 85kg per porter. The "backpacks" are actually wooden frames for weaved baskets, held together with ropes. This technology was already widely available much before medieval times. Any specific piece of luggage, then as now, had its own breaking point, but since this is way before standardized production in high ...
9
I offer this only because no one has yet provided a more informed answer.
A few centuries earlier, writing in the early Eighth century, St Bede complained in his 'History of the English Church and People' [also sometimes called 'Ecclesiastical History of the English People'] that in his day people of influence were taking advantage of the exemption of ...
8
Well, there are two problems - the first is that we don't know where Abaskun actually is. It was purported to be in the area of the mouth of the Gorgan River, which brings us to another issue - there are numerous sandbars in the region, which come and go with the weather over a span of years. The "island" may have been a vegetated sandbar (also known as a ...
8
The Iliad, the most important of Greek Mythology, in ancient times was at the center of western education. Children in Greece prior to the Roman expansion started learning with the Iliad, and the Iliad remained a prominent part of education through the Roman era into the middle ages. Not just Homer was important, but it is also my understanding that the ...
7
This is a difficult question to answer because towns were of different sizes and the size of a guild depended on what kind of guild it was. For example, an association of bakers would have a lot more members than a guild of glovers. Florence had a population of about 20,000 people in 1100 A.D.. If we assume 1 baker per hundred people, that would be 200 men. ...
7
To answer your first question, yes attacks were frequent.
This is what prompted many of the earliest 'settlements' to build a surrounding and protective wall in the first place, to stop constant raids from stronger 'warrior' nomadic tribes killing, enslaving people and stealing food.
To answer your second question, the farmers and dry grain/food supplies ...
7
Saints Days, in particular, the local saint's day
Shrove Tuesday
Lent
Easter
Christmas was less important.
In any area of importance four quarterly Saint's days would be identified with local days when legal actions occurred and markets occurred in the local large city. As such courts were either rotating, or held on feudal bases, it is usual for ...
7
According to this article, there are letters to and from a mosque in Constantinople in the 10th century. with speculation it was built for merchants from Muslim countries, as well as for dignitaries, in times of peace between Muslim middle east and christian Byzantine.
6
The following paper is a pretty detailed treatment:
Liberties and Customs of the Port of London
Note that the spiritual precursor to the Magna Carta was the Charter of Liberties issued by Henry.
Anciently, the City of London and Five Ports were supposed to be free from duty and this supposedly was given by charters from Edward the Confessor. However, no ...
6
This is an example of frankalmoin, a type of feudal land tenure where land was given to the church free of any military, religous or secular service.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankalmoin
The practice came into disrepute when grants of land were made to the church and then leased back to the donor. In this case, the grant was made to the Church but ...
5
ANOTHER EXPLANATION REGARDING POLAND IS THAT IT HAD A LOT OF JEWS, PARTICULARLY IN URBAN SETTINGS; NOW, WHY WERE Jews Less Affected?
And even if Jews died at a lesser rate, it can be attributed to the sanitary practices Jewish law.
For instance, Jewish law compels one to wash his or her hands many times throughout the day. In the general medieval ...
5
It seems that there is a correlation between exposure to and surviving the plague and a genetic predisposition against infection with HIV that has a prevalence in Northern Europe that is not observed in Southern Europe:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/10/4/l_104_05.html
5
One factor to consider also is that Poland had a much smaller population than western Europe. Around the time of the Black Death, the Polish population was something like 2-3 million, while the French population was about 14 millon or even higher. It's common sense that disease spreads more easily in higher population density areas, especially when hygiene ...
5
TL;DR
Alexander Nevsky's helmet hasn't yet been found.
There are two helmets often (mis-)attributed to Nevsky:
The Helmet of Yaroslav II (Vsevolodovich), shown in Sergei Eisenstein's epic drama „Alexander Nevsky“
The Helmet of Michael (Fedorovich)
The first thing is that the real helmet of Alexander Nevsky has never been found. However, there are two ...
5
Rani Padmavati is a very popular character, but to call her a historical character will be misleading, and wrong, based on evidences so far.
History is based on written sources. Now, there can be a paucity of sources. Some later discovery of a written source can possibly overturn earlier versions. But written source is a must. The only two written sources ...
4
It's a simple (or not) optimization problem.
Is the cost of the wall to protect the surrounding farms + cost of defending that wall (marginal cost compared to just the wall around the city) more or less than the cost of losing and rebuilding the farms (land improvements, buildings, stocks that can't be moved to the city and possibly farmers)?
Judging by ...
4
The success of the mongolian army was built on more factors:
size: as it mentioned, an army with 100.000 people wasn't small at all. Take note that the population of Holy Roman Empire (today: Germany, Netherlands, North Italy, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and some parts of France) in 1200 was only 5 million!
tactics: ...
4
According to the Atlas of World Population History (by McEvedy and Jones), it was about 800,000.
... the demographic base was of the same order of magnitude about 800,000
when in the 13th century Genghis Khan set out from Mongolia to
conquer the world, and it was still in the same band in fact slightly lower, about
600,000 when the Chinese ...
3
When I traveled Krakow last month, the tour guide explained Black Death affected less in Poland because they had life style sanitizing dishes with vodka.
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