In 1307, arrest warrants were issued for the Knights Templar from the King of France on charges of heresy, sodomy and conspiracy. This led to the trial over a seven year period of many knights including the leaders of the…
Read MoreI was in Italy in August and September this year and visited many medieval sites – in the next few blog posts, I’ll give you some highlights In late August, I went to Siena – a gorgeous medieval city in…
Read MoreI have been travelling round Italy and will be sharing some amazing videos and images from that incredible country in the next few posts. To begin with, here is a church in the medieval town of San Gimignano that claims…
Read MoreA medieval object called an Oliphant made from a real elephant – that you can see in York Minster in England
Read MoreMy Irish grandmother used to usher myself and my sister into her room at Christmas to show off her nativity set. There was the crib of Jesus centre stage, Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, three kings and a couple of…
Read MoreSaint Pantaleon is the patron saint of the lottery – proving there really is a saint for everything. I have even found several prayers online beseeching Pantaleon to pick the right numbers for the faithful. One went like this: Dear…
Read MoreFlorence was a city known to the Knights Templar as one of the great centres of civilisation in medieval Italy. They may even have developed their primitive banking operation by watching the activities of Florentine merchants who were very commercially…
Read MoreWhat happened to saints Chrysanthus and Daria and are the bones under an Italian church really those of the two martyred Romans? The relics of two Roman era saints are, according to faithful Catholics, contained within the medieval cathedral of…
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