Notre-Dame, Palace of the Virgin, with its clusters of columns, its soaring arches, its superb stone carvings and its matchless stained-glass windows, the cathedral of…

Southern France, the cult of courtly love, takes root and flourishes. In the glories of its new cathedral, the town of Chartres provided the fullest…

Abelard, Peter – a renowned teacher from Paris, surrounded by a group of questioning students – formed the nucleus of the new universities. Through the…

Toledo falls and this marks the beginning of the end of Islam in Spain. A triumph for orthodoxy The events at Canossa and the condemnation…

Henry IV stood barefoot in the snow, for three days in January, 1077, outside Canossa castle, waiting to see Pope Gregory VIl and to beg…

Galilee Chapel in Durham Cathedral. Durham was the greatest of the Norman ecclesiastical border fortress in the north of England.

William of Normandy, the conqueror, was also descended from English kings and was convinced that King Edward had promised him the succession. The disputed succession…

Hugh Capet was coronated in 987 and with that, began the French dominance of Europe. During the eleventh century, a view of world history is…

Norsemen or Vikings – Danes, Norwegians and Swedes — were terrorizing the greater part of Europe, over a thousand years ago. Their earliest activities were…