Geert Groote, otherwise Gerrit or Gerhard Groet, in Latin Gerardus Magnus, was a Dutch preacher and founder of the Brethren of the Common Life. In 1366 he visited the papal court at Avignon. About this time he was appointed to a canonry in...

John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster, was a member of the House of Plantagenet, the third surviving son of King Edward III of England and Philippa of Hainault. He was called "John of Gaunt" because he was born in Ghent, then known as Gaunt...

Claus Sluter (1340s in Haarlem – 1405 or 1406 in Dijon) was a Dutch sculptor. He was the most important northern European sculptor of his age and is considered a pioneer of the "northern realism" of the Early Netherlandish painting that cam...

Philip the Bold (Dutch: Filips de Stoute French: Philippe le Hardi), also Philip II, Duke of Burgundy, was the fourth and youngest son of King John II of France and his wife, Bonne of Luxembourg. By his marriage to Margaret III, Countess of...

Geoffrey Chaucer, known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to be buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey. While he achieved fame during his...

Ferdinand I, sometimes referred to as the Handsome, occasionally as the Inconstant, was King of Portugal and the Algarve, the second (but eldest surviving) son of Peter I and his wife, Constance of Castile. He succeeded his father in 1367....

Saint Catherine of Siena was a tertiary of the Dominican Order and a Scholastic philosopher and theologian. She also worked to bring the papacy of Gregory XI back to Rome from its displacement in France, and to establish peace among the Ita...

The Most Noble Order of the Garter is an order of chivalry, or knighthood, originating in medieval England, and presently bestowed on recipients in the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms; it is the pinnacle of the honours system i...

The Black Death was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 75 to 200 million people in Eurasia, peaking in Europe from 1347 to 1351. The bacterium Yersinia pestis, which results in se...

Margaret of Dampierre was the last Countess of Flanders (as Margaret III) of the House of Dampierre, Countess of Artois and Countess Palatine of Burgundy (as Margaret II) and twice Duchess consort of Burgundy. Margaret was widowed in 13...

Vytautas the Great (c. 1350 – 1430) was one of the most famous rulers of medieval Lithuania. Vytautas was the ruler (1392–1430) of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania which chiefly encompassed the Lithuanians and Ruthenians. He was also the Prince...

The Renaissance (from French: Renaissance "re-birth", Italian: Rinascimento, from rinascere "to be reborn") was a cultural movement that spanned the period roughly from the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Age...

This fascinating fourteenth-century text is as complex as it is misunderstood. The premise is simple enough: the author creates a fictional set-up where, over ten days, seven female and three male characters who are cooped up in a country e...

Jogaila was Grand Duke of Lithuania (1377–1434), King of the Kingdom of Poland (1386–1399), and then sole King of Poland (1399–1434). He ruled in Lithuania from 1377. In 1386 in Kraków he was baptized as Wladyslaw, married the young Queen r...

Margaret I was queen consort of Norway and Sweden, omnipotent ruler of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, and founder of the Kalmar Union, which united the Scandinavian countries for over a century. De facto a queen regnant, the laws of contempora...