The "Wujing Zongyao" (literally "Collection of the Most Important Military Techniques") was the first book in history to record the written formulas for gunpowder solutions containing saltpetre, sulphur, and charcoal, along with many added...

The Domesday Book is a great land survey from 1086, commissioned by William the Conqueror to assess the extent of the land and resources being owned in England at the time, and the extent of the taxes he could raise. The information collect...

Parzival is a major medieval German epic poem attributed to the poet Wolfram von Eschenbach, written in the Middle High German language. The poem is commonly dated circa the first quarter of the 13th century. The poem is, in part, an adapta...

Villard de Honnecourt was a 13th-century artist from Picardy in northern France. He is known to history only through a surviving portfolio or "sketchbook" containing about 250 drawings and designs of a wide variety of subjects. The so-ca...

The Codex Gigas is the largest extant medieval manuscript in the world. It was created in the early 13th century in the Benedictine monastery of Podlažice in Bohemia, and is now preserved at the National Library of Sweden in Stockholm. It i...

Chosen as one of the ten best adventure books of all time The Travels of Marco Polo remains a wondrous adventure narrative. Chronicling the thirteenth-century world from Venice, his birthplace, to the far reaches of Asia, Marco Polo tells o...

The Divine Comedy (Italian: Commedia, later christened "Divina" by Giovanni Boccaccio), written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321, is widely considered the central epic poem of Italian literature, and is seen as one of t...

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...

The Limbourg brothers, Paul, Jean, and Hermann, were a Netherlandish family of manuscript illuminators. All three died in 1416, presumably of the plague. Paul is thought to be the eldest and therefore the head of the workshop, but the firs...

Francesco Petrarca was one of the great figures of Italian literature. He traveled widely in the service of the church, was involved in Italian politics, and wrote extensively. In 1341 he was crowned laureate at Rome for his poetry. Vari...

Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1342-1400) had a career in royal service as a member of the court and a diplomat. His literary work, notable for its range of genres, helped establish the English literary tradition. With their astonishing diversity...

The Yongle Encyclopedia, literally The Great Canon or Vast Documents of the Yongle Era, was a Chinese compilation commissioned by the Chinese Ming Dynasty emperor Yongle in 1403 and completed by 1408. Until Wikipedia, it was the world's lar...

Rowan Gavin Paton Menzies was a British author and retired submarine lieutenant-commander who has written books promoting claims that the Chinese sailed to America before Columbus. Historians have rejected Menzies' theories and assertions a...

The Craftsman's Handbook: "Il Libro dell' Arte" by Cennino d'Andrea Cennini (c.1370-c.1440). He was an Italian painter influenced by Giotto. He was a student of Agnolo Gaddi. He is remembered mainly for having authored Il libro dell'arte, o...

An influence on Thomas More, Ignatius Loyola, John Wesley, and Dr. Johnson, the 15th-century priest & writer Thomas ? Kempis wrote many devotional works, culminating in this masterpiece celebrating man's dependence on God's boundless love....