In this second installment of our holiday series of excerpts from William Caxton’s The Game and Playe of the Chesse, we hear about the layout of the chessboard and...

We kick off a holiday miniseries of chess lore from William Caxton’s The Game and the Playe of the Chesse with one version of how chess was invented. We...

For our 4th anniversary, we celebrate Halloween with one of the great tales of the unquiet dead from the Icelandic sagas — namely, Grettis saga and the story of...

This episode we hear three tales from a miracle catalogue compiled in the hopes of winning official sainthood for King Henry VI, whose reputation needed all the help it...

Previously, we heard Odoric (or Odoricus) of Pordenone (or Friuli) describe his travels as a Franciscan missionary to the Far East. This episode, we get an attempt by a...

At last we reach the coast of China with Friar Odoricus in the final episode of our medieval travelers series. We also take a look at the Renaissance exploration...

In our third travelers episode, we catch up with the explorer and diplomat Ibn Battuta, as he narrowly avoids disaster in Southern India, though his entourage is not so...

In the second installment of our medieval travelers series, we follow Marco Polo into the deserts of Iran and learn about the hazards of the road, including a lethal...

We kick off a miniseries of texts from medieval travelers by continuing with Gerald of Wales as he sets out to tour Wales with Archbishop Baldwin, collecting stories from...