Pope Urban II, otherwise known as Odo of Châtillon or Otho de Lagery, was the head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 12 March 1088 to his death. He is best known for convening the Council of Clermont which ignited the series of Christian military expeditions known as the Crusades.
Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons including punishment, extracting a confession, interrogation for information, or intimidating third parties.
Guibert de Nogent was a Benedictine historian, theologian, and author of autobiographical memoirs. Guibert was relatively unknown in his own time, going virtually unmentioned by his contemporaries. He has only recently caught the attention of scholars who have been more interested in his extensive autobiographical memoirs and personality which provide insight into medieval life.
Tickling is the act of touching a part of a body in a way that causes involuntary twitching movements or laughter. The word evolved from the Middle English tikelen, perhaps frequentative of ticken, to touch lightly.
The Council of Clermont was a mixed synod of ecclesiastics and laymen of the Catholic Church, called by Pope Urban II and held from 17 to 27 November 1095 at Clermont, Auvergne, at the time part of the Duchy of Aquitaine.
Barlaam of Seminara, c. 1290–1348, or Barlaam of Calabria was a Basilian monk, theologian and humanistic scholar born in southern Italy. He was a scholar and clergyman of the 14th century, as well as a humanist, philologist and theologian.
In the Middle Ages, the medicine of Western Europe was composed of a mixture of existing ideas from antiquity. In the Early Middle Ages, following the fall of the Western Roman Empire, standard medical knowledge was based chiefly upon surviving Greek and Roman texts, preserved in monasteries and elsewhere. Medieval medicine is widely misunderstood, thought of as a uniform attitude composed of placing hopes in the church and God to heal all sicknesses, while sickness itself exists as a product of destiny, sin, and astral influences as physical causes. But, especially in the second half of the medieval period, medieval medicine became a formal body of theoretical knowledge and was institutionalized in universities. Medieval medicine attributed illnesses, and disease, not to sinful behavior, but to natural causes, and sin was connected to illness only in a more general sense of the view that disease manifested in humanity as a result of its fallen state from God. Medieval medicine also recognized that illnesses spread from person to person, that certain lifestyles may cause ill health, and some people have a greater predisposition towards bad health than others.
Marchetto da Padova was an Italian music theorist and composer of the late medieval era. His innovations in notation of time-values were fundamental to the music of the Italian ars nova, as was his work on defining the modes and refining tuning. In addition, he was the first music theorist to discuss chromaticism.
The Gesta Francorum, or Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum, is a Latin chronicle of the First Crusade by an anonymous author connected with Bohemond of Taranto.
Tickle torture is the prolonged use of tickling to abuse, dominate, harass, humiliate, or interrogate an individual. While laughter is popularly thought of as a pleasure response, in tickle torture, the one being tickled may laugh whether or not they find the experience pleasant. In a tickling situation, laughter can indicate a panic reflex rather than a pleasure response. Tickle torture can cause real physical and mental distress in a victim.
Poulaines, also known by other names, were a style of unisex footwear with extremely long toes that were fashionable in Europe at various times in the Middle Ages. The poulaine proper was a shoe or boot of soft material whose elongated toe frequently required filling to maintain its shape. The chief vogue for poulaines spread across Europe from medieval Poland in the mid-14th century and spread across Europe, reaching upper-class England with the 1382 marriage of Richard II to Anne of Bohemia and remaining popular through most of the 15th century. Sturdier forms were used as overshoes and the sabatons of the era's armor were often done in poulaine style.
Maarat al-Numan, also known as al-Ma'arra, is a city in northwestern Syria, 33 km (21 mi) south of Idlib and 57 km (35 mi) north of Hama, with a population of about 58,008 before the Civil War. In 2017, it was estimated to have a population of 80,000, including several displaced by fighting in neighbouring towns. It is located on the highway between Aleppo and Hama and near the Dead Cities of Bara and Serjilla.
Psychological torture, mental torture or emotional torture is a type of torture that relies primarily on psychological effects and only secondarily on any physical harm inflicted. Although not all psychological torture involves the use of physical violence, there is a continuum between psychological torture and physical torture. The two are often used in conjunction with one another and often overlap in practice, with the fear and pain induced by physical torture often resulting in long-term psychological effects and many forms of psychological torture involving some form of pain or coercion.
The siege of Ma'arra occurred in late 1098 in the city of Ma'arrat Nu'man, in what is modern-day Syria, during the First Crusade. It is infamous for the claims of widespread cannibalism committed by the Crusaders.
Saint-Germer-de-Fly Abbey is a former Benedictine abbey located in the village of Saint-Germer-de-Fly, in Picardy in the Oise département of France. Only the late Romanesque-early Gothic church remains, now the village parish church. It is regarded as one of the earliest manifestations of the Gothic style in France. A Gothic chapel added in the mid-13th century is noted as a smaller-scale reinterpretation of the Sainte-Chapelle of Paris.
Jay Rubenstein is an American historian of the Middle Ages.
The Christchurch Dragon is a legend associated with the town of Christchurch, Dorset, on the south coast of England. The legend has its origin in a mid-12th century French manuscript written by Hermann de Tournai, which tells how a party of canons from the cathedral of Notre-Dame in Laon, France, witnessed a five-headed dragon destroy the church and much of the town. Although well-documented, the legend is little-known in the town of its origin.
Helinand was the bishop of Laon from 1052 to 1098.
