Divine Clothing While many of us have had a near-spiritual experience in thrift shops *, Medieval rich people often used clothing donations to pave their route to Heaven. These …
The Hat Man is usually tall. He wears a broad-brimmed hat and a trench coat. And people across the world have reported sleeping encounters with him. For about as …
How did the Victorians’ opulent, affluent homes become an international shorthand for haunted house? As art historian Sarah Burns points out, in the 1870s, Victorian houses weren’t horror homes. …
Want to brie gouda at fontinella the future? Try Tyromancy, the practice of predicting the future with cheese. Holy of Holies Derived from the Greek (turos) (cheese) and manteia (divination), …
During the Middle Ages, bats (called “witches’ birds”) were associated with witches, devils, and other evil-doers. In 1332, Lady Jacaume of Bayonne in France was publicly burned because “crowds …
Before it was a pumpkin, Jack-o’-Lantern was a mythical Irishman who played tricks on the Devil. The original Jack-o’-Lantern was a blacksmith named Jack who was too evil to …
The criers of wine were a uniquely French form of Medieval advertising. Troops of them walked the streets of Paris, each armed a large measure of wine, from which …
The Medieval stocks punished so many brewers, bakers, butchers, and cooks that one wit suggested they should locate their gilds underneath the local pillories. John Stow described how Medieval stocks …
In Victorian England, fashionable people would pay to attend mummy unrolling parties, and the more you paid the nearer you could see the performance. Europeans had been buying mummies …
For the strangest Medieval Saint, may I suggest St. Guinefort, known for being martyred, healing sick children and being a very good boy. The story goes something like this: …
In what might be the first medieval traffic speeding law, the city of London includes this rule in its 15th century law book, the Liber Albus: that no carter within …
Peter I of Russia shortcutted his infamous beard tax when he personally shaved his horrified courtiers. At a court reception not long after his European tour, he unexpectedly pulled out …
