Religion

A spider on its web, woodcut, 1547. (Image courtesy of Wellcome Collection)

A sign of the devil or a miracle cure? How people felt about spiders in the Middle Ages

Illustration by Joey Guidone

The big question: has terrorism ever achieved its aims?

Selim I

The extraordinary life of Sultan Selim I

The Pilgrim fathers arrive at Plymouth, Massachusetts on board the Mayflower. (Photo by Harold M. Lambert/Kean Collection/Archive Photos/Getty Images)

“They decided that God must be leading them to North America”: the Puritans journey to the Mayflower

The pilgrim fathers

Your guide to the Pilgrim Fathers, plus 6 interesting facts

Painting of Martin Luther translating the New Testament into German vernacular in 1521 (Photo by Fine Art Photographic Library/Corbis via Getty Images)

Your guide to Martin Luther, the theologian who launched the Reformation

A replica of Jesus' tomb. (Photo by Alamy)

General ancient history

History’s greatest mysteries The fate of Jesus's body

The capture of Jerusalem in 1099

How the First Crusade captured Jerusalem in 1099

St Swithin (or Swithun). (Image by Alamy)

Q&A Who was St Swithin?

Stained glass window of King Alfred the Great

Exclusive podcast The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles

Taking of Jerusalem by the Crusaders, Painting by Emile Signol (1804–1892), (Photo by Leemage/Corbis via Getty Images)

Blog Medieval(ish) matters 11: Did women fight in the crusades? And why did people follow a goose to the Holy Land?

A 13th-century illumination showing the coronation of Foulques and Melisende. (Photo by Alamy)

Women and the crusades

Illustration from Dante's ‘Inferno', depicting thieves tormented in hell by serpents.

General ancient history

A brief history of the afterlife

Thomas Becket murder

7 controversial saints in history

Original Gutenberg Bible, Beinecke Library, Yale Univeristy. (Photo by Alamy)

General ancient history

The history of the Bible