In the early Middle Ages, Irish monks transported an important collection of texts to continental Europe. Written during Ireland’s golden age (between the sixth and ninth centuries), the manuscripts ...

Jamie Kreiner (Hist/Mus,’04) thinks a lot about thinking. Her new book, The Wandering Mind: What Medieval Monks Tell Us About Distraction, achieved a rare feat for a scholarly work: The Wall Street ...

The medieval period often gets painted as a thousand years of darkness, filth, and ignorance. Popular culture loves to ...

Kreiner is a professor of history at the University of Georgia specializing in the early Middle Ages, and the author of The Wandering Mind: What Medieval Monks Tell Us About Distraction It’s time for ...

When we think of medieval friars, we may well picture Robin Hood’s jolly Friar Tuck, known for his rotund figure and love of food and drink. But it turns out some of these monks were full of more than ...

What do medieval monks and volcanic eruptions have in common? According to a team of researchers led by the University of Geneva, quite a bit because chronicles from the 12th and 13th century are ...

A University of Cambridge study has found that many -- if not most -- monks were "riddled with parasites," even more than commoners, despite their advanced technologies and wealth. Corbis via Getty ...

Research examining traces of parasites in medieval Cambridge residents suggests that monks were almost twice as likely as ordinary townspeople to have intestinal worms -- despite monasteries of the ...

Tom has a Master's degree in Journalism. His editorial work covers anything from archaeology and the environment to technology and culture. Tom has a Master's degree in Journalism. His editorial work ...

Sébastien Guillet, an environmental scientist at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, was rocking out to Pink Floyd’s classic Dark Side of the Moon album one day when he made a prescient ...