When we think of eating in the medieval era, we often envision wooden banquet tables, goblets, elaborate salt cellars, and giant turkey legs. Banquet tables were even more adorned on Christmas, at ...

Christian Monks, St. Cyprian, St. Cassian, St. John, St. Paul and St. Vitalis, from the Saints Procession mosaic in the Basilica di Sant'Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, Italy.De Agostini/Getty Images ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Food for monks in the middle ages consisted of what was grown within the monastery and what could be begged from nearby towns. Their main foodstuffs included vegetables such as turnips or salad, dark ...

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 ...

Melissa Breyer was Treehugger’s senior editorial director before moving to Martha Stewart. Her writing and photography have been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, National Geographic, ...