Search Results: Urban legend

The Council of Clermont in central France was held in November 1095 and witnessed Pope Urban II's (r. 1088-1099) historic call for the First Crusade (1095-1102) to capture Jerusalem for Christendom from its Muslim occupiers. The Pope's speech...

The Crusades were a series of military campaigns organised by Christian powers in order to retake Jerusalem and the Holy Land back from Muslim control. There would be eight officially sanctioned crusades between 1095 CE and 1270 CE and many...

A 15th century CE illustration by Jean Colombe of the Council of Clermont of November 1095 CE where Pope Urban II (r. 1088-1099 CE) famously called for the First Crusade (1095-1102 CE). (National Library, Paris)

The Legend of Cutha (also known as the Cutha Legend and Kutha Legend) is a fictional work dated to the 2nd millennium BCE belonging to the genre known as Mesopotamian Naru literature. It features the Akkadian king Naram-Sin (r. 2261-2224...

The First Crusade (1095-1102) was a military campaign by western European forces to recapture the city of Jerusalem and the Holy Land from Muslim control. Conceived by Pope Urban II following an appeal from the Byzantine emperor Alexios I...

The Grail Legend (also known as the Grail Quest, Quest for the Holy Grail) developed in Europe c. 1050-1485 CE. It most likely originated in Ireland as folklore before appearing in written form sometime before 1056 CE in The Prophetic Ecstasy...

The Arthurian legend begins with the Welsh cleric Geoffrey of Monmouth (c. 1100 - c. 1155 CE). Earlier history writers such as Gildas, Bede, and Nennius had already established the existence of a British war-chief who defeated the Saxons...

The Legend of Sargon of Akkad (c. 2300 BCE) is an Akkadian work from Mesopotamia understood as the autobiography of Sargon of Akkad (Sargon the Great, r. 2334-2279 BCE), founder of the Akkadian Empire. The earliest copy is dated to the 7th...

King Arthur is among the most famous literary characters of all time. The Arthurian legend of the Knights of the Round Table, Camelot, the Quest for the Holy Grail, the love affair of Lancelot and Guinevere, and the wizard Merlin have informed...

Medieval literature is defined broadly as any work written in Latin or the vernacular between c. 476-1500, including philosophy, religious treatises, legal texts, as well as works of the imagination. More narrowly, however, the term applies...