Irina Dumitrescu

At some point​ in the early sixth century, a well-born Irish monk arrived on Säckingen, a small island on the Rhine. Fridolin had already travelled through Gaul, discovered the relics of St Hilarius at Poitiers and reversed a bishop’s paralysis before Hilarius appeared to him in a dream and gave him another assignment: to find an uninhabited island among the Alemanni, the Germanic...

Of all​ the medieval people who sound as though they should be made up, Roland le Pettour, also known as Roland le Fartere, must be near the top of the list. An entertainer who worked for Henry II, Roland is recorded in several medieval registers as holding substantial tracts of land north of Ipswich. His yearly service to the king, at least as it has come down to us, was ‘saltum,...

Alysoun of​ Bath first appeared in the 14th century in the Canterbury Tales, dressed in a finely spun headcloth, scarlet stockings and supple new shoes. An accomplished weaver, well-travelled pilgrim and serial bride, she spends more time recounting the dramas of her own life than contributing to the storytelling competition. In 1600, three men were fined for printing and selling ‘a...

Early​ in The Book of Margery Kempe, the middle-class mystic and would-be saint visits a community of monks, whose abbot invites her to dine with them. Margery is on top form during the meal, regaling the group with the ‘good words’ that God put in her mind. She is so charismatic, in fact, that one monk who has long despised her begins to show great interest in what she has to...

In​ the mid-seventh century, a busy and well-connected abbess in Northumbria took a promising new poet under her wing. This unassuming elderly man, who worked as a cowherd, had never managed to learn a single song. He went to feasts with the other agricultural workers at the monastery, but always left before the harp could be passed to him. One night he departed early and went to sleep in...