The murder of the queen had been represented to me as a deed lawful and meritorious. — Anthony Babington, executed for his part in the Babington Plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I of England It’s a strange turn of events that when assassinations are discussed, the discussion rarely includes the Hungarian Queen Elizabeth of Bosnia; …
The richest man in the world, of all time, came from Africa. Many people know the story of Mansa Musa, the rule of the Empire of Mali, who spent so much gold during his journey to Hajj that the price of gold was devalued for several years after he went home. Lesser known is …
- February 26, 2021
- Interesting
- Comments Off on Finding the Edge of the World
Tags
It takes a great man to turn a Duchy into a Kingdom, and for the medieval Bosnia and Herzegovina that man was Tvrtko I. Not that the lead up to his crowning was uneventful or easy; on the contrary, Tvrtko overcame enormous odds sandwiched between two great powers to wrest away the wild and mountainous …
- October 26, 2020
- History , Interesting
- Comments Off on And Then He Was King
Tags
If a church is corrupt enough and gives little enough care to its adherents, at some point its followers will be tempted to follow something else. This was the case in tenth century Bulgaria, where the Orthodox Church provided a breathtakingly rich pageantry full of jewel encrusted costumes, but gave little care to the …
- June 22, 2020
- Bosnia and Herzegovina , Bosnia and Herzegovina , Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Comments Off on A Very Balkan Heresy
Tags
“At first we were confused. The East thought that we were West, while the West considered us to be East. Some of us misunderstood our place in the clash of currents, so they cried that we belong to neither side, and others that we belong exclusively to one side or the other. But I tell …
- June 18, 2020
- Bulgaria
- Comments Off on A Tale of Two Churches
Tags
Throughout Europe the Middle Ages are synonymous with kings and courts and conquest. Every king in the medieval history of Great Britain was proven on the battlefield. Charlemagne rode over huge swathes of continental Europe and added it to his empire – including parts of modern-day Croatia and Bosnia. Frederick I Barbarossa fought through no …
- June 2, 2020
- Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Comments Off on There Were Kings in Bosnia
Tags
“Hard times create great men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And weak men create hard times.” G. Michael Hopf The golden age of Bosnia is generally accepted to center around one particular man – Ban Kulin. Certainly he didn’t come to power in easy and posh world-circumstances – when he …
- June 2, 2020
- Comments Off on The Creation of Great Men