Thoughts Medieval The Official Blog of the Sarasota Medieval Fair

The peasants of the Sarasota Medieval Fair demonstrated recently on Fruitville Road in front of the Sarasota fairgrounds with signs preparing onlookers for this month’s festival and its scenario — The Peasant’s Revolt of 1381. With picket signs, farming implements and angry fists flying 
history rep

During the Middle Ages clothing was dictated by the Feudal System and highly influenced by the Kings and Queens of the era. Medieval clothes provided information about the class status of a person. Due to Sumptuary Laws, only the wealthy could dress in fashionable clothing. The style of clothing wor

Clothing in the Middle Ages was another marker of a person’s status thanks to Sumptuary Laws imposed by rulers. Sumptuary Laws curbed the expenditure of people and in effect controlled behavior to ensure a specific class structure was maintained. Penalties for violating sumptuary laws could amount t

Actor, author and historian Tony Robinson filmed the documentary “The Great Rising of 1381″ in 2004 for Channel 4, British Public Service Television. Available today on YouTube as an 11 part series, the film winds viewers through the geographic landmarks allowing the stories of the revolt and its ke

Last week we talked about motte and bailey castles, the first kind of castle in medieval times. However, like all technologies, castles changed over time. A more familiar kind of castle to you would probably be a concentric castle.   A concentric castle is most easily described as “a castle within a

Did you know that the Tower of London, the building in which the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Treasurer, and other nobles were hiding, is actually a castle? Yes, despite having the word “tower” in its name, the Tower of London is a veritable fortress. Castles in medieval times were an importan

Today’s post is about the weapons each side used in the Peasants’ Revolt. What makes this battle particularly interesting is that it was not between two armies, but between the upper class (nobility and royalty) who had control of militias, and the lower class (the peasants) who mainly had to organi