Tancred of Hauteville was an eleventh-century Norman petty lord about whom little is known. His historical importance comes entirely from the accomplishments of his sons and later descendants. He was a minor noble near Coutances in the Cote...

Guido of Arezzo (991/992 – after 1033) was a music theorist of the Medieval era. He is regarded as the inventor of modern musical notation (staff notation) that replaced neumatic notation; his text, the Micrologus, was the second-most-widel...

Edward the Confessor, also known as Saint Edward the Confessor, was among the last Anglo-Saxon kings of England, and usually considered the last king of the House of Wessex, ruling from 1042 to 1066. The son of Æthelred the Unready and E...

Mac Bethad mac Findlaích, known in English as Macbeth, was King of Scots (or Alba) from 1040 until his death. He is best known as the subject of William Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth and the many works it has inspired, although the play is...

Harald Sigurdsson, given the epithet Hardrada (roughly translated as "stern counsel" or "hard ruler") in the sagas, was King of Norway (as Harald III) from 1046 to 1066. In addition, he unsuccessfully claimed the Danish throne until 1064 an...

Casimir I the Restorer was a Duke of Poland of the Piast dynasty and the de jure monarch of the entire country from 1034 until his death. He was the only son of Mieszko II Lambert by his wife Richeza, daughter of Count Palatine Ezzo of L...

Harold Godwinson, often called Harold II, was the last Anglo-Saxon king of England. Harold reigned from 6 January 1066 until his death at the Battle of Hastings on 14 October, fighting the Norman invaders led by William the Conqueror during...

William I usually known as William the Conqueror and sometimes William the Bastard, was the first Norman King of England, reigning from 1066 until his death in 1087. The descendant of Viking raiders, he had been Duke of Normandy since 1035...

Alp Arslan was the second Sultan of the Seljuq Empire and great-grandson of Seljuq, the eponymous founder of the dynasty. His real name was Muhammad bin Dawud Chaghri, and for his military prowess, personal valour, and fighting skills he ob...

Matilda of Flanders was the wife of William the Conqueror and, as such, Queen consort of the Kingdom of England. She bore William nine children, including two kings, William II and Henry I. Matilda, or Maud, was the daughter of Baldwin V...

Malcolm III was King of Scots from 1058 to 1093. He was later nicknamed "Canmore" ("ceann mòr", Gaelic for "Great Chief": "ceann" denotes "leader", "head" (of state) and "mòr" denotes "pre-eminent", "great", and "big"). Malcolm's long reign...

Roger I (Roger Guiscard), c.1031-1101, Norman conqueror of Sicily; son of Tancred de Hauteville. He went to Italy in 1058 to join his brother, Robert Guiscard, in conquering Apulia and Calabria from the Byzantines. Between 1061 and 1091 he...

John XIX (born ? in Rome, died October 1032), was Pope from 1024 to 1032. He succeeded his brother, Pope Benedict VIII (1012–24), both being members of the powerful house of Tusculum. When elected Pope John XIX he was an unordained layman....

Anselm of Canterbury was a Benedictine monk, an Italian medieval philosopher, theologian, and church official who held the office of Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 to 1109. Called the founder of scholasticism, he is famous as the origin...

Urban is best known for starting the First Crusade. Urban's crusading movement took its first public shape at the Council of Piacenza, where in March 1095 Urban received an ambassador from the Byzantine emperor Alexius I Comnenus, asking fo...