Five edges of the medieval world
Vikings, Crusaders, the Black Death, Joan of Arc, and the Knights of Malta.
5 questions. Pick an answer to see the explanation. Share your result at the end.
When did the Vikings reach North America?
Leif Erikson sailed from Greenland to the eastern coast of North America around 1000 AD, establishing a short-lived settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows on the northern tip of Newfoundland. The site was rediscovered and confirmed by archaeology in 1960. Norse contact with North America preceded Columbus by approximately five centuries — but did not produce a lasting colony.
Who called the First Crusade, and when?
Pope Urban II preached the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont on 27 November 1095, offering a plenary indulgence to knights who would travel east to recover the Holy Land. The expedition reached Jerusalem and captured it on 15 July 1099. Richard the Lionheart led the Third Crusade (1189–1192); Alexios I Komnenos's request for aid against the Seljuks was the immediate trigger but he did not call the Crusade himself; Francis of Assisi joined the Fifth Crusade as a peace envoy.
What pathogen caused the Black Death?
DNA analysis of skeletons from 14th-century plague pits in London and elsewhere, published 2010–2011 by Johannes Krause's team, definitively identified *Yersinia pestis* as the pathogen — ending centuries of medical debate. The bacterium is transmitted primarily by fleas on rats and is still extant. About 2,000 plague cases are reported worldwide every year, mostly in Madagascar, the DRC, and Peru.
When and how was Joan of Arc executed?
Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in Rouen on 30 May 1431, aged 19, after a heresy trial conducted by an English-aligned French ecclesiastical court. She had been captured by the Burgundians a year earlier and sold to the English. The verdict was overturned by a Vatican retrial in 1456, and she was canonised as a saint in 1920.
Who gave the island of Malta to the Knights Hospitaller in 1530?
After the Hospitallers' expulsion from Rhodes in 1522 by Sultan Suleiman, they spent eight years searching for a new base. Charles V granted them Malta in 1530 as a hereditary fief in exchange for a nominal annual rent of one Maltese falcon. The Order ruled Malta for 268 years, until Napoleon expelled them in 1798. The 'Maltese falcon' is the historical root of the modern phrase.