Frederic Madden News Today

When Martin Luther translated the Bible, the great Reformer chose to include the Apocrypha but didn’t like it. He called these books apocryphal, that is, texts of dubious origin, and disqualified by their very nature from being part of the Holy Scriptures. This very fact serves as a proper introduction to those books called the Apocrypha. The Apocrypha is not the Word of God, and, thus, not to be read as such, and not to be trusted for faith and life. However it does provide some value to...

English monk and chronicler Born ? Died 1259 Matthew of Paris (is) known to us only through his voluminous writings. In spite of his surname, and of his...

There is no accusation that is more guaranteed to get under a chess player’s skin than dismissing his beloved game as a ‘waste of time’. There is no better way to antagonize a chess player than to say that. But many famous thinkers and writers have done so. In chapter two of his book "Chessays", a collection of thought-provoking essays about a wide range of chess-related issues, Howard Burton has compiled a list of statements by detractors and defenders. Now available: a four-par...

From Renaissance rabbis to 19th-century forgers to John Pierpont Morgan's terrifying librarian, meet history's great manuscript addicts

From chivalric romance to seduction and temptation, from bravery and honor to trickery and shame, as far as poems go, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight has it all.

An alternative theory about the Lewis chessmen suggests the ivory figures may originate in Iceland!