Blog anniversary!

Medieval bloggers

As of November 15, 2013, this blog has been in existence for two years!  When I started, I had so much to learn - it was a major project to wrestle a picture into place, I forgot to add a thingie so that people could follow the blog, and I was clueless about HTML.

Fortunately, I have a husband who is both extremely ept and extremely patient, so the blog finally evolved into something that was more fun that not, most of the time, and very rarely has me tearing my hair out these days.  (Part of that is because I've given up on fancy formatting, of course.)  The blog gets a healthy number of pageviews, which is gratifying, and has even managed to acquire some followers.  (Thank you, followers!)

So, to celebrate, I'm doing two things:

First, I thought I'd pick my ten most popular posts of the past two years, and provide you with links to them, in case you weren't on board with this blog at the time they ran.  Maybe you'll find something here that interests you, or something you'd enjoy revisiting, if you've already seen it.  (I've not included the most popular guest posts here, but they are also well worth looking for.)

And second, my next post - whenever it may happen - will include a short quiz, successful completion of which will enter the contestant in a drawing for a free copy of my book, A Thing Done.

Here are the ten most popular posts, not in order of popularity but chronological, from most recent to earliest:

... that Death had undone so many.

A post about famous people in central Italy who lost their lives in the Black Death in 1348 - artists, churchmen, scholars, and others.

A Hospital with a Venerable History

Some history of an ancient hospital still operating in Florence.

A Medieval Doctor and His Career

 

Taddeo Alderotti, medieval Florentine physician.

 Who was the historical Beatrice?

The real woman behind the legend - Dante's inspiration.

In Search of the Etruscans - Part 3: Cerveteri

In Search of the Etruscans - Part 2: Tarquinia

In Search of the Etruscans - Part 1: Rome 

Three posts about the Etruscans, in three cities where this mysterious people has left tantalizing traces.

Let's just call him Leonardo, shall we?

 

Names and what their structures mean

Was There a Florence Before the Renaissance?

What was Florence like in Dante's time?

A Historical Puzzle (and a Possible Solution) - Part 1 

The question that started me on the quest that became my first novel.

Images in this post are in the public domain or are our own, with these exceptions:  photo of hospital is licensed to Sailko, and photo of skeletons (detail shown here) is licensed to Mattis, both via the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license, Wikimedia Commons.