Search for It!

Find the answers you need at the Medieval History site

Having trouble finding what you seek? Use our search box to search for it. It helps if you know how to search and what to look for.

How to Search

At the top of nearly every page of this site you will find a search box. You can use this box to search the Medieval History site or to search the entire About.com collection of sites. To use the search box:

1. Click inside the search text box
2. Type the word or phrase you're looking for
3. Select one of these items from the drop-down menu:
   1. "in this topic" to search the entire Medieval History site (the default)
   2. "on About" to search About's entire collection of sites
   3. "on the web" to look beyond About
   4. "in Products" to search for relevant books, videos and other merchandise through mySimon
4. Click "go"

If the topic you're looking for concerns medieval history or the Renaissance, try searching this site first. If your search yields more than one page of results and the first page doesn't help you, don't forget to check the next page! Results at other About sites will be displayed as well as results for this site.

Your Search Phrase

Typing the correct phrase into the search box will be the difference between finding what you're looking for and getting the dreaded "No documents matched this query" result.

Your best bet is to use only one or, at most, two words in your search phrase (all lower-case is fine). The search engine looks for the exact string of characters you type into the box, so, the shorter the string, the more likely you are to find what you seek. For example, if you type "siege tactics" into the search box, the engine will only find those pages where the exact phrase "siege tactics" has been used (and the only page at this site where it's been used so far is this one).

However, if you just type "siege" into the search box, you'll get more than a dozen results; the same goes for just typing "tactics." In both cases the first result will be our Subject Index for General Militaria, which will undoubtedly lead you to information on the tactics used by medieval armies when besieging fortified structures.

There are more complicated ways to search; but if you know what to look for, you'll find advanced search methods are unnecessary.

Spelling

Be sure your words are spelled correctly! I try not to use misspelled words in my features and in my subject pages, so if you search for "castel" you won't find my pages of links on Castles, and if you search for "wepon" or "sord" you won't find my pages on Armor & Weaponry.

Are you uncertain how to spell what you're looking for? Merriam-Webster has a helpful online dictionary you can use to check your spelling. If you're a less-than-stellar speller, you'll want to bookmark this page (I have).

For quick reference, here are the correct spellings for some of the words I've discovered are often misspelled. (You can copy and paste any of these words into the search box.) To get the best results, use only one word in your search!

antiquity, antiquities

archaeology, archaeological ("archeology" is used but not preferred)

architecture, architectural

armor ("armour" is the British spelling)

Asiatic

battle

bibliography, bibliographical

biography, biographical

Byzantine, Byzantium

castle

chivalry, chivalric

development

ecclesiastic, ecclesiastical

Europe

feminism, feminist

Hellenism

knight, knightly

literary

manuscript

medieval (mediaeval is the archaic spelling)

military

monastery, monastic

occidental

plague

re-enactment, reenactment (both are acceptable)

recreation, recreational

Reformation

religion, religious

Renaissance

Scandinavia, Scandinavian

science, scientific

siege

sword

technology, technological

weapon, weaponry

What to Look For

If you don't find what you're looking for, perhaps your choice of word or phrase isn't commonly used; you may wish to use another term. If you're stumped, try Merriam-Webster's online thesaurus. But remember: You cannot always expect a search to turn up the exact information you need. Sometimes, you have to look further.

Because medieval history covers hundreds of nations and cultural groups, more than a thousand years, and an uncountable number of possible topics, it is simply not possible to provide an index with every term that someone could possibly use in a search. (It's also not possible for me to have heard every term ever used in conjunction with medieval history.) The best I can do is keep expanding my coverage and putting as many keywords that are appropriate in my documents to help you with your search.

So, even if you can't find information on a particular event, custom, person, or other facet of history here at the site, it doesn't mean the site can't help you find the information on the net. One of the many sites we link to could include just the information you seek, if you know to visit that site in the first place. Think of what larger category your specialized interest fits into.

For example, are you looking for information on a particular battle tactic? Don't search for the tactic itself -- search for information about tactics in general. For this, a visit to our subject index for Military History could be extremely useful.

Don't just run a search on "Mary Tudor" and stop when none of the pages in the search help you. Mary Tudor was an English Queen. Try our pages of net links on Medieval Britain, where you'll find links to information about the monarchs of England. And don't stop there! Check out Women of the Middle Ages to see if any of the sites linked there can help you.

When you think of the larger category that encompasses your topic of interest, you can search for that category. Or, you can browse our index of net link categories. Currently, there are more than 300 subject pages, covering topics that range from Archaeology to Women of the Middle Ages; more sites are added to these pages regularly, and more categories are added occasionally, too.

Our directory is multilayered; this means that the first link you click will almost always take you to a second directory of sub-pages, and some of these may take you to yet another layer. I have done this to reduce the immense number of links you have to wade through in each page in order to find what you're looking for. For example, there are currently more than 200 links in our pages for Medieval Britain. If they were all on one page, it would take quite some time to load; and if you were only looking for, say, links for Wales, it would be quite a waste of time to scroll through more than 200 links just so you could look at twenty of them.

Also, organizing the directory in this way allows the top layer of the directory to be displayed on every page of this site. You can see these links on the left side of the page under the heading "Subjects."

If you're not sure whether or not a subject page can help you, please click on the link and go to the page! There you'll find a list of sites on the internet, each link accompanied by a little information about what you can find there. If the page doesn't help you, return to the index and try something else. After all, you can't know until you try. I urge you to do a little browsing before emailing me with a request for assistance. Trust me, it's a lot easier (and quicker) to do a little clicking than it is to compose a plea for help.

Please note: If you are researching a topic that is not covered by this site, I am sorry I will be unable to help you. You may find one of the other About.com history sites more suited to your needs, depending on the topic, chronological era and geographical location you're researching. A listing can be found in the About history channel.

Return to the Frequently Asked Questions page.

 

 

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