In Death and the Miser, a Dutch painting from around 1490, a hideous skeletal figure—a medieval version of the grim reaper—comes knocking at a man’s bedroom door. As death watches, the dying miser ...

Medieval literature speaks often of the goddess Fortuna, a personification of the belief that the fates of men and women were beyond their control, utterly random, and divorced from meaning or justice ...

Rodney Hilton, 85, a British historian who wrote influential works on the rise of capitalism and medieval peasant revolts, died June 7 at his home in Birmingham, England. The cause of death was not ...

Profits and public-mindedness are often at odds. A business’s aim is to make money, and most of the time, concerns about social good are secondary at best, frequently touted for public-relations ...