The Medieval Python

This history of medieval inventions, focusing on the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries, vividly portrays a thriving era of human ingenuity--and the results are still being felt to this day. From th

The Bodleian Library is one of the few libraries outside Germany with a substantial number of medieval manuscripts from the German-speaking lands. These manuscripts, most of which were acquired by Arc

In 2010, the world's wealthiest art institution, the J. Paul Getty Museum, found itself confronted by a century-old genocide. The Armenian Church was suing for the return of eight pages from the Zeytu

Chinese culture of the Six Dynasties period (220–589) saw a blossoming of stories of the fantastic. Zhiguai, “records of the strange” or “accounts of anomalies,” tell of encounters with otherness, in

Alexander the Great (356–333 BC) was transformed into a legend by all those he met, leaving an enduring tradition of romances across the world. Aside from its penetration into every language of mediev

The wool trade was undoubtedly one of the most important elements of the British economy throughout the medieval period - even the seat occupied by the speaker of the House of lords rests on a woolsac

"Caring for the Living Soul identifies the fundamental role emotions played in the development of learned medicine and in the formation of the social role of the 'physicians of the body' in western Me

"In Frontiers for Peace in the Medieval North : the Norwegian-Scottish Frontier, c. 1260-1470, Ian Peter Grohse examines social and political interactions in Orkney, a Norwegian-held province with lon

In the early eighth century, the Muslim general Tariq ibn Ziyad led his forces across the Straits of Gibraltar and conquered most of the Iberian Peninsula. Yet alongside the flourishing kingdom of al-

The churches of medieval Europe contained richly carved and painted screens, placed between the altar and the congregation; they survive in particularly high numbers in England, despite being partly d

In addition to tracing the political, cultural and religious history of medieval Germany, this volume examines the thought of outstanding German men and women, and includes an extensive account of the

Mary Magdalene and the Virgin Mary continue to intrigue and fascinate us to this day. Their appearances in the Bible are brief, piquing our curiosity and compelling speculation about the unknown years

The Medieval Risk-Reward Society offers a study of adventure and love in the European Middle Ages focused on the poetry of authors such as Marie de France, Chretien de Troyes, Wolfram von Eschenbach,

The Geniza merchants of the eleventh-century Mediterranean - sometimes called the 'Maghribi traders' - are central to controversies about the origins of long-term economic growth and the institutional bases of trade. In this book, Jessica Goldberg reconstructs the business world of the Geniza merchants, maps the shifting geographic relationships of the medieval Islamic economy and sheds new light on debates about the institutional framework for later European dominance. Commercial letters, business accounts and courtroom testimony bring to life how these medieval traders used personal gossip and legal mechanisms to manage far-flung agents, switched business strategies to manage political risks and asserted different parts of their fluid identities to gain advantage in the multicultural medieval trading world. This book paints a vivid picture of the everyday life of Jewish merchants in Islamic societies and adds new depth to debates about medieval trading institutions with unique quanti

In The Wandering Throne of Solomon: Objects and Tales of Kingship in the Medieval Mediterranean Allegra Iafrate analyzes the circulation of artifacts and literary traditions related to king Solomon, p