The Medieval Python

This book provides an informative, critical and concise introduction to the literature of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, contextualising the literature and introducing the pre-eminent authors

Traditionally anticlericalism has been regarded as a significant historical factor, by some historians even as the unifying focal point for the host of movements known as the Reformation of the sixtee

Public execution of criminals has been practiced in the West since ancient times. In this wide-ranging investigation of the death penalty in Europe from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century, Adria

The Carmelites' role as one of the four great mendicant orders was not unchallenged. Originating as an association of hermits on Mount Carmel, the order experienced a dramatic transformation in the th

Who were the Lollards? What did Lollards believe? What can the manuscript record of Lollard works teach us about the textual dissemination of Lollard beliefs and the audience for Lollard writings? Wh

A bibliographic guide to the scholarly literature on medieval depictions of the Christian otherworld or afterlife that predate Dante. Among them are the apocalypses of Peter and Paul; the visions of F

This book explores the connection between reading and healing. It analyses how the mental and emotional impact of reading was expanded in the Middle Ages into a therapeutic tool for improving the heal

The relics of medieval knights' manors still shape the landscape of Poland today. The anonymous hills contain the remnants of wooden buildings, sometimes ones of stone or brick, as well as numerous ti

The focus of this book is medieval vernacular literature in Western Europe. Chapters are written by experts in the area and present the current scholarship at the time this book was originally publish

Indulgences played a major role in medieval 'strategies for eternity', easing the journey through Purgatory to Heaven after death. However, theological attacks during the Reformation and the subsequent Protestant rejection of indulgences have given them a poor reputation, compounding the effect of the fourteenth-century satires by Chaucer and Langland of the pardoners who ensured their widespread distribution. This book examines indulgences in late medieval England and it offers an extensive and authoritative re-evaluation of their role in England's religious, social and economic life between 1300 and the Reformation. R. N. Swanson traces their importance to devotional life, their contribution to charitable and economic structures and the complex tale of their disappearance under Henry VIII. This is a major contribution to the religious history of late medieval England and will be essential reading for scholars of medieval history, religious studies and the Reformation.

These works of museum quality, from an anonymous collection (one of the most important currently in private hands), were exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2005. Many of the objects in the

This monumental study of medieval law and sexual conduct explores the origin and develpment of the Christian church's sex law and the systems of belief upon which that law rested. Focusing on the Chur

Medieval literature contains many figures caught at the interface between life and death - the dead return to place demands on the living, while the living foresee, organize or desire their own deaths. Jane Gilbert's original study examines the ways in which certain medieval literary texts, both English and French, use these 'living dead' to think about existential, ethical and political issues. In doing so, she shows powerful connections between works otherwise seen as quite disparate, including Chaucer's Book of the Duchess and Legend of Good Women, the Chanson de Roland and the poems of Francois Villon. Written for researchers and advanced students of medieval French and English literature, this book provides original, provocative interpretations of canonical medieval texts in the light of influential modern theories, especially Lacanian psychoanalysis, presented in an accessible and lively way.

This book examines the vital role of market towns in the medieval economy. It focuses on Exeter, and on how it served as an important link in a marketing chain that connected local, regional, and overseas trade. Although small by most standards (the population stood at around 3,100 in 1377), Exeter was the largest town in south-western England and had long played a central role in the marketing hierarchy of the region. Its functions can be illustrated through prosopographical analysis, a methodology which creates 'collective biographies' of specific groups of traders, thereby revealing the identity - status, occupation, residence - of buyers and sellers, the goods they exchanged, where they traded, and how they marketed their goods. Such an approach also helps to characterise the town's regional networks of trade and hinterland.

This book examines the vital role of market towns in the medieval economy. It focuses on Exeter, and on how it served as an important link in a marketing chain that connected local, regional, and overseas trade. Although small by most standards (the population stood at around 3,100 in 1377), Exeter was the largest town in south-western England and had long played a central role in the marketing hierarchy of the region. Its functions can be illustrated through prosopographical analysis, a methodology which creates 'collective biographies' of specific groups of traders, thereby revealing the identity - status, occupation, residence - of buyers and sellers, the goods they exchanged, where they traded, and how they marketed their goods. Such an approach also helps to characterise the town's regional networks of trade and hinterland.

Simple Forms is a study of popular or folk literature in the medieval period. Focusing both on the vast body of oral literature that lies behind the written texts which have survived from the medieval

In recent years, work on the medieval English peasant has tended to stress the degree of interaction between the village and the world beyond its bounds. This book not only provides an overview of thi

From a 2013 conference in Rome, 10 essays explore the trope of disembodied heads in medieval and early modern literature and art. Among the topics are Adam's skull, the meaning of the head in high med

Saint Anne, the mother of Mary, is not a biblical figure. She first appears in a second-century apocryphal infancy gospel as part of the story of the savior’s birth and maternal ancestry. Over the ens

A unique study of medieval monastic life that for the first time integrates the results of modern archaeological investigation with conventional historical and architectural research. Norton Priory itself has been the subject of the largest campaign of excavation of any monastic house in Europe, and Dr. Greene's results and analysis are therefore of the widest interest.

Abraham, son of Terah or Azar and husband of Sarah, is one of the pivotal figures of the Old Testament and is generally seen as the founder of the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim faiths. He was a rich s

To whom does a painted tablet—a tabula picta—belong? To the owner of the physical piece of wood on which an image is painted? Or to the person who made the painting on that piece o

The late medieval Church obliged all Christians to rebuke the sins of others, especially those who had power to discipline in Church and State: priests, confessors, bishops, judges, the Pope. This practice, in which the injured party had to confront the wrong-doer directly and privately, was known as fraternal correction. Edwin Craun examines how pastoral writing instructed Christians to make this corrective process effective by avoiding slander, insult, and hypocrisy. He explores how John Wyclif and his followers expanded this established practice to authorize their own polemics against mendicants and clerical wealth. Finally, he traces how major English reformist writing - Piers Plowman, Mum and the Sothsegger, and The Book of Margery Kempe - expanded the practice to justify their protests, to protect themselves from repressive elements in the late Ricardian and Lancastrian Church and State, and to urge their readers to mount effective protests against religious, social, and politica

The late medieval Church obliged all Christians to rebuke the sins of others, especially those who had power to discipline in Church and State: priests, confessors, bishops, judges, the Pope. This practice, in which the injured party had to confront the wrong-doer directly and privately, was known as fraternal correction. Edwin Craun examines how pastoral writing instructed Christians to make this corrective process effective by avoiding slander, insult, and hypocrisy. He explores how John Wyclif and his followers expanded this established practice to authorize their own polemics against mendicants and clerical wealth. Finally, he traces how major English reformist writing - Piers Plowman, Mum and the Sothsegger, and The Book of Margery Kempe - expanded the practice to justify their protests, to protect themselves from repressive elements in the late Ricardian and Lancastrian Church and State, and to urge their readers to mount effective protests against religious, social, and politica

A fresh examination of the Cathar heresy, using the records of inquisitorial tribunals to bring out new details of life at the time.

The interdisciplinary volume Devotional Interaction in Medieval England and its Afterlives examines the interaction between medieval English worshippers and the material objects of their devotion, wit

This fascinating reference covers the weapons and armor used by warriors from the 4th to the 15th century and discusses how and why they changed over time.

Drawing extensively on unpublished manuscript sources, this study uncovers the culture of experimentation that surrounded biblical exegesis in fourteenth-century England. In an area ripe for revision, Andrew Kraebel challenges the accepted theory (inherited from Reformation writers) that medieval English Bible translations represent a proto-Protestant rejection of scholastic modes of interpretation. Instead, he argues that early translators were themselves part of a larger scholastic interpretive tradition, and that they tried to make that tradition available to a broader audience. Translation was thus one among many ways that English exegetes experimented with the possibilities of commentary. With a wide scope, the book focuses on works by writers from the heretic John Wyclif to the hermit Richard Rolle, alongside a host of lesser-known authors, including Henry Cossey and Nicholas Trevet, and many anonymous texts. The study provides new insight into the ingenuity of medieval interpret

"This volume offers newly translated texts that exemplify the two most important traditions of Arthurian literature in the Middle Ages. These selections emphasize the connection between secular and re

Through the juxtaposition of legal theory and practice and the utilization of detailed family reconstruction, a comparison of the property, remarriage and identity of widows in two fundamentally diffe

Maintenance, Meed, and Marriage in Medieval English Literature deftly interrogates the relationship between lord and man in medieval England. Employing the study of medieval analogies this book is the

In Medieval Boundaries, Sharon Kinoshita examines the role of cross-cultural contact in twelfth- and early thirteenth-century French literature. Starting from the observation that many of the earliest

This volume explores the reciprocal relationships that can develop between medieval women writers and the modern scholars who study them. Medieval women writers discussed include those writing in the

The Muslim conquest of Iberia in 711 began nearly eight centuries of struggle for control of the peninsula. The invaders quickly achieved military supremacy, but political dominance was less complete.

The supposed brutality of medieval punishment looms large in the popular contemporary imagination, yet this perception can obscure the diverse and nuanced reactions of medieval society to violent or c

The Church’s Bible series brings the rich classical tradition of biblical interpretation to life, illuminating Scripture as it was understood during the first millennium of Christian history. Co

The institution of marriage is commonly thought to have fallen into crisis in late medieval northern France. While prior scholarship has identified the pervasiveness of clandestine marriage as the cau

During the past thirty years, the study of medieval families has emerged as a focus of discussion in European history. Largely unexplored in professional publications and teaching curricula until the

Bringing together the work of both leading and emerging scholars in the field of medieval gender studies, the essays in Rivalrous Masculinities advance our understanding of medieval masculinity as a p

Beginning with their introduction in the eleventh century, and ending with their widespread abandonment in the seventeenth, Marc Morris explores many of the country’s most famous castles, as well as s