The Medieval Python

The modern state, however we conceive of it today, is based on a pattern that emerged in Europe in the period from 1100 to 1600. Written from the experience of a lifetime of teaching and research in t

"The State" is the most powerful of political ideas but where does it come from? This broad-ranging new study traces the history of the word and the concept back to the systems of law and justice crea

This interdisciplinary study explores how classical ideals of generosity influenced the writing and practice of gift giving in medieval Europe. In assuming that medieval gift giving was shaped by oral 'folk models', historians have traditionally followed in the footsteps of social anthropologists and sociologists such as Marcel Mauss and Pierre Bourdieu. This first in-depth investigation into the influence of the classical ideals of generosity and gift giving in medieval Europe reveals to the contrary how historians have underestimated the impact of classical literature and philosophy on medieval culture and ritual. Focusing on the idea of the gift expounded in the classical texts read most widely in the Middle Ages, including Seneca the Younger's De beneficiis and Cicero's De officiis, Lars Kjær investigates how these ideas were received, adapted and utilised by medieval writers across a range of genres, and how they influenced the practice of generosity.

Theories of liminality have long informed scholarship on peripheral regions of medieval Europe. Few of these regions were, however, as aggressively portrayed as frontier or march by contemporary comme

Julian of Norwich the best-known of the medieval mystics today. The text of her Revelation has circulated continually since the fifteenth century, but the twentieth century saw a massive expansion of