Learning to Die in London, 1380-1540 argues that the educated awareness of death and mortality was a vital aspect of the city's civic culture, critical not only to the shaping of single lives and the
Everyday life in early thirteenth-century England is revealed in vivid detail in this riveting collection of correspondence of people from all classes, from peasants and shopkeepers to bishops and ear
In 1213, Pope Innocent III issued his letter Vineam Domini, thundering against the enemies of Christendom—the "beasts of many kinds that are attempting to destroy the vineyard of the Lord of Sabaoth"—
For some historians, medieval Iberian society was one marked by peaceful coexistence and cross-cultural fertilization; others have sketched a harsher picture of Muslims and Christians engaged in an on
Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2010The Hundred Years War was a vicious, costly, and, most dramatically, drawn out struggle that laid the framework for the national id
The Migration Age is still envisioned as an onrush of expansionary "Germans" pouring unwanted into the Roman Empire and subjecting it to pressures so great that its western parts collapsed under the w
In the wake of Jerusalem's fall in 1099, the crusading armies of western Christians known as the Franks found themselves governing not only Muslims and Jews but also local Christians, whose culture a
The quiet market town of Wilsnack in northeastern Germany is unfamiliar to most English-speakers and even to many modern Germans. Yet in the fifteenth century it was a European pilgrimage site surpas
When Muslim invaders conquered Sicily in the ninth century, they took control of a weakened Greek state in cultural decadence. When, two centuries later, the Normans seized control of the island, the
Queen Isabel of Castile is perhaps best known for her patronage of Christopher Columbus and for the religious zeal that led to the Spanish Inquisition, the waging of holy war, and the expulsion of Je
Drawing from both Christian and Islamic sources, Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval Spain demonstrates that the clash of arms between Christians and Muslims in the Iberian peninsula that began in the
Arabic culture was a central and shaping phenomenon in medieval Europe, yet its influence on medieval literature has been ignored or marginalized for the last two centuries. In this ground-breaking bo
Medieval courtiers defined themselves in ceremonies and rituals. Tournaments, Maying, interludes, charivaris, and masking invited the English and French nobility to assert their identities in gesture
The Trotula was the most influential compendium of women's medicine in medieval Europe. Scholarly debate has long focused on the traditional attribution of the work to the mysterious Trotula, said to
In the late fourteenth century the complex Middle English word "trouthe," which had earlier meant something like "integrity" or "dependability," began to take on its modern sense of "conformity to fac
A succession of catastrophes in the middle years of the fourteenth century brought France to the brink of destruction. The bankruptcy of the French state and a bitter civil war within the royal family
As a veteran campaigner, the Byzantine emperor Maurice (582-602) compiled a unique and influential handbook intended for the field commander. In this first complete English translation, the Strategiko
"A wonderful introduction to those new to the subject as well as a welcome contribution to the debate on the nature of the medieval nobility."--Medieval Review
Before the rise of universities, cathedral schools educated students in a course of studies aimed at perfecting their physical presence, their manners, and their eloquence. The formula of cathedral sc
"Richard, Duke of Aquitaine, son of the King of England, remained with Philip, the King of France, who so honored him for so long that they ate every day at the same table and from the same dish,
They were, in the words of one contemporary observer, "the Promised Lands." In all of Europe, only Northern Italy could rival the economic power and cultural wealth of the Low Countries in the later M
Seldom heard from in modern times, those on the margins of Medieval Europe have much to tell us about the society that defined them. More than just a fascinating cast of characters, the visionaries an
The Book of Chivalry is the most pragmatic of all surviving chivalric manuals. Written at the height of the Hundred Years War, it includes the essential commonplaces of knighthood in the mid-fourteent
The figuration of the Virgin Mary was often contradictory in medieval texts and theological, philosophical and social perceptions of her greatly influenced both sacred and secular literature. In this
The Corpus Librorum Emblematum (CLE ) Series presents documentation relating to printed books belonging to the tradition of emblems and imprese.The individual catalogues provide comprehensive short-ti
