Briac, is a man with a perfect life – bold, witty, and splendid to behold, he is the King of France’s trusted knight.But the day that captivating Aimée de Fleurance appears in the woods to interrupt a hunt, St. Briac’s life is turned on end. When she takes her sister’s place and joins the royal court to avoid an arranged marriage, St. Briac is drawn unwillingly into her impetuous scheme.To save Aimée from the king’s bed, St. Briac shocks them both by declaring that they are betrothed. After all, marriage is the last thing he wants, especially to this infuriating maiden…Journey back to the magical world of 16th century France and join Aimée and St. Briac for an adventure filled with enchantment, laughter, and sensuous passion!

    Some called her a healer, for her tenderness could gentle the wildest creature. Amid the thorny tangle of the War of the Roses, Lady Isabella Ashley grew to womanhood.Isabella soon learned that affairs of love were just as treacherous as intrigues of the court. Many clamored for her hand, but only one would claim her heart. For Isabella demanded nothing less than a man whose iron will matched her own, whose passion blazed as hot as the sun, and who was worthy enough to bring to blossom the . . .

    Henry, the first king of that name, had died with no son to succeed him and England had plunged headlong into civil war, with the crown as the victors prize. The unrest had spread deep into that unhappy land, even as far as her beloved Cambray, from whose stone walls her father's men had many times ridden to quell the wild borderlands of the Welsh Marches.Now, with her home in other hands and her own future entrusted to her partisan overlord, it was time for the name of Ann of Cambray to blaze like a beacon though those dark days of twelfth century England.This is her chronicle.

    

    1899 edition, photographically reproduced for absolute fidelity. Imprimatur by Cardinal Gibbons. Excellent for home or classroom use. No version surpasses the Douay-Rheims for accuracy.

    Much effort has been expended on extracting historical facts from 'De excidio', but Gildas did not set out to write history as we understand it. The common approach of the contributors to this volume is to look at tha author and his text on their own terms, for themselves rather than for the items of evidence which we can get out of them.Who was Gildas, and what was his position in society? What was his intellectual background - what he had learnt of Latin and Christian culture through his education, and what did he know of British language and literary traditions? What audience was he adressing? All these questions can be given some kind of answer by a close study of the text of the 'De excidio'. But there is also important evidence from Continental sources on early fifth-centyry Britain, and from Irish sources on Gildas's own repuation and career. This is a volume which no student of post-Roman Britain can afford to ignore; it does not attempt to present clear-cut conclusions or optimistic certainties, but establishes a basis on which further research can be carried out.

    It has been substantially revised since the first edition published by Dolmen Press in 1984.The Irish Hand is arranged in two parts. The first is an anthology of high-quality full-page color photographic plates of the thirty most celebrated Irish manuscripts, with a commentary analyzing the contents and history of each manuscript and with notes on their scripts and the scribes. The second part examines the historical evolution of Irish script (the Irish hand), tracing that tradition to our own time.

    Chronicle, burlesque, ballad, fable, debate, lyric, legend, lore, and drama follow one another in rich variety--"huge cloudy symbols of a high romance." In this comprehensive collection, editor Thomas J. Garbaty makes accessible to readers the landmarks of English prose, poetry, and drama for the years 1100 through 1500. For the most part, these vital works are presented complete in middle English. Readers are aided by an extensive system of margin glosses, supplemented by footnotes, a brief linguistic introduction to each work, and an authoritative General Introduction that places every selection within a medieval perspective.

    

    

    Castles is a collection of stunning photographs of some of the many different types of castle throughout the ages, highlighting some of the best surviving examples from across the globe.

    

    

    

    This study (the only brief introduction to Petrarch available in English) explores that modernity through a series of often conflicting but always interlocking images of himself which Petrarch projects in his writings; the traveller and intellectual deeply interested in the writings of antiquity; the man of action and contemplative; and the poet laureate and moralist.

    Morony compares conditions in late Sasanian and early Islamic Iraq in the seventh century AD and depicts both the emergence of a local form of Islamic society, and the interaction of Muslim conquerors from Arabia with the native population.

    Describes the teachings of the Buddha, looks at Buddhism in India, Burma, Thailand, China, Korea, and Japan, and looks at Buddhist history, sects, shrines, and temples.

    Peter seeks to reclaim for central Italy an important part of its own history. Noble's thesis is at once original and controversial: that the Republic, an independent political entity, was in existence by the 730s and was not a creation of the Franks in the 750s.Noble examines the political, economic, and religious problems that impelled the central Italians--and a succession of resolute popes--to seek emancipation from the Byzantine Empire. He delineates the social structures and historical traditions that produced a distinctive political society, describes the complete governmental apparatus of the Republic, and provides a comprehensive assessment of the Franco-papal alliance.

    It is not a story of unimpeded advance towards the Church of medieval France but rather of painful adaptation. It takes account of unsolved problems: the reaction of the Church to heresy, to Judaism, to the Frankish ethos of marriage, and to the conversion of peoples outside Francia itself. Special attention is paid to the intellectual interests of churchmen and to the role of the vernacular in transmitting the Christian message to clergy and laity whose Latin was negligible or nil.Much turned on the authority of a succession of rulers who combined deep piety with material needs that were inimical to the Church's position as a great landowner. The advance of the Church was thus hesitant and often baulked. What emerges is the Churchmen's increasing resolve to unite against the pressures of lay domination, and to press forward with their basic duties as converters and teachers.

    

    

    

    Professor Whitaker looks at the Arthurianworld which Malory inherited form his sources and to which he added his own details, and examines its different aspects: castles and forests, kingdoms and empires, showing how these diverge from reality to meetthe particular requirements of romance, how new political and temporal relationships are set up for the same reason, and how it was shaped by the presence of the Otherworld in the Celtic stories from which many episodes were drawn.