Then, in vengeance for a bitter crime, Baron Duncan of Wexton—the Wolf—unleashed his warriors against Louddon. Exquisite Madelyne was the prize he catured...but when he gazed upon the proud beauty, he pledged to protect her with his life. In his rough-hewn castle, Duncan proved true to his honor. But when at last their noble passion conquered them both, she surrendered with all her soul. Now, for love, Madelyne would stand fast...as bravely as her Lord, the powerful Wolf who fought for...Honor’s Splendour.

    The occurrence of such phenomena sheds much light on the nature of medieval society and medieval religion. It also forms a chapter in the history of women. Previous scholars have occasionally noted the various phenomena in isolation from each other and have sometimes applied modern medical or psychological theories to them. Using materials based on saints' lives and the religious and mystical writings of medieval women and men, Caroline Walker Bynum uncovers the pattern lying behind these aspects of women's religiosity and behind the fascination men and women felt for such miracles and devotional practices. She argues that food lies at the heart of much of women's piety. Women renounced ordinary food through fasting in order to prepare for receiving extraordinary food in the eucharist. They also offered themselves as food in miracles of feeding and bodily manipulation. Providing both functionalist and phenomenological explanations, Bynum explores the ways in which food practices enabled women to exert control within the family and to define their religious vocations. She also describes what women meant by seeing their own bodies and God's body as food and what men meant when they too associated women with food and flesh. The author's interpretation of women's piety offers a new view of the nature of medieval asceticism and, drawing upon both anthropology and feminist theory, she illuminates the distinctive features of women's use of symbols. Rejecting presentist interpretations of women as exploited or masochistic, she shows the power and creativity of women's writing and women's lives.

    Evans are the writings that have had such a major role in shaping the Western monastic tradition and influencing the development of Catholic mystical theology. Together with an introduction by the master of Bernard studies, jean Leclercq, they comprise a volume that occupies and place of special importance in the chronicle of the history of the western spiritual adventure.

    

    From the golden pleasure domes of Constantinople to the barbaric pomp of Malcolm of Scotland's court, this is the magical tale of ravishingly beautiful Mairin of Aelfleah, called "Enchantress" by the three men who loved her: Basil, Prince of Byzantium; Josselin, gallant knight; and the tragic Eric Longsword.

    But this hope was soon destroyed. As recorded by contemporary chroniclers, the reigns of the next four Plantagenet monarchs were marked by a series of continuing horrors, of famine and war, disorder and cruelty, culminating with the Black Death - the plague that swept across Europe and killed almost half its population.

     Stories on conversion from extreme sinfulness to extreme holiness have always attracted humankind’s attention, and this was especially so among the monks of the ancient and medieval world.  In the literature of fourth-century Egypt, alongside the wise sayings of the desert fathers and the stories illustrating their way of life, there are also the accounts of the lives of the harlots, Pelagia, Maria, Thais, Mary of Egypt, and a number of lesser figures, all of which were copied, translated, and retold throughout the Middle Ages.   In this monograph, Benedicta Ward continues the work she began in The Sayings of the Desert Fathers and The Lives of the Desert Fathers, commenting on early monastic texts by discussing the theme of Christian repentance.  She begins with May Magdalene, the archetypal penitent, and goes on to examine the desert tradition, concluding each chapter with new translations of those lives which were most influential in the early Church and on countless generations afterwards.

    It starts with the Vandals, Visigoths, Burgundians and other Germanic invaders of the Empire, whose coins were modelled on contemporary issues of the Western or Eastern emperors. The coinage of the Franks is followed from early Merovingian times through to the establishment and subsequent fragmentation of the Carolingian empire. Italy is represented by the coinages of the Ostrogoths, Lombards, Carolingians and popes down to the Ottoman conquest in the mid-tenth century. The coinage of the Anglo-Saxons is traced from the introduction of minting in the early seventh century to the emergence of a united kingdom during the first half of the tenth century, including the aberrant coinages of Northumbria and the Anglo-Viking coinages of the Danelaw.

    Discusses mosaics in many of the major monuments, including Cefalu, the Palatine Chapel, Martorana and others. Also includes discussions of iconography and the development of style. All with endnotes. List of illustrations; preface by the author. Index of names, iconographical index and general index. 120 black and white plates. Slight scuffing at edges of spine. Bookplate on front pastedown. xx, 478 pages, with plates. cloth, title gilt-stamped on spine.

    Professor Wickham surveys the foundations on which this dramatic art was built: the architecture, costumes and ceremonial of the imperial court at Byzantium, the liturgies of countires in the Eastern and Western Empires and the triumph of the Roman rite and the Romanesque style in Western art. Within this context Professor Wickham describes three major influences upon the drama: religion, recreation and commerce. The first produced the liturgical music drama rooted in praise of Christ the King, vernacular Corpus Christi drama, Saint Plays and Moralities centred on the humanity of Christ. The second gave rise to the secular theatres of social recreation based on the games and dances of village communities ad the more sophisticated sex and war games of the nobility. The section on commerce shows how the development of the drama was intimately related to questions of funding and management which led, during the sixteenth century, to the substitution of a professional for an amateur theatre, and to a growing emphasis on stage spectacle. For this third edition the author has added a substantial section on monastic reform and its effect on Biblical translation and the use of allegory; a final chapter charts the transition in different European countries from this medieval Gothic theatre to the neoclassical methods of play construction and representation which flourished for the next two hundred years. The book gorges a coherent pattern through a very large and complicated subject. It is an excellent introduction to medieval theatre for undergraduates and to the growing number of theatregoers who enjoy contemporary revivals of medieval plays. A large plate section gives a pictorial version of the story, using photographs of contemporary manuscript illuminations, mosaics, frescoes, paintings and sculptures.

    Hughes gives an account of the problems which arose when the organization of the Christian church, imported from the urban bureaucracy of the Roman Empire, had to be adapted to the heroic society of early Ireland. How was church government in Ireland brought into line with the secular law, and were the changes made without protest? Dr. Hughes finds the key to these questions in legal texts of the sixth, seventh and eighth centuries, and attempts, through them, to trace the gradual process of modification which culminated in the eighth century, when the church, now fully adjusted to Irish society, reached a so-far unprecedented height of power and influence. In the ninth century the Viking raids and settlements provided new problems: did they really bring about a decline in the spiritual vitality of the church and degeneracy in her institutions, as is often supposed? It is for answers to questions like these that Dr. Hughes searches the contemporary sources for each period that she examines, tracing the history of the church up to the twelfth century. The main emphasis of the book is on the church as an institution, but it also asks what Christianity meant to different people at different times, and illustrates some of Ireland's contacts with England and the continent.

    

    It has remained one of the best-known studies of the great medieval universities for over a century. Volume 1 contains detailed studies of the universities of Salerno, Bologna and Paris with in-depth analysis of their origins and constitutions, institutional development and specialised curriculum. It also includes sections on what a medieval university was; the learning and curriculum of the Dark Ages; the twelfth-century Renaissance; the respective places of Plato and Aristotle in the medieval curriculum; the development of Scholasticism; and the figures of Peter Abelard, Peter the Lombard, and John of Salisbury. Rashdall's study was one of the first comparative works on the subject. Its scope and breadth has ensured its place as a key work of intellectual history, and an indispensable tool for the study of the educational organisation of the Middle Ages.

    120 black-and-white and color illustrations.

    In this award-winning biography, Donald R. Howard recreates the public, private, and poetic life of this extraordinary man. Chaucer was born in the latter half of the fourteenth century, an age of revolution and devastation when Europe was convulsed by the Hundred Years' War, the Black Death, and the social and intellectual upheavals that marked the "autumn of Feudalism." The son of a wealthy London vintner, he maneuvered his way into the turbulent courts of Edward III and Richard II, and thus, without holding noble rank himself, he was able to witness the violent drama of royal power. It was, as Howard demonstrates, the perfect vantage point for a poet. Chaucer's own poetic development from the mannered medieval style of The Book of the Duchess to the rich, comic, human complexity of the Canterbury Tales reflects the transformation of his world. With the Canterbury Tales and the darker, more formal epic Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer established English for all time as a language of literature.

    Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.The transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance has been discussed since the 1940s as a shift from a Latinate culture to one based on a vernacular language, and, since the 1960s, as a shift from orality to literacy. From Topic to Tale focuses on this multifaceted transition, but it poses the problem in different terms: it shows how a rhetorical tradition was transformed into a textual one, and ends ultimately in a discussion of the relationship between discourse and society.The rise of French vernacular literacy in the twelfth century coincided with the emergence of logic as a powerful instrument of the human mind. With logic come a new concern for narrative coherence and form, a concern exemplified by the work of Chretien de Troyes. Many brilliant poetic achievements crystallized in the narrative art of Chretien, establishing an enduring tradition of literary technique for all of Europe. Eugene Vance explores the intellectual context of Chretien's vernacular literacy, and in particular, the interaction between the three "arts of language" (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) compromising the trivium. Until Vance, few critics have studied the contribution of logic to Chretiens poetics, nor have they assessed the ethical bond between rationalism and the new heroic code of romance.Vance takes Chretien de Troyes' great romance, Yvain ou le chevalier au lion,as the centerpiece of the Twelfth-Century Renaissance. It is also central to his own thesis, which shows how Chretien forged a bold new vision of humans as social beings situated between beasts and angels and promulgated the symbolic powers of language, money, and heraldic art to regulate the effects of human desire. Vance's reading of the Yvain contributes not only to the intellectual history of the Middle Ages, but also to the continuing dialogue between contemporary critical theory and medieval culture.Eugene Vance is professor of French and comparative literature at Emory University and principal editor of a University of Nebraska series, Regents Studies in Medieval Culture. Wlad Godzich is director of the Center for Humanistic Studies at the University of Minnesota and co-editor of the series Theory and History of Literature.

    

    You play these magi, gathered in covenants with your allies and servants, unlocking secret powers and creating wonders. You and your friends will also portray the loyal companions and grogs who stand with the magi, as a buffer between them and the mundane world that often misunderstands their power and motives. When adventures draw you out into the medieval world of Mythic Europe, your stories are the stuff of legend.

    The Anointed provides an stunning example of personal fortitude in the face of adversity that echoes many aspects of contemporary life. Halevi shows how, despite all odds, it is tolerance, wisdom, compassion, and understanding that undermine the efforts of prejudice, fear, ignorance, and hate. Most importantly, Halevi demonstrates that God is bigger than all humans, and that we can never truly judge, lest we be judged. Bibliography. Index.

    Hoffman, The Beautiful Kitchen Maid by Miguel de Cervantes, and The Emperor's New Clothes by Hans Christian Andersen. 73 full-color illustrations.

    The love child of King Edward IV, Roseanna Castlemaine was pledged to her father's most prized warrior. Baron Ravenspur was dark, strong, and commanding, and in the bedchamber, where he forced her to honor her marriage vows, she learned to crave his intoxicating touch. And still she swore not to love him even as she surrendered to the dark rapture of... THE RAVEN.HIS PASSION WAS THE FIRE...Lord Roger Montford's shoulders were broad within the coat of mail that made him invulnerable to everything but Roseanna's innocence. Obsessed with taming the fiery beauty who inflamed his flesh, he fell in love, knowing ruthless men plotted to topple the king he served and at the heart of the intrigue was she who would be either his death or his salvation...THE ROSE.

    

    S�an McGrail's study received exceptional critical acclaim when it was first published in hardback in 1987 and it is now revised and published in paperback for the first time. Professor McGrail provides an authoritative survey of water transport across Northern Europe from the Late Palaeolithic to the later Middle Ages, using evidence of excavations, but also documentary sources, iconographic and ethnographic evidence. In the process he answers such key questions as How were these boats built? What sort of environment were they used in? What speeds could they achieve? and how were they navigated?