She dreams of a fearless knight to rescue her from the king's stern wardship...Jason of Artane is determined to leave his past behind and pursue a noble quest, but his plans take a different turn when he crosses paths with a mysterious young woman. His life changes when he see her true self and pulls her out of the shadows and into his heart...originally published in the anthology Tapestry

    It brings fresh evidence to bear on the fall of the Roman empire and the origins of the medieval economy. The book uses new material from recent excavations, and develops a new method for the study of hundreds of travelers to reconstitute the communications infrastructure that conveyed those travelers--ship sailings, overland routes--linking Europe to Africa and Asia, from the time of the later Roman empire to the reign of Charlemagne and beyond.

    From the familiar court of King Arthur to the distant realm of Prince Vladimir of Kiev, this enticing collection reveals that being a good knight is harder than it may seem. Not only are a brave heart and a strong arm required, but it is also necessary to know your own weaknesses, learn to cooperate with others and even, at times, have a good sense of humor! Giovanni Manna brings his warm, colorful characters to these adventurous tales that are sure to delight young would-be knights across the land.

    The charming poems, each one dedicated to a different king or queen, tell the story of the forty-one English monarchs from William I to Elizabeth II in a humorous and charming way that has delighted generations of children and their parents. This CD, read by actors Isla Blair and Julian Glover, includes Kings and Queens in its entirety, as well as a selection from the Farjeons’ Heroes and Heroines, an account of the deeds of heroes and heroines from around the world, including Alexander the Great, Julius Cesar, Robin Hood, Christopher Columbus, Sir Francis Drake, George Washington, Napoleon, Florence Nightingale, and Buffalo Bill, among others.

    Until now, however, many of the most important visual and textual sources on the topic have remained untranslated or otherwise difficult to consult. Mary Carruthers and Jan M. Ziolkowski bring together the texts and visual images from the twelfth through the fifteenth centuries that are central to an understanding of memory and memory technique. These sources are now made available for a wider audience of students of medieval and early modern history and culture and readers with an interest in memory, mnemonics, and the synergy of text and image.The art of memory was most importantly associated in the Middle Ages with composition, and those who practiced the craft used it to make new prayers, sermons, pictures, and music. The mixing of visual and verbal media was commonplace throughout medieval cultures: pictures contained visual puns, words were often verbal paintings, and both were used equally as tools for making thoughts. The ability to create pictures in one's own mind was essential to medieval cognitive technique and imagination, and the intensely pictorial and affective qualities of medieval art and literature were generative, creative devices in themselves.

    The result is a nuanced portrayal of a multifarious western world that was sharply divided between its northern and southern aspects. By also integrating the histories of the Islamic and Byzantine world into the main narrative, the text brings new life to the continuum of interaction--social, cultural, and intellectual, as well as commercial--that existed among all three societies. In addition, it describes ways in which the medieval Latin West attempted to understand the unified and rational structure of the human cosmos, which they believed existed beneath the observable diversity and disorder of the world. This effort to re-create a human ordering of unity through diversity provides an essential key to understanding medieval Europe and the ways in which it regarded and reacted to the worlds around it. The Worlds of Medieval Europe is an ideal text for undergraduate courses in medieval history, Western civilization, the history of Christianity, and Muslim-Christian relations. It also serves as an excellent supplement for courses on the history of a specific country in the medieval period, the history of medieval art, or the history of the European economy.

    The Order was subject to a torturous inquisition period during the 14th century and ultimately dissolved. This is a unique collection of translated sources, which in addition to documenting the origins of the Order and the circumstances of its suppression and dissolution, examines the many and varied facets of its activities during the 12th and 13th centuries. It will be of interest to anyone interested in the medieval period, and is an invaluable source for those wanting to find out more about this most fascinating and enigmatic of institutions.

    Her fame (and infamy) still fascinates us. She is a pivotal figure in the history of the twelfth century because of her lordly inheritance as well as the eminence--and political and diplomatic scope--of her marital rank as queen, first of France and then of England. Some essays in this collection reassess the often fragmentary historical information about her life, while others investigate her reputation in later literary and historical contexts.

    For Waltheof of Huntington, however, rebellion is not at the forefront of his thoughts. From the moment he catches sight of Judith, daughter of the King’s formidable sister, he knows he has found his future wife.When Waltheof saves Judith’s life, it is clear that the attraction is mutual. But marriage has little to do with love in medieval Europe. When William refuses to let the couple wed, Waltheof joins forces with his fellow rebels in an uprising against the King. William brutally crushes the rebellion, but realizes that Waltheof cannot be ignored. Marrying him to his niece, he decides, is the perfect way to keep him in check.But is the match between the Saxon earl and Norman lady made in heaven or hell? As their children grow, Waltheof and Judith must choose between their feelings for each other and older loyalties. At the same time, the reputation of Waltheof’s Norman acquaintance Simon de Senlis continues to flourish. The son of William’s chamberlain, he shares a special bond with Waltheof, who rescued him from being trampled by a horse when he was a squire. Now Simon enjoys the confidence of both the King and the rebel earl. And when tension between the two ignites once more, it is Simon who is set to reap the reward.Based on an astonishing true story of honor, treachery, and love, The Winter Mantle is historical fiction at its very best, reaching from the turbulent reign of William the conqueror to the high drama of the Crusades.

    Professor Spufford, who has made a lifelong study of these changes, here brings together a vast amount of material from archives all over the world - letters, account books, legal documents, civil records - to build up a comprehensive general picture. He has also personally travelled many of the roads, rivers and mountain passes that were the arteries of medieval trade, bringing the whole subject to vivid life. The eight chapters of the book cover the financial revolutions of the 13th century that led to the rise of modern banking, borrowing and insurance; the market in luxuries and the role of the great courts; international fairs; trade routes and the hazards of transport; raw materials; manufactured goods; the wealth of cities and nations; and the balance of trade between countries.

    This volume demonstrates the value of more recent interpretive approaches to this famous and iconic artefact, by examining the textile's materiality, visuality, reception and historiography, and its constructions of gender, territory and cultural memory. The essays it contains frame discussions vital to the future of Tapestry scholarship and are complemented by a bibliography covering three centuries of critical writings.Contributors: Valerie Allen, Richard Brilliant, Shirley Ann Brown, Elizabeth Carson Pastan, Madeline H. Cavines, Martin K. Foys, Michael John Lewis, Karen Eileen Overbey, Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Dan Terkla, Stephen D. White.

    Unlike their male counterparts, their sitters have not been judged for their professional accomplishments. In this groundbreaking study, Barbara J. Harris argues that the roles of aristocratic wives, mothers, and widows constituted careers for women that had as much public and political significance and were as crucial for the survival and prosperity of their families and class as their husband's careers. Women, Harris demonstrates, were trained from an early age to manage their families' property and households; arrange the marriages and careers of their children; create, sustain, and exploit the client-patron relationships that were an essential element in politics at the regional and national levels; and, finally, manage the transmission and distribution of property from one generation to another, since most wives outlived their husbands.English Aristocratic Women unveils the lives of noblewomen whose historical influence has previously been dismissed, as well as those who became favorites at the court of Henry VIII. Through extensive archival research of documents belonging to more than twelve hundred families, Harris paints a collective portrait of upper-class women of this period. By recognizing the full significance of the aristocratic women's careers, this book reinterprets the politics and gender relations of early modern England. Barbara J. Harris is Professor of History and Women's Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her previous works include Edward Stafford, Third Duke of Buckingham, 1478-1521.

    Suffused with warmth, moving easily between the mundane and the otherworldly, and, above all, delicately elegiac, the poet's voice cuts across all the literary genres and religious modes on which he drew. Born in the second half of the 11th century, Halevi wandered in his youth between Muslim and Christian Spain before settling in Córdoba around 1110. Towards the end of his life, to the amazement and consternation of his friends and admirers, he set out on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, at the time under Crusader rule. He arrived in Alexandria in 1140 and recorded his perilous sea voyage in a celebrated sequence of poems, remarkable for their fusion of startling realism and religious longing. Months later Halevi embarked for Palestine. The exact date, location and circumstances of his death have remained a mystery. Gabriel Levin was born in France in 1948 and grew up in the United States and Israel. His first collection of poems, Sleepers of Beulah, was published in 1992 and his mucb-praised second collection, Ostraca, appeared in late 1999. He lives in Jerusalem.

    Friend of royalty, prelates, noted poets, and musicians, Machaut was a cosmopolitan presence in late medieval Europe. He also served as canon of the cathedral of Reims, the coronation site of French kings. From this penetrating study of his music, Machaut emerges as a composer deeply involved in the great crises of his day, one who skillfully and artfully expressed profound themes of human existence in ardent music and poetry.

    Accounts of the early history of the peoples of Europe, including the English, are key tools in our construction of that identity. National identity has been studied through a range of different types of evidence - historical, archaeological, linguistic and most recently genetic. This has caused problems of interdisciplinary communication. In this book Catherine Hills carefully and succinctly unravels these different perceptions and types of evidence to assess how far it is really possible to understand when and how the people living in south and east Britain became 'English'.

    Only Lady Clarise's wits and wiles could save her family. Her stepfather's orders were clear: Within two months she must poison the man known as the Slayer, or her mother and sisters are doomed to die. Fate offered the flame-haired beauty an unexpected opportunity to enter Christian de la Croix's defenses in the guise of that nursemaid that recently widowed warrior needed desperately for his motherless infant son. In that role, she soon lost her heart to tiny Simon, and came to realize that his bold father, the Slayer, was more sinned against than sinner. Despite the frightening rumors that surround her planned prey, Clarise is soon convinced that Christian hadn't killed his young wife—and that, while he was truly a fearsome warrior, he had never wantonly slain helpless men. With those realizations came the understanding that it is her monstrous stepfather who is the true danger, and that Clarise is in desperate need of an ally and a new battle plan if she is to save everyone she loves—including the man she has come to kill.

    There is simply no other like it.Medieval Essays is the mature reflection of one of the most gifted cultural historians of the twentieth century. Christopher Dawson commands the substance and the breadth of cultural history as few others ever have. He ranges from the fateful days of the late Roman Empire to the final destruction of Byzantium, from the rise of Islam to the flowering of western vernacular literature, from missions to China to the caliphs of Egypt, from the tragedy of Christian Armenia to complex religious realities of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Spain, from philosophy to literature, theology to natural science. The very breadth of his canvas makes the precision of his judgments and the vitality of his analyses all the more remarkable.The Times Literary Supplement said of the original edition: "These essays, though concerned with topics derived from a remote past, are designed to display the relevance of those topics to the problems and controversies of the present." The judgment is yet truer today. Few, if any, studies of the Middle Ages are more significant for understanding the cultural dynamics of the twenty-first century. Fortunately, few are as readable, illuminating, or challenging.

    . . . probably the most interesting, challenging , and provocative study of the Pearl poems written in the last two decades."--Julian Wasserman, Loyola University of New Orleans Edward Condren examines the manuscript of the Gawain-Pearl Poet in the light of a compositional method well recognized from the literature of ancient Greece and Rome through the Renaissance but largely overlooked by modern criticism. Arguing that the manuscript is a single integrated artifact and not merely a collection, he shows that it is held together, as is the universe, by mathematical equations called the Divine Proportion in the Middle Ages and phi by modern mathematicians. More than a critical study of four poems in a manuscript, Condren's detailed discussion of numeric theory reveals the medieval way of understanding the created universe in neo-Pythagorean and Platonic terms, and it underscores the importance of the quadrivium in the medieval view of an ordered universe.Drawing on medieval theories of proportion and harmony, Condren shows that the manuscript is more intricately designed and presented than anyone has yet recognized and that the poet who created this work was better educated and more self-consciously brilliant than most have imagined. He argues that the order in which the poems appear--with the two poems set in the Middle Ages placed at the beginning and end of the manuscript and the two set in the Judaic era located at the manuscript's center--allows the literal narratives to exfoliate historically from the Old Testament world, through the era of the New Testament, and implicitly to the salvation that lies beyond. Working poem by poem, Condren details the mathematical forms governing the structure of the manuscript and guiding its progress, from the calculated use of decorated initials to sophisticated mathematics involving squares, primes, different counting systems, and geometrical schemes of the pentangle and ultimately the cross. Condren shows how the anonymous poet takes literally the scriptural statement that all things are disposed according to number, weight, and measure as a means to bridge the worlds of flesh and spirit. By fashioning a mathematically harmonious manuscript, suffusing it with the progressive development of theological belief, and placing its characters in the dilemmas of earthly living, Condren argues, the poet replicates the harmony of the universe and the difficulty human beings have in attempting to embrace it.Edward I. Condren is professor of English at UCLA.

    Cathey's Hêliand: Text and Commentary is a simply unique, wonderfully encompassing, and helpful text, and nothing quite like it exists anywhere in the world. The commentary portion of the book consists of an interweaving of interpretation and philological consideration. This work presents the reader with explanatory commentary that encompasses both the scientific and the poetic and treats them both with equal felicity. The volume also contains something that is exceptionally valuable and cannot be found in English: a compact and serviceable grammar of Old Saxon and an appended glossary that defines all of the vocabulary found in this edited version of the Hêliand.

    In fact, the God of medieval Christendom was the Father of only one Son but many daughters—including Lady Philosophy, Lady Love, Dame Nature, and Eternal Wisdom. God and the Goddesses is a study in medieval imaginative theology, examining the numerous daughters of God who appear in allegorical poems, theological fictions, and the visions of holy women. We have tended to understand these deities as mere personifications and poetic figures, but that, Barbara Newman contends, is a mistake. These goddesses are neither pagan survivals nor versions of the Great Goddess constructed in archetypal psychology, but distinctive creations of the Christian imagination. As emanations of the Divine, mediators between God and the cosmos, embodied universals, and ravishing objects of identification and desire, medieval goddesses transformed and deepened Christendom's concept of God, introducing religious possibilities beyond the ambit of scholastic theology and bringing them to vibrant imaginative life.Building a bridge between secular and religious conceptions of allegorized female power, Newman advances such questions as whether medieval writers believed in their goddesses and, if so, in what manner. She investigates whether the personifications encountered in poetic fictions can be distinguished from those that appear in religious visions and questions how medieval writers reconcile their statements about the multiple daughters of God with orthodox devotion to the Son of God. Furthermore, she examines why forms of feminine God-talk that strike many Christians today as subversive or heretical did not threaten medieval churchmen.Weaving together such disparate texts as the writings of Latin and vernacular poets, medieval schoolmen, liturgists, and male and female mystics and visionaries, God and the Goddesses is a direct challenge to modern theologians to reconsider the role of goddesses in the Christian tradition.

    The semi-independent prince of the Hebrides and much of the West Highland mainland, he was a worthy representative of a notable line, living in dramatic and exciting times for Scotland, England, and Ireland. He took his part in it all, an active supporter of Robert the Bruce, encouraging trade, seeking to heal the feuding propensities of his people, allying the Isles with Orkney and Shetland and Norway, and travelling as far as the Baltic.

    This official guide provides coverage of the 12 playable factions; detailed area maps; battle tactics; and listings of units and siege weaponry.

    A testimony to the remarkable history of collecting and patronage in Poland, the book showcases Leonardo da Vinci's magnificent Lady with an Ermine (Portrait of Cecilia Gallerani), but also includes important works by Hans Memling, Jusepe de Ribera, Bernardo Bellotto, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Elisabeth-Louise Vigee-LeBrun, Johann Friedrich Overbeck, and others." In addition to commentary on each painting, the book brings to light Poland's long-overlooked cultural history.

    

    In showing how the court adapted and survived, the author examines internal court politics and protocols, external court relations, court finances, court structure, and ceremonial observances. Emperor and courtiers, he concludes, adjusted to the warrior elite, while retaining the ideological advantage bestowed by culture, tradition, and birth, to which these new wielders of power continued to pay homage.

    The volume presents over 100 recipes, drawn from actual medieval manuscripts, together with preparation instructions. The authors help place these enticing recipes in context through a short survey of medieval dining behavior, and they give practical menu suggestions for preparing simple meals or banquets that incorporate these delightfully tasty dishes. Chapters include an overview of early French culinary traditions, foodstuffs that were used, and methods of preparation. Early French Cookery also discusses the equipment of the kitchens and dining rooms that were used, and characterizes those who prepared the food and those who consumed it. The recipes are set out in a modern format, with quantities given in both metric and standard U.S. measurements. Recipes are grouped by category: appetizers, vegetables, fish dishes, desserts, and so forth. Early French Cookery concludes with a fascinating look at a day in the life of a contemporary master chef at a duke's court. We watch Master Chiquart organize the purchase, storage, preparation, and serving of the food consumed by a duke and his dozens of family members, courtiers, staff and servants--and all done without benefit of grocery stores, refrigeration, labor-saving electric appliances, or running water. Early French Cookery will be of interest to a wide variety of people, from those who like to hold unusual parties to those who are interested in the economics of the middle ages. D. Eleanor Scully is an occasional lecturer at the Stratford Chef School and advisor to Wilfrid Laurier University on Medieval and Renaissance cooking and customs. Terence Scully is Professor of French Language and Literature, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario.

    Focuses on three major disputes in which he was engaged: against the Manichees, the Donatists and the British scholar Pelagius. 'Students of St Augustine will welcome this ... rich, thoughtful account ... Every page of this volume promises pleasure for the mind with some passages providing food for the soul.' Augustinian Studies

    We can for the first time begin to answer fundamental questions such as: what did houses look like and how were they furnished? how did villages and individual farmsteads develop? how and when did agrarian production become intensified and how did this affect village communities? what role did craft production and trade play in the rural economy? In a period for which written sources are scarce, archaeology is of central importance in understanding the 'small worlds' of early medieval communities. Helena Hamerow's extensively illustrated and accessible study offers the first overview and synthesis of the large and rapidly growing body of evidence for early medieval settlements in north-west Europe, as well as a consideration of the implications of this evidence for Anglo-Saxon England.

    Tragic and stirring names from the past scatter the French countryside, places such as Agincourt, Crecy, Aquitaine, Rouen - where Joan of Arc was burnt buy the English at the stake - and a stretch of beach on the Cherbourg peninsula where Edward III knighted the Black Prince - plus many more. This useful book will pinpoint the places for the visitor, explain their historical significance in the context of the war, and also show with maps and photographs what there is to see and do in the town or site today.

    Annotation and commentary accessible to undergraduates make the series an ideal vehicle for the study of Aquinas by readers approaching him from a variety of backgrounds and interests.

    How and why did the images of the dying God-man and his grieving mother achieve such prominence, inspiring unparalleled religious creativity as well such imitative extremes as celibacy and self-flagellation? To answer this question, Rachel Fulton ranges over developments in liturgical performance, private prayer, doctrine, and art. She considers the fear occasioned by the disappointed hopes of medieval Christians convinced that the apocalypse would come soon, the revulsion of medieval Jews at being baptized in the name of God born from a woman, the reform of the Church in light of a new European money economy, the eroticism of the Marian exegesis of the Song of Songs, and much more. Devotion to the crucified Christ is one of the most familiar yet disconcerting artifacts of medieval European civilization. How and why did the images of the dying God-man and his grieving mother achieve such prominence, inspiring unparalleled religious creativity and emotional artistry even as they fostered such imitative extremes as celibacy, crusade, and self-flagellation?Magisterial in style and comprehensive in scope, From Judgment to Passion is the first systematic attempt to explain the origins and initial development of European devotion to Christ in his suffering humanity and Mary in her compassionate grief. Rachel Fulton examines liturgical performance, doctrine, private prayer, scriptural exegesis, and art in order to illuminate and explain the powerful desire shared by medieval women and men to identify with the crucified Christ and his mother.The book begins with the Carolingian campaign to convert the newly conquered pagan Saxons, in particular with the effort to explain for these new converts the mystery of the Eucharist, the miraculous presence of Christ's body at the Mass. Moving on to the early eleventh century, when Christ's failure to return on the millennium of his Passion (A.D. 1033) necessitated for believers a radical revision of Christian history, Fulton examines the novel liturgies and devotions that arose amid this apocalyptic disappointment. The book turns finally to the twelfth century when, in the wake of the capture of Jerusalem in the First Crusade, there occurred the full flowering of a new, more emotional sensibility of faith, epitomized by the eroticism of the Marian exegesis of the Song of Songs and by the artistic and architectural innovations we have come to think of as quintessentially high medieval.In addition to its concern with explaining devotional change, From Judgment to Passion presses a second, crucial question: How is it possible for modern historians to understand not only the social and cultural functions but also the experience of faith--the impulsive engagement with the emotions, sometimes ineffable, of prayer and devotion? The answer, magnificently exemplified throughout this book's narrative, lies in imaginative empathy, the same incorporation of self into story that lay at the heart of the medieval effort to identify with Christ and Mary in their love and pain.

    Interest and poignancy are added by the fact that this is a true story - the baritone 'heavy' is Alexander Dumas who wrote The Count of Monte Cristo. But it is the central figure, the heroine Violetta, the archetypal 'whore with the heart of gold' who dominates the piece. It is her opera and we love her for it.A superb 'human interest' story, a captivating cast of characters, and music which is both enchanting and insightful: just some of La Traviata's ingredients explaining its enduring popularity. The characters are outlined with Smillie's reliable blend of insight and originality: "Violetta, we must accept, is the proverbial Whore with the Heart of Gold, and this ravishing melody goes a long way towards melting the said heart." David Timson narrates throughout.

    The twelve readings in this volume represent some of the best recent scholarship on the Crusades.

    You will find fantastic pictures to help explain things more, cartoons to make you giggle, and fun things to do in the color panels.

    This led him to conduct the restoration of two fabulous constructions from that period, the fortifications surrounding the city of Carcassonne and the story book castle of Pierrefonds. His very romatic approach to the Middle Ages has come down to us intact through thousands of pen drawings and his virtuoso watercolors.

    Its primary concern is the relationships between the various ethnic, cultural, regional, and religious communities that co-existed in the Iberian peninsula in the later Middle Ages. Conflicts and mutual interactions between them are here explored in a range of both historical and literary studies, to expose something of the rich diversity of the cultural life of later medieval Spain.

    To the modern reader, these medieval texts seem like exercises in sadism, but they also provided Medieval women such as Hildegard of Bingen and Joan of Arc with role models who helped them to shape their own extraordinary destinies. This book explores the ability of the virgin body to generate contradictory meanings, both repressive and liberating, depending on who told the tale and how it was told.

    Tournaments, Maying, interludes, charivaris, and masking invited the English and French nobility to assert their identities in gesture and costume as well as in speech. These events presumed that performance makes a self, in contrast to the modern belief that identity precedes social performance and, indeed, that performance falsifies the true, inner self. Susan Crane resists the longstanding convictions that medieval rituals were trivial affairs, and that personal identity remained unarticulated until a later period.Focusing on England and France during the Hundred Years War, Crane draws on wardrobe accounts, manuscript illuminations, chronicles, archaeological evidence, and literature to recover the material as well as the verbal constructions of identity. She seeks intersections between theories of practice and performance that explain how appearances and language connect when courtiers dress as wild men to interrupt a wedding feast, when knights choose crests and badges to supplement their coats of arms, and when Joan of Arc cross-dresses for the court of inquisition after her capture.

    Translations in modern English don't even seem to help. It's hard to get past her medieval Catholicims to her radically inclusive ideas - to the insights that made Julian a spiritual giant. The Essence of Julian is the most accessible and lively translation of this difficult medieval masterpiece yet available. It is simply much easier to read and understand than any previous treatment of Julian's writings enthusiast will be satisfied for many years to come.

    This timely introduction responds to that trend, focusing on the production and reception of Old English texts, and on their relation to Anglo-Saxon history and culture.The book presents a wider range of material than is usual in English literary histories. It not only covers an intriguing range of genres, from riddles and cryptograms to allegory and romance, but into this coverage it also integrates discussion of Anglo-Latin texts which are crucial to understanding the development of Old English literature. Its extensive bibliographical coverage of scholarship devotes special attention to studies of the past 15 years, while a retrospective section outlines the reception of the Anglo-Saxons and their literature in later periods.Throughout their narrative, the authors champion Anglo-Saxon studies, contending that it is uniquely placed to contribute to current debates about literature's relation to history and culture.

    This paperback edition of a book first published in hardback in 2002 is a fascinating and provocative study which looks at castles in a new light, using the theories and methods of landscape studies. For the first time castles are examined not as an isolated phenomenon, but in relation to their surrounding human as well as physical landscapes. Taking a thematic approach, the study examines a broad range of evidence - archaeological, documentary and topographical - to put castles back into the medieval landscape and assess their contribution to its evolution. Far more than simply a book about castles, this is a study of the impact of power and authority on the landscape. O.H. Creighton is Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Exeter. He is the author (with R.A. Higham) of Medieval Castles (Shire, 2003).

    Kormak's Saga, The Saga of Hallfred Troublesome-Poet, The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-Tongue, The Saga of Bjorn, Champion of the Hitardal People, Viglund's Saga Set in the farmsteads of Viking age Iceland at a time when the old ethos of honour and heroic adventure merged with new ideas of romantic infatuation, each of these sagas features poet heroes, complex love triangles, and travels to foreign lands.

    

    The first two chapters provide an introduction to the historical problem of early medieval slavery and a short history of Bavaria to provide background information. The next six chapters deal with a series of topics, which provide a complete historical overview of the institutions and conditions of slavery. This historical analysis is based upon an extensive collection of primary documents, each referenced in the text as it occurs in the discussion. These documents are then provided in English translation in the final three chapters of the volume.

    Though if her father proved traitorous, he was duty bound to expose him... and so destroy their love!Bride of the IsleChristine MacDhiubh could claim no place as home until the gallant Lord of Bitterlee came in search of a bride! Marriage had been sadness for Adam Sutton, yet duty demanded he wed again. But brave of heart though she might be, could Christine ever heal his soul?Norwyck's LadyBartholomew, Earl of Norwyck, had well learned the bitter lesson from his traitorous first wife. What, then should he make of a mysterious beauty who claimed ignorance of her true identity? Was she an enemy sent to destroy him - or an angel come to heal his wounded soul?

    The book offers broad conclusions on the role and characteristics of armed force at sea before 1650, conclusions that exploit the best current understanding of the medieval period. The examination of naval militias in the Baltic, permanent galley fleets in the Mediterranean, contract fleets and the use of reprisal for political ends all illustrate the variety and complexity of naval power and domination of the sea in theyears from 1000 to 1650. The detailed and closely coordinated studies by scholars from Europe, North America, and Australia show patterns in war at sea and discuss the influence of the development of ships, guns, and the language of public policy on maritime conflict. The essays show the importance and unique character of violence at sea in the period. Contributors: JOHN B. HATTENDORF, NIELS LUND, JAN BILL, TIMOTHY J. RUNYAN, IAN FRIEL, JOHN H. PRYOR, LAWRENCE V. MOTT, JOHN DOTSON, MICHEL BALARD, BERNARD DOUMERC, MARCO GEMIGNANI, FRANCISCO CONTENT DOMINGUES, LOUIS SICKING, JAN GLETE, N.A.M. RODGER, RICHARD W. UNGER.

    Through an exploration of several contemporary cultural phenomena, this book reveals the narrative underpinnings of public discourse. The ways these particular forms of storytelling shape our assumptions are examined by Angela Jane Weisl through a series of examples that demonstrate the intrinsic ways medievalism persists in the modern world, thus perpetuating archaic ideas of gender, ideology, and doctrine.

    A comprehensive survey of the history of Cornwall between 1485 and 1603, this books looks at the social, political, and economic issues of the period.

    of Illinois) at the 1996 International Congress of Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The contributors, five of whom studied under Friedman, are mainly English professors in American universities. Among the topics are identity in the Gesta Herewardi, the double in The Franklin's Tale, a nude cyclops in a 16th-century costume book, and depictions of the insane in the 13th century. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

    Her brother thinks it's a great joke in a long-standing family competition for April Fool jokes. As she prepares to host her niece's surprise wedding shower, Posy must try to set matters straight, so to speak, as well as handle a series of mishaps in this modern day comedy of errors set in a Southern college town.

    They invented new sounds and new ways of understanding medieval music. This is the fascinating story of the musicians and the societies in which they worked to remake a lost musical world.

    They include material associated with Anglo-Saxon England as well as early Medieval Scotland, Wales and Ireland, and discoveries of Insular metalwork in Scandinavia. They are divided into five themes which reflect the many recent advances in the study of Insular art: politics and patrons; national and regional identities; art and archaeology; the implications of scientific analysis and style; analysis, methodology and meaning.

    It is heavily illustrated by pictures of surviving objects and contemporary representations of medieval work. Each industry is approached by material (amongst others stone, tin, lead, copper, iron, brick, glass, leather, bone and wood), discussing its acquisition, working and sale as a finished product. The contributors are the leading experts in their fields. They describe the specialist work that went to make the housing, clothing, tools, vessels and ornaments of medieval people. A general bibliography provides a valuable reference tool.

    The volume's 11 chapters cover such topics as scholarship on Byzantine gardens; Theodore Hyrtakenos' Description of the Garden of St. Anna and the Ekphrasis of gardens; and herbs in the field and garden in Byzantine medicinal