Yet for centuries Edward III (1327-77) was celebrated as the most brilliant of all English monarchs. In this first full study of his character and life, Ian Mortimer shows how under Edward the feudal kingdom of England became a highly organised nation, capable of raising large revenues and deploying a new type of projectile-based warfare, culminating in the crushing victory over the French at Crecy. Yet under his rule England also experienced its longest period of domestic peace in the middle ages, giving rise to a massive increase of the nation's wealth through the wool trade, with huge consequences for society, art and architecture. It is to Edward that England owes its system of parliamentary representation, its local justice system, its national flag and the recognition of English as the language of the nation. Nineteenth century historians saw in Edward the opportunity to decry a warmonger, and painted him as a self-seeking, rapacious, tax-gathering conqueror. Yet as this book shows, beneath the strong warrior king was a compassionate, conscientious and often merciful man - resolute yet devoted to his wife, friends and family. He emerges as a strikingly modern figure, to whom many will be able to relate - the father of both the English people and the English nation.

    Though simpler, this version includes all the wonderful stories—such as King Arthur’s winning of Guenievere and Merlin’s tragic downfall at the hands of the evil Vivien.

    Within these pages you will discover majestic, mysterious and fantastical faeries and angels, sphinxes and fauns, mad Queens, gothic seducers, goblins and trolls. Wendy's sculptures have inspired many great artist of our time: George Lucas, for whom she fabricated "Yoda" and Jim Henson, with whom she worked on his classic films, The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth.

    So it was with Wyclif, who rested forty-two years under chancel stone condemned by the Papacy, protected by the Crown. Finally, a bishop came with a few men, spades, shovels, a horse and cart. By then, not much was left of Wyclif—hair and skin gone, his bones slipped out of place inside the simple alb they’d buried him in. The bishop gathered what he could. Beside the River Swift, he lit a pile of wood and tossed the bones on one at a time, cursing the heretic from limb to limb. Afterwards, they shoveled ash into the water and no one even thought the word martyr.

    Yet in the fifteenth century it was a European pilgrimage site surpassed in importance only by Rome and Santiago de Compostela. The goal of pilgrimage was three miraculous hosts, supposedly discovered in the charred remains of the village church several days after it had been torched by a marauding knight in August 1383. Although the church had been burned and the spot soaked with rain, the hosts were found intact and dry, with a drop of Christ's blood at the center of each.In Wonderful Blood, Caroline Walker Bynum studies the saving power attributed to Christ's blood at north German cult sites such as Wilsnack, the theological controversy such sites generated, and the hundreds of devotional paintings, poems, and prayers dedicated to Christ's wounds, scourging, and bloody crucifixion. She argues that Christ's blood as both object and symbol was central to late medieval art, literature, pious practice, and theology. As object of veneration, blood provided a focus of intense debate about the nature of matter, body, and God and an occasion for Jewish persecution; as motif, blood became a prominent subject of northern art and a central symbol in the visions of mystics and the prayers of ordinary people.

    At the same time, Italian physicians and surgeons began to open human bodies in order to study their functions and the illnesses that afflicted them, culminating in the great illustrated anatomical treatise of Andreas Vesalius in 1543. Katharine Park traces these two closely related developments through a series of case studies of women whose bodies were dissected after their deaths: an abbess, a lactating virgin, several patrician wives and mothers, and an executed criminal. Drawing on a variety of texts and images, she explores the history of women's bodies in Italy between the late thirteenth and the mid-sixteenth centuries in the context of family identity, religious observance, and women's health care.Secrets of Women explodes the myth that medieval religious prohibitions hindered the practice of human dissection in medieval and Renaissance Italy, arguing that female bodies, real and imagined, played a central role in the history of anatomy during that time. The opened corpses of holy women revealed sacred objects, while the opened corpses of wives and mothers yielded crucial information about where babies came from and about the forces that shaped their vulnerable flesh. In the process, what male writers knew as the -secrets of women- came to symbolize the most difficult challenges posed by human bodies-- challenges that dissection promised to overcome. Park's study of women's bodies and men's attempts to know them--and through these efforts to know their own--demonstrates the centrality of gender to the development of early modern anatomy.

    Focusing on the Summa theologiae - the work containing Aquinas' most systematic and complete exposition of the Christian doctrine of God - Rudi te Velde acquaints the reader with Aquinas' theological understanding of God and the metaphysical principles and propositions that underlie his project. Aquinas' conception of God is dealt with not as an isolated metaphysical doctrine, but from the perspective of his broad theological view which underlies the scheme of the Summa. Readers interested in Aquinas, historical theology, metaphysics and metaphysical discourse on God in the Christian tradition will find this new contribution to the studies of Aquinas invaluable.

    Yet there is an aspect to this myth which has been neglected, but which is perhaps its most potent part of all.  For central to the Arthurian stories are the mysterious, sexually alluring enchantresses, those spellcasters and mistresses of magic who wield extraordinary influence over Arthur's life and destiny, bestriding the Camelot mythology with a dark, brooding presence. Echoing the search for the Grail, Carolyne Larrington takes her readers on a quest of her own - to discover why these dangerous women continue to bewitch us.  Her journey takes in the enchantresses as they appear in poetry and painting, on the Internet and TV, in high culture and popular culture.  She shows that whether they be chaste or depraved, necrophiliacs or virgins, the Arthurian enchantresses  are manifestations of the feared, uncontainable Other, frightening and fascinating in equal measure.

    With the balance already disrupted by humans, one unicorn would find herself imperiled by forces she could never have imagined. To rescue her heart, Shahly must rescue the stallion she loves from the clutches of the humans. Driven by the love of her stallion, she must enter the world of the humans, known enemies of the unicorns, and put all she is and all she knows at risk to free him. She can't know of the dark forces at work, forces that could be the very undoing of everything she has ever known, forces that could mean the very extinction of her kind, and youth and inexperience conspire against her at every turn, as does her own heart. Before she can realize, she is so entangled with the role she must play to free him that her quest becomes a blur, and at times her very survival depends upon the actions of those around her, some wanting to protect her and others wanting her dead But treacherous humans and horrific monsters are only part of her problem as another invades her heart, determined to unwittingly take the place of her stallion-and end her simple life as a unicorn forever. To complete her mission, she must battle the unseen forces around her, see through the deceptions, and win a hopeless fight with her own heart. And with only three days and nights to do this, she must rely upon the help of her kind's greatest and deadliest enemy, unaware that he has an agenda of his own.

    Moving beyond biographies of famous noble women of the middles ages, the scope of this important reference work is vast and provides a comprehensive understanding of medieval women's lives and experiences. Masculinity in the middle ages is also addressed to provide important context for understanding women's roles. Entries that range from 250 words to 4,500 words in length thoroughly explore topics in the following areas:- Art and Architecture- Countries, Realms, and Regions- Daily Life- Documentary Sources- Economics- Education and Learning- Gender and Sexuality- Historiography- Law- Literature- Medicine and Science- Music and Dance- Persons- Philosophy- Politics- Political Figures- Religion and Theology- Religious Figures- Social Organization and StatusWritten by renowned international scholars, Women and Gender in Medieval Europe is the latest in the Routledge Encyclopedias of the Middle Ages. Easily accessible in an A-to-Z format, students, researchers, and scholars will find this outstanding reference work to be an invaluable resource on women in Medieval Europe.

    This innovative and expansive survey draws on historical and archaeological sources in the narration of 750 years of the region's history. Among a number of key themes it addresses the rise of medieval states, the conversion to Christianity, the monastic movement inspired by developments in Western Europe and in Byzantium and the role of material culture in the representation of power.

    Capitalizing on the phenomenal success of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and its upcoming movie adaptation, this interactive kit allows buyers to uncover the secrets of Da Vinci's highly debated masterpieces for themselves.

    Fresh from the ravage of Ipswich, under the command (almost certainly) of the king of Denmark, they were intent no doubt on the rich spoils to be had from the royal Mint at Maldon. Facing them on the shore was Byrhtnoth, the second nobleman of the realm, with an army drawn from the households of the region. The ensuing fight was terrible in its ferocity. Byrhtnoth and many of his companions were slain, and eventually the vikings triumphed. Their victory marked the collapse of effective armed resistance to the Danes, and presaged the end of Anglo-Saxon England.

    Rosenwein here discusses some instances from the Early Middle Ages. Drawing on extensive microhistorical research, as well as cognitive and social constructionist theories of the emotions, Rosenwein shows that different emotional communities coexisted, that some were dominant at times, and that religious beliefs affected emotional styles even as those styles helped shape religious expression.This highly original book is both a study of emotional discourse in the Early Middle Ages and a contribution to the debates among historians and social scientists about the nature of human emotions. Rosenwein explores the character of emotional communities as discovered in several case studies: the funerary inscriptions of three different Gallic cities; the writings of Pope Gregory the Great; the affective world of two friends, Gregory of Tours and Venantius Fortunatus; the Neustrian court of Clothar II and his heirs; and finally the tumultuous period of the late seventh century. In this essay, the author presents a new way to consider the history of emotions, inviting others to continue and advance the inquiry.For medievalists, early modernists, and historians of the modern world, the book will be of interest for its persuasive critique of Norbert Elias's highly influential notion of the civilizing process. Rosenwein's notion of emotional communities is one with which all historians and social scientists working on the emotions will need to contend.

    Contains over 30 original theoretical, historical, and historiographic essays by renowned and emergent scholars. Covers the vibrancy of medieval art from both thematic and sub-disciplinary perspectives. Features an international and ambitious range - from reception, Gregory the Great, collecting, and pilgrimage art, to gender, patronage, the marginal, spolia, and manuscript illumination.

    Taking blood and bodies seriously, this volume uses cutting-edge theory to propose that blood possesses the ability to shape the body as a distinct identity, transforming it from an unenclosed, diverse, and not unified vessel into a whole distinct from its surroundings—all through various strategies of discourse and investigation, each of which rely “wholeheartedly” on blood.

    to the time of the Reformation. Includes Cyprian, Athanasius, Ambrose, Chrysostom, Jerome, Augustine, Benedict, Gregory the Great, Columba, Charlemagne, Hildebrand, Anselm, Bernard, Becket, Langton, Dominic, Francis, Wycliffe, Hus, and Savonarola. Suitable for ages 11 and up.

    The original eleven-volume Latin edition, containing 594 maps, put Blaeu ahead of his staunch competitor, mapmaker Joanes Janssonius, whose rivalry inspired Blaeu to produce a grandiose edition of the largest and most complete atlas to date. Covering Arctica, Europe, Africa, Asia, and America, Blaeu's Atlas Maior was a remarkable achievement and remains to this day one of history's finest examples of mapmaking. This reprint, including all 58 maps of England and 55 maps of Scotland and Ireland, is made from the National Library of Vienna's colored, gold-heightened copy, thus assuring the best possible detail and quality. Alongside original quotes from Joan Blaeu relating to the individual maps, the new text by Peter van der Krogt explains the historical and cultural associations and introduces the reader into the fascinating world of early modern cartography. The text is in English, French and German. The author: Peter van der Krogt, the leading expert in the field of Dutch atlases, is a collaborator on the Explokart Research Program for the History of Cartography at the University of Utrecht's Faculty of Geosciences. Since 1990 he has been working on Koeman's Atlantes Neerlandici, the carto-bibliography of atlases published in the Netherlands. His second project is the compilation, in co-operation with the Nijmegen University, of an illustrated and annotated catalogue of the Atlas Blaeu-Van der Hem, the most important multi-volume atlas preserved in the Austrian National Library, which wasadded to Unesco's ?Memory of the World? register in 2004.

    Drawing from sources written from 1409-1600 (including the works of Hans Talhoffer, Fiore dei Liberi, Filippo Vadi, Joachim Meyer and more), this book uses step-by-step photos and historic illustrations to demonstrate the deadly and effective techniques of European dagger fighting. Talhoffer and the others were men with real fighting experience, not self-promoted "grand masters" or denizens of the training hall, and they wrote the manuals that form the basis for Medieval and Renaissance Dagger Combat. The dynamics of the knife fight have not changed over the centuries, and the masters' lessons are as useful against an attacker with today's tactical folder as they were against the first dagger.

    These Knights were led by one Hugues de Payens a member of the lower nobility of Champagne. The Knights stated that their mission was to protect the Pilgrims en route to the Holy Places of Jesus, and they had taken vows of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience to the teachings of Christ. This wonderful little book gives you a unique insight into the life of a Knights Templar as unlike any other title of its kind this books focus is on the duties beliefs and daily life of the Knights Templar rather than just their history.

    Meticulously researched, it also examines celebratory poetry and a musical history of extraordinary brilliance. Illustrated with illuminated manuscripts, engravings, portraits, photographs, and images from film and television, this work as rich as its subject.

    Although dissonance and strife were certainly part of this relationship, he argues, coexistence and cooperation were more common. Moving beyond the clash of civilizations model that surveys the relationship between Islam and Christianity from a geopolitical perch, Dursteler analyzes the lived reality by focusing on a localized microcosm: the Venetian merchant and diplomatic community in Muslim Constantinople. While factors such as religion, culture, and political status could be integral elements in constructions of self and community, Dursteler finds early modern identity to be more than the sum total of its constituent parts and reveals how the fluidity and malleability of identity in this time and place made coexistence among disparate cultures possible.

    The 81 magnificent sculpted heads featured in this volume provide a sweeping view of the Middle Ages, from the waning days of the Roman Empire to the dawn of the Renaissance. Each sculpture bears eloquent witness to its own remarkable history, whether it was removed because of changing tastes or for political reasons, such as being cut off the head of a king on a grand cathedral facade. The book is organized into seven thematic sections, including “Iconoclasm” and “The Stone Bible,” which explore the process of reconnecting these works to their origins using both traditional art historical methods as well as the latest scientific technology. An essay on medieval physiognomy by the distinguished scholar Willibald Sauerländer introduces the volume.

    In this, his second of a three-volume series concerning world ecological degradation, Chew reviews the past 5,000-year history of structural conditions and processes that define the relationship between nature and culture. Chew's message about the coming Dark Ages, as human communities continue to reorganize to meet the contingencies of ecological scarcity and climate changes, is a must-read for those concerned with human interactions and environmental changes, including environmental anthropologists and historians, world historians, geographers, archaeologists, and environmental scientists.

    From the grand medieval fortresses of Britain and Ireland to the châteaux of France and the fantasy castles of Eastern Europe, this wonderful new book offers an inspiring, breathtaking journey through the battles, struggles and victories of the past.

    Yet this is the first full-length account of the nature and holdings of Anglo-Saxon libraries from the sixth century to the eleventh.The early chapters discuss libraries in antiquity, notably at Alexandria and republican and imperial Rome, and also the Christian libraries of late antiquity which supplied books to Anglo-Saxon England. Because Anglo-Saxon libraries themselves have almost completely vanished, three classes of evidence need to be combined in order to form a detailed impression of their holdings: surviving inventories, surviving manuscripts, and citations of classical and patristic works by Anglo-Saxon authors themselves.After setting out the problems entailed in using such evidence, the book is provided with appendices containing editions of all surviving Anglo-Saxon inventories, lists of all Anglo-Saxon manuscripts exported to continental libraries during the eighth century and then all manuscripts re-imported into England in the tenth, as well as a catalogue of all citations of classical and patristic literature by Anglo-Saxon authors.A comprehensive index, arranged alphabetically by author, combines these various classes of evidence so that the reader can see at a glance what books were known where and by whom in Anglo-Saxon England. The book thus provides, within a single volume, a vast amount of information on the books and learning of the schools which determined the course of medieval literary culture.

    In reality, responses to wolves varied across medieval Europe. Although not dependent on the wilderness, wolves were conceptually linked to this environment - which although on the fringes of medieval society, became increasingly exploited from the eighth to fourteenth centuries, so bringing people and livestock closer to the wolf.This book compares responses to wolves, focusing on two regions, Britain and southern Scandinavia. It looks at the distribution of wolves in the landscape, their potential impact as predators on both animals and people, and their use as commodities, in literature, art, cosmology and identity. It also investigates the reasons (both practical and cultural) for the eradication of wolves in England, but their survival on the Scandinavian peninsula. ALEKSANDER PLUSKOWSKI is Junior Research Fellow in Medieval Archaeology, Clare College, Cambridge

    From early childhood she experienced religious visions, and at the age of eight she entered a cloistered religious life in the Benedictine monastery of Disibondenberg. Eventually she not only became abbess of thecommunity, but presided over the establishment of an important new convent near Bingen. All but forgotten for hundreds of years, Hildegard was rediscovered in the 1980s and since then her visionary writings have been widely read and studied. Even more surprisingly, music that she composed has beenperformed and recorded to great acclaim. She has come to be seen by some as a proto-feminist icon -- a woman of great accomplishments who made her own way in a man's world and exerted extraordinary influence over some of the most powerful figures of her time. Much of Hildegard's correspondence hasbeen preserved. It reveals that for more than 30 years this cloistered nun was an unflinching adviser and correspondent to all levels of church and society, from popes and kings to ordinary lay persons, from Jerusalem to England. With the 2004 OUP publication of Volume III of Joseph Baird and RaddEhrman's translation, the complete correspondence became available for the first time in English. For this new abridgement, Baird has selected 75 of the most interesting and revealing of the letters from Volumes I, II, and III. Freed from the organizational restraints of the Latin edition of theletters, he has arranged them in roughly chronological order and provided greatly expanded, accessibly written introductory notes that contextualize the letters and explain their significance. As a result, this fascinating collection serves as a kind of life in letters that makes an idealintroduction ot this exceptional woman, her world, and her work. This book is the first to give a thorough and definitive illlumination of the personal life of Hildegard of Bingen as viewed through the defining lens of her personal correspondence: her early, hesitant bid for recognition of herspiritual gifts; her courageous, and ultimately futile, fight to retain the companionship of her close personal friend and the poignant outcome of that struggle; her vehement defiance of the male hierarchy in her bid to establish her own communities under her personal governance; her impudentchallenge to contemporary conservatives views by the dress and customs she established in her community; her paean of praise for the power of music; and her adamant refusal, even at the advanced age of eighty, to give in to the demands of the male authorities even in the face of excommunication.

    One cannot ask theo-aesthetic questions about the Eucharist without engaging fundamental questions about the relationship between beauty, art (broadly defined), and eating.--from Eating BeautyIn a remarkable book that is at once learned, startlingly original, and highly personal, Ann W. Astell explores the ambiguity of the phrase eating beauty. The phrase evokes the destruction of beauty, the devouring mouth of the grave, the mouth of hell. To eat beauty is to destroy it. Yet in the case of the Eucharist the person of faith who eats the Host is transformed into beauty itself, literally incorporated into Christ. In this sense, Astell explains, the Eucharist was productive of an entire 'way' of life, a virtuous life-form, an artwork, with Christ himself as the principal artist. The Eucharist established for the people of the Middle Ages distinctive schools of sanctity--Cistercian, Franciscan, Dominican, and Ignatian--whose members were united by the eucharistic sacrament that they received.Reading the lives of the saints not primarily as historical documents but as iconic expressions of original artworks fashioned by the eucharistic Christ, Astell puts the faceless Host in a dynamic relationship with these icons. With the advent of each new spirituality, the Christian idea of beauty expanded to include, first, the marred beauty of the saint and, finally, that of the church torn by division--an anti-aesthetic beauty embracing process, suffering, deformity, and disappearance, as well as the radiant lightness of the resurrected body. This astonishing work of intellectual and religious history is illustrated with telling artistic examples ranging from medieval manuscript illuminations to sculptures by Michelangelo and paintings by Salvador Dal�. Astell puts the lives of medieval saints in conversation with modern philosophers as disparate as Simone Weil and G. W. F. Hegel.

    43).

    It introduces new data, as well as new ways to think about them - modes of analysis that, while familiar to archaeological practitioners in the West and in Japan, are herein applied to evidence from the Chinese Bronze Age for the first time. The treatment of social stratification, clan and lineage organisation, as well as gender and ethnic differences will be of interest to those involved in the general or comparative analysis of grand themes in the Social Sciences.

    The original eleven-volume Latin edition, containing 594 maps, put Blaeu ahead of his staunch competitor, mapmaker Joanes Janssonius, whose rivalry inspired Blaeu to produce a grandiose edition of the largest and most complete atlas to date. Covering Arctica, Europe, Africa, Asia, and America, Blaeu's Atlas Maior was a remarkable achievement and remains to this day one of history's finest examples of mapmaking. This reprint, including all 28 maps of Spain and Portugal, 13 maps of Africa and 23 of America, is made from the National Library of Vienna's colored, gold-heightened copy, thus assuring the best possible detail and quality. Alongside original quotes from Joan Blaeu relating to the individual maps, the new text by Peter van der Krogt explains the historical and cultural associations and introduces the reader into the fascinating world of early modern cartography. The text is in Spanish, English and Portuguese. The author: Peter van der Krogt, the leading expert in the field of Dutch atlases, is a collaborator on the Explokart Research Program for the History of Cartography at the University of Utrecht's Faculty of Geosciences. Since 1990 he has been working on Koeman's Atlantes Neerlandici, the carto-bibliography of atlases published in the Netherlands. His second project is the compilation, in co-operation with the Nijmegen University, of an illustrated and annotated catalogue of the Atlas Blaeu-Van der Hem, the most important multi-volume atlas preserved in the Austrian NationalLibrary, which was added to Unesco's ?Memory of the World? register in 2004.

    

    Consulting a wide range of key texts and source material, Animals, Gods and Humans covers 800 years and provides a detailed analysis of early Christian attitudes to, and the position of, animals in Greek and Roman life and thought.Both the pagan and Christian conceptions of animals are rich and multilayered, and Ingvild S�lid Gilhus expertly examines the dominant themes and developments in the conception of animals.Including study of: biographies of figures such as Apollonus of Tyana; natural history; the New Testament via Gnostic texts; the church fathers; and from pagan and Christian criticism of animal sacrifice, to the acts of martyrs, the source material and detailed analysis included in this volume make it a veritable feast of information for all classicists.

    They had come to the throne in 1461, when Edward IV, who traced his claim to Edward III, replaced the ineffectual Henry VI as king. Forced into exile in 1470, Edward returned to power after the bloody battle of Towton in 1470 finally ended Lancastrian opposition. His reign was ended by his premature death in 1483, leaving behind his son Edward, a minor, as his heir. This led to Richard III's ursurpation, ended two years later by his defeat and death at Bosworth Field at the hands of Henry Tudor, who became Henry VII and the founder of a new dynasty, marrying Elizabeth of York, the daughter of Edward IV. The Yorkists were one of the two main contending parties in England's first great civil war, the Wars of the Roses. They have been immortalised by Shakespeare not only in his Richard III but also in his three parts of Henry VI. Anne Crawford examines the truth behind both the characters of these kings and behind the stories in the plays, including the death of the duke of Clarence by drowning in a butt of malmsey and the celebrated murder of his nephews, Edward V and Richard, duke of York, by their uncle, Richard III.

    The manuscript is of paramount importance as it contains the only known surviving version, both in terms of text and of image, of the love story of Bayad wa Riyad.This study will place this manuscript within the context of late medieval Mediterranean courtly culture, offering:an annotated translation into English of the entire text reproductions of its images an analysis of both text and images in a series of progressively broader contexts including that of al-Andalus(Arabic-speaking); of "reconquista" Iberia; and the larger Mediterranean world.Cynthia Robinson broadens understanding of the Mediterranean region during the Middle Ages, making this text an invaluable resource for scholars with interests in Medieval Spain, art and Mediterranean courtly culture.

    It sets forth in simple story form the development and progress of knighthood from the time of St. George, who won his spurs by killing the dragon, to the founding, a thousand years later, of the order which bore his name and embodied in its ritual the highest ceremonial of chivalry. With its explanation of the meaning of the degrees of knighthood, its description of quests and tourneys, and its outline of the great events of chivalry, this volume will serve as a good introduction to the later reading of Arthurian and other romances, and of the history of Charlemagne's wars and the crusades.

    Over a short span of years important matters began to turn on the cut of a sleeve. Fashion influenced consumption and provided a stimulus that drove demand for goods and turned wealthy townspeople into enthusiastic consumers. Making wise decisions about the alarmingly expensive goods that composed a fashionable wardrobe became a matter of pressing concern, especially when the market caught on and became awash in cheaper editions of luxury wares.Focusing on the luxury trade in fashionable wear and accessories in Venice, Florence, and other towns in Italy, Gilding the Market investigates a major shift in patterns of consumption at the height of medieval prosperity, which, more remarkably, continued through the subsequent era of plague, return of plague, and increased warfare. A fine sensitivity to the demands of le pompe, that is, the public display of private wealth, infected town life. The quest for luxuries affected markets by enlarging exchange activity and encouraging retail trades. As both consumers and tradesmen, local goldsmiths, long-distance traders, bankers, and money changers played important roles in creating this new age of fashion.In response to a greater public display of luxury goods, civic sumptuary laws were written to curb spending and extreme fashion, but these were aimed at women, youth, and children, leaving townsmen largely unrestricted in their consumption. With erudition, grace, and an evocative selection of illustrations, some reproduced in full color, Susan Mosher Stuard explores the arrival of fashion in European history.

    The book elaborates new interpretative paradigms, drawing on the work of continental scholars and literary critics, and on complementing interdisciplinary scholarship of medieval imaginary spaces and their representations. It gathers evidence from both Old English verse and historico-geographical documents, and focuses on the juncture between traditional scientific learning and the symbolic values attributed to space and orientation. Combining close reading with an original theoretical model, Creation, Migration, and Conquest offers innovative interpretations of celebrated texts and highlights the links between place, identity, and collective identity.

    This guide covers more than 2700 castles as well as mansions and historic houses, all alphabetically organised, with detailed maps, visiting information, illustrations, and anecdotes of hauntings and family histories.

    This book offers a significant re-appraisal of a much maligned monarch and his historical importance, making use of the latest empirical research and revisionist theories, and concentrating on people and personalities, perceptions and expectations, rather than dry constitutional analysis. Papers consider both the institutional and the personal facets of Edward II's life and rule: his sexual reputation, the royal court, the role of the king's household knights, the nature of law and parliament in the reign, and England's relations with Ireland and Europe. Contributors: J. S. HAMILTON, W. M. ORMROD, IAN MORTIMER, MICHAEL PRESTWICH, ALISTAIR TEBBIT, W. R. CHILDS, PAUL DRYBURGH, ANTHONY MUSSON, GWILYM DODD, ALISON MARSHALL, MARTYN LAWRENCE, SEYMOUR PHILLIPS.

    Of these, Wolfram von Eschenbach's Middle High German Parzival (c. 1210) is generally recognized as the most complex and beautiful. Strangely, in Parzival, the Grail is identified as a stone rather than a cup or dish. This oddity is usually seen as just another mystery, further evidence of the difficulty of discerning the true sources of the Grail legend. In this groundbreaking study, G. Ronald Murphy seeks to illuminate this mystery and to enable a far better appreciation of Wolfram's insight into the nature of the Grail and its relationship to the Crusades. The Grail, container of the sacred body and blood of Christ, Wolfram was saying, was where God said it would be: on the altar at the consecration of the Mass. Wolfram's "sacred stone" was none other than a consecrated altar, precious by virtue of the sacrament but also, Murphy argues, by virtue of the material from which it was made: a green gem, one of the precious stones associated with the rivers of Paradise. Murphy explores what it signifies for the Grail to be a translucent gemstone and an altar made portable only by a woman. Wolfram's stone is a sacramental reference to the stone the Crusaders fought to obtain - the Holy Sepulchre. Parzival, Murphy believes, was intended as an argument against continued efforts by Latin Christians to recover the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem by force of arms. In Wolfram's story, warring Christian and Muslim brothers are brought together in peace by the power of Wolfram's Holy Grail--a stone Murphy believes still exists. Murphy's investigation of the spiritual nature and meaning of the Grail is thus accompanied by his quest for and wondrous discovery of the actual altar stone that inspired Wolfram's work. Offering an entirely original reading of Wolfram's famous text, this engrossing and accessible book appeals not only to scholars and students of medieval literature but to anyone who is drawn to the lasting mystery of the Holy Grail.

    Madden turns his scholarly eye on the intrigue and politics swirling about the Medieval Church. Professor Madden explores the compelling events that shaped the culture and forever altered history, from the Monophysite Controversy to reform movements to the Inquisition, Black Death, and Great Schism. This is a history populated with larger-than-life characters and notorious personages such as Charlemagne, Pope Innocent III, and the Knights Templar. Richly detailed and infused with dramatic intensity, Professor Madden’s captivating lectures provide a better understanding not only of the Medieval Church, but of the modern world that followed.

    The central premise of this volume is that texts do not exist in isolation. Each written work is embedded in contexts--literary, historical, geographical, social, political, and religious--and derives its meaning in part from the intersection of those contexts in the reader's experience of the text.

    It demonstrates that historians often misinterpret the Life of Aleksandr Nevskiy and treat it as a source for political and military history. By putting the Life in the context of Christian (not only Orthodox) culture, the study achieves remarkable and impressive results in its analysis of the Life. With its mature and innovative methodology it also demonstrates how the Life impacted on common historical consciousness, as it was placed into the historical framework of the medieval Russian chronicles. This researches places Isoaho among those scholars of medieval Russian history, who study the role of political leaders in the formation of the Russian state.

    His work is characterized by a powerful and unique voice and by the constant innovation that allowed him not only to develop traditional genres, but to compose poems that virtually created genres of their own. This selection includes poems on love, a cycle of six compositions on grief, a long poem on God and predestination, others of praise and vilification, or on philosophical themes. While March has previously been translated into English prose, this anthology offers translations that, more than an aid to understanding the medieval Catalan, aspire to be poems that can be enjoyed in English without constant reference to the original. The translator has worked for several decades on Ausias March, and has produced a critical edition and two anthologies, as well as prose translations. ROBERT ARCHER holds the Cervantes Chair of Spanish at King's College London. Published in association with Editorial Barcino

    Through surveys of the gentry's military background, administrative and political roles, social behavior, and education, the reader is provided with an overview of how the group's culture evolved and how it was disseminated.

    The Irish Sea had been a meeting ground for commerce, religion, and war throughout centuries, and around the first millennium this region of the North Atlantic became a barometer of the changes that were reshaping the lands of northern Europe.This volume of revised essays looks at political and cultural contact and change throughout the liquid highway between Ireland and Britain, covering topics such as the end of the Viking Age, the collapse of the Old English kingdom, the earliest contacts with the Normans, economic revival and change, and religious reform.

    This book outlines a strategic approach to castles, arguing that "it was not what was built, but where it was built" that was the key to Norman success. Castles are placed into context via landscape archaeology, and a study of contemporary and later sources. Castle positioning in the landscapes of Somerset, Monmouthshire, and County Meath are examined in detail. Above all, the author argues, it is necessary to see the Normans as part of a wider European phenomenon that drew its inspiration from the Roman Empire.

    It argues that Henry of Lancaster was not the "all conquering" hero of 1399 but was rather the leader of a coalition of disaffected noblemen who had old scores to settle with Richard II. It also proposes that Richard II was not an incompetent king whose personality disorder(s) and/or tyrannical behavior brought about his fall. Rather, it argues that the king was in no worse a political position in 1399 than in 1387 or even 1381. As on the previous two great crises of the reign, the king forwent a military option of dealing with his opponents and decided to let the issues of 1399 play themselves out on the field of politics. Both in 1381 and 1387 this tactic had proven effective and there was nothing to suggest in 1399 that it would not be so again.

    Above all, the wonderful aspects of geographic otherness made it possible for English writers to see their homeland as not only barbarously divided but also blessed and united. Even as they acknowledged England as a barbarous wasteland... or as a site of brutal disorder..., the English also imagined England as a holy wilderness or as a blessed isle.--from the IntroductionIn a view that sweeps from the tenth century to the mid-sixteenth century, Kathy Lavezzo shows how the English people's concern with their island's relative isolation on the global map contributed to the emergence of a distinctive English national consciousness in which marginality came to be seen as a virtue. Lavezzo examines the many world maps and textual geographies produced by the English during these years. In a beautifully illustrated book, she argues that the English looked to the globe only to emphasize and, in time, to exalt their own exceptional geographic status. The author charts this process by examining a series of wondrous maps and canonical texts. Demonstrating how medieval geographic notions conditioned English attitudes toward Rome, clarifying the complicated religious history leading up to Henry the Eighth's divorce and the Reformation, Angels on the Edge of the World straddles the subjects--and methods--of literature, history, and cultural geography. It will be of special interest to those readers who use cartography as a way to map cultural identities.

    The original eleven-volume Latin edition, containing 594 maps, put Blaeu ahead of his staunch competitor, mapmaker Joanes Janssonius, whose rivalry inspired Blaeu to produce a grandiose edition of the largest and most complete atlas to date. Covering Arctica, Europe, Africa, Asia, and America, Blaeu's Atlas Maior was a remarkable achievement and remains to this day one of history's finest examples of mapmaking. This reprint, including all 63 maps of Belgium and Holland (known in 1665 as the Republic of the United Netherlands and the Spanish or Royal Netherlands), is made from the National Library of Vienna's colored, gold-heightened copy, thus assuring the best possible detail and quality. Alongside original quotes from Joan Blaeu relating to the individual maps, the new text by Peter van der Krogt explains the historical and cultural associations and introduces the reader into the fascinating world of early modern cartography. The text is in Dutch, French and English. The author: Peter van der Krogt, the leading expert in the field of Dutch atlases, is a collaborator on the Explokart Research Program for the History of Cartography at the University of Utrecht's Faculty of Geosciences. Since 1990 he has been working on Koeman's Atlantes Neerlandici, the carto-bibliography of atlases published in the Netherlands. His second project is the compilation, in co-operation with the Nijmegen University, of an illustrated and annotated catalogue of the Atlas Blaeu-Van der Hem, the most important multi-volume atlaspreserved in the Austrian National Library, which was added to Unesco's ?Memory of the World? register in 2004.

    The subject has never been studied in detail before, but there is a surprisingly large amount of information about it in four kindsof source: confessors' manuals; medical compendia that discussed many illnesses; commentaries on canon law; and theological commentaries on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. Although most historians of medieval culture focus on only one or two of these kinds of source, a broader comparison revealsthat medieval writers held surprisingly diverse opinions about what magic was, how it worked, and whether it was ever legitimate to use it.Medieval discussions of magically caused impotence also include a great deal of information about magical practices, most of which have not been studied before. In particular, these sources say a great deal about popular magic, a subject which has been particularly neglected by historians becausethe evidence is scanty and difficult to interpret. Magic and Impotence makes new information about popular magic available for the first time.Magic and Impotence also examines why the authors of legal, medical, and theological texts were so interested in popular magical practices relating to impotence. It therefore uses magically caused impotence as a case-study to explore the relationship between elite and popular culture. Inparticular, this study emphasizes the importance of the thirteenth-century pastoral reform movement, which sought to enforce more orthodox religious practices. Historians have often noted that this movement brought churchmen into contact with popular beliefs, but this is the first study todemonstrate the profound effect it had on theological and legal ideas about magic.

    Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

    The original eleven-volume Latin edition, containing 594 maps, put Blaeu ahead of his staunch competitor, mapmaker Joanes Janssonius, whose rivalry inspired Blaeu to produce a grandiose edition of the largest and most complete atlas to date. Covering Arctica, Europe, Africa, Asia, and America, Blaeu's Atlas Maior was a remarkable achievement and remains to this day one of history's finest examples of mapmaking. This reprint, including all 64 maps of France, is made from the National Library of Vienna's colored, gold-heightened copy, thus assuring the best possible detail and quality. Alongside original quotes from Joan Blaeu relating to the individual maps, the new text by Peter van der Krogt explains the historical and cultural associations and introduces the reader into the fascinating world of early modern cartography. The text is in French, English and German. The author: Peter van der Krogt, the leading expert in the field of Dutch atlases, is a collaborator on the Explokart Research Program for the History of Cartography at the University of Utrecht's Faculty of Geosciences. Since 1990 he has been working on Koeman's Atlantes Neerlandici, the carto-bibliography of atlases published in the Netherlands. His second project is the compilation, in co-operation with the Nijmegen University, of an illustrated and annotated catalogue of the Atlas Blaeu-Van der Hem, the most important multi-volume atlas preserved in the Austrian National Library, which was added to Unesco's ?Memory of the World? register in 2004.