Long Monet had known that even her marriage would serve her people. Her husband would be chosen for her—for this was the way of royal existence. Still, as any woman does—peasant or princess—Monet dreamt of owning true love—of owning choice in love. Thus, each time the raven-haired, sapphire-eyed, Crimson Knight of Karvana rode near, Monet knew regret—for in secret, she loved him—and she could not choose him. As an arrogant king from another kingdom began to wage war against Karvana, Karvana's king, knights and soldiers answered the challenge. The Princess Monet would also know battle. As the Crimson Knight battled with armor and blade—so the Scarlet Princess would battle in sacrifice and with secrets held. Thus, when the charge was given to preserve the heart of Karvana, Monet endeavored to serve her kingdom and forget her secreted love. Yet, love is not so easily forgotten

    But what was it like to actually live in those extraordinary times? Now you can find out.These 36 lectures provide a different perspective on the society and culture of the Middle Ages - one that entrenches you in the daily human experience of living during this underappreciated era. Drawing on history, literature, the arts, technology, and science, these lectures will deepen the way you understand not only the Middle Ages but everything that came afterward: From the Renaissance, to the Enlightenment, to your own world.Filled with amazing insights, this series brings you closer than ever before to life as it was lived and felt. You'll meet the likes of William Caxton, England's first printer who not only printed and distributed a variety of works but also often had to translate them himself; learn about Hugh of Payns and the role of his Knights Templar - organized for the protection of pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem - in the creation of the first modern bank; see how communities dealt with marriage in a time when the church had not yet drawn this institution into its orbit; and much more.Rich with information and period detail (including revealing examples of medieval literature from the English, French, Norse, Icelandic, and Italian worlds), these lectures will dramatically increase your understanding of how lives in the Middle Ages were really lived.

    All his life, he has longed to be a warrior and to follow in the footsteps of the father he never knew, so he is devastated when he is rejected as an apprentice to Castle Redmont's Battleschool. He's no happier when he's assigned instead to the Ranger Corps, the Kingdom's secret service, as the Rangers are a mysterious group whose uncanny ability to move about unseen is thought by many to be the result of black magic. Will begins training under the dour and enigmatic Halt, and reluctantly learns all the fieldcraft and archery he will need to become a fully-fledged Ranger. But Will soon finds himself needing all his new-found skills as he and Halt set off on a desperate mission to prevent the assassination of the King

    Across the English coastlands and countryside they raided, torched, murdered, and destroyed all in their path. Farmers, monks, and soldiers all fell bloody under the Viking sword, hammer, and axe.Then, when the hour was most desperate, came an unlikely hero. King Alfred rallied the battered and bedraggled kingdoms of Britain and after decades of plotting, praying, and persisting, finally triumphed over the invaders.Alfred's victory reverberates to this day: He sparked a literary renaissance, restructured Britain's roadways, revised the legal codes, and revived Christian learning and worship. It was Alfred's accomplishments that laid the groundwork for Britian's later glories and triumphs in literature, liturgy, and liberty."Ben Merkle tells the sort of mythic adventure story that stirs the imagination and races the heart―and all the more so knowing that it is altogether true!" ―George Grant, author of The Last Crusader and The Blood of the Moon

    But Celtica's villages and mines are silent. It is only when the three find an exhausted and starving girl called Evanlyn that they learn why: Morgarath has sent his foul creatures to enslave the Celts. As Gilan rides swiftly back to Araluen to report this news to the King, Will and Horace discover the true purpose behind Morgarath's actions. The Kingdom is sure to be defeated in a surprise three-sided attack - unless the two friends can somehow intervene.

    But when Norsemen from across the sea burn his village they also destroy his new life, and Osric finds himself a prisoner of these warriors. Their chief, Sigurd the Lucky, believes the Norns have woven this strange boy's fate together with his own, and Osric begins to sense glorious purpose among this Fellowship of warriors.Immersed in the Norsemen's world and driven by their lust for adventure, Osric proves a natural warrior and forges a blood bond with Sigurd, who renames him Raven. But the Norsemen's world is a savage one, where loyalty is often repaid in blood and where a young man must become a killer to survive. When the Fellowship faces annihilation from ealdorman Ealdred of Wessex, Raven chooses a bloody and dangerous path, accepting the mission of raiding deep into hostile lands to steal a holy book from Coenwolf, King of Mercia. There he will find much more than the Holy Gospels of St Jerome. He will find Cynethryth, an English girl with a soul to match his own. And he will find betrayal at the hands of cruel men, some of whom he regarded as friends...

    Stark, the author of The Rise of Christianity, reviews the history of the seven major crusades from 1095-1291 in this fascinating work of religious revisionist history.

    When Shira’s father is arrested by the local baron intent on enforcing the Catholic Church’s strictures against heresy, Shira fights for his release and encounters two men who will influence her life profoundly—an inspiring Catholic priest and Meir ben Baruch, a brilliant scholar. In Meir, Shira finds her soulmate.Married to Meir in Paris, Shira blossoms as a wife and mother, savoring the intellectual and social challenges that come with being the wife of a prominent scholar. After witnessing the burning of every copy of the Talmud in Paris, Shira and her family seek refuge in Germany. Yet even there they experience bloody pogroms and intensifying anti-Semitism. With no safe place for Jews in Europe, they set out for Israel only to see Meir captured and imprisoned by Rudolph I of Hapsburg. As Shira weathers heartbreak and works to find a middle ground between two warring religions, she shows her children and grandchildren how to embrace the joys of life, both secular and religious.A multi-generational novel that vividly brings to life a period rarely covered in historical fiction.

    Considered among the most intricate and lovely of embroidery styles, it requires a delicate touch. Now the secrets of stumpwork are revealed through eight beautiful floral projects, all inspired by the 16th-century illuminated Book of Hours created by Jean Bourdichon for Anne of Brittany. The embroideries include “Corncockle and Dragonfly,” “Snowdrop and Cranefly,” and the lovely “Venus’ Looking Glass and Bumble-bee.” In addition to instructions for every technique, this fully illustrated book also provides tracing patterns and a comprehensive stitch glossary.

    1500-1577) was arguably the most famous chef of the Italian Renaissance. He oversaw the preparation of meals for several Cardinals and was such a master of his profession that he became the personal cook for two Popes. At the culmination of his prolific career he compiled the largest cookery treatise of the period to instruct an apprentice on the full craft of fine cuisine, its methods, ingredients, and recipes. Accompanying his book was a set of unique and precious engravings that show the ideal kitchen of his day, its operations and myriad utensils, and are exquisitely reproduced in this volume.Scappi's Opera presents more than one thousand recipes along with menus that comprise up to a hundred dishes, while also commenting on a cook's responsibilities. Scappi also included a fascinating account of a pope's funeral and the complex procedures for feeding the cardinals during the ensuing conclave. His recipes inherit medieval culinary customs, but also anticipate modern Italian cookery with a segment of 230 recipes for pastry of plain and flaky dough (torte, ciambelle, pastizzi, crostate) and pasta (tortellini, tagliatelli, struffoli, ravioli, pizza).Terence Scully presents the first English translation of the work. His aim is to make the recipes and the broad experience of this sophisticated papal cook accessible to a modern English audience interested in the culinary expertise and gastronomic refinement within the most civilized niche of Renaissance society.

    The stirring story of a young prince caught between Britonnic and Saxon worlds in 7th century England.

    In the course of that century, the city’s convents evolved from small, semiautonomous communities to large civic institutions. By 1552, roughly one in eight Florentine women lived in a religious community. Historian Sharon T. Strocchia analyzes this stunning growth of female monasticism, revealing the important roles these women and institutions played in the social, economic, and political history of Renaissance Florence.It became common practice during this time for unmarried women in elite society to enter convents. This unprecedented concentration of highly educated and well-connected women transformed convents into sites of great patronage and social and political influence. As their economic influence also grew, convents found new ways of supporting themselves; they established schools, produced manuscripts, and manufactured textiles.Strocchia has mined previously untapped archival materials to uncover how convents shaped one of the principal cities of Renaissance Europe. She demonstrates the importance of nuns and nunneries to the booming Florentine textile industry and shows the contributions that ordinary nuns made to Florentine life in their roles as scribes, stewards, artisans, teachers, and community leaders. In doing so, Strocchia argues that the ideals and institutions that defined Florence were influenced in great part by the city’s powerful female monastics.Nuns and Nunneries in Renaissance Florence shows for the first time how religious women effected broad historical change and helped write the grand narrative of medieval and Renaissance Europe. The book is a valuable text for students and scholars in early modern European history, religion, women’s studies, and economic history.

    His brother's wedding brings Norse Prince Mykyl back to Bratthl'id Norway, and face to face with the proud Amoda Ni Cormac, a woman destined to be his oldest brother's concubine. Driven by revenge, Mykyl steals the emerald eyed beauty. Bound by duty, secrets, and lies, Mykyl and Amoda are caught in a battle for survival that will ultimately set them free.

    How do you accomplish this task and win glory for yourself and the king? This step-by-step guide will help your readers plan a strategy, arm the soldiers, build the right weapons, and capture the castle. A fun and exciting way to introduce readers to the medieval world.

    This study shows how the Maiden with the Mead appears at the climax of a ritual structure within the myths - a structure that clearly is based on Pagan initiation rituals. The Maiden is the aim of the initiation and its consecration. Her mead is the mead that transfers knowledge, wisdom and indeed resurrection to the initiate. The study also shows that although the Maiden appears with different names and different status (she may be a goddess, a valkyrie, or giantess)she is always the same being - the Great Goddess of light hidden in the utter darkness of death. Only the initiate that overcomes his fears may find her in that ghastly realm and bring himself and the Goddess back to life - and to resurrection. This study shows the immense importance of this underlying myth and the ritual which it reflects, and throws new light on Old Norse religious practice and how to interpret Edda poetry.

    It underwent kaleidoscopic territorial and structural changes, yet recovered repeatedly from disaster: even after the near-impregnable Constantinople fell in 1204, variant forms of the empire reconstituted themselves. The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire tells the story, tracing political and military events, religious controversies and economic change. It offers clear, authoritative chapters on the main events and periods, with more detailed chapters on particular outlying regions, neighbouring powers or aspects of Byzantium. With aids such as a glossary, an alternative place-name table and references to English translations of sources, it will be valuable as an introduction. However, it also offers stimulating new approaches and important new findings, making it essential reading for postgraduates and for specialists.

    The dead could--and did--cross back and forth at will. The pagan mind had no fear of death, but some of the dead were definitely to be dreaded: those who failed to go peacefully into the afterlife but remained on this side in order to right a wrong that had befallen them personally or to ensure that the law promoted by the ancestors was being respected. But these dead individuals were a far cry from the amorphous ectoplasm that is featured in modern ghost stories. These earlier visitors from beyond the grave--known as revenants--slept, ate, and fought like men, even when, like Klaufi of the Svarfdaela Saga, they carried their heads in their arms. Revenants were part of the ancestor worship prevalent in the pagan world and still practiced in indigenous cultures such as the Fang and Kota of equatorial Africa, among others. The Church, eager to supplant this familial faith with its own, engineered the transformation of the corporeal revenant into the disembodied ghost of modern times, which could then be easily discounted as a figment of the imagination or the work of the devil. The sanctified grounds of the church cemetery replaced the burial mounds on the family farm, where the ancestors remained as an integral part of the living community. This exile to the formal graveyard, ironically enough, has contributed to the great loss of the sacred that characterizes the modern world.

    Connected with this theme is the quest for Alexander s wall."

    And not just any parcel of much-coveted property, but Burkshire Keep, a significant holding along a key section of the Welsh coast. All he has to do now is keep it from falling into the hands of the marauding Vikings, defeat the scheming Robert (who desires the Keep above all else), and woo the warrior maiden who lives there--Hallie, his wife by proxy.Of the three, the first two tasks are quickly proved the easiest to accomplish by far. Fortunately for Tremen, a lifetime of battle has strengthened his right arm. He's confident that, given enough time, enough patience--and enough birch switches freshly cut from the garden--eventually, he'll bring even a head-strong woman like his wife to heel...that is, if she doesn't outrun, out-fight, or even outright kill him first.

    The first opened in 325, the last closed in 1965, and the names of many ring out in the history of the church: Nicea, Chalcedon, Trent, Vatican II. Though centuries separate the councils, each occurred when the church faced serious crises, sometimes with doctrinal matters, sometimes with moral or even political matters, and sometimes with discerning the church's relation to the world. The councils determined much of what the Catholic Church is and believes. Additionally, many councils impacted believers in other Christian traditions and even in other faiths.In this accessible, readable, and yet substantial account of the councils Joseph Kelly provides both the historical context for each council as well as an account of its proceedings. Readers will discover how the councils shaped the debate for the following decades and even centuries, and will appreciate the occasional portraits of important conciliar figures from Emperor Constantine to Pope John XXIII.

    In Knights the reality of knighthood is detailed, warts and all. This handsome reference tells the true story of these mounted warriors, who evolved from simple soldiers on horseback to defenders of the faith during the Crusades.Written by a team of historians with specialized knowledge of the medieval period, this beautifully illustrated reference includes:A timeline of knight history from its origins The ethos and ideals of knighthood Becoming a knight and the everyday life of a knight Knights in premedieval times The rise and fall of Charlemagne's empire Knights among the Normans and the Saxons The Crusades The decline of knighthood The role of literature and movies in the mythology of knights And much more.Hundreds of beautiful color photographs, artworks and maps add to this fascinating history of knights and knighthood.

    Because of her mixed heritage, she is proclaimed a heathen and ill-treated, her world is bleak and dark—until the Baron decides to hold a Tourney, and make her the prize.In need of a champion to escape her present existence, and hopefully once again have the love and joy she’d known in her former years, Illara has no idea that the Black Beast of Northumberland is about to change her life… in unimaginable ways.The Black Beast of Northumberland, Pagan de Chevel was an intimidating sight, always masked and mysterious; the whispers attached to him were terrifying. He was six and half feet tall, an ebon mass of armor whose mask beneath the helm could never be removed.Behind the intimidating sight, beyond the rumors and chilling tales, of how he achieved glory on the battlefield, and at the Tourneys, was a man both obsessed and tormented, a soul driven by vengeance, and a secret that gave him both birth, and death.Pagan de Chevel never forgot the tales of a young maiden spoken by her father, when he served John of Thresford in the holy land—and when the chance came to claim her as prize, he stood her champion. However, vows to a woman grown, one with courage, skill, and particularly one who saw beyond the darkness and scars he hid, would test his long held quest for revenge.For Pagan and Illara, treason, murder and a climatic event would pit them both against enemies, betrayers, and their own fears—until courage, passion and the deepest love, would become the prize worth dying for.

    Much of the country is in the iron grip of Louis of France and his collaborators, and civil war rages as the forces of the boy king try to fight off the French. Most of this means nothing to Edwin Weaver, son of the bailiff of Conisbrough Castle in Yorkshire, until he is suddenly thrust into the noble world of politics and treachery: he is ordered by his lord the earl to solve a murder which might have repurcussions not just for him but for the future of the realm. Edwin is terrified but he must obey; he takes on the challenge and learns more until he uncovers the horrific secret which has been dead and buried for fifteen years, a secret which might kill them all - and realises there are some questions to which he might not wish to know the answers.

    They were nonetheless one of the longest-lasting, for their state survived Charlemagne's conquest in 774, and was the core of the medieval kingdom of Italy. The incompleteness of their conquest of Italy was also one of the root causes of Italian division for over 1300 years after their arrival. But they present a challenge to the historian, for most of the evidence for them dates to the last half-century of their independence, up to 774, a period in which Langobard Italy was a coherent and apparently tightly-governed state by early medieval standards. How they reached this from the incoherent and disorganised situation visible in late sixth-century Italy is still a matter of debate. The historians and archaeologists who contribute to this volume discuss Langobard archaeology and material culture both before and after their invasion, Langobard language, political organisation, the church, social structures, family structures, and urban economy. It is thus an important and up to date starting point for future research on early medieval Italy. Contributors: G. AUSENDA, S. BARNISH, S. BRATHER, T.S. BROWN, N. CHRISTIE, M. COSTAMBEYS, P. DELOGU, D. GREEN, W. HAUBRICHS, J. HENNING, B. WARD-PERKINS, C. WICKHAM.

    A few years later, Roger is dead and Aislinn is forced to marry his younger brother, Garrett. The reserved, scholarly Garrett cannot compare to the golden knight of Aislinn's cherished dreams. A skilled weaver, but unable to read or write, she spurns both Garrett and his scholarly pursuits. As artistic temperament and intellect collide, Garrett retreats to his books while Aislinn begins a new tapestry designed to taunt him with her love for his dead brother. Drawn together by a series of mysterious attacks on their estates, they discover intriguing qualities about each other, and although they both deny it, a growing physical attraction. Aislinn and Garrett discover the threads of love binding them together are stronger than any chains others can devise.

    The period saw significant changes in scientific and philosophical approaches to animals as well as their representation in art.Animals were omnipresent in medieval everyday life. They had enormous importance for medieval agriculture and trade and were also hunted for food and used in popular entertainments. At the same time, animals were kept as pets and used to display their owner's status, while medieval religion attributed complex symbolic meanings to animals.As with all the volumes in the illustrated Cultural History of Animals, this volume presents an overview of the period and continues with essays on the position of animals in contemporary Symbolism, Hunting, Domestication, Sports and Entertainment, Science, Philosophy, and Art.Volume 2 in the Cultural History of Animals edited by Linda Kalof and Brigitte ReslContents:Introduction. Animals in culture, ca. 1000-ca. 1400 --1. Good creation and demonic illusions : the medieval universe of creatures / Sophie Page --2. Medieval hunting / An Smets and Baudouin van den Abeele --3. From forest to farm and town : domestic animals from ca. 1000 to ca. 1450 / Esther Pascua --4. Animals in medieval sports, entertainment, and menageries / Lisa J. Kiser --5. Like a book written by God's finger : animals showing the path toward God / Pieter Beullens --6. Animals and anthropology in medieval philosophy / Pieter de Leemans and Matthew Klemm --7. Beyond the ark : animals in medieval art / Brigitte Resl.

    Paul Getty Museum’s holdings in German and Central European manuscripts from the ninth to the eighteenth century. This book showcases full-color reproductions of masterpieces from such works as Carolingian manuscripts of the ninth century; several sumptuously illuminated Ottonian texts from the late tenth and early eleventh centuries; two of the most celebrated examples of Romanesque illumination: the Helmarshausen Gospel book from the 1120s and the Stammheim Missal, made around 1170 for Saint Michael’s monastery in Hildesheim; The Life of the Blessed Hedwig from 1353, and the only known illuminations by the Cologne painter called the Master of Saint Veronica, ca. 1400. It also illustrates many richly colored illuminations from such manuscripts as a luxury psalter made in Würzburg, dating from the mid-thirteenth century; a copy of Rudolf von Ems’s Weltchronik, produced in the early fifteenth century; and chivalric and dynastic manuscripts from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries.

    Over forty years from 1066, England was traumatised and transformed. The Anglo-Saxon ruling class was eliminated, foreign elites took control of Church and State, and England's entire political, social and cultural orientation was changed. Out of the upheaval which followed the Battle of Hastings, a new kind of Englishness emerged and the priorities of England's new rulers set the kingdom on the political course it was to follow for the rest of the Middle Ages. However, the Norman Conquest was more than a purely English phenomenon, for Wales, Scotland and Normandy were all deeply affected by it too. This book's broad sweep successfully encompasses these wider British and French perspectives to offer a fresh, clear and concise introduction to the events which propelled the two nations into the Middle Ages and dramatically altered the course of history.

    In Women and Aristocratic Culture in the Carolingian World, Valerie L. Garver offers a fresh appraisal of the cultural and social history of eighth- and ninth-century women. Examining changes in women's lives and in the ways others perceived women during the early Middle Ages, she shows that lay and religious women, despite their legal and social constrictions, played integral roles in Carolingian society.Garver's innovative book employs an especially wide range of sources, both textual and material, which she uses to construct a more complex and nuanced impression of aristocratic women than we've seen before. She looks at the importance of female beauty and adornment; the family and the construction of identities and collective memory; education and moral exemplarity; wealth, hospitality and domestic management; textile work, and the lifecycle of elite Carolingian women.Her interdisciplinary approach makes deft use of canons of church councils, chronicles, charters, polyptychs, capitularies, letters, poetry, exegesis, liturgy, inventories, hagiography, memorial books, artworks, archaeological remains, and textiles. Ultimately, Women and Aristocratic Culture in the Carolingian World underlines the centrality of the Carolingian era to the reshaping of antique ideas and the development of lasting social norms.

    

    An excellent book and a delight to read, written with panache and entirely convincing.' Professor PETER COSS, Cardiff University. This book takes us into the world of the medieval cook, from the chefs in the great medieval courts and aristocratic households catering for huge feasts, to the peasant wife attempting to feed her family from scarce resources, from cooking at street stalls to working as hired caterers for private functions. It shows how they were presented in the art, literature and moral commentary of the period (valued on some grounds, despised on others), how they functioned, and how they coped with the limitations and the expectations which faced them in different social settings. Particular use is made of their frequent appearance in the margins of illuminated manuscript, whether as decoration, or as a teaching tool.

    The battles took place on terrain Jacobsen knows well. . . Recommended.”—Choice“Jacobsen provides an operational history of Justinian’s campaign. Throughout he traces the military strategies and tactical intrigues of leaders such as the Roman general Belisarius and the Goth leader Totila.”—Publishers Weekly“Jacobsen knows the sites he writes about, he has read Procopius diligently . . . and his military reconstruction can be faulted only in attributing to both sides rather better command and control than the ancient armies could generally manage. . . . Jacobsen has offered wargamers a tool they will appreciate.”—The Classical ReviewA period of stability in the early sixth century A.D. gave the Eastern Roman emperor Justinian an opportunity to recapture parts of the Western Empire which had been lost to invading barbarians in the preceding centuries. The climactic conflict over Italy between 535 and 554—the Gothic War—decided the political future of Europe, holding in its balance the possibility that the Roman Empire might rise again. While large portions of the original territory of the ancient Roman Empire were recaptured, the Eastern Empire was incapable of retaining much of its hard-won advances, and soon the empire once again retracted. As a result of the Gothic War, Italy was invaded by the Lombards who began their important kingdom, the Franks began transforming Gaul into France, and without any major force remaining in North Africa, that territory was quickly overrun by the first wave of Muslim expansion in the ensuing century. Written as a general overview of this critical period, The Gothic War: Justinian’s Campaign to Reclaim Italy opens with a history of the conflict with Persia and the great Roman general Belisarius’s successful conquest of the Vandals in North Africa. After an account of the Ostrogothic tribe and their history, the campaigns of the long war for Italy are described in detail, including the three sieges of Rome, which turned the great city from a bustling metropolis into a desolate ruin. In addition to Belisarius, the Gothic War featured many of history’s most colorful antagonists, including Rome’s Narses the Eunuch, and the Goths’ ruthless and brilliant tactician, Totila. Two appendices provide information about the armies of the Romans and Ostrogoths, including their organization, weapons, and tactics, all of which changed over the course of the war.

    This was not achieved through empire building, conquest, large armies, treaties, marriage alliances, trade or any of the other traditional means of exercising power. Indeed England was successful in few of these. Instead she based her power and eventual supremacy on the creation of a standing professional navy which firstly would control her coasts and those of her rivals, and then threaten their trade around the world. This emergence of a sea-power brought with it revolutionary ship designs and new weapon-fits, all with the object of making English warships feared on the seas in which they sailed. Along with this came the absorption of new navigational skills and a breed of sailor who fought for his living. Indeed, the English were able to harness the avarice of the merchant and the ferocity of the pirate to the needs of the state to create seamen who feared God and little else. Men schooled as corsairs rose to command the state's navy and their background and self-belief defeated all who came against them. This is their story; the story of how seizing command of the sea with violent intent led to the birth of the greatest sea borne empire the world has ever seen.

    Historians, literary historians, and art historians reflect upon the meaning of urban space as it evolved since ca. 1200, offering new case studies, exploring specific approaches by artists and poets, and investigating how the various social classes interacted with each other within the city over time. Gender issues and legal aspects play as important roles as economic, religious, and architectural elements.

    A collaborative history from leading scholars, covering the key debates and issues Surveys the building blocks of political society, and considers whether there were fundamental differences across Britain and Ireland Considers potential factors for change, including the economy, Christianisation, and the Vikings

    

    This fascinating volume is the first to examine and celebrate the achievements of medieval draftsmen in depth. It reproduces rarely seen leaves from more than fifty manuscripts dating from the 9th to the early 14th century. In the accompanying texts, Melanie Holcomb and other experts in the field consider the techniques, uses, and aesthetics of medieval drawings, casting light on their critical role in the intellectual life of the Middle Ages.

    Part of the popular series, Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture, this expansive volume enables a fundamental understanding of Arthurian literature and explores why it is still integral to contemporary culture. Offers a comprehensive survey from the earliest to the most recent works Features an impressive range of well-known international contributors Examines contemporary additions to the Arthurian canon, including film and computer games Underscores an understanding of Arthurian literature as fundamental to western literary tradition

    Richard Pfaff constructs a history of the worship carried out in churches - cathedral, monastic, or parish - primarily through the surviving manuscripts of service books, and sets this within the context of the wider political, ecclesiastical, and cultural history of the period. The main focus is on the mass and daily office, treated both chronologically and by type, the liturgies of each religious order and each secular 'use' being studied individually. Furthermore, hagiographical and historiographical themes - respectively, which saints are prominent in a given witness and how the labors of scholars over the last century and a half have both furthered and, in some cases, impeded our understandings - are explored throughout. The book thus provides both a narrative account and a reference tool of permanent value.

    The ninth century gave birth to a new revival of secular biography, which has come to be recognized as one of the brightest bands in the spectrum of Carolingian historical writing. This collection brings together, for the first time in one volume, the five royal/imperial biographies written during the Carolingian period.Thomas F. X. Noble's new English translations of these five important texts--Einhard's Life of Emperor Charles, Notker's Deeds of Charles the Great, Ermoldus Nigellus's Poem in Honor of Louis, Thegan's Deeds of Emperor Louis, and the Life of Louis by "the Astronomer"--are each accompanied by a short introduction and a note on "Essential Reading." Offering details on matters of style, sources used by the author, and the influence, if any, exerted by the text, Noble provides a context for each translation without compromising the author's intended voice. By "reuniting" these five essential medieval texts in an English translation, this volume makes these voices accessible to scholars and non-experts alike throughout the Anglophone world.

    David Hiley describes the church services in which chant is performed, takes the reader through the church year, explains what Latin texts were used, and, taking Worcester Cathedral as an example, describes the buildings in which it was sung. The history of chant is traced from its beginnings in the early centuries of Christianity, through the Middle Ages, the revisions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the restoration in the nineteenth and twentieth. Using numerous music examples, the book shows how chants are made and how they were notated. An indispensable guide for all those interested in the fascinating world of Gregorian chant.

    Territorial grabbing. Blood-soaked battles. Saints and sinners. The Middle Ages had it all! Discover one of the most exciting periods in human history in The Timeline of Medieval Warfare. This comprehensive book provides a unique at-a-glance historical overview of the Middle Ages from 774 AD to 1492. From the Vikings and the Crusades, to the Turks and the European Kings, you’ll discover how warfare changed throughout the centuries. Get a unique view of major medieval events in context with what was happening around the world at the time through a fact-packed running timeline on each page, detailing all of the most important events, discoveries, people, and conflicts. Experience some of the world’s greatest battles—the Crusades, the Hundred Years’ War, the Wars of the Roses, and the battle of Hastings—through historical anecdotes and artwork. Learn all about crossbows, armed horsemen, handcannons, gunpowder, warships, and naval fleets, and the effect warfare ultimately had on how history unfolded. Richly illustrated throughout with medieval artwork, tapestries, illustrations, diagrams of military camps, weaponry, and modern photographs of key locations.

    The narrative format, suspenseful action, and path navigation keep readers reading!

    She spent the last thirty years of her life in her cell, doing penance for her sins, fending off attacks by the devil, and instructing women in religion and handiwork through its one small window. Hathumoda, the daughter of a noble Saxon couple whose progeny would establish the first German empire, became abbess of a similar community of women when she was twelve years old. She too spent the rest of her life there, dying at the age of thirty-four in the course of an epidemic that swept across northwestern Europe. In spite of their confinement, both women made so great an impression on those who knew them that substantial biographies appeared within a few years of their deaths. In the growing field of early medieval texts in translation, this book presents the first full English translations of the Lives of Liutbirga of Wendhausen, the first anchoress in Saxony, and Hathumoda, the first abbess of Gandersheim. The introduction and notes tell the story of the remarkable survival and transmission of the Lives and describe the ninth-century Saxon world that produced them and their authors. Although praised by their biographers for their holiness, Liutbirga and Hathumoda are not presented primarily as wonder-working saints, but as real flesh-and-blood women, pursuing sanctity in a world driven by family and ecclesiastical politics as much as spirituality. Histories of the women's families as well as memorials to their heroines, the Lives of Liutbirga and Hathumoda shed new light on a vibrant corner of Christian Europe in the century after Charlemagne.ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR: Frederick S. Paxton is Brigida Pacchiani Ardenghi Professor of History at Connecticut College. He is the author of several works including The Cluniac Death Ritual in the Central Middle Ages (forthcoming) and Christianizing Death: The Creation of a Ritual Process in Early Medieval Europe.PRAISE FOR THE BOOK:"This volume presents the stories of two very interesting Saxon figures. . . . The translator has presented the texts in a comfortably readable English. . . . These well-translated texts, not to mention the lengthy introduction, extensive bibliography, and other helpful materials, should be of value for anyone studying female saints' lives and for exploring the world of Saxon Christianity." -- J.S., Magistra"The two historical works are important for the study of women's spirituality in the Middle Ages. They are important for the life of canonesses and medieval family monasticism. These two works are important because of the transition of Saxon culture to Frankish culture and life. Finally, the two Lives move us from religious life to social transformation."--Cyprian Davis, American Benedictine Review"Frederick S. Paxton is to be thanked for making these two difficult texts . . . accessible to a wider readership in plain and readable English. . . . [T]he book's 79-page introduction does an excellent job of introducing and contextualizing the texts, and points the reader in the direction of related work. . . . By providing an expert and thoroughly contextualized entr�e into a world often shrouded in the arcane of Germanophone historiography, Paxton extends our understanding of Carolingian Saxony even as he introduces it."--Simon MacLean, English Historical Review"In making [these books] available in such a scholarly translation he has performed a great service for both students and their teachers."--Sarah Hamilton, Journal of Ecclesiastical History"The two English translations of the Lives of Liutbirga and Hathumoda are excellent and pleasant to read."--Sibylle Jefferis, Journal of English and Germanic Philology

    In doing so, this book examines the definition of al-Andalus literary borders, the reconstruction of which navigates between traditional generic formulations and actual political, military and cultural challenges. By looking at a variety of genres, the book shows that literature aiming to recall and define al-Andalus expresses a series of symbolic literary objects more than a geographic and political entity fixed in a single time and place. Looking Back at al-Andalus offers a unique examination into the role of memory, language, and subjectivity in presenting a series of interpretations of what al-Andalus represented to different writers at different historical-cultural moments."

    What does it mean to create and watch a "medieval film"? What is a medieval film and why are they successful?This is the first work that attempts to answer these questions, drawing, for instance, on film theory, postcolonial theory, cultural studies, and the growing body of work on medievalism. Contributors investigate British, German, Italian, Australian, French, Swedish, and American film, exploring topics such translation, temporality, film noir, framing, and period film, and find the medieval lurking in unexpected corners. In addition, it provides in-depth studies of individual films from different countries including The Birth of a Nation to Nosferatu, and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.Medieval Film will be of interest to medievalists working in disciplines including literature, history, and art history, and to scholars working on film and in cultural studies. It will also be of interest to undergraduates, postgraduates, and to an informed enthusiast in film and/or medieval culture.

    Badir argues that the medieval Magdalene story was not discarded as part of Reformation iconoclasm, but was enthusiastically embraced by English writers and artists and retold in a wide array of genres. This rich study bridges the historical division between medieval and early modern culture by showing the ways in which Protestant writers, as well as Catholics, used the medieval stories, art, and symbolism related to the biblical Magdalene as resources for thinking about the role of the affective and erotic in Christian devotion. Their literary and artistic glosses protected a range of religious devotional practices and lent embodied, tangible form to the God of the Reformation. They employed the Magdalene figure to articulate religious experience by means of a poetics that could avoid controversial questions of religious art while exploring the potency and appeal of the beautiful. The Maudlin Impression  is a literary history of imitation and invention. It participates in the "religious turn" in early modern studies by demonstrating the resilience of a single topos across time and across changing Christian beliefs."In this historically rich and theoretically informed study, Patricia Badir argues that the medieval figure of Mary Magdalene serves as a 'site of memory' for early modern writers, enabling them both to reflect on what has been lost in the aftermath of the Reformation and to fashion their own Protestant and Counter-Reformation models of piety, repentance, mourning, and holiness. Drawing from poems, plays, sermons, homilies, biographies, and paintings, Badir convincingly demonstrates the remarkable resiliency and flexibility of the Magdalene trope in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Her fascinating narrative traces the evolution of the Magdalene from the Reformation to the Restoration and raises provocative questions about the mnemonic function of religious art, the power of beautiful images in an iconoclastic culture, and the place of affect, longing, and embodiment in a Protestant poetics." --Huston Diehl, University of Iowa"In the aftermath of the Reformation, the English wrote about Mary Magdalene. Sometimes she belongs to a specifically Protestant poetics: the gaudy Catholic whore turned Reformed penitent. Yet most post-Reformation Magdalenes resist Catholic-or-Protestant pigeonholing; instead, all unexpectedly, Badir's quick-eyed scholarship discloses continuities, convergences, recuperations. . . . [Her] book luminously teaches the all-important lesson that the Reformation fought in polemics was not necessarily the Reformation found in poetry." --Debora Shuger, University of California, Los Angeles"A marvelously textured account from an early modern perspective of an alluring sacred figure about whom there has recently been a Renaissance of cultural interest--popular as well as scholarly. Badir subtly explicates how the theological and artistic issues concerning the devotional depiction of the Magdalene go to the core of Christian representational practice, provoking, all along the way, questions about gender, desire, and sacred eroticism." --Richard Rambuss, Emory University

    The texts highlight the continuities with the medieval Latin West while simultaneously emphasizing the ways in which Italy was exceptional, particularly for its cities that drove Mediterranean trade, its new communal forms of government, the impact of the papacy's temporal claims on the central peninsula, and the richly textured religious life of the mainland and its islands.A unique feature of this volume is its incorporation of the southern part of the peninsula and Sicily--the glittering Norman court at Palermo, the multicultural emporium of the south, and the kingdoms of Frederick II--into a larger narrative of Italian history. Including Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, and Lombard sources, the documents speak in ethnically and religiously differentiated voices, while providing wider chronological and geographical coverage than previously available.Rich in interdisciplinary texts and organized to enable the reader to focus by specific region, topic, or period, this is a volume that will be an essential resource for anyone with a professional or private interest in the history, religion, literature, politics, and built environment of Italy from ca. 1000 to 1400.

    All assumed a woman would marry and thus the book concentrates on women s family life. The introduction establishes the historical framework within which the jurists worked. A chapter on Qur n verses devoted to women s lives is followed by chapters on marriage and divorce which compare the views of jurists during the formative period. The fourth chapter describes the evolution from the formative to the classical periods. The fifth uses material from both periods to describe the array of legal opinion about other aspects of women s lives in and outside their homes. Throughout, jurists opinions are juxtaposed with relevant quotations from contemporaneous ad th collections."

    But how became the patron saint of England in the first place has always been a mystery. He was not English, nor was his principal shrine there - the usual criteria for national patronage; yet his status and fame have eclipsed all others. Instead, it was Edward III's use of the saint in his wars against the French that really established him as a patron and protector of the king. Unlike other such saints, however, George was enthusiastically adopted by other English people to signify their membership in the "community of the realm". This book traces the origins and growth of his cult, arguing that, especially after Edward's death, George came to represent a "good" politics (in this case, the shared prosecution of a war with spoils for everyone) and could be used to rebuke subsequent kings for their poor governance. Most kings came to realize this fact, and venerated St. George in order to prove their worthiness to hold their office. This political dimension of the cult never completely displaced the devotional one, but it was so strong that St. George survived the Reformation as a national symbol - one that grows ever more important in the wake of devolution and the recovery of a specifically English identity. JONATHAN GOOD is Associate Professor of History at Reinhardt College.

    The collection was designed to be accessible and entertaining, as well as orthodox, to counter the success of Lollard preaching, and taught both the priests who used the sermons, as well as their audiences, the fundamentals of the Christian faith and doctrine, illustrated by many stories. The Festial is is the only English sermon collection to be printed in England before the Reformation and is probably the most frequently printed work of its time, before religious change made it unacceptable. This new edition, in two volumes with full editorial apparatus, supersedes the incomplete EETS edition by Theodor Erbe (E.S. 96 (1905)). Volume 1 contains the Introduction and the first half of the text; Volume 2 (to be published in 2010) will contain the remainder of the text, Explanatory Notes, and Glossary.

    900 to 1350, widening his perspective to include a discussion of the emergence of the medieval state and state formation in the Middle Ages in general. The primary objective is to examine Norway as a case that may serve to illuminate some general problems of European state formation in the period, problems related both to the formation of the European system of independent kingdoms within a common cultural framework and to the inner development of these kingdoms. The volume furthermore examines the changes that took place in the military, social-economical, ideological, legal and administrative fields between the first formation of the kingdom and the early fourteenth century which, according to common opinion, represents a peak in the development of a Norwegian state.The volume constitutes a vivid and compelling feat, offering a fresh and innovative approach to an important chapter in the history of Norway, while also casting new light on developments in the larger context of European history.

    Sensuous, spiritual, and ethereal, this selection of works by the prominent Andalusian Sufi mystic and poet Abū al-Hasan al-Shushtarī (1212-1269) will delight everyone, whether or not they are devotees of Islamic literature.

    Much recent scholarship has sought to identify and strip away later intellectual categories and seek a fresh understanding of medieval culture and society on its own terms. That approach is reflected in the articles in this volume on questions such as the end of late antiquity, reform, the crusades, the family, chivalric culture, Romanesque and Gothic architecture, Christianization, and heresy. It addresses key themes such as sexuality, gender, and power and class. More traditional topics are also explored including economic and demographic expansion and change, urban politics, kingship, hospitals, education, and scholasticism. The volume is vital for European specialists and an important resource for comparative world history.

    Describing the fighting techniques of soldiers in what has been characterized as the 'age of chivalry', this book shows the methods by which armies gained and lost ascendancy on the battlefield.