46 color illustrations.

    How have the crusades contributed to Islamist rage and terrorism today? Were the crusades the Christian equivalent of modern jihad? In this sweeping yet crisp history, Thomas F. Madden offers a brilliant and compelling narrative of the crusades and their contemporary relevance. With a cry of "God wills it!" medieval knights ushered in a new era in European history. Across Europe a wave of pious enthusiasm led many thousands to leave their homes, family, and friends to march to distant lands in a great struggle for Christ. Yet the crusades were more than simply a holy war. They represent a synthesis of attitudes and values that were uniquely medieval so medieval, in fact, that the crusading movement is rarely understood today. Placing all the major crusades within the medieval social, economic, religious, and intellectual environments that gave birth to the movement and nurtured it for centuries, Madden brings the distant medieval world vividly to life. From Palestine and Europe's farthest reaches, each crusade is recounted in a clear, concise narrative. The author gives special attention as well to the crusades' effects on the Islamic world and the Christian Byzantine East. More information is available on the author's website."

    It’s a fun way to learn to read and as a supplement for activity books for childrenFrom Hamlet to Romeo and Juliet to A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare's celebrated works have touched people around the world. Aliki combines literature, history, biography, archaeology, and architecture in this richly detailed and meticulously researched introduction to Shakespeare's world-his life in Elizabethan times, the theater world, and the Globe, for which he wrote his plays. Then she brings history full circle to the present-day reconstruction of the Globe theater. .

    Anyone caught by surprise in the open fields or depths of the woods would see a bizarre procession of demons, giants, hounds, ladies of the night, soldiers, and knights, some covered in blood and others carrying their heads beneath their arms. This was the Wild or Infernal Hunt, the host of the damned, the phantom army of the night--a theme that still inspires poets, writers, and painters to this day. Millennia older than Christianity, this pagan belief was employed by the church to spread their doctrine, with the shapeshifters' and giants of the pagan nightly processions becoming sinners led by demons seeking out unwary souls to add to their retinues. Myth or legend, it represents a belief that has deep roots in Europe, particularly Celtic and Scandinavian countries. The first scholar to fully examine this myth in each of its myriad forms, Claude Lecouteux strips away the Christian gloss and shows how the Wild Hunt was an integral part of the pagan worldview and the structure of their societies. Additionally, he looks at how secret societies of medieval Europe reenacted these ghostly processions through cult rituals culminating in masquerades and carnival-like cavalcades often associated with astral doubles, visions of the afterlife, belief in multiple souls, and prophecies of impending death. He reveals how the nearly infinite variations of this myth are a still living, evolving tradition that offers us a window into the world in which our ancestors lived.

    David Macaulay's first book, CATHEDRAL, introduced readers around the world to his unique gift for presenting architecture and technology in simple terms, and for demystifying even the most complex of concepts. CATHEDRAL received a Caldecott Honor Medal and is now considered a classic. BUILDING THE BOOK CATHEDRAL includes the content of CATHEDRAL in its entirety. Here Macaulay traces the evolution of his creative process in "building" that first book, from the initial concept to the finished drawings. He introduces the basic elements of structure and sequence and explains why one angle of a drawing may be better for conveying an idea than another. He describes how perspective, scale, and contrast can be used to connect a reader with concepts, and how placement of a picture on a page can make a difference in the way information is communicated. Building the Book Cathedral provides an opportunity to examine Macaulay's unique problem-solving skills as he looks back over two and a half decades at the book that launched his distinguished career.

    -- Each title covers a huge range of information-- Clear text and lively, labeled illustrations and pictures introduce children to the history of the world-- Ancient World covers 10,000 BC - 500 AD-- Medieval World covers 500 AD - 1500 AD-- The Last 500 Years covers 1500 AD - present-- Timelines of World History is an indispensable guide to what happened when and where in the world, with plenty of illustrations and covers over 3,500 dates

    The study places Richard in Europe, the Mediterranean and Palestine and demonstrates that few rulers had more enemies or more influence. The paperback edition includes an updated bibliography.

    The desire to set aside certain periods of time to mark their significance is a transhistorical, transcultural phenomena. Virtually all cultures have marked special days or periods: the feast day of a saint, the celebration of a historical event, the turning of a season, a period of fasting, the birthday of an important historical figure. Around these days a rich body of traditions, beliefs, and superstitions have grown up, many of them only half-remembered today. Now, for the first time, Bonnie Blackburn and Leofranc Holford-Strevens combine this body of knowledge with a wide-ranging survey of calendars across cultures in an authoritative and engaging one-volume reference work. The first section of The Oxford Companion to the Year is a day-by-day survey of the calendar year, revealing the history, literature, legend, and lore associated with each season, month, and day. The second part provides a broader study of time-reckoning: historical and modern calendars, religious and civil, are explained, with handy tables for the conversion of dates between various systems and a helpful index to facilitate speedy reference. The Oxford Companion to the Year is a unique and uniquely delightful reference source, an indispensable aid for all historians and antiquarians, and a rich mine of information and inspiration for browsers.

    

    Outside, the civil war of 1216 rages through the English countryside, throwing into jeopardy all that its people hold dear. As the turmoil outside reaches a peak, Miriel itches to break free from her life inside as a religious novice. She plots to escape but her plans screech to a halt when a soldier of fortune, a half-dead Nicholas de Caen appears at the convent door. Once held captive by royalist troops, he has managed to escape their clutches with part of the royal regalia, but his flight has sapped all life from him.Miriel nurses him with the vigor she has had suppressed in her imprisonment, and revives Nicholas, in whom she recognizes her own stubborn pride and independence. He is not only her kindred spirit, he is also her only way out. So upon his recovery and release, Miriel coerces her former patient into taking her with him. Never one for nostalgia, Miriel has only seen Nicholas as a means of escape, and once out of the convent, the two part on bad terms. From this point forward, misfortune will plague Miriel's life until she runs into a new Nicholas, this time a famous soldier and merchant. Can the two now see past their pride and into each other's souls, formerly one and the same? Or have the ravages of a bloody war clouded their sight?The critically-acclaimed author of The Love Knot and The Champion, Elizabeth Chadwick once again sheds light on the blood-stained Middle Ages by breathing life into legendary characters in The Marsh King's Daughter.

    Was life too short anyway, and the Church too disapproving, to admit suicide? And how is the historian supposed to find out? In addressing these questions Alexander Murray takes the reader on a remarkable odyssey through medieval law, social life, literature, and religion. He examines a wide range of suicides and explores how the living reacted to them--a topic that will be examined in more detail in Volumes II and III of this masterly trilogy.

    Starting with the prehistoric period, from which survives the famous settlement of Skara Brae, it goes on to discuss the flowering of the Celtic Church in the sixth and seventh centuries and the subsequent invasion by the Vikings, who settled there in large numbers and established a powerful Norse earldom. Sites and remains to be explored include settlements from the stone age, stone circles and burials from the bronze age, iron-age brochs, Viking castles, the magnificent cathedral of St Magnus, Renaissance palaces, a Martello tower from the Napoleonic Wars and numerous remains from the Second World War. This new edition has been revised and updated, and includes a new chapter that sheds light on recent findings.

    Elizabeth de Burgh, nee Elizabeth de Clare, (1295-1360) led a tumultuous early life: an arranged marriage, an abduction leading to a clandestine second marriage, a forced third marriage to a man who died a traitor. Afterwards, empowered by a vow of chastity to insure her independence, Elizabeth emerged as a capable administrator of her vast estates, a concerned mother and grandmother, a shrewd builder of social and political networks, and a good friend. She expressed her piety by many charitable initiatives, culminating in the foundation of Clare College, Cambridge University, a demonstration of her devotion to God and to learning. This book is the first biography of this remarkable woman. Frances Underhill shows how deeply gender issues influenced her life and how admirably Elizabeth rose above them to impact the lives of others. Hedged in by gender barriers, Underhill reveals, Elizabeth achieved prestige among her contemporaries and left a lasting legacy after her death.

    But often overlooked is the fact that ultimately the Crucifixion is a scene of capital punishment. Mitchell Merback reconstructs the religious, legal, and historical context of the Crucifixion and of other images of public torture. The result is a fascinating account of a time when criminal justice and religion were entirely interrelated and punishment was a visual spectacle devoured by a popular audience.Merback compares the images of Christ's Crucifixion with those of the two thieves who met their fate beside Jesus. In paintings by well-known Northern European masters and provincial painters alike, Merback finds the two thieves subjected to incredible cruelty, cruelty that artists could not depict in their scenes of Christ's Crucifixion because of theological requirements. Through these representations Merback explores the ways audiences in early modern Europe understood images of physical suffering and execution. The frequently shocking works also provide a perspective from which Merback examines the live spectacle of public torture and execution and how audiences were encouraged by the Church and the State to react to the experience. Throughout, Merback traces the intricate and extraordinary connections among religious art, devotional practice, bodily pain, punishment, and judicial spectatorship.Keenly aware of the difficulties involved in discussing images of atrocious violence but determined to make them historically comprehensible, Merback has written an informed and provocative study that reveals the rituals of medieval criminal justice and the visual experiences they engendered.

    Thietmar is arguably the most important witness to the early history of Poland, and his detailed descriptions of Slavic folklore are the earliest on record. He offers striking portraits of his contemporaries, revealing opinions from politics to women's fashion.

    And the King of France loved him as his own soul; and they loved each other so much that the King of England was absolutely astonished at the vehement love between them and marveled at what it could mean."Public avowals of love between men were common from antiquity through the Middle Ages. What do these expressions leave to interpretation? An extraordinary amount, as Stephen Jaeger demonstrates.Unlike current efforts to read medieval culture through modern mores, Stephen Jaeger contends that love and sex in the Middle Ages relate to each other very differently than in the postmedieval period. Love was not only a mode of feeling and desiring, or an exclusively private sentiment, but a way of behaving and a social ideal. It was a form of aristocratic self-representation, its social function to show forth virtue in lovers, to raise their inner worth, to increase their honor and enhance their reputation. To judge from the number of royal love relationships documented, it seems normal, rather than exceptional, that a king loved his favorites, and the courtiers and advisors, clerical and lay, loved their superiors and each other.Jaeger makes an elaborate, accessible, and certain to be controversial, case for the centrality of friendship and love as aristocratic lay, clerical, and monastic ideals. Ennobling Love is a magisterial work, a book that charts the social constructions of passion and sexuality in our own times, no less than in the Middle Ages.

    Cantor, one of the world's most distinguished medieval scholars. From the fall of Rome to the beginning of the Renaissance, this comprehensive work presents the full pageant of medieval times across the entire Old World, with articles on the New World, Africa, and the Far East as well. Twenty major essays anchor the text while more than 600 entries written by a coterie of the world's best medieval historians and writers provide specific information on everything from the Abbadid Dynasty to the Seal of Zug. Interspersed throughout are maps, diagrams, and more than 250 color and black-and-white illustrations detailing all the elements of everyday life: dress, locales, edifices, ceremonies, customs, military tactics, travel, home life, commerce, religion, and royalty. And at every opportunity, material is compared with the modern life through "then and now" images, an ingenious tool that sheds new light on the origins of modern social and political phenomena. Interest in the Middle Ages is stronger than ever as it becomes more and more evident that the modern period has much more in common with the medieval world than previously imagined. Authoritative, entertaining, and full of the excitement and grandeur of a remarkable period in human history, The Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages is an indispensable home reference work that will---with every page---deliver readers into the heart of the Middle Ages.

    CHOICE He places the invasion in a broad context. He outlines the Anglo-Scandinavian nature of the English kingdom in the eleventh century, traces the careers of the major leaders, and devotes a chapter each to the English and Norwegian military systems. JOURNAL OF MILITARY HISTORY William the Conqueror's invasion in 1066 was not the only attack on England that year. On September 25, 1066, less than three weeks before William defeated King Harold II Godwinson at the battle of Hastings, that same Harold had been victorious over his other opponent of 1066, King Haraldr Hardradi of Norway at the battle of Stamford Bridge. It was an impressive victory, driving an invading army of Norwegians from the earldom of Northumbria; but it was to cost Harold dear. In telling the story of this neglected battle, Kelly DeVries traces the rise and fall of a family of English warlords, the Godwins, as well as that of the equally impressive Norwegian warlord Hardradi.KELLY DEVRIES is Associate Professor, Department of History, Loyola College in Maryland.

    The work, an unparalleled achievement of Jewish thought, is devoted to a demonstration that the Torah, properly understood, is identical to true philosophy.

    These were also the centuries in which nomadic and military empires arose in the heart of Asia, impinging on the history of adjacent, well-established civilizations and cultures (China, India, Islamic Western Asia and Christian eastern and central Europe) to an unparalleled extent. Lamaist Buddhism established itself inthe Mongolian region and in Tibet and Islam among the Turkish people of Transoxania, southern Siberia and Xinjiang. It was in Eastern Europe, above all in Russia, that the Turco-Mongol Golden Horde was to have a major, enduring influence on the course of the region's history.

    But they also meant the last things that would come to each individual separately--not just the place, Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory, to which their souls would go but also the accounting, the calling to reckoning, that would come at the end of life. At different periods in the Middle Ages one or the other of these sorts of "last things" tended to be dominant, but both coexisted throughout. In "Last Things," Caroline Walker Bynum and Paul Freedman bring together eleven essays that focus on the competing eschatologies of the Middle Ages and on the ways in which they expose different sensibilities, different theories of the human person, and very different understandings of the body, of time, of the end. Exploring such themes as the significance of dying and the afterlife, apocalyptic time, and the eschatological imagination, each essay in the volume enriches our understanding of the eschatological awarenesses of the European Middle Ages. Caroline Walker Bynum is Professor of Medieval History at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. She is the author and editor of numerous books, including "The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336," "Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women," and "Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond," winner of the Award for Excellence in the Historical Study of Religion from the American Academy of Religion. Paul Freedman is Professor of History at Yale University. He is the author of various articles and books, including "Images of the Medieval Peasant" and "The Origins of Peasant Servitude in Medieval Catalonia." The Middle Ages Series 1999 376 pages 6 1/8 x 9 1/4 17 illus. ISBN 978-0-8122-1702-5 Paper $29.95s 19.50 World Rights History, Religion Short copy: Eleven essays that focus on the competing eschatologies of the Middle Ages.Contents:Settling scores: eschatology in the Church of the Martyrs / Carole StrawThe decline of the empire of God: amnesty, penance, and the afterlife from late antiquity to the middle ages / Peter BrownFrom Jericho to Jerusalem: the violent transformation of Archbishop Engelbert of Cologne / Jacqueline E. JungFrom decay to splendor: body and pain in Bonvesin da la Riva's Book of the three scriptures / Manuele GragnolatiTime is short: the eschatology of the early Gaelic Church / Benjamin HudsonExodus and exile: Joachim of Fiore's Apocalyptic scenario / E. Randolph DanielArnau de Vilanova and the body at the end of the world / Clifford R. BackmanOf earthquakes, hail, frogs, and geography: plague and the investigation of the Apocalypse in the later middle ages / Laura A. SmollerCommunity among the saintly dead: Bernard of Clairvaux's Sermons for the Feast of All Saints / Anna HarrisonHeaven in view: the place of the elect in an illuminated book of hours / Harvey StahlThe limits of Apocalypse: eschatology, epistemology, and textuality in the Commedia and Piers plowman / Claudia Rattazzi Papka.

    In Aristocratic Women in Medieval France another model is put forth: women of the landholding elite--from countesses down to the wives of ordinary knights--had considerable rights, and exercised surprising power.The authors of the volume offer five case studies of women from the mid-eleventh through the thirteenth centuries, and from regions as diverse as Blois-Chartres, Champagne, Flanders, and Occitania. They show not only the diversity of life experiences these women enjoyed but the range of social and political roles open to them. The ecclesiastical and secular sources they mine confirm that women were regarded as full members of both their natal and affinal families, were never excluded from inheriting and controlling property, and did not have their share of family property limited to dowries. Women across France exchanged oaths for fiefs and assumed responsibilities for enfeoffed knights. As feudal lords, they settled disputes involving vassals, fortified castles, and even led troops into battle.Aristocratic Women in Medieval France clearly shows that it is no longer possible to depict well-born women as powerless in medieval society. Demonstrating the importance of aristocratic women in a period during which they have been too long assumed to have lacked influence, it forces us to reframe our understanding of the high Middle Ages.

    Chapters discuss: urban and rural settlements; surveying agriculture; industry; the military; the church; public and private architecture; arts and crafts; leisure pursuits; death and burial; and building techniques. This illustrated volume creates a portrait of the period, which should make interesting reading for all those interested in the Middle Ages, and in particular the Crusaders.

    Islam bridged Eurasia, western Europe, and North Africa. Vikings, with links to Scandinavia and Russia, had just arrived in North America. These and other peoples reached out to create links and put isolated cultures unwittingly in touch. John Man vividly captures these epochal events, and depicts the colorful peoples that defined the world's mix of stability and change, of isolation and contact. In an immensely learned portrayal, he traces enduring cultural strands that became part of the world as we know it today.In text, maps, and pictures, most in color, and drawing on the expertise of two dozen consultants, John Man has created a concise compendium of all the major cultures of the lost millennial world of 1000. In some cultures--Europe, Islam, China, and Japan--written records contain a vast range of materials, often revealing sharply focused details of life and personality. Here lie startling contrasts with today's world, and even foreshadowing of the future that are equally astonishing in their familiarity. For nonliterate cultures--in the United States, Southeast Asia, Polynesia, Africa--this book draws on a wealth of archeological research, some of it made available to nonspecialists for the first time.

    Such celebratory portraits of the Virgin were also common in Siena’s extensive subject territories, the contado. This richly illustrated book explores late medieval Sienese art—how it was created, commissioned, and understood by the citizens of Siena. Examining political, economic, and cultural relations between Siena and the contado, Diana Norman offers a new understanding of Marian art and its political function as an expression of civic ideology.Drawing on extensive unpublished archives, Norman reconstructs the circumstances surrounding the commission of Marian art in the three most prestigious locations of fourteenth-century Siena: the cathedral, the Palazzo Pubblico, and the hospital of Santa Maria della Scala. She analyzes similarly important commissions in the contado towns of Massa Marittima, Montalcino, and Montepulciano. Casting new light on such topics as the original site for the reliquary tomb of Saint Cerbone, patron saint of Massa Marittima, and the identity of the patrons of the Marian frescoes in the rural hermitage of San Leonardo al Lago, the author deepens our insight into the origins and meanings of Sienese art production of the late medieval period.