The nearly complete surviving illustrated manuscript, which was created in the Swabian Imperial Free City of Augsburg around 1550, is composed of 169 pages with large-format illustrations in gouache and watercolor depicting wondrous and often eerie celestial phenomena, constellations, conflagrations, and floods as well as other catastrophes and occurrences. It deals with events ranging from the creation of the world and incidents drawn from the Old Testament, ancient tradition, and medieval chronicles to those that took place in the immediate present of the book’s author and, with the illustrations of the visionary Book of Revelation, even includes the future end of the world. The surprisingly modern-looking, sometimes hallucinatory illustrations and the cursory descriptions of the Book of Miracles strikingly convey a unique view of the concerns and anxieties of the 16th century, of apocalyptic thinking and eschatological expectation. The present facsimile volume reproduces the Book of Miracles in its entirety for the first timeand thus makes one of the most important works of the German Renaissance finally available to art lovers and scholars. The introduction puts the codex in its cultural and historical context, and an extensive description of the manuscript and its miniatures, as well as a complete transcript of the text, accompany the facsimile in an appendix.

    Between these epochal events, many of the contours and patterns of English life that would endure for the next millennium were shaped. In this authoritative work, N. J. Higham and M. J. Ryan reexamine Anglo-Saxon England in the light of new research in disciplines as wide ranging as historical genetics, paleobotany, archaeology, literary studies, art history, and numismatics. The result is the definitive introduction to the Anglo-Saxon world, enhanced with a rich array of photographs, maps, genealogies, and other illustrations. The Anglo-Saxon period witnessed the birth of the English people, the establishment of Christianity, and the development of the English language. With an extraordinary cast of characters (Alfred the Great, the Venerable Bede, King Cnut), a long list of artistic and cultural achievements (Beowulf, the Sutton Hoo ship-burial finds, the Bayeux Tapestry), and multiple dramatic events (the Viking invasions, the Battle of Hastings), the Anglo-Saxon era lays legitimate claim to having been one of the most important in Western history.

    Both the recipes and the factbook part are based on finds, literary sources, other contemporary sources and experimental archaeology.In the first part of the book the authors presents the food of the Viking Age. They describe what one may have eaten during the Viking Age, how the food was prepared and the practices that surrounded eating the food. This chapter is based on the yet to be finished doctoral thesis by Daniel Serra, archaeological finds from the period across Scandinavia and a range of various other sources.The second part is a cookbook presented as a journey through Viking Age Scandinavia with 42 different recipes divided into seven geographical areas. The recipes are based upon archaeological finds and experimental archaeology bound together by the combined archaeological and culinary expertise of Daniel Serra and Hanna Tunberg. Almost all dishes can be cooked just as easily in the kitchen as out in a re-enactors camp.In addition to the background material and the actual cookbook, there are some very interesting appendixes. Not only do we include an Encyclopedic part, which act as a quick reference guide to both food and cooking equipment, there will also be a list of plant finds and a reference for translation of plants, fish birds and other ingredients between English, Latin, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and German.

    Tensions flare as a plot to overthrow the king is discovered.As the York forces gather to make one last effort to win the throne, will Blanche betray her king and her husband, Giles Beaufort?

    This ambitious history tells the fascinating story of the cult of the saints from its origins in the second-century days of the Christian martyrs to the Protestant Reformation. Robert Bartlett examines all of the most important aspects of the saints--including miracles, relics, pilgrimages, shrines, and the saints' role in the calendar, literature, and art.The book explores the central role played by the bodies and body parts of saints, and the special treatment these relics received. From the routes, dangers, and rewards of pilgrimage, to the saints' impact on everyday life, Bartlett's account is an unmatched examination of an important and intriguing part of the religious life of the past--as well as the present.

    But very little has been said about the background to their intense rivalry. Here, Linda Porter examines the ancient and intractable power struggle between England and Scotland, a struggle intensified during the reigns of Elizabeth and Mary’s grandfathers. Henry VII aimed to provide stability when he married his daughter, Margaret, to James IV of Scotland in 1503. But he must also have known that Margaret’s descendants might seek to rule the entire island.Crown of Thistles is the story of a divided family, of flamboyant kings and queens, cultured courts and tribal hatreds, blood feuds, rape and sexual licence on a breath-taking scale, and violent deaths. It also brings alive a neglected aspect of British history – the blood-spattered steps of two small countries on the fringes of Europe towards an awkward unity that would ultimately forge a great nation. Beginning with the unlikely and dramatic victories of two usurping kings, one a rank outsider and the other a fourteen-year-old boy who rebelled against his own father, the book sheds new light on Henry VIII, his daughter, Elizabeth, and on his great-niece, Mary Queen of Scots, still seductive more than 400 years after her death.

    The curtain fell on the Roman Empire in Western Europe, its territories divided between successor kingdoms constructed around barbarian military manpower. But if the Roman Empire was dead, the dream of restoring it refused to die. In many parts of the old Empire, real Romans still lived, holding on to their lands, the values of their civilisation, its institutions; the barbarians were ready to reignite the imperial flame and to enjoy the benefits of Roman civilization, the three greatest contenders being Theoderic, Justinian and Charlemagne. But, ultimately, they would fail and it was not until the reinvention of the papacy in the eleventh century that Europe’s barbarians found the means to generate a new Roman Empire, an empire which has lasted a thousand years.

    It also reveals why, after years of success, he left behind his prestigious teaching position and became a penniless traveler trying to experience the peace of a contented inner life.With illustrations, photographs, and maps, the rich and diverse world that produced al-Ghazali is vividly brought alive.Edoardo Albert is a London-based writer of Italian and Sri Lankan extraction.

    1395–1441) studied fauna and flora in their natural environment and under carefully chosen lighting conditions, and then achieved a breathtaking and convincing realism in his paintings. Each panel is a collection of minuscule details rendered with superb clarity from foreground to background—or at least that is the impression at first glance. As this book reveals, that is precisely where Van Eyck’s exceptional talent lay: He understood that the human brain is able to supplement visual perception where necessary. Here, details from Van Eyck’s paintings are organized by such themes as nature, architecture, daily life, fabrics, glass, jewelry and mirrors, and portraits. Opening with a biographical note and an essay on the technique of oil painting on panel, the authors explain the significance of the individual details and how Van Eyck achieved his innovative artistic results.  With a preface by contemporary painter Luc Tuymans, this book is an unprecedented look at the work of a popular master.

    The encounter sets him on a journey to confront the man who has stolen his family's titles and land. Set against the backdrop of the Albigensian crusades of the early 13th Century, this is the story of a man's search for peace in a world gone mad.

    They’re new too; they’ve been at the school just longer than she has, and they’ve never made an effort to reach out to anyone. Until she comes. When her friends find out, they’re awed. But Cara can't shake the feeling that there’s more to James and Crispin than the two are telling.As the days go on, everything at her new home seems to be going better than it has in any of the previous cities she’s lived in. She loves her friends, gets a job at a bookstore, and even starts to spend more time with Crispin and James. She’s happy. But all that begins to change when she comes to realize that the two boys she’s becoming close to are hiding something. It’s then that she knows her unexplainable wariness of them has been justified all along. But she keeps it a secret.Days later, when a stranger accosts her outside a small shopping center, Crispin and James arrive just in time to help her. But they seem know the attacker. And instead of running him off, Crispin and James take Cara away, for her own protection.With little explanation, Cara is told that she’s important and that she can’t go home until the boys have sorted some things out. In the meantime, Cara’s world is being turned upside down as she finds out that there is more to her life than she possibly imagined.

    As Bednarski points out, the story is important not so much for what it tells us about Margarida but for how it illuminates a past world. Through the depositions and accusations made in court, the reader learns much about medieval women, female agency, kin networks, solidarity, sex, sickness, medicine, and law. Unlike most histories, this book does not remove the author from the analysis. Rather, it lays bare the working methods of the historian. Throughout his tale, Bednarski skillfully weaves a second narrative about how historians "do" history, highlighting the rewards and pitfalls of working with primary sources.The book opens with a chapter on microhistory as a genre and explains its strengths, weaknesses, and inherent risks. Next is a narrative of Margarida's criminal trial, followed by chapters on the civil suits and appeal and Margarida's eventual fate. The book features a rough copy of a court notary, a notorial act, and a sample of a criminal inquest record in the original Latin. A timeline of Margarida's life, list of characters, and two family trees provide useful information on key people in the story. A map of late medieval Manosque is also provided.

    Forced to marry her brother's enemy in the name of peace, she and her children must leave all that they know and accept a journey into an uncertain future. Can Marie leave her past behind and embrace the future? Join the journey as Mac Zazski introduces you to the fantasy world of "The Royal Consort".

    In earlier work she has already given us scholarly yet sympathetic portrayals of English medicine, hospitals, and welfare for lepers. Now she widens her scope to public health. Her argument is clear, simple and convincing. Through the efforts of crown and civic authorities, mercantile elites and -popular- interests, English towns and cities aspired to a far healthier, less polluted environment than previously supposed. All major sources of possible infection were regulated, from sounds and smells to corrupt matter - and to immorality. Once again Professor Rawcliffe has overturned a well-established orthodoxy in the history of pre-modern health and healing. Her book is a magnificent achievement.- Peregrine Horden, Royal Holloway University of London. This first full-length study of public health in pre-Reformation England challenges a number of entrenched assumptions about the insanitary nature of urban life during -the golden age of bacteria-. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach that draws on material remains as well as archives, it examines the medical, cultural and religious contexts in which ideas about the welfare of the communal body developed. Far from demonstrating indifference, ignorance or mute acceptance in the face of repeated onslaughts of epidemic disease, the rulers and residents of English towns devised sophisticated and coherent strategies for the creation of a more salubrious environment; among the plethora of initiatives whose origins often predated the Black Death can also be found measures for the improvement of the water supply, for better food standards and for the care of the sick, both rich and poor. Carole Rawcliffe is Professor of Medieval History, University of East Anglia.

    Yet the Byzantines, geographically located at the heart of the upheavals that led from the ancient to the modern world, had abundant and sophisticated knowledge of the cultures with which they struggled and bargained. Ethnography After Antiquity examines both the instances and omissions of Byzantine ethnography, exploring the political and religious motivations for writing (or not writing) about other peoples.Through the ethnographies embedded in classical histories, military manuals, Constantine VII's De administrando imperio, and religious literature, Anthony Kaldellis shows Byzantine authors using accounts of foreign cultures as vehicles to critique their own state or to demonstrate Romano-Christian superiority over Islam. He comes to the startling conclusion that the Byzantines did not view cultural differences through a purely theological prism: their Roman identity, rather than their orthodoxy, was the vital distinction from cultures they considered heretic and barbarian. Filling in the previously unexplained gap between antiquity and the resurgence of ethnography in the late Byzantine period, Ethnography After Antiquity offers new perspective on how Byzantium positioned itself with and against the dramatically shifting world.

    A Sea of Languages brings together some of the most influential scholars working in Muslim-Christian-Jewish cultural communications today to discuss the convergence of the literary, social, and economic histories of the medieval Mediterranean.This volume takes as a starting point Maria Rosa Menocal's groundbreaking work The Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History, a major catalyst in the reconsideration of prevailing assumptions regarding the insularity of medieval European literature. Reframing ongoing debates within literary studies in dynamic new ways, A Sea of Languages will become a critical resource and reference point for a new generation of scholars and students on the intersection of Arabic and European literature.

    Beautiful photographs of the author's extensive and varied collection of knights provide him with an opportnity to share his knowledge of knightly lore and recount his own often humorous adventures while assembling this collection over thirty years. www.medievalknightsbook.com

    Set in the thirteenth century, its heroine, Sofia, is a young princess of Kievan Rus. She begins her story by recounting her capture in battle and life of slavery to a young army captain in the Mongol armies that are flooding Europe. Not only is her life shattered, it is threatened by the bitter rivalries in her new master's powerful family, and shadowed by the leader of the Mongol invasion, Batu Khan, Genghis Khan's grandson. How will she learn to survive in a world of total war, much less rediscover the love she once took for granted? Always seeking to escape and menaced by outer enemies and inner turmoil, where can she find safe haven even if she can break free? Clear eyed and intelligent, Sofia could be a character from The Game of Thrones, but she refuses to believe that life is solely about the strong dominating the weak or about taking endless revenge. Her story is based on actual historical events, which haunt her destiny. Like an intelligent Forrest Gump, she reflects her times. But as she matures, she learns to reflect on them as well, and to transcend their fetters. In doing so, she recreates a lost era for us, her readers.

    There is evidence for the kinds of poetry favoured by the Vikings from the fifth to the fifteenth centuries, in oral tradition, in runes and in medieval manuscripts. This book features a selection of carefully-chosen poems to encompass the rich store of genres and styles of the Vikings, whose poetic language is colourful, intricate and steeped in mythological knowledge. The style of the poetry ranges from the highly formal to the scurrilous, and is often light-hearted, even in the face of death and tragedy. Beautifully illustrated with works of art from the British Museum collection, this book captures perfectly the essence of Viking Poetry and offers a fascinating glimpse into the ideology of the time.

    

    Works by supreme practitioners—Cimabue, Duccio, Giotto, and Simone Martini—are examined here in a wider Dominican context. The contents of major foundations—Siena, Pisa, Perugia, and Santa Maria Novella in Florence—are studied alongside less well-known centers. For the first time, these frescoes and panel paintings are brought together with illuminated choir books, carved crucifixes, goldsmith's work, tombs, and stained glass. At the heart of the book is the Dominicans' evolving relationship with the laity, expressed at first by the partitioning of their churches, and subsequently by the sharing of space, and the production and use of art. Joanna Cannon's magisterial study is informed by extensive new research, using chronicles, legislation, liturgy, sermons, and other sources to explore the place of art in the lives of the friars and the urban laity of Central Italy.

    As Imam and Caliph, the Fatimid sovereign claimed to inherit the religious and political authority of the Prophet, a claim which inspired the conquest of North Africa and Egypt and a following of believers as far away as India. The reaction this provoked was crucial to the political and religious evolution of mediaeval Islam. This book combines the separate histories of Isma'ilism, North Africa and Egypt with that of the dynasty into a coherent account. It then relates this account to the wider history of Islam to provide a narrative that establishes the historical significance of the empire.

    Newman convincingly and with great clarity demonstrates the widespread applicability of the crossover concept as an analytical tool, examining some very disparate works.These include French and English romances about Lancelot and the Grail; the mystical writing of Marguerite Porete (placed in the context of lay spirituality, lyric traditions, and the Romance of the Rose); multiple examples of parody (sexually obscene, shockingly anti-Semitic, or cleverly litigious); and René of Anjou's two allegorical dream visions. Some of these texts are scarcely known to medievalists; others are rarely studied together. Newman's originality in her choice of these primary works will inspire new questions and set in motion new fields of exploration for medievalists working in a large variety of disciplines, including literature, religious studies, history, and cultural studies. "As Barbara Newman points out, in the wake of the bruising debates about 'Robertsonianism,' scholars preferred to focus on different kinds of questions, but the work produced during the intervening decades can now fruitfully inform a return, with a somewhat different orientation, to the thorny questions of how the sacred and the secular interact in medieval literary texts, and indeed how and to what extent these categories functioned within medieval cultural imagination. Newman's book tackles these questions head-on in a variety of texts, and is sure to stimulate further research in this area." —Sylvia Huot, University of Cambridge"In Medieval Crossover, Barbara Newman highlights the ways in which the premodern reader understood 'sacred' and 'secular' not as opposing points on a continuum but as what Newman calls a state of 'double judgment,' where transcendent truths could be understood through paradox or hermeneutic inversion. Exquisitely written, grounded in thoughtful readings of some of the most enigmatic texts of the Middle Ages, Medieval Crossover charts a new course in our understanding of premodern modes of interpretation." —Suzanne Conklin Akbari, University of Toronto "This outstanding piece of scholarship makes an original contribution to the fields of medieval studies in general as well as more specifically to the study of medieval English and French, or better, francophone literature produced either on the continent or in England. Medievalists working in a large variety of disciplines—historical, sociological, religious, as well as cultural and literary—will find this book of great interest. The general argument for both is completely convincing: specialists as well as general readers of medieval works need to learn about and practice double judgment, and Newman's book gives them wonderful examples of how to do so and what is at stake in the process." —Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner, Boston College

    Welcome to an innovative and reader-friendly approach to medieval history, one that combines visually appealing infographics, whimsical cartoons and lively, informative text. Each spread offers a snapshot that highlights an aspect of the diversity and intercultural dynamics of the medieval world, from Europe to the Byzantine, Ottoman and Islamic empires. Readers get the inside scoop on crusaders and caliphs, Mongols and midwives, as they read about expanding trade routes, power shifts, conquests, adventure, and persecutions. From the daily life of the medieval child to Rabban bar Sauma’s extraordinary pilgrimage, the result is a colorful and varied picture of what life was like a thousand years ago. For example, did you know: • 5% of babies in English peasants’ homes died from pig bites? • what medieval workers did for a living? • you could buy a Turkish horse for 455 cartloads of dung? • the best way to stop the unstoppable knight? Shapiro’s meticulous research is brought to life by Ross Kinnaird’s historically based, humorous, illustrations. Who would imagine medieval history could be this much fun!

    But how and why did he achieve such heights? This biographical study of aristocratic social and geographical mobility in the 'Age of the Crusades' reassesses John's fascinating life, and explores how families and dynasticism, politics, intrigue, religion and war all contributed to John's unprecedented career. John was a major figure in the history of the thirteenth-century Mediterranean, and yet very much a product of the workings of the society of his day. This book reveals how John's life, and its multifarious connections to France, Italy, the German empire and the papacy, can illuminate the broad panorama of the early thirteenth-century world, and the zenith of the crusading movement.

    During these centuries radical changes occurred in the organisation of the rural world. Towns and complex communities of artisans and merchant-traders emerged and networks of contact between northern Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Middle and Far East were redefined, with long-lasting consequences into the present day. Loveluck provides the most comprehensive comparative analysis of the rural and urban archaeological remains in this area for twenty-five years. Supported by evidence from architecture, relics, manuscript illuminations and texts, this book explains how the power and intentions of elites were confronted by the aspirations and actions of the diverse rural peasantry, artisans and merchants, producing both intended and unforeseen social changes.

    Today, Benedictine values continue to undergird our life as a Christian community in Durham . . . so I hope that this book will help people of all ages to understand more about this cherished aspect of our history and heritage, and that through its insights into the past, it will add to visitors’ enjoyment of the Cathedral and its precincts today.”—The Very Reverend Michael Sadgrove, from the Foreword

    Sarah Semple employs archaeological, historical, art historical, and literary sources to study the variety of ways in which the early medieval population of England used the prehistoric legacy in the landscape, exploring it from temporal and geographic perspectives. Key to the arguments and ideas presented is the premise that populations used these remains, intentionally and knowingly, in the articulation and manipulation of their identities: local, regional, political, and religious. They recognized them as ancient features, as human creations from a distant past. They used them as landmarks, battle sites, and estate markers, giving them new Old English names. Before, and even during, the conversion to Christianity, communities buried their dead in and around these monuments. After the conversion, several churches were built in and on these monuments, great assemblies and meetings were held at them, and felons executed and buried within their surrounds.This volume covers the early to late Anglo-Saxon world, touching on funerary ritual, domestic and settlement evidence, ecclesiastical sites, place-names, written sources, and administrative and judicial geographies. Through a thematic and chronologically-structured examination of Anglo-Saxon uses and perceptions of the prehistoric, Semple demonstrates that populations were not only concerned with Romanitas (or Roman-ness), but that a similar curiosity and conscious reference to and use of the prehistoric existed within all strata of society.