"Conceptually well organized, stylistically clear, intellectually thoughtful, and pedagogically useful."

- Thomas Head, Speculum

"For its humane and learned approach to its enormous canvas, as well as for the cogency with which it penetrates at speed to the essentials of a vanished historical epoch, this History of the Church in the Middle Ages deserves a very wide audience indeed."

- Barrie Dobson, English Historical Review

"To have written a scholarly and very readable history of the Western Church over a millennium is a remarkable tour de force, for which Donald Logan is to be warmly congratulated."

- C.H Lawrence, The Tablet

"A feat of historical synthesis, most confident in its telling of the coming of Christianity. Books like Logan's are needed more than ever before."

- Miri Rubin, TLS

In this fascinating survey, F. Donald Logan introduces the reader to the Christian church, from the conversion of the Celtic and Germanic peoples to the discovery of the New World. He reveals how the church unified the people of Western Europe as they worshipped with the same ceremonies and used Latin as the language of civilized communication. From remote, rural parish to magnificent urban cathedral, A History of the Church in the Middle Ages explores the role of the church as a central element in determining a thousand years of history.

This new edition brings the book right up to date with recent scholarship, and includes an expanded introduction exploring the interaction of other faiths - particularly Judaism and Islam - with the Christian church.

Richard E. Zeikowitz explores various discourses of male same-sex desire in diverse 14th century chivalric texts and describes the sociopolitical forces motivating those discourses. He attempts to dethrone traditional heteronormative views by drawing attention to culturally normative "queer" desire. Zeikowitz articulates possible homoeroticized interactions in chivalric texts, such as Charny's Book of Chivalry, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Troilus and Criseyde. He also examines how intimate male bonds are rendered as dangerous attachments in chronicle narratives of the reigns of Edward II and Richard II.

The twelve essays in "Women and Wealth in Late Medieval Europe" re-examine the vexing issue of women, money, wealth, and power from distinctive perspectives--literature, history, architectural history--using new archival sources. The contributors examine how money and changing attitudes toward wealth affected power relations between women and men of all ranks, especially the patriarchal social forces that constrained the range of women's economic choices. Employing theories on gender, culture, and power, this volume reveals wealth as both the motive force in gender relations and a precise indicator of other, more subtle, forms of power and influence mediated by gender.

Saicho (767-822), the founder of the Tendai School, is one of the great masters of Japanese Buddhism. This edition, which includes a new preface by the author, makes available again a classic work on this important figure's life and accomplishments. Groner's study focuses on Saicho's founding of the great monastic center on Mount Hiei, the leading religious institution of medieval Japan, and his radical move to adopt for purposes of ordination the Mahayana bodhisattva precepts--a decision that had far-reaching consequences for the future of Japanese Buddhist ethical thought, monastic training and organization, lay-clerical relations, philosophical developments, and Buddhism-state relations.

A gripping chronicle of the ferocious twenty-year struggle between the English monarch and the feudal lords of Ireland, The Twilight Lords describes the first authentic colonial venture in English history, a venture that held captive a whole generation of the best that Ireland and England could muster. By the time the last and the greatest of the "rebels" surrendered, Elizabeth was dead, two waves of English settlers had been exterminated, and the southern part of Ireland had become a barren wilderness.

A new narrative history of the Viking Age, interwoven with exploration of the physical remains and landscapes that the Vikings fashioned and walked: their rune-stones and ship burials, settlements and battlefields. To many, the word 'Viking' brings to mind red scenes of rape and pillage, of marauders from beyond the sea rampaging around the British coastline in the last gloomy centuries before the Norman Conquest. It is true that Britain in the Viking Age was a turbulent, violent place. The kings and warlords who have impressed their memories on the period revel in names that fire the blood and stir the imagination: Svein Forkbeard and Edmund Ironside, Ivar the Boneless and Alfred the Great, Erik Bloodaxe and Edgar the Pacifier amongst many others. Evidence for their brutality, their dominance, their avarice and their pride is still unearthed from British soil with stunning regularity. But this is not the whole story. In Viking Britain, Thomas Williams has drawn on his experience as project curator of the British Museum exhibition of Vikings: Life and Legend to show how the people we call Vikings came not just to raid and plunder, but to settle, to colonize and to rule. The impact on these islands was profound and enduring, shaping British social, cultural and political development for hundreds of years. Indeed, in language, literature, place-names and folklore, the presence of Scandinavian settlers can still be felt, and their memory - filtered and refashioned through the writings of people like J.R.R. Tolkien, William Morris and G.K.Chesterton - has transformed the western imagination. This remarkable book makes use of new academic research and first-hand experience, drawing deeply from the relics and landscapes that the Vikings and their contemporaries fashioned and walked: their runestones and ship burials, settlements and battlefields, poems and chronicles. The book offers a vital evocation of a forgotten world, its echoes in later history and its implications for the present.

The carole was the principal social dance in France and England from c. 1100 to c. 1400 and was frequently mentioned in French and English medieval literature. However, it has been widely misunderstood by contributors in recent citations in dictionaries and reference books, both linguistic and musical. The carole was performed by all classes of society - kings and nobles, shepherds and servant girls. It is described as taking place both indoors and outdoors. Its central position in the life of the people is underlined by references not only in what we might call fictional texts, but also in historical (or quasi-historical) writings, in moral treatises and even in a work on astronomy. Dr Robert Mullally's focus is very much on details relevant to the history, choreography and performance of the dance as revealed in the primary sources. This methodology involves attempting to isolate the term carole from other dance terms not only in French, but also in other languages. Mullally's groundbreaking study establishes all the characteristics of this dance: etymological, choreographical, lyrical, musical and iconographical.

This laudable work offers a study, translation and partial edition of one of the most important early Mamluk sources and its author. In addition to the work's contribution to Mamluk history, it also makes a significant contribution towards the ultimate goal of having the key texts of early Mamluk historiography accessible to scholars.
In this first volume the life and work of al-Y?n?n? (d. 1326), the textual history of his Chronicle, its historiographic significance and textual filiation with other independent sources are presented and discussed.

The primary focus of this collection by leading medieval historians is the laity, in particular the ideas and ideals of lay people. The contributors explore lay attitudes as expressed in legal cases, charters, chronicles and collective activities. Highlights the centrality of kinship, whilst stressing its limitations as an all purpose social bond. Ranges chronologically and geographically from the seventh century to the eve of the Reformation, from Western Britain to papal and urban Italy, from Carolingian dynastic politics to the decline of medieval pilgrimage in the sixteenth century, and from the courts of twelfth-century France to the fifteenth-century wards of London. -- .

This book provides a detailed analysis of women's involvement in litigation and other legal actions within their local communities in late-medieval England. It draws upon the rich records of three English towns - Nottingham, Chester and Winchester - and their courts to bring to life the experiences of hundreds of women within the systems of local justice. Through comparison of the records of three towns, and of women's roles in different types of legal action, the book reveals the complex ways in which individual women's legal status could vary according to their marital status, different types of plea and the town that they lived in. At this lowest level of medieval law, women's status was malleable, making each woman's experience of justice unique. -- .

In many respects this book, first published in 1961, marked a somewhat radical departure from contemporary historical writings. It is neither a constitutional nor a political history, but a historical definition and explanation of the main features which characterised the three kinds of government which can be discerned in the Middle Ages ? government by the Pope, the King, the People. The author's enviable knowledge of the sources ? clerical, secular, legal, constitutional, liturgical, literary ? as well as of modern literature enables him to demonstrate the principles upon which the papal government, the royal government, and the government of the people rested. He shows how the traditional theocratic forms of government came to be supplanted by forms of government based on the will of the people. Although concerned with the Middle Ages, the book also contains much that is of topical interest to the discerning student of modern institutions. Medieval history is made understandable to modern man by modern methods.

The Second Crusade (1145-49) was an ambitious and unprecedented attempt to expand the borders of Christianity in the Holy Land, the Baltic and the Iberian peninsula. Because the expedition to the Levant proved a spectacular failure, historians have largely ignored the impact of this important event. This wide-ranging collection offers a series of original interpretations of partially explored evidence for all three theatres of war. It also considers the planning, execution and consequences of the crusade for western Europe, the Crusader States of the Holy Land and the Muslim Near East. An international group of leading academics have produced a volume that marks a significant contribution to the study of European expansion and the history of the crusades. This work should be of use for researchers, students, scholars and teachers of medieval historians, both students and teaching scholars. -- .

Our current image of the Christian population of al-Andalus after AD711 reflects the way history has been written. The Christians almost disappeared from the historical record as the historians of the conquering Muslims concentrated on the glories of the Ummayads.This book reconsiders, through their own words, the fate of the Christians of al-Andalus. The texts discusses two chronicles in Latin on the fate of Hispania, the problematic accounts of Christian martyrs in Cordoba, a Muslim historian's account of how his Christian ancestors survived the conquest and other texts reflecting the acculturation of Christians into Islamic society.

This book examines one of the most fundamental issues in twelfth-century English politics: justice. It demonstrates that during the foundational period for the common law, the question of judgement and judicial ethics was a topic of heated debate - a common problem with multiple different answers. How to be a judge, and how to judge well, was a concern shared by humble and high, keeping both kings and parish priests awake at night. Using theological texts, sermons, legal treatises and letter collections, the book explores how moralists attempted to provide guidance for uncertain judges. It argues that mercy was always the most difficult challenge for a judge, fitting uncomfortably within the law and of disputed value. Shining a new light on English legal history, Justice and mercy reveals the moral dilemmas created by the establishment of the common law. -- .

Angeliki Laiou (1941-2008), one of the leading Byzantinists of her generation, broke new ground in the study of the social and economic history of the Byzantine Empire. Women, Family and Society in Byzantium, the first of three volumes to be published posthumously in the Variorum Collected Studies Series, brings together eight articles published between 1993 and 2009. Demonstrating Professor Laiou's characteristic attention to the relationship between ideology and social practice, the first five articles concern the status of women as evidenced through legal, narrative, hagiographical, and archival sources, while the final three investigate conceptions of law and justice, the vocabulary and typology of peasant rebellions, and the and the form and evolution of political agreements in Byzantine society.

"Anglo-Norman Studies" has established itself as one of the leading annuals in the field and this index aims to simplify access to the first decade of scholarhip produced by the Battle Conference. Primarily an index of persons and places, it also includes wider subject entries. Entries for persons are cross-referenced by titles and offices, so that a succession of holders of a bishopric or an earldom can be quickly traced.

Revisionist approach to the question of the authenticity - or not - of the documents in the Book of Llandaf. Awarded the Francis Jones Prize in Welsh History 2019 by Jesus College Oxford The early-twelfth-century Book of Llandaf is rightly notorious for its bogus documents - but it also provides valuable information on the earlymedieval history of south-east Wales and the adjacent parts of England. This study focuses on its 159 charters, which purport to date from the fifth century to the eleventh, arguing that most of them are genuine seventh-century and later documents that were adapted and "improved" to impress Rome and Canterbury in the context of Bishop Urban of Llandaf's struggles in 1119-34 against the bishops of St Davids and Hereford and the "invasion" of monks from English houses such as Gloucester and Tewkesbury. After assembling other evidence for the existence of pre-twelfth-century Welsh charters, the author defends the authenticity of most of the Llandaf charters' witness lists, elucidatestheir chronology, and analyses the processes of manipulation and expansion that led to the extant Book of Llandaf. This leads him to reassess the extent to which historians can exploit the rehabilitated charters as an indicator of social and economic change between the seventh and eleventh centuries and as a source for the secular and ecclesiastical history of south-east Wales and western England. PATRICK SIMS-WILLIAMS is a Fellow of the British Academy; he was formerly Reader in Celtic and Anglo-Saxon in the University of Cambridge and Professor of Celtic Studies at Aberystwyth University.

The Chronicon of Thietmar of Merseburg has long been recognised as one of the most important sources for the history of the tenth and early eleventh centuries, especially for the history of the Ottonian Empire. Thietmar's testimony also has special value because of his geographical location, in eastern Saxony, on the boundary between German and Slavic cultures. He is arguably the single most important witness to the early history of Poland, and his detailed descriptions of Slavic folklore are the earliest on record. This is a very important source in the medieval period, translated here in its entirety for the first time. It relates to an area of medieval studies generally dominated by German scholars, in which Anglo-phone scholars are beginning to make a substantial contribution. -- .

A series which is a model of its kind: Edmund King The wide-ranging articles collected here represent the cutting edge of recent Anglo-Norman scholarship. There is a particular focus on historical sources for the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and especially on the key texts which are used by historians in understanding the past. There are articles on Eadmer's Historia Novorum, Dudo of Saint-Quentin's Historia Normannorum, the historical profession at Durham, and the use of charters to understand the role of women in the Norman march of Wales. Other contributions examine canon law in late twelfth-century England, and Angevin rule in Normandy in the time of Henry fitz Empress. The Old English world is also represented in the volume: there is a fresh investigation into Harold Godwineson's posthumous reputation, and a new interpretation of the reign of Aethelred the Unready. S.D. CHURCH is Professor of Medieval History at the University of East Anglia. Contributors: Emma Cavell, Catherine Cubitt, John Gillingham, Mark Hagger, Fraser McNair, Charles C. Rozier, Nicholas Ruffini-Ronzani, Danica Summerlin, Ann Williams

Brian Boru is chiefly remembered as the man 'who drove the Danes from Ireland', and who died at the Battle of Clontarf on Good Friday 1014. But there was far more to his life than that. The youngest son of an obscure king from Thomond, he came closer than any other Irishman before him or after him to uniting Ireland. He tamed the Danes of Limerick and the Norsemen of Dublin, overthrew the monopoly of the Ui Neill's on the high throne of Ireland and became one of the few high kings to invest that throne with any real authority. An able administrator, a patron of the church and of learning, he fully deserved the eulogistic title BRIAIN IMPERATORIS SCOTORUM, Brian Emperor of the Irish, accorded to him by an admirer. Ireland gave him a funeral of unprecedented ceremony - and then promptly forgot him. His heirs were unable to maintain his authority or consolidate his achievements and all too quickly the old days of internecine strife and petty fueding between the various rival Irish kingdoms were revived. In Brian Boru, King of Ireland, Roger Chatterton Newman explores the life and times of this remarkable man and attmepts to distil reality from myth. Not least, it offers a new theory on Brian's relationship with Gormfhlaith, queen mother of Dublin. And it shows what might have happenned to Irish histoy had the events of Easter 1014 not taken place. With 78 illustations.

Intellectually and visually stimulating, this important landmark book looks at the religious, political, social and artistic significance of the Imperial tombs of the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD). It traces the evolutionary development of the most elaborately beautiful imperial tombs to examine fundamental issues on death and the afterlife in one of the world's most sophisticated civilizations. Selected tombs are presented in terms of their structure, artistic programs and their purposes. The author sets the tombs in the context of Chinese attitudes towards the afterlife, the politics of mausoleum architecture, and the artistic vocabulary which was becoming the mainstream of Chinese civilization.

WINNER OF THE FRANK WATSON BOOK PRIZE 2021. SHORTLISTED IN SCOTLAND'S NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS 2021 The first full-scale, interdisciplinary treatment of the wide-ranging connections between the Gaelic world and the Northumbrian kingdom. Northumbria was the most northerly Anglo-Saxon kingdom; its impressive landscape featured two sweeping coastlines, which opened the area to a variety of cultural connections. This book explores influences that emanated from the Gaelic-speaking world, including Ireland, the Isle of Man, Argyll and the kingdom of Alba (the nascent Scottish kingdom). It encompasses Northumbria's "Golden Age", the kingdom's political and scholarly high-point of the seventh and early eighth centuries, and culminates with the kingdom's decline and fragmentation in the Viking Age, which opened up new links with Gaelic-Scandinavian communities. Political and ecclesiastical connections are discussed in detail; the study also covers linguistic contact, material culture and the practicalities of travel, bringing out the realities of contemporary life. This interdisciplinary approach sheds new light on the west and north of the Northumbrian kingdom, the areas linked most closely with the Gaelic world. Overall, the book reveals the extent to which Gaelic influence was multi-faceted, complex and enduring. Dr FIONA EDMONDS is Reader in History and Director of the Regional Heritage Centre at Lancaster University.

This book is a biography of Pope Innocent III. Avoiding the many scholarly controversies concerning the pope, it offers a concise and balanced portrait of the man and his pontificate. Its chronological organization-unusual in biographies of Innocent-enables the reader to see how the pope was usually dealing with many different subjects at the same time, and that the events in one aspect of his life could influence his views of other topics. This structure, together with the thorough documentation, can provide new insights even for scholars well-versed in his pontificate. Written in clear, jargon-free English, the book also gives the students and general reader a good sense of this pope and of the medieval papacy.