Joseph A. Dane's What Is a Book? is an introduction to the study of books produced during the period of the hand press, dating from around 1450 through 1800. Using his own bibliographic interests as a guide, Dane selects illustrative examples primarily from fifteenth-century books, books of particular interest to students of English literature, and books central to the development of Anglo-American bibliography. Part I of What Is a Book? covers the basic procedures of printing and the parts of the physical book-size, paper, type, illustration; Part II treats the history of book-copies-from cataloging conventions and provenance to electronic media and their implications for the study of books. Dane begins with the central distinction between a "book-copy"-the particular, individual, physical book-and a "book"-the abstract category that organizes these copies into editions, whereby each copy is interchangeable with any other. Among other issues, Dane addresses such basic questions as: How do students, bibliographers, and collectors discuss these things? And when is it legitimate to generalize on the basis of particular examples? Dane considers each issue in terms of a practical example or question a reader might confront: How do you identify books on the basis of typography? What is the status of paper evidence? How are the various elements on the page defined? What are the implications of the images available in an online database? And, significantly, how does a scholar's personal experience with books challenge or conform to the standard language of book history and bibliography? Dane's accessible and lively tour of the field is a useful guide for all students of book history, from the beginner to the specialist.

This is the first book in English providing a wide range of Byzantine legal sources. In six chapters, this book explains and illustrates Byzantine law through a selection of fundamental Byzantine legal sources, beginning with the sources before the time of Justinian, and extending up to AD 1453. For all sources English translations are provided next to the original Greek (and Latin) text. In some cases, tables or other features are included that help further elucidate the source and illustrate its nature. The volume offers a clear yet detailed primer to Byzantine law, its sources, and its significance.

Controversial scholarly debates around the beginnings of the Ottoman Empire in the last century are not only rooted in the scarcity or heterogeneity of sources, but also in the mentalities and ideologies that canonised thought paradigms. This book uses an interdisciplinary approach at the interface between Ottoman, Byzantine, Mediterranean and Southeast European studies. Unusual sources such as Western Anatolian numismatics and predominantly European documents met innovative methods from the study of violence and power networks. Making a case study around the military akinci institution, the author re-evaluates the emergence of the Ottoman polity in dealing with various warlords and across multiple identities and political affiliations.

This book provides the first detailed overview of research on rulership in theory and practice, with a particular emphasis on the monarchies of Bohemia, Hungary and Poland in the High and Late Middle Ages. The contributions examine the legitimation of rule of the first local dynasties, the ritual practice of power, the ruling strategies and practices of power in the established monarchies, and the manifold influences on the rulership in East Central Europe from outside the region (such as from Byzantium, and the Holy Roman Empire). The collection shows that these ideas and practices enabled the new polities to become legitimate members of Latin Christendom.

This volume unites a team of distinguished scholars from France, Germany, Italy, the UK, and the USA to celebrate Rosalind B. Brooke's immense contribution to Franciscan studies over the last 60 years. It is divided into four sections, beginning with an appraisal of Dr Brooke's influence upon Franciscan studies. The second section contains a series of historical studies and expressions of the Franciscan spirit. Hagiographical studies occupy the third section, reflecting the friars' ministry and the thirst for the renewal of the Franciscan vision. The fourth part explores the art and iconographical images of St. Francis and his friars. These innovative studies reflect new insights into and interpretations of Franciscan life in the Middle Ages. Contributors are (n order of appearance) Michael W. Blastic, O.F.M., Maria Pia Alberzoni, Bert Roest, Michael F. Cusato, O.F.M., Jens Roehrkasten, David Luscombe, Luigi Pellegrini. Peter Murray Jones, Maria Teresa Dolso, Michael J.P. Robson, Andre Vauchez, David Burr, William R. Cook, Nigel Morgan, and Kathleen Giles Arthur.

This collection of seventeen essays newly identifies contributions to musical culture made by women before 1500 across Europe. You will learn about repertoire from such diverse locations as Iceland, Spain, and Italy, and encounter examples of musicianship from the gender-fluid professional musicians at the Islamicate courts of Syria to the nuns of Barking Abbey in England. The book shows that women drove musical patronage, dissemination, composition, and performance, including within secular and ecclesiastical contexts, and also reflects on the reception of medieval women's musical agency by both medieval poets and by modern recording artists. Contributors are David Catalunya, Lisa Colton, Helen Dell, Annemari Ferreira, Rachel Golden, Gillian L. Gower, Anna Kathryn Grau, Carissa M. Harris, Louise McInnes, Lisa Nielson, Lauren Purcell-Joiner, Megan Quinlan, Leah Stuttard, Claire Taylor Jones, Melissa Tu, Angelica Vomera, and Anne Bagnall Yardley.

This book offers a new and inclusive approach to Western exegesis up to 1100. For too long, modern scholars have examined Jewish and Christian exegesis apart from each other. This is not surprising, given how religious, social, and linguistic borders separated Jews and Christians. But they worked to a great extent on the same texts. Christians were keenly aware that they relied on translation. The contributions to this volume reveal how both sides worked on parallel tracks, posing similar questions and employing more or less the same techniques, and in some rare instances, interdependently.

This open access book brings together an international team of experts, The Middle Ages in Modern Culture considers the use of medieval models across a variety of contemporary media - ranging from television and film to architecture - and the significance of deploying an authentic medieval world to these representations. Rooted in this question of authenticity, this interdisciplinary study addresses three connected themes. Firstly, how does historical accuracy relate to authenticity, and whose version of authenticity is accepted? Secondly, how are the middle ages presented in modern media and why do inaccuracies emerge and persist in these works? Thirdly, how do creators of modern content attempt to produce authentic medieval environments, and what are the benefits and pitfalls of accurate portrayals? The result is nuanced study of medieval culture which sheds new light on the use (and misuse) of medieval history in modern media. This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Knowledge Unlatched.

This volume explores social practices of framing, building and enacting community in urban-rural relations across medieval Eurasia. Introducing fresh comparative perspectives on practices and visions of community, it offers a thorough source-based examination of medieval communal life in its sociocultural complexity and diversity in Central and Southeast Europe, South Arabia and Tibet. As multi-layered social phenomena, communities constantly formed, restructured and negotiated internal allegiances, while sharing a topographic living space and joint notions of belonging. The volume challenges disciplinary paradigms and proposes an interdisciplinary set of low-threshold categories and tools for cross-cultural comparison of urban and rural communities in the Global Middle Ages. Contributors are Maaike van Berkel, Hubert Feiglstorfer, Andre Gingrich, Karoly Goda, Elisabeth Gruber, Johann Heiss, Katerina Hornickova, Eirik Hovden, Christian Jahoda, Christiane Kalantari, Odile Kommer, Fabian Kummeler, Christina Lutter, Judit Majorossy, Ermanno Orlando, and Noha Sadek.

This volume contains the edition and translation of the chapter of al-Maqrizi's al-H abar 'an al-basar dealing with Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Franks, and Goths. This chapter is, for the most part, an almost exact reproduction of Ibn Haldun's Kitab al-'Ibar, from which al-Maqrizi derived material from many other sources, including prominent Christian sources such as Kitab Hurusiyus, Ibn al-'Amid's History, and works by Muslim historians like Ibn al-Atir's Kamil. Therefore, this chapter of al-H abar 'an al-basar is a continuation of the previous Arabic historiographical tradition, in which European history is integrated into world history through the combination of Christian and Islamic sources.

Dominican Resonances in Medieval Iceland explores the life and legacy of Jon Halldorsson, Bishop of Skalholt (1322-39), a Dominican who had studied the liberal arts in Paris and canon law in Bologna. Combining different disciplinary approaches (literary and intellectual history, manuscript studies, musicology), this book aims to examine the conditions under which literate culture thrived in 14th-century Scandinavia. The studies included in this volume consider Jon Halldorsson's educational background and his contributions as a storyteller to Old Norse literature, focusing especially upon legendary sagas such as Clari saga and examining their link to the Dominican tradition of exempla. The volume also includes critical studies of manuscripts that contain tales and adventures, secular law and canon law, administrative writings, as well as music and liturgy from the province of Nidaros. Combining these various analytical perspectives results in rich insights with broad implications for our understanding of medieval Nordic culture. Contributors are Astrid Marner, Christian Etheridge, Embla Aae, Gisela Attinger, Gottskalk Jensson, Gunnar Hardarson, Hjalti Snaer AEgisson, Karl G. Johansson, Stefan Drechsler, Vedis Ragnheidardottir, and Vidar Palsson

In the late fourteenth century, the medieval Crown of Aragon experienced a series of food crises that created conflict and led to widespread starvation. Adam Franklin-Lyons applies contemporary understandings of complex human disasters, vulnerability, and resilience to explain how these famines occurred and to describe more accurately who suffered and why. Shortage and Famine in the Late Medieval Crown of Aragon details the social causes and responses to three events of varying magnitude that struck the western Mediterranean: the minor food shortage of 1372, the serious but short-lived crisis of 1384-85, and the major famine of 1374-76, the worst famine of the century in the region. Shifts in military action, international competition, and violent attempts to control trade routes created systemic panic and widespread starvation-which in turn influenced decades of economic policy, social practices, and even the course of geopolitical conflicts, such as the War of the Two Pedros and the papal schism in Italy. Providing new insights into the intersecting factors that led to famine in the fourteenth-century Mediterranean, this deeply researched, convincingly argued book presents tools and models that are broadly applicable to any historical study of vulnerabilities in the human food supply. It will be of interest to scholars of medieval Iberia and the medieval Mediterranean as well as to historians of food and of economics.

A Companion to Late Medieval and Early Modern Augsburg introduces readers to major political, social and economic developments in Augsburg from c. 1400 to c. 1800 as well as to those themes of social and cultural history that have made research on this imperial city especially fruitful and stimulating. The volume comprises contributions by an international team of 23 scholars, providing a range of the most significant scholarly approaches to Augsburg's past from a variety of perspectives, disciplines, and methodologies. Building on the impressive number of recent innovative studies on this large and prosperous early modern city, the contributions distill the extraordinary range and creativity of recent scholarship on Augsburg into a handbook format. Contributors are Victoria Bartels, Katy Bond, Christopher W. Close, Allyson Creasman, Regina Dauser, Dietrich Erben, Alexander J. Fisher, Andreas Flurschutz da Cruz, Helmut Graser, Mark Haberlein, Michele Zelinsky Hanson, Peter Kreutz, Hans-Joerg Kunast, Margaret Lewis, Andrew Morrall, Marjorie Elizabeth Plummer, Barbara Rajkay, Reinhold Reith, Gregor Rohmann, Claudia Stein, B. Ann Tlusty, Sabine Ullmann, Wolfgang E.J. Weber.

This volume offers a history of historiography, as Roumen Daskalov presents a critical analysis of Bulgarian historiographical views of the Middle Ages to reveal their embeddedness in their historical context and their adaptation to the contemporary circumstances. The study traces the establishment of a master narrative of the Bulgarian Middle Ages and its evolution over time to the present day, including the attempt at a Marxist counter-narrative. Daskalov uses categories of master national narratives, which typically are stories of origins and migrations, state foundations and rises ("golden ages"), and decline and fall, yet they also assert the continuity of the "people", present certain historical personalities (good or evil, "great" or "weak"), and describe certain actions or passivity to others' actions.