An engaging and informative survey of medieval pet keeping which also examines their representation in art and literature. Animals in the middle ages have often been discussed - but usually only as a source of food, as beasts of burden, or as aids for hunters. This book takes a completely different angle, showing that they were also beloved domesticcompanions to their human owners, whether they were dogs, cats, monkeys, squirrels, and parrots. It offers a full survey of pets and pet-keeping: from how they were acquired, kept, fed, exercised, and displayed, to the problems they could cause. It also examines the representation of pets and their owners in art and literature; the many charming illustrations offer further evidence for the bonds between humans and their pets, then as now. A wide range of sources, including chronicles, letters, sermons and poems, are used in what is both an authoritative and entertaining account. Dr KATHLEEN WALKER-MEIKLE gained her PhD at University College London.

After nearly eight centuries and much research and writing on Marie de France, the only biographical information we know about her, with any degree of certainty, is that she was from France and wrote for the Anglo-Angevin court of Henry II. Yet Marie de France remains today one of the most prominent literary voices of the end of the twelfth century and was the first woman of letters to write in French. The chapters in this book are composed by scholars who have specialized in Marie de France studies, in most cases for many years. Offering traditional views alongside new critical perspectives, the authors discuss many different aspects of her poetics.

This timely volume ventures into the subject of sadomasochism in varied aspects of medieval life. Saint's Lives and mystical treatises provide evidence of failed sadism and empowering masochism. Literary culture in the form of epics and courtly tales preserve stories of eroticised power. These exciting chapters join together to form a picture of medieval culture that is kinky in its practice and deeply psychological at its core. -- .

Twelfth-century individuals negotiated personal relationships along a continuum connecting rather than polarizing immediacy and mediated representation. Their markers of individuation, signs of identity and media of communication thus evidence practical engagement with contemporary medieval sign theory and perceptions of reality. In this study, the relevance of modern theory for the interpretation of medieval artifacts is shown to depend upon the parallel existence of theoretical activity by the producers and users of such artifacts. In the cultural landscape of the central Middle Ages, the axes of iconicity, semantics and materiality traced by charters, seals, and by both concrete and metaphorical images of the imprint, dynamically shaped the boundaries within which a sense of self was formulated, modulated, experienced, and enacted.

The focus of this collection of articles by Donald J. Kagay is the effect of the expansion of royal government on the societies of the medieval Crown of Aragon. He shows how the extensive episodes of warfare during the 13th and 14th centuries served as a catalyst for the extension of the king's law and government across the varied topography and political landscape of eastern Spain. In the long conflicts against Spanish Islam and neighbouring Christian states, the relationships of royal to customary law, of monarchical to aristocratic power, and of Christian to Jewish and Muslim populations, all became issues that marked the transition of the medieval Crown of Aragon to the early modern states of Catalonia, Aragon and Valencia, and finally to the modern Spanish nation.

The twelve complete articles in this volume represent some of the best recent scholarship on the crusades. The collection introduces students to fundamental concepts of crusading, including the nature of the movement, the motivation of the participants, and the impact on the East. The focus is not on individual crusades but on the political, economic, spiritual, and demographic factors behind these medieval holy wars and on their consequences.

A strong editorial structure guides students through the competing perspectives that have dominated scholarly discussion. An opening introduction summarizes relevant historical events and provides an overview of the historiography. Each article is then contextualized by the editor with a discussion of its significance to scholarship.

What visitor to Mexico City, unaware of its pre-Hispanic history, could imagine that right under a Christian Church may still lie the remains of the sinister tzompantli, the Aztecs' altar of skulls? Professor Jorge Hardoy poses this question and many more in his comprehensive summary of the ancient cities where Latin America's peoples lived before the Spaniards arrived in the sixteenth century. Because Aztec Tenochtitlan, today Mexico City, and Inca Cuzco represent the culmination of the two most advanced civilizations encountered by the Spainsh conquistadors, the author explores these cities end-to-end. He also studies such older civic memorial centers as Teotichuacan, Tula, Monte Alban, Uxmal, Chichen Itza, Tikal, Palenque, Tiahuanaco, Chan Chan, Pachacamac, Machu Picchu, and lesser know sites, most virtually, if not totally, abandoned centuries before the Conquest. Such inclusive coverage makes for a lively discussion of some fifteen hundred years of urban life as immortalized in the architecture, art, and crafts of long vanished civilizations. There is an extensive bibliography, many photographs, maps, charts and city plans showing urban layouts of temples, which tell much about the life of the inhabitants. His book shows that while new findings come to light each year, so much buried history lies waiting to be found that archaology will always be an ever unfolding drama. This book was first published in 1973.

This collection of sources covers one of the most controversial and shocking episodes in medieval English history, the 'tyranny' and deposition of Richard II and the usurpation of the throne by his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, who became King Henry IV. Contemporaries were sharply divided about the rights and wrongs of both Richard and Henry, and this division is reflected in the texts which form the major part of these sources. All the principal contemporary chronicles are represented in this collection, from the violently partisan Thomas Walsingham, chronicler of St Alban's Abbey who saw Richard as a tyrant and murderer, to the indignant Dieulacres chronicler, who claimed that the 'innocent king' was tricked into surrender by his perjured barons. -- .

"Envisaging Heaven in the Middle Ages" considers medieval notions of heaven in theological and mystical writings; in visions of the otherworld; and in medieval arts such as drama, poetry, music and vernacular literature.
The volume considers the influence of images and visions of heaven on the secular literature by some of the greatest writers of the period, such as Chretien de Troyes and Chaucer. The coherence and beauty of these notions make heaven one of the most impressive medieval cathedrals of the mind.
The book shows that the idea of heaven in the Middle Ages was as varied as those who wrote about it, and reveals the extent to which the Christian afterlife was (as it is today) a projection of human hopes and fears.
The book also reveals the extent to which the Christian afterlife was (as it is today) a projection of human hopes and fears. Because "the reality" of heaven was one based on speculation, as well as fancy, medieval heavens were products both of ingenious thought and of creative, wishful imagination.
With contributions from such experts as Peter Dronke, Robin Kirkpatrick, Peter Meredith, Bernard McGinn, Barbara Newman and A.C. Spearing, this collection will be essential reading for all those interested in medieval religion and culture.

This volume brings together a group of international scholars, who explore many unusual aspects of the world of Byzantine women in the period 800-1200. The specific aim of this collection is to investigate the participation of women - non-imperial women in particular - in supposedly 'masculine' fields of operation. This new research across a range of disciplines attempts to provide an analysis of the activities of and attitudes towards Byzantine women in this period. Using evidence from sources as diverse as tax registers, monastic foundation documents, twelfth-century novels, historical texts, art history and the writings of women themselves, such as the hymnographer Kassia and the historian Anna Komnene, these papers elucidate the context in which Byzantine women lived. They emphasize the variety of female experiences, the circumstances that shaped women's lives, and the ways in which individual women were perceived by their society. Contributions focus on women's dress, their participation in the street life of Constantinople, their appearance in Byzantine fiscal documents, their monastic foundations, their engagement with entertainment at the imperial court, and the way heroines are portrayed in the Byzantine novels. Analysis of the writings of the hymnographer Kassia, the networking of Mary 'of Alania' and the ways she overcame the disadvantages of being a foreign-born empress, and the family values reflected in Anna Komnene's Alexiad, draw attention to specific problems. All these aim to expand our understanding of the circumstances that shaped women's lives and expectations in the Middle Byzantine period and to analyze the range of women's experiences, the roles they played and the impact they made on society.

The essays in this volume deal with the history of the Middle East from c.550 to 1000 AD. There are three main themes: Syria in Late Antiquity and the changes and continuities with the early Islamic period; relations between Muslims and the Byzantine Empire from the 8th to the 11th centuries; and the development of government and the economy in the early caliphate. Throughout there is an emphasis on social and economic trends and the integration of written and archaeological evidence to elucidate the complex developments in this pivotal part of the world. In different ways all the papers discuss the formation of the Islamic world and the way in which the legacy of Antiquity, economic, social and cultural, affected the emergence of what we think of as this "Islamic World". These papers will be of interest to historians of Islam and Byzantium but also western mediaevalists interested in comparing processes of change at opposite ends of the Mediterranean.

Henry IV, Henry V and Henry VI were at the same time kings of England and dukes of Lancaster. This book examines the complex relationship between their public authority and their personal lordship over a private inheritance. In so doing, it sheds new light on late medieval English government at both national and local levels.

This comprehensive and absorbing book traces the cultural history of Southeast Asia from prehistoric (especially Neolithic, Bronze-Iron age) times through to the major Hindu and Buddhist civilizations, to around AD 1300. Southeast Asia has recently attracted archaeological attention as the locus for the first recorded sea crossings; as the region of origin for the Austronesian population dispersal across the Pacific from Neolithic times; as an arena for the development of archaeologically-rich Neolithic, and metal using communities, especially in Thailand and Vietnam, and as the backdrop for several unique and strikingly monumental Indic civilizations, such as the Khmer civilization centred around Angkor. Southeast Asia is invaluable to anyone interested in the full history of the region.

These essays take advantage of a new, exciting trend towards interdisciplinary research on the Charlemagne legend. Written by historians, art historians, and literary scholars, these essays focus on the multifaceted ways the Charlemagne legend functioned in the Middle Ages and how central the shared (if nonetheless fictional) memory of the great Frankish ruler was to the medieval West. A gateway to new research on memory, crusading, apocalyptic expectation, Carolingian historiography, and medieval kingship, the contributors demonstrate the fuzzy line separating "fact" and "fiction" in the Middle Ages.

Where Heaven and Earth Meet is a Festschrift in honor of Daniel F. Callahan, Professor of History at the University of Delaware. It is an interdisciplinary collection that celebrates and advances research in his principal scholarly interests. One central focus is on the writings of Ademar of Chabannes and what they reveal about heresy, music, warfare, and the Peace of God in the early Middle Ages. Another is on Western religious history (ecclesiastical houses, hagiography, and papal writings), and the collection is rounded out by studies of early Islamic Jerusalem as well as Arabic numismatics. Contributing authors include Professor Callahan's former classmates, graduate students, colleagues and admirers of his research. The collection will be of interest to researchers in art history, history, musicology, and religion. Contributors are: Bernard S. Bachrach, Daniel F. Callahan, Lawrence G. Duggan, Michael Frassetto, Matthew Gabriele, James Grier, John D. Hosler, Anna Trumbore Jones, Lawrence Nees, Richard R. Ring, Jane T. Schulenburg

Medieval Scandinavia went through momentous changes. Regional power centres merged and gave birth to the three strong kingdoms of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. At the end of the Middle Ages, they together formed the enormous Kalmar Union comprising almost all lands around the North Atlantic and the Baltic Sea. In the Middle Ages, Scandinavia became part of a common Europe, yet preserved its own distinct cultural markers. Scandinavia in the Middle Ages 900-1550 covers the entire Middle Ages into an engaging narrative. The book gives a chronological overview of political, ecclesiastical, cultural, and economic developments. It integrates to this narrative climatic changes, energy crises, devastating epidemies, family life and livelihood, arts, education, technology and literature, and much else. The book shows how different groups had an important role in shaping society: kings and peasants, pious priests, nuns and crusaders, merchants, and students, without forgetting minorities such as Sami and Jews. The book is divided into three chronological parts 900-1200, 1200-1400, and 1400-1550, where analyses of general trends are illustrated by the acts of individual men and women. This book is essential reading for students of, as well as all those interested in, medieval Scandinavia and Europe more broadly.

The medieval film genre is not, in general, concerned with constructing a historically accurate past, but much analysis nonetheless centers on highlighting anachronisms. This book aims to help scholars and aficionados of medieval film think about how the re-creation of an often mythical past performs important cultural work for modern directors and viewers. The essays in this collection demonstrate that directors intentionally insert modern preoccupations into a setting that would normally be considered incompatible with these concepts. The Middle Ages provide an imaginary space far enough removed from the present day to explore modern preoccupations with human identity.

Linked by the politics of global trade networks, Viking Age Europe was a well-connected world. Within this fertile social environment, Iceland ironically has been casted as a marginal society too remote to participate in global affairs, and destined to live in the shadow of its more successful neighbours. Drawing on new archaeological evidence, Tara Carter challenges this view, arguing that by building strong social networks the first citizens of Iceland balanced thinking globally while acting locally, creating the first cosmopolitan society in the North Atlantic. Iceland's Networked Society asks us to reconsider how societies like Iceland can, even when positioned at the margins of competing empires, remain active in a global political economy and achieve social complexity on its own terms.

This book was first published in 1962. Until the era of the Industrial Revolution wool was, without question, the most important raw material in the English economic system. The staple article of the country's export trade in the Middle Ages, it remained until the nineteenth century the indispensable basis of her greatest industry. This book looks at the decline of cloth industry in East Anglia sine the mid-sixteenth century.

Examination of the role played by key figures around the monarchy in the Wars of the Roses. The reigns of Edward IV and Richard III have long engendered fascination and debate, not least concerning the extent of the authority and power of key individuals surrounding the court at the time. This book examines the most influential men and women at the centre of their regimes: the political power-brokers. They served the king in matters of diplomacy, warfare, court ceremony, local government, and the attempt to keep order amid the ongoing crisis of kingship sparked by the Wars of the Roses. Their close royal association to the king led to rapid increases in their power and fortune. Among their ranks are well-documented figures such as the tragic "Kingmaker", Richard Neville,earl of Warwick, and the steadfast baron William, Lord Hastings. This volume however is also concerned to bring to the forefront lesser discussed figures, including Sir Thomas Montgomery, Edward's close friend whose career was remade by the Yorkist usurpation, and Sir John Fogge, one of the leading men of Kent who prospered under Yorkist rule, yet risked everything by rejecting Richard's right to rule. Grounded on extensive archival research, this book offers a more detailed and nuanced image of the influence the power-brokers wielded and their place in the Yorkist state. It analyses the manifestation of their power and the manner in which they exercised their influence publicly and privately; and establishes their importance in the foundation, maintenance, and downfall of the Yorkist dynasty.

Military Diasporas proposes a new research approach to analyse the role of foreign military personnel as composite and partly imagined para-ethnic groups. These groups not only buttressed a state or empire's military might but crucially connected, policed, and administered (parts of) realms as a transcultural and transimperial class while representing the polity's universal or at least cosmopolitan aspirations at court or on diplomatic and military missions. Case studies of foreign militaries with a focus on their diasporic elements include the Achaemenid Empire, Ptolemaic Egypt, and the Roman Empire in the ancient world. These are followed by chapters on the Sassanid and Islamic occupation of Egypt, Byzantium, the Latin Aegean (Catalan Company) to Iberian Christian noblemen serving North African Islamic rulers, Mamluks and Italian Stradiots, followed by chapters on military diasporas in Hungary, the Teutonic Order including the Sword Brethren, and the Swiss military. The volume thus covers a broad band of military diasporic experiences and highlights aspects of their role in the building of state and empire from Antiquity to the late Middle Ages and from Persia via Egypt to the Baltic. With a broad chronological and geographic range, this volume is the ideal resource for upper-level undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars interested in the history of war and warfare from Antiquity to the sixteenth century.