First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Christians in fifteenth-century Iraq and al-Jazira were socially and culturally home in the Middle East, practicing their distinctive religion despite political instability. This insightful book challenges the normative Eurocentrism of scholarship on Christianity and the Islamic exceptionalism of much Middle Eastern history to reveal the often unexpected ways in which inter-religious interactions were peaceful or violent in this region. The multifaceted communal self-concept of the 'Church of the East' (so-called 'Nestorians') reveals cultural integration, with certain distinctive features. The process of patriarchal succession clearly borrowed ideas from surrounding Christian and Muslim groups, while public rituals and communal history reveal specifically Christian responses to concerns shared with Muslim neighbors. Drawing on sources from various languages, including Arabic, Armenian, Persian, and Syriac, this book opens new possibilities for understanding the rich, diverse, and fascinating society and culture that existed in Iraq during this time.

A major reconsideration of the relationship between warrior aristocrats, epics, and heroes in medieval culture. The process of identity formation during the central Middle Ages (10th-12th centuries) among the warrior aristocracy was fundamentally centered on the paired practices of gift giving and violent taking, inextricably linked elements of the same basic symbolic economy. These performative practices cannot be understood without reference to a concept of the sacred, which anchored and governed the performances, providing the goal and rationale of social and military action. After focussing on anthropological theory, social history, and chronicles, the author turns to the "literary" persona of the hero as seen in the epic. He argues that the hero was specifically a narrative touchstone used for reflection on the nature and limits of aggressive identity formation among the medieval warrior elite; the hero can be seen, from a theoretical perspective, as a "supplement" to his own society, who both perfectly incarnated its values but also, in attaining full integrity, short-circuited the very mechanisms of identity formation and reciprocity which undergirded the society. The book shows that the relationship between warriors, heroes, and their opponents (especially Saracens) must be understood as a complex, tri-partite structure - not a simple binary opposition - in which the identity of each constituent depends on the other two. ANDREW COWELL isAssociate Professor of the Department of French and Italian, and the Department of Linguistics, at the University of Colorado.

The Professions in Early Modern England, 1450-1800" looks at the growth of a professional working class from the Tudor period to the early nineteenth century, a working class vital in the development of a recognizably modern world. "Examines the differences between the 'lettered' and the leisured classes and explores the lives of lawyers, politicians, physicians, teachers and clerics. Those interested in British or social history. Hardcover - 0-582-29265-4 $ 84.95 y

Hono sapiens, homo pugnans, and so it has been since the beginning of recorded history. In the Middle Ages, especially, armed conflict and the military life were so much a part of the political and cultural development that a general account of this period is, in large measure, a description of how men went to war.

This thought-provoking book explores medieval perceptions of pilgrimage, gender and space. It examines real life evidence for the widespread presence of women pilgrims, as well as secular and literary texts concerning pilgrimage and women pilgrims represented in the visual arts. Women pilgrims were inextricably linked with sexuality and their presence on the pilgrimage trails was viewed as tainting sacred space.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203463803

First full-scale account of the use of the Arthurian legend in the long twelfth century. The precedent of empire and the promise of return lay at the heart of King Arthur's appeal in the Middle Ages. Both ideas found fullness of expression in the twelfth century: monarchs and magnates sought to recreate an Arthurian golden age that was as wondrous as the biblical and classical worlds, but less remote. Arthurianism, the practice of invoking and emulating the legendary Arthur of post-Roman Britain, was thus an instance of medieval medievalism. This book provides a comprehensive history of the first 150 years of Arthurianism, from its beginnings under Henry II of England to a highpoint under Edward I. It contends that the Plantagenet kings of England mockingly ascribed a literal understanding of the myth of King Arthur's return to the Brittonic Celts whilst adopting for themselves a figurative and typological interpretation of the myth. A central figure in this work is Arthur of Brittany (1187-1203), who, for more than a generation, was the focus of Arthurian hopes and their disappointment. CHRISTOPHER MICHAEL BERARD is a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Providence College. He completed his PhD at the University of Toronto's Centre for Medieval Studies.

In "Performance, Cognitive Theory, and Devotional Culture," Jill Stevenson uses cognitive theory to explore the layperson's physical encounter with live religious performances, and to argue that laypeople's interactions with other devotional media--such as books and art objects--may also have functioned like performance events. By revealing the remarkable resonance between cognitive science and medieval visual theories, Stevenson demonstrates how understanding medieval culture can enrich the study of performance generally. She concludes by applying her theories of medieval performance culture to contemporary religious forms, including creationist museums, Hell Houses, and megachurches.

Grief binds the worshipers together in an adagio of sorrow as they encounter the sculptural representation of the Entombment of Christ. Located in funerary chapels, parish churches, cemeteries, and hospitals, these works embody the piety of the later Middle Ages. In this book, Donna Sadler examines the sculptural Entombments from Burgundy and Champagne through a variety of lenses, including performance theory, embodied perception, and the invocation of the absent presence of the Holy Sepulcher. The author demonstrates how the action of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus entombing Christ in the presence of the Marys and John operates in a commemorative and collective fashion: the worshiper enters the realm of the holy and becomes a participant in the biblical event.

This book examines one collection of saints' lives, or sanctorals, and the twenty-five female saints witnessed therein. Included in the study are transcriptions of twenty-two previously unedited lives. Hagiography was one of the most prolific narrative genres in the Middle Ages. Jacobus de Voragine's Golden Legend (c. 1260), the most popular compendium, was translated into every language in Western Europe. In the medievalIberian peninsula, the number of conserved hagiographic documents dwarfs those belonging to other narrative genres. This book examines one collection of saints' lives, or sanctorals, and the twenty-five female saints witnessed therein. Their lives furnished exemplary models for women inside and outside the Church, and tell stories of maidens tortured by pagan sovereigns, prostitutes, mothers who see their sons martyred, and women who dress as men in orderto avoid being married off to the nearest suitor. This study challenges an understanding of these women as passive recipients of social and spiritual influence by re-situating female authority within the context of vision, language, and performativity. Included in the study are transcriptions of twenty-two previously unedited lives. Emma Gatland is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, University of Cambridge.

Few historians have had a greater impact on their chosen period than K.B. McFarlane. This complete collection of the articles that he published during his lifetime represents the core of his work.

This work offers a comprehensive study of warfare and the Byzantine army in the social context. It deals with Byzantine attitudes to warfare, the effects of war on society as a whole both culturally and physically, as well as relationships between soldiers, leaders and society. It also examines the strategic situation of the empire and the state's response to external military pressures in the period from the late 6th-century to the late 12th-century. The strategic geography of the empire, communications, logistics, resources and manpower are also examined, as well as the army's strategic and tactical administrative evolution.

This volume is available individually, or as part of the 7 volume set "Emergence of International Business 1200-1800" (0-415-19072-X; $910.00/Y [Can. $1365.00/Y]).

This is a study of the religious practices of lay people within a distinctive and relatively unexplored region that once formed the diocese of Salisbury. Andrew Brown explores lay piety in its contexts of landscape, society, and the church, and examines the many different issues and activities which were of contemporary importance, such as the religious guilds, charity, and heresy. He shows how the regional variations in social and economic structure affected parish life, and concludes with an important assessment of the reception of the Reformation in the diocese. This is the first scholarly study of the lay religion of this region, and its broad chronological range of and meticulously researched local focus offer illuminating insights into medieval piety over the centuries.

The idea of what an "eyewitness" account is here scrutinised through examination of key Crusading texts. Eyewitness is a familiar label that historians apply to numerous pieces of evidence. It carries compelling connotations of trustworthiness and particular proximity to the lived experience of historical actors. But it has received surprisingly little critical attention. This book seeks to open up discussion of what we mean when we label a historical source in this way. Through a close analysis of accounts of the Second, Third and Fourth Crusades, aswell as an in-depth discussion of recent research by cognitive and social psychologists into perception and memory, this book challenges historians of the Middle Ages to revisit their often unexamined assumptions about the place of eyewitness narratives within the taxonomies of historical evidence. It is for the most part impossible to situate the authors of the texts studied here, viewed as historical actors, in precise spatial and temporal relation to the action that they purport to describe. Nor can we ever be truly certain what they actually saw. In what, therefore, does the authors' eyewitness status reside, and is this, indeed, a valid category of analysis? This book argues that the most productive way in which to approach the figure of the autoptic author is not as some floating presence close to historical events, validating our knowledge of them, but as an artefact of the text's meaning-makingoperations, in particular as these are opened up to scrutiny by narratological concepts such as the narrator, focalization and storyworld. The conclusion that emerges is that there is no single understanding of eyewitness runningthrough the texts, for all their substantive and thematic similarities; each fashions its narratorial voice in different ways as a function of its particular story-telling strategies. MARCUS BULL is Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Professor of Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

The third edition of The Beast Within has been updated throughout to include current scholarship, new discussion of definitions, and fresh perspectives on critical animal theory that places animals, rather than humans, at the center of the discourse. Organized thematically, Salisbury incorporates many new sections and subsections to reveal the multifaceted history of the relationship between humans and animals: domestication, animal diseases and pandemics, dogfights, cockfights, Islamic dietary restrictions, menageries and zoos, and animals as entertainers. To show how modern concerns have been informed by medieval precedents, sections have been expanded to uncover medieval understandings of animal sexuality, animals before the law, and vegetarianism and modern 'fake meat'. The logical narrative concludes with chapters on 'Animals as Humans' and 'Humans as Animals', demonstrating that the lines between humans and animals have become increasingly blurred from the fourth to the twenty-first century. With an interdisciplinary approach that discusses humans and animals in relation to domestication, symbolism, science, law, religion, food and diet, sexuality, and entertainment, The Beast Within is an essential resource for all students of animal history, literature, and art in the Middle Ages.

With its prime focus on the human factor in history, this book examines the role of foolishness in the unfolding of major events in Britain, particularly invasions, from Caesar's expeditions to the Norman Conquest. Many historians believe that foolishness in a bygone age cannot be meaningfully assessed, but this book does not accept that view.

In 1095 the First Crusade was launched, establishing a great military endeavour which was a central preoccupation of Europeans until the end of the thirteenth century. In Western warfare in the age of the Crusades, 1000-1300 John France offers a wide-ranging and challenging survey of war and warfare and its place in the development of European Society, culture and economy in the period of the Crusades. Placing the crusades in a wider context, this book brings together the wealth of recent scholarly research on such issues as knighthood, siege warfare, chivalry and fortifications into an accessible form. Western warfare in the age of the Crusades, 1000-1300 examines the nature of war in the period 1000-1300 and argues that it was primarily shaped by the people who conducted war - the landowners. John France illuminates the role of property concerns in producing the characteristic instruments of war: the castle and the knight. This authoritative study details the way in which war was fought and the reasons for it as well as reflecting on the society which produced the crusades.

Byzantine Empresses provides a series of biographical portraits of the most significant Byzantine women who ruled or shared the throne between 527 and 1204. It presents and analyses the available historical data in order to outline what these empresses did, what the sources thought they did, and what they wanted to do.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203024818

The bestselling historian tells the story of the landscapes, peoples and culture of early medieval Britain in eight walks, an epic sea voyage and a north-south ride by motorbike. The five centuries between the end of Roman Britain (410) and the death of Alfred the Great (899) have left few voices save a handful of chroniclers, but Britain's 'Dark Ages' can still be explored through their material remnants: buildings, books, metalwork, and, above all, landscapes. Adams explores Britain's lost early medieval past by walking its paths and exploring its imprint on valley, hill and field. From York to Whitby, London to Sutton Hoo and Falmouth to Mallaig, In the Land of Giants offers a beautifully written insight into the lives of peasants, drengs, ceorls, thanes, monks and kings during an enigmatic but richly exciting period of our island's history.

"The Sage in Jewish Society of Late Antiquity" explores the social position of rabbis in Palestinian (Roman) and Babylonian (Persian) society from the period of the fall of the Temple to late antiquity. Author Richard Kalmin argues that ancient rabbinic sources depict comparable differences between Palestinian and Babylonian rabbinic relationships with non-Rabbis." The Sage in Jewish Society of Late Antiquity" provides a cultured and stimulating analysis of the role of the sage in late antiquity and sheds new light on rabbinic comments on such diverse topics as biblical heroes and genealogy and lineage.

"From Roman Britain to Norman England" is a general survey of the main developments in the region from the fourth century to the eleventh. P. H. Sawyer takes an analytical approach, devoting chapters to social organization, the changing character of kingship, the royal government and the power of the church. Particular attention is paid to the history of settlement, the making of the landscape, the growth of towns and trade that made eleventh century England one of the most highly urbanized areas of western Europe. Sawyer also emphasizes the influence of British, Roman, Frankish, Viking and Christian that helped shape English society and contributed to the making of the United Kingdom. There is a full bibliography and the text is complemented by maps that provide a detailed informative account of the post-Roman English society.