The history of the Aztecs has been haunted by the spectre of human sacrifice. As bloody priests and brutal warriors, the Aztecs have peopled the pages of history, myth and fiction, their spectacular violence dominating perceptions of their culture and casting a veil over their unique way of life. Reinvesting the Aztecs with a humanity frequently denied to them, and exploring their religious violence as a comprehensible element of life and existence, Caroline Dodds Pennock integrates a fresh interpretation of gender with an innovative study of the everyday life of the Aztecs. This was a culture of contradictions and complications, but in amongst the grand ritual we can find the personal and private, the minutiae of life which make the world of these extraordinary people instantly familiar. Despite their violent bloodshed, the Aztecs were a compassionate and expressive people who lived and worked in cooperative gendered partnership.

This is an important new study of the impact of the Norman Conquest. It provides the first full explanation of how the English and the Normans merged to become the same people. The author draws on anthropological theory, the latest scholarship on Anglo-Norman England, and sources ranging from legal documents to romances.

John Benet's Chronicle, 1399-1462 is the first English translation of a fifteenth-century Latin chronicle which has been much used by medievalists since it was published in 1972. Lively and entertaining, it richly deserves the much wider readership that translation can now attract. The introduction argues that John Benet, vicar of Harlington, was only the - rather inefficient - copyist of a chronicle composed by an unidentified writer. Internal clues suggest that the real author was a Londoner who was exceptionally well-informed about events and people in the period of the Wars of the Roses. He was possibly a clerk to the signet, as this book investigates further.

This collection of documents in translation brings together the seminal sources for the late Merovingian Frankish kingdom. It inteprets the chronicles and saint's lives rigorously to reveal new insights into the nature and significance of sanctity, power and power relationships. The book makes available a range of 7th- and early 8th-century texts, five of which have never before been translated into English. It opens with a broad-ranging explanation of the historical background to the translated texts and then each source is accompanied by a full commentary and an introductory essay exploring its authorship, language and subject matter. The sources are rich in the detail of Merovingian political life. Their subjects are the powerful in society and they reveal the successful interplay between power and sanctity, a process which came to underpin much of European culture throughout the early Middle Ages. -- .

The fruits of new research on the politics, society and culture of England in the fourteenth century. The essays collected here engage with many of the most important themes and subjects of the period. In addition to addressing matters of kingship and changing theories of power, they tackle questions concerning loyalty and rebellion at the centre of authority and on its margins; the role of law, both domestic and international; the nature of memory - legal, historical and fabricated; and the relationship between the Plantagenets and the rulers of those nations and territories over which England claimed dominion. In so doing, the collection offers important new insights into political and social developments at times of major turmoil, including Edward I's war with Scotland, the deposition of Edward II, and the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, while also exploring the mechanisms used to ensure peace and the smooth-running of a kingdom during a time of immense change. DAVID GREEN is Lecturer in British Studies and History, Harlaxton College; CHRIS GIVEN-WILSON is Professor of Late Medieval History, University of St Andrews. Contributors: James Bothwell, S.W. Dempsey, Matthew Hefferan, Samuel Lane, Cary J. Nederman, W. Mark Ormrod, Bridget Wells-Furby

This collection of sources demonstrates the variety of evidence that survives of English women in all walks of life from the time of Edward I to the eve of the Reformation. The sources are introduced by a substantial overview of current thinking about English medieval women below the level of the greater aristocracy. In addition, Goldberg explores many of the methodological problems and strengths of particular sources. Individual chapters explore the life-cycle themes of childhood, adolescence, married life, widowhood and old age. The study then moves on to examine such topics as work in town and country, prostitution, the law, recreation and devotion. In every case the reader is exposed to a range of sources, but particular attention is paid to those sources that reflect actual experience or provide insights into the lives of ordinary women rather than the prescriptive or purely literary texts. A particular feature of this collection is the extensive use of church court depositions that allow the voices of peasant women, servant girls, bourgeois wives, or poor widows to be heard across the centuries. The sources are presented in a form designed to be accessible to undergraduates, but of interest to teachers and researchers alike. -- .

This study traces the chequered history of Peter von Danzig, a French caravel which was inadvertently taken over by Gdansk (Danzig). Beata Mozejko charts the fluctuating and often dramatic fortunes of the caravel, from her arrival in Gdansk as a merchantman in 1462 to her demise near La Rochelle in 1475. The author examines the caravel's role as a warship during the Anglo-Hanseatic conflict, and her most famous operation, when she was used by Gdansk privateer Paul Beneke to capture a Burgundian galley with a rich cargo that included Hans Memling's Last Judgement triptych. Using literary and archival sources, Mozejko provides a comprehensive overview and analysis of the information available about the caravel and her colourful career.

Until his untimely death in 1991, David Herlihy, Professor of History at Brown University, was one of the most prolific and best-known American historians of the European Middle Ages. Author of books on the history of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Italy, Herlihy published, in 1978, his best-known work in collaboration with Christine Klapisch-Zuber, Les Toscans et leurs familles (Translated into English in 1985, and Italian in 1988). For the last dozen or so years of his life, Herlihy launched a series of ambitious projects, on the history ofwomen and the family, and on the collective behavior of social groups in medieval Europe. While he completed two important books - on the family (1985) and on women's work (1991) - he did not find the time to bring these other major projects to a conclusion. This volume contains essays he wrote after 1978. They convey a sense of the enormous intellectual energy and great erudition that characterized David Herlihy's scholarly career. They also chart a remarkable historian's intellectual trajectory, as he searched for new and better ways of asking a set of simple and basic questions about the history of the family, the institution within which the vast majority of Europeans spent so much of their lives. Because of his qualities as a scholar and a teacher, during his relatively brief career Herlihy was honored with Presidencies of the four major scholarly associations with which he was affiliated: the Catholic Historical Association, the Medieval Academy of America, the Renaissance Society of America,and the American Historical Association.

While educational travel was extremely popular among early modern Englishmen, the practice attracted extensive public criticism. Rather than examining travel itself, this book explores the vivid public images of educational travellers, their development and popularity, and the fears and prejudices in English society that engendered them.
The first part of the book examines the medieval background of English travel abroad, the enthusiasm for educational travel among early modern Englishmen, and the progress of the public debate over the practice which essentially started with the publication of Ascham's "The Scholemaster in 1570.
The second part of the book examines each of the seven major images of the educational traveller: the Italianated traveller; the atheistical traveller, the Catholic traveller, the morally corrupt traveller, the culturally corrupt traveller, and the foolish and lying travellers.

..". qualities of careful scholarship, lucidity, and vision make this collection eminently accessible to the intelligent general reader and an extremely useful teaching text." . The Historian

"The essays collected in this volume ... have been lovingly compiled by Herlihy's colleague ... Molho, whose introduction links the adventurous curiosity of the historian to the generosity of the man ... pleasant as well as instructive ... Students in particular will profit from accompanying an accomplished master through his restless search for new techniques and new questions to address ... a typological guide through the great document collections of late medieval Italy." . Labor History

Until his untimely death in 1991, David Herlihy, Professor of History at Brown University, was one of the most prolific and best-known American historians of the European Middle Ages. Author of books on the history of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Italy, Herlihy published, in 1978, his best-known work in collaboration with Christine Klapisch-Zuber, Les Toscans et leurs familles (Translated into English in 1985, and Italian in 1988). For the last dozen or so years of his life, Herlihy launched a series of ambitious projects, on the history ofwomen and the family, and on the collective behavior of social groups in medieval Europe. While he completed two important books - on the family (1985) and on women's work (1991) - he did not find the time to bring these other major projects to a conclusion.

This volume contains essays he wrote after 1978. They convey a sense of the enormous intellectual energy and great erudition that characterized David Herlihy's scholarly career. They also chart a remarkable historian's intellectual trajectory, as he searched for new and better ways of asking a set of simple and basic questions about the history of the family, the institution within which the vast majority of Europeans spent so much of their lives. Because of his qualities as a scholar and a teacher, during his relatively brief career Herlihy was honored with Presidencies of the four major scholarly associations with which he was affiliated: the Catholic Historical Association, the Medieval Academy of America, the Renaissance Society of America, and the American Historical Association.

Anthony Molho is Munro Goodwin Wilkinson Professor of European History at Brown University, and has written several works on the social, political, and economic history of late medieval and early modern Italy.

The eighth century has not been analysed as a period of economic history since the 1930s, and is ripe for a comprehensive reassessment. The twelve papers in this book range over the whole of Europe and the Mediterranean from Denmark to Palestine, covering Francia, Italy and Byzantium on the way. They examine regional economies and associated political structures, that is to say the whole network of production, exchange, and social relations in each area. They offer both authoritative overviews of current work and new and original work. As a whole, they show how the eighth century was the first century when the post-Roman world can clearly be seen to have emerged, in the regional economies of each part of Europe.

In Culture and Society in Medieval Galicia, twenty-three international authors examine Galicia's changing place in Iberia, Europe, and the Mediterranean and Atlantic worlds from late antiquity through the thirteenth century. With articles on art and architecture; religion and the church; law and society; politics and historiography; language and literature; and learning and textual culture, the authors introduce medieval Galicia and current research on the region to medievalists, Hispanists, and students of regional culture and society. The cult of St. James, Santiago Cathedral, and the pilgrimage to Compostela are highlighted and contextualized to show how Galicia's remoteness became the basis for a paradoxical centrality in medieval art, culture, and religion. Contributors are Jeffrey A. Bowman, Manuel Castineiras, James D'Emilio, Thomas Deswarte, Pablo C. Diaz, Emma Falque, Amelia P. Hutchinson, Amancio Isla, Henrik Karge, Melissa R. Katz, Michael Kulikowski, Fernando Lopez Sanchez, Luis R. Menendez Bueyes, William D. Paden, Francisco Javier Perez Rodriguez, Ermelindo Portela, Rocio Sanchez Ameijeiras, Adeline Rucquoi, Ana Suarez Gonzalez, Purificacion Ubric, Ramon Villares, John Williams , and Roger Wright.

Al-Mu'ayyad fi'l-DIn al-ShIrzI (died 470/1087), was an outstanding, multi-talented Fatimid scholar of Persian origin. He excelled as a missionary-agent, statesman, poet, preacher and theologian. Based on his autobiography, this work provides an insight into the remarkable life and achievements of al-Mu'ayyad through the important stages of his career, describing his daring attempt to win over the Buyids of western Iraq to the Fatimid cause, his dangerous flight to Cairo and finally his expedition to Syria and Iraq to build up an alliance of local rulers against the invading Saljuk Turks. The author demonstrates that in addition to being an intriguing personal account, the life of al-Mu'ayyad is a rich source of Islamic history in the 5/llth century, which deals with crucial events in the struggle between the Fatimids, Abbasids, Buyids and Saljuks for supremacy in the Muslim world.

This work explores the role of canon law in the ecclesiastical reform movement of the eleventh century, commonly known as the Gregorian Reform. Focusing on the Collectio canonum of Bishop Anselm of Lucca, it explores how the reformers came to value and employ law as as means of achieving desired ends in a time of social upheaval and revolution.

In The Anxieties of a Citizen Class: The Miracles of the True Cross of San Giovanni Evangelista, Venice 1370-1480 Kiril Petkov identifies the socio-psychological preoccupations accompanying the formation of the leading commoner group of early Renaissance Venice, the cittadini originarii, as revealed in a cycle of miracles performed by a fragment of the True Cross owned by the brotherhood of San Giovanni Evangelista. The study's principal contention is that the miracles trace the evolution of the citizen elite from members of a large, fluid group of men of affairs to community managers to state servants. Each miracle highlights a stage of that process and the social anxieties engendered in the acquisition of a specific social identity.

In Envoys of A Human God Andreu Martinez offers a comprehensive study of the religious mission led by the Society of Jesus in Christian Ethiopia. The mission to Ethiopia was one of the most challenging undertakings carried out by the Catholic Church in early modern times. The book examines the period of early Portuguese contacts with the Ethiopian monarchy, the mission's main developments and its aftermath, with the expulsion of the Jesuit missionaries. The study profits from both an intense reading of the historical record and the fruits of recent archaeological research. Long-held historiographical assumptions are challenged and the importance of cultural and socio-political factors in the attraction and ultimate estrangement between European Catholics and Ethiopian Christians is highlighted.

This lavish set of books contains the most complete collection of raw material for reconstructing the history of the Achaemenid Persian Empire to date. Studying Achaemenid history has been difficult in the past because original sources include texts from hugely disparate origins, many different languages and various periods in history; the risk is to rely too heavily on biased and often inaccurate Greek and Roman sources. Amelie Kuhrt presents here an unprecedented collection of key texts to form a balanced representation of all aspects of the Empire, in translations from their original Greek, Old Persian, Akkadian, Hebrew, Aramaic, Egyptian or Latin. Kuhrt selects from classical writers, the Old Testament, royal inscriptions, administrative documents and Babylonian historical writing, as well as the evidence of monuments, artefacts and archaeological sites. All material is accompanied by a detailed introduction to the sources and guidelines to their interpretation. A truly monumental achievement, this collection will prove to be a major resource for any student of Persian history, from undergraduate level to the advanced scholar.

When originally published in 1901, this volume related for the first time the History of Egypt in the Middle Ages, from its conquest by the Saracens in 640 to its annexation by the Ottoman Turks in 1517 in a continuous narrative apart from the general history of the Muslim caliphate.

Beatific Enjoyment in Medieval Scholastic Debates examines the religious concept of enjoyment as discussed by scholastic theologians in the Latin Middle Ages. Severin Kitanov argues that central to the concept of beatific enjoyment (fruitio beatifica) is the distinction between the terms enjoyment and use (frui et uti) found in Saint Augustine's treatise On Christian Learning. Peter Lombard, a twelfth-century Italian theologian, chose the enjoyment of God to serve as an opening topic of his Sentences and thereby set in motion an enduring scholastic discourse. Kitanov examines the nature of volition and the relationship between volition and cognition. He also explores theological debates on the definition of enjoyment: whether there are different kinds and degrees of enjoyment, whether natural reason unassisted by divine revelation can demonstrate that beatific enjoyment is possible, whether beatific enjoyment is the same as pleasure, whether it has an intrinsic cognitive character, and whether the enjoyment of God in heaven is a free or un-free act. Even though the concept of beatific enjoyment is essentially religious and theological, medieval scholastic authors discussed this concept by means of Aristotle's logical and scientific apparatus and through the lens of metaphysics, physics, psychology, and virtue ethics. Bringing together Christian theological and Aristotelian scientific and philosophical approaches to enjoyment, Kitanov exposes the intricacy of the discourse and makes it intelligible for both students and scholars.

The rich collections of the Hermitage Museum include a remarkable series of Norman and later medieval British coins. Unlike the Hermitage's Anglo-Saxon coins which are mainly from Russian finds, the coins in this volume come from three major private collectors of the nineteenth century. They include some 60 coins of William I, purchased in London, that derive from the 1833 hoard from Beauworth, Sussex. For the later middle ages the collection is particularly rich in gold coinage. Virtually all of the 493 coins are illustrated for the first time. They will be a valuable source for medieval numismatists and for those interested in the history of the Hermitage and its collections. This volume complements Hermitage Museum, Part I (ISBN 0-19-726187-6). Parts II and III will follow.

This book provides a fresh introduction to the political history of late medieval France duing the turbulent period of the "Hundred Years' War," taking into account the social, economic and religious contexts. Graeme Small considers not just the monarchy but also prelates, noble networks and the emerging municipalities in this new analysis.

The setting for the studies collected here is the West-Eurasian steppe region, extending from present-day Kazakhstan through southern Russia, Ukraine and Moldavia to the Carpathian Basin. The first articles deal with pre-Mongol, Turkic peoples of the region and their relations with the Byzantine Empire to the south, but the core of the volume is the history of the Golden Horde and its successor states, such as the Kazan and Crimean Khanates, whose Turco-Mongol overlords are often referred to as Tatars. These played a decisive role in the history of Western Central Asia and Eastern Europe in the 13th-16th centuries and had a fundamental influence on the rise of the Russian state. Particular articles look at Mongol institutions and terminology, others at the interaction of the medieval Tatar and Russian worlds.