Here, Myres looks anew at the dark centuries of English history between the collapse of Roman rule in the early fifth century and the emergence of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the seventh--the subject of the now-classic Roman Britain and the English Settlements by Collingwood and Myres--and reconsiders the period in light of abundant recent research in the field. New linguistic findings have led to a significant shift in emphasis, which is now reflected in this last volume of the Oxford History of England. The author illuminates some of the little-understood factors that link Roman Britain with Anglo-Saxon England, and suggests certain political and social continuities that help to clarify this complex and traumatic historical era.

In 2005 Museum Het Valkhof in Nijmegen presented the exhibition a ~The Limbourg Brothers. Nijmegen Masters at the French Court (1400-1416)a (TM). This was the first time that original miniatures from four manuscripts by the Limbourg brothers were shown in the Netherlands. The exhibition formed an excellent opportunity to invite prominent scholars to share their views on the art of the Limbourg brothers during a two-day conference. This publication presents in written form the conference papers delivered by some of the leading scholars in the field.

Of all the civilisations existing in the year 1000, that of Western Europe seemed the unlikeliest candidate for future greatness. Compared to the glittering empires of Byzantium or Islam, the splintered kingdoms on the edge of the Atlantic appeared impoverished, fearful and backward. But the anarchy of these years proved to be, not the portents of the end of the world, as many Christians had dreaded, but rather the birthpangs of a radically new order. MILLENNIUM is a stunning panoramic account of the two centuries on either side of the apocalyptic year 1000. This was the age of Canute, William the Conqueror and Pope Gregory VII, of Vikings, monks and serfs, of the earliest castles and the invention of knighthood, and of the primal conflict between church and state. The story of how the distinctive culture of Europe - restless, creative and dynamic - was forged from out of the convulsions of these extraordinary times is as fascinating and as momentous as any in history.

A close analysis of forgeries and historical writings at Saint Peter's, Ghent; Saint-Denis near Paris; and Christ Church, Canterbury, offering valuable access to why medieval people often rewrote their pasts. What modern scholars call "forgeries" (be they texts, seals, coins, or relics) flourished in the central Middle Ages. Although lying was considered wrong throughout the period, such condemnation apparently did not extend to forgeries. Rewriting documents was especially common among monks, who exploited their mastery of writing to reshape their records. Monastic scribes frequently rewrote their archives, using charters, letters, and narratives, to create new usable pasts for claiming lands and privileges in their present or future. Such imagined histories could also be deployed to "reform" their community or reshape its relationship with lay and ecclesiastical authorities. Although these creative rewritings were forgeries, they still can be valuable evidence of medieval mentalities. While forgeries cannot easily be used to reconstruct what did happen, forgeries embedded in historical narratives show what their composers believed should have happened and thus they offer valuable access to why medieval people rewrote their pasts. This book offers close analysis of three monastic archives over the long eleventh century: Saint Peter's, Ghent; Saint-Denis near Paris; and Christ Church, Canterbury. These foci provide the basis for contextualizing key shifts in documentary culture in the twelfth century across Europe. Overall, the book argues that connections between monastic forgeries and historical writing in the tenth through twelfth centuries reveal attempts to reshape reality. Both sought to rewrite the past and thereby promote monks' interests in their present or future.

Iconoclasm was the name given to the stance of that portion of Eastern Christianity that rejected worshipping God through images (eikones) representing Christ, the Virgin or the saints and was the official doctrine of the Byzantine Empire for most of the period between 726 and 843. It was a period marked by violent passions on either side. This is the first comprehensive account of the extant contemporary texts relating to this phenomenon and their impact on society, politics and identity. By examining the literary circles emerging both during the time of persecution and immediately after the restoration of icons in 843, the volume casts new light on the striking (re)construction of Byzantine society, whose iconophile identity was biasedly redefined by the political parties led by Theodoros Stoudites, Gregorios Dekapolites and Empress Theodora or the patriarchs Methodios, Ignatios and Photios. It thereby offers an innovative paradigm for approaching Byzantine literature.

Edited with a facing-page English translation from the Latin text by: Treharne, R. F.; Unknown function: Sanders, I. J.

A pocketbook reproduction of the Declaration of Arbroath with historical analysis by Tom Turpie to commemorate the 700th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration. The document is a declaration of Scottish independence as a sovereign state in 1320, rather than a feudal land controlled by England's Norman kings, and to lift the excommunication of Robert the Bruce.

This is the first major study in English of the queens of the Ottonian dynasty (919-1024). The Ottonians were a family from Saxony who are often regarded as the founders of the medieval German kingdom. They were the most successful of all the dynasties to emerge from the wreckage of the pan-European Carolingian Empire after it disintegrated in 888, ruling as kings and emperors in Germany and Italy and exerting indirect hegemony in France and in Eastern Europe. It has long been noted by historians that Ottonian queens were peculiarly powerful - indeed, among the most powerful of the entire Middle Ages. Their reputations, particularly those of the empresses Theophanu (d.991) and Adelheid (d.999) have been commemorated for a thousand years in art, literature, and opera. But while the exceptional status of the Ottonian queens is well appreciated, it has not been fully explained. Ottonian Queenship offers an original interpretation of Ottonian queenship through a study of the sources for the dynasty's six queens, and seeks to explain it as a phenomenon with a beginning, middle, and end. The argument is that Ottonian queenship has to be understood as a feature in a broader historical landscape, and that its history is intimately connected with the unfolding story of the royal dynasty as a whole. Simon MacLean therefore interprets the spectacular status of Ottonian royal women not as a matter of extraordinary individual personalities, but as a distinctive product of the post-Carolingian era in which the certainties of the ninth century were breaking down amidst overlapping struggles for elite family power, royal legitimacy, and territory. Queenship provides a thread which takes us through the complicated story of a crucial century in Europe's creation, and helps explain how new ideas of order were constructed from the debris of the past.

New investigations into a pivotal era of the thirteenth century. The years between 1258 and 67 comprise one of the most influential periods in the Middle Ages in England. This turbulent decade witnessed a bitter power struggle between King Henry III and his barons over who should control the government of the realm. Before England eventually descended into civil war, a significant proportion of the baronage had attempted to transform its governance by imposing on the crown a programme of legislative and administrative reform far more radical and wide-ranging than Magna Carta in 1215. Constituting a critical stage in the development of parliament, the reformist movement would remain unsurpassed in its radicalism until the upheavals of the seventeenth century. Simon de Montfort, the baronial champion, became the first leader of a political movement to seize power and govern in the king's name. The essays collected here offer the most recent research into and ideas onthis pivotal period. Several contributions focus upon the roles played in the political struggle by particular sections of thirteenth-century society, including the Midland knights and their political allegiances, aristocratic women, and the merchant elite in London. The events themselves constitute the second major theme of this volume, with subjects such as the secret revolution of 1258, Henry III's recovery of power in 1261, and the little studied maritime theatre during the civil wars of 1263-7 being considered. Adrian Jobson is an Associate Lecturer at Canterbury Christ Church University. Contributors: Sophie Ambler, Nick Barratt, David Carpenter, PeterCoss, Mario Fernandes, Andrew H. Hershey, Adrian Jobson, Lars Kjaer, John A. McEwan, Tony Moore, Fergus Oakes, H.W. Ridgeway, Christopher David Tilley, Benjamin L. Wild, Louise J. Wilkinson.

The Philosophy and Science of Roger Bacon offers new insights and research perspectives on one of the most intriguing characters of the Middle Ages, Roger Bacon. At the intersections between science and philosophy, the volume analyses central aspects of Bacon's reflections on how nature and society can be perfected. The volume dives into the intertwining of Bacon's philosophical stances on nature, substantial change, and hylomorphism with his scientific discussion of music, alchemy, and medicine. The Philosophy and Science of Roger Bacon also investigates Bacon's projects of education reform and his epistemological and theological ground maintaining that humans and God are bound by wisdom, and therefore science. Finally, the volume examines how Bacon's doctrines are related to a wider historical context, particularly in consideration of Peter John Olivi, John Pecham, Peter of Ireland, and Robert Grosseteste. The Philosophy and Science of Roger Bacon is a crucial tool for scholars and students working in the history of philosophy and science and also for a broader audience interested in Roger Bacon and his long-lasting contribution to the history of ideas.

Before the advent of printing, the preaching of the friars was the mass medium of the middle ages. This edition of marriage sermons reveals what a number of famous preachers actually taught about marriage. David D'Avray teases out the close connection between marriage symbolism and social, cultural, and legal realities in the thirteenth century; and assesses the impact of this preaching.

Literature serves many purposes, and one of them certainly proves to be to convey messages, wisdom, and instruction, and this across languages, religions, and cultures. Beyond that, as the contributors to this volume underscore, people have always endeavored to reach out to their community members, that is, to build community, to learn from each other, and to teach. Hence, this volume explores the meaning of communication, translation, and community building based on the medium of language. While all these aspects have already been discussed in many different venues, the contributors endeavor to explore a host of heretofore less considered historical, religious, literary, political, and linguistic sources. While the dominant focus tends to rest on conflicts, hostility, and animosity in the pre-modern age, here the emphasis rests on communication with its myriad of challenges and potentials for establishing a community. As the various studies illustrate, a close reading of communicative issues opens profound perspectives regarding human relationships and hence the social context. This understanding invites intensive collaboration between medical historians, literary scholars, translation experts, and specialists on religious conflicts and discourses. We also learn how much language carries tremendous cultural and social meaning and determines in a most sensitive manner the interactions among people in a communicative and community-based fashion.

An interdisciplinary approach to sources for our knowledge of the crusades. The interrelation of so-called "literary" and "historical" sources of the crusades, and the fluidity of these categorisations, are the central concerns of the essays collected here. They demonstrate what the study of literary texts can do for our historical understanding of the crusading movement, challenging earlier historiographical assumptions about well-known poems and songs, and introducing hitherto understudied manuscript sources which elucidate a rich contemporary compositional culture regarding the matter of crusade. The volume discusses a wide array of European textual responses to the medieval crusading movement, from the Plantagenet and Catalan courts to the Italy of Charles of Anjou, Cyprus, and the Holy Land. Meanwhile, the topics considered include the connexions between poetry and history in the Latin First Crusade texts; the historical, codicological and literary background to Richard the Lionheart's famous song of captivity; crusade references in the troubadour Cerveri of Girona; literary culture surrounding Charles of Anjou's expeditions; the use of the Melusine legend to strengthen the Lusignans' claim to Cyprus; and the influence of aristocratic selection criteria in manuscript traditions of Old French crusade songs. These diverse approaches are unified in their examination of crusading texts as cultural artefacts ripe for comparisonacross linguistic and thematic divides. SIMON THOMAS PARSONS teaches Medieval History at Royal Holloway, University of London and King's College London; LINDA PATERSON is Professor Emerita at Warwick University. Contributors: Luca Barbieri, Miriam Cabre, Jean Dunbabin, Ruth Harvey, Simon John, Charmaine Lee, Helen J. Nicholson, Simon Parsons, Anna Radaelli, Stephen Spencer, Carol Sweetenham.

This innovative critical volume brings the study of Margery Kempe into the twenty-first century. Structured around four categories of 'encounter' - textual, internal, external and performative - the volume offers a capacious exploration of The Book of Margery Kempe, characterised by multiple complementary and dissonant approaches. It employs a multiplicity of scholarly and critical lenses, including the intertextual history of medieval women's literary culture, medical humanities, history of science, digital humanities, literary criticism, oral history, the global Middle Ages, archival research and creative re-imagining. Revealing several new discoveries about Margery Kempe and her Book in its global contexts, and offering multiple ways of reading the Book in the modern world, it will be an essential companion for years to come. -- .

An examination of the growth of civic power in the turbulent arena of late medieval London. In the late fourteenth century, London's government, through mismanagement and negligence, experienced a series of crises. Relationships with the crown were tested; competing factions sought to wrest power from the hands of the once all-powerful victualling guilds; revolt in the streets in 1381 targeted the institutions of royal as well as civic power; and, between 1392 and 1397, King Richard removed the liberties of the city and appointed his own wardensto govern in place of the mayor of London. This book examines the strategies employed by the generation of London aldermen who governed after 1397 to regain control of their city. By examining a range of interdisciplinary sources, including manuscript and printed books, administrative records, accounts of civic ritual and epitaphs, the author shows how, by carefully constructing the idea of a civic community united by shared political concerns and spiritual ambitions, a small number of men virtually monopolised power in the capital. More generally, this is an exploration of the mentalities of those who sought civic power in the late Middle Ages and provokes the question: whygovern, and for whom? DAVID HARRY is Lecturer in History at the University of Chester.

The Laborer's Two Bodies explores the intellectual, cultural, and political consequences of one of the most fundamental shifts in late medieval English society: the first national labour regulation in the wake of the 1348 plague. Bridging the medieval and early modern periods, this book analyzes a wide range of texts and images produced in this initial period of labour regulation (1349 to 1500), including trial records, ecclesiastical bulls, penitential literature, and chronicle accounts, considering these documents alongside better known texts by Chaucer, Gower, Langland, the Paston Family, Barclay and More (among others). This book demonstrates that the category of labour (as both lived and imagined) became increasingly problematic for writers who struggled to understand the meaning of work in a world where labour was simultaneously understood as punishment, virtue and reward.

In the five hundred years covered by this volume there was scarcely a year which passed without either war or some open demonstration of hostility between the many sovereign powers which governed Europe. This volume in the Origins of the Modern State in Europe series focuses on the crucial role of war in the formation of state systems.

In Vox regis: Royal Communication in High Medieval Norway, David Bregaint examines how the Norwegian monarchy gradually managed to infiltrate Norwegian society through the development of a communicative system during the High Middle Ages, from c. 1150 to c. 1300. Drawing on sagas, didactic literature, charters, and laws, the book demonstrates how the Norwegian kings increasingly played a key -role in the promotion of royal ideology in society through rituals and the written word. In particular, the book stresses the interaction between secular and clerical culture, the role of the Church and of the Norwegian aristocracy

This collection of essays in two volumes explores patterns of medieval society and culture, spanning from the close of the late antique period to the beginnings of the Renaissance. In the first volume, the articles unravel the complexities of authority and community, and then turn to the multiple rubrics of behavior which bound and defined medieval societies. Volume 1 thus ends with a discussion of morality, from models of civic virtue (and vice) to Christian prescriptions and prohibitions.

In the Mirror of the Prodigal Son provides a comprehensive history of the function of the parable of the prodigal son in shaping religious identity in medieval and Reformation Europe. By investigating a wealth of primary sources, the book reveals the interaction between commentaries, sermons, religious plays, and images as a decisive factor in the increasing popularity of the prodigal son. Pietro Delcorno highlights the ingenious and multifaceted uses of the parable within pastoral activities and shows the pervasive presence of the Bible in medieval communication. The prodigal son narrative became the ideal story to convey a discourse about sin and penance, grace and salvation. In this way, the parable was established as the paradigmatic biography of any believer.

Proclus (412-485 A.D.) was one of the last official 'successors' of Plato at the head of the Academy in Athens at the end of Antiquity, before the school was finally closed down in 529. As a prolific author of systematic works on a wide range of topics and one of the most influential commentators on Plato of all times, the legacy of Proclus in the cultural history of the west can hardly be overestimated. This book introduces the reader to Proclus' life and works, his place in the Platonic tradition of Antiquity and the influence his work exerted in later ages. Various chapters are devoted to Proclus' metaphysical system, including his doctrines about the first principle of all reality, the One, and about the Forms and the soul. The broad range of Proclus' thought is further illustrated by highlighting his contribution to philosophy of nature, scientific theory, theory of knowledge and philosophy of language. Finally, also his most original doctrines on evil and providence, his Neoplatonic virtue ethics, his complex views on theology and religious practice, and his metaphysical aesthetics receive separate treatments. This book is the first to bring together the leading scholars in the field and to present a state of the art of Proclean studies today. In doing so, it provides the most comprehensive introduction to Proclus' thought currently available.

In ad 330 the Emperor Constantine consecrated the new capital of the eastern Roman Empire on the site of the ancient city of Byzantium. Its later history is well known, yet comparatively little is known about the city before it became Constantinople and then Istanbul. Although it was just a minor Greek polis located on the northern fringes of Hellenic culture, surrounded by hostile Thracian tribes and denigrated by one ancient wit as the 'armpit of Greece', Byzantium did nevertheless possess one unique advantage - control of the Bosporus strait. This highly strategic waterway links the Aegean to the Black Sea, thereby conferring on the city the ability to tax maritime traffic passing between the two. Byzantium and the Bosporus is a historical study of the city of Byzantium and its society, epigraphy, culture, and economy, which seeks to establish the significance of its geographical circumstances and in particular its relationship with the Bosporus strait. Examining the history of the region through this lens reveals how over almost a millennium it came to shape many aspects of the lives of its inhabitants, illuminating not only the nature of economic exploitation and the attitudes of ancient imperialism, but also local industries and resources and the genesis of communities' local identities. Drawing extensively on Dionysius of Byzantium's Anaplous Bosporou, an ancient account of the journey up the Bosporus, and on local inscriptions, what emerges is a meditation on regional particularism which reveals the pervasive influence which the waterway had on the city of Byzantium and its local communities, and which illustrates how the history of this region cannot be understood in isolation from its geographical context. This volume will be of interest to all those interested in classical history more broadly and to Byzantinists seeking to explore the history of the city before it became Constantinople.

Anglo-Danish Empire is an interdisciplinary handbook for the Danish conquest of England in 1016 and the subsequent reign of King Cnut the Great. Bringing together scholars from the fields of history, literature, archaeology, and manuscript studies, the volume offers comprehensive analysis of England's shift from Anglo-Saxon to Danish rule. It follows the history of this complicated transition, from the closing years of the reign of King AEthelred II and the Anglo-Danish wars, to Cnut's accession to the throne of England and his consolidation of power at home and abroad. Ruling from 1016 to 1035, Cnut drew England into a Scandinavian empire that stretched from Ireland to the Baltic. His reign rewrote the place of Denmark and England within Europe, altering the political and cultural landscapes of both countries for decades to come.

The present volume is a Festschrift in honor of the distinguished scholar in Late Byzantine, post-Byzantine and Cretan Renaissance studies I. Mavromatis. The title Kalligraphos is indicative of the foundations of his scholarship, which lie in the fields of paleography and early printing. With manuscripts and early printed books as the primary material of his studies, Professor Mavromatis has produced several major works in the fields of Byzantine philology, Cretan Renaissance literature (especially Erotorcritos) and late Byzantine vernacular poetry. This volume includes a short preface and twenty-four articles by senior and younger scholars, former colleagues, collaborators, and students of Professor Mavromatis. The articles are loosely arranged in chronological order of their subject matter and treat issues ranging from Byzantine historiography going back to the 4th century CE to post-Byzantine Cretan poetry of the 17th century. This philological kaleidoscope features new editions and interpretations of hitherto unknown or little-known poems and texts. The volume is intended for scholars, graduate and undergraduate students and the general readership interested in Byzantine and post-Byzantine literature.