This book analyses Julian from the perspectives of Byzantine Culture and will therefore appeal to all those interested in Byzantine perspectives on Late Roman history / Julian the Apostate in Byzantine Culture will appeal to researchers and students alike in Byzantine perspectives on Julian, Greco-Roman Paganism, and the Later Roman Empire / This book will also appeal to those interested in Byzantine Historiography.

First full analysis of the rich records surviving from medieval English town courts. Town courts were the principal institution responsible for the delivery of justice and urban administration within medieval towns. Their records survive in large quantities in archives across England, and they provide an unparalleled insight into the lives and work of thousands of men and women who lived in these towns. The court rolls tell us much about the practice of law at the local level within towns, as well as yielding a broad range of perspectiveson the economy, society and administration of towns. This volume is the first collection dedicated to the analysis of town courts and their records. Through a wide range of approaches, it offers new interpretations of the role that these courts played. It also demonstrates the wide range of uses to which court records can be put to in order to more fully understand medieval urban society. The volume draws on the records of a considerable number of towns and their courts across England, including London, York, Norwich, Lincoln, Nottingham, Lynn, Chester, Bromsgrove and Shipston-on-Stour. RICHARD GODDARD is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Nottingham; TERESA PHIPPS is Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of History at Swansea University. Contributors: Christopher Dyer, Richard Goddard, Jeremy Goldberg, Alan Kissane, Maryanne Kowaleski, JaneLaughton, Esther Liberman Cuenca, Susan Maddock, Teresa Phipps, Samantha Sagui

Written by a brilliant scholar, this book is the first volume of a major work, which makes full use of the very rich documentary material still surviving and relates it to the evidence of the chronicles. Oriental sources are not disregarded: use is made of Arabic material and the latest archaeological discoveries in the Near East. The author has concentrated upon the Order as an institution in the crusader states and as a powerful international religious corporation. He considers its growth to power, its participation in the polititcs of the Latin settlement in the East, its organisation, its position as an exempt Order of the Church, its properties and its methods of administration as a landlord in feudal states. For the first time, the Order of St John is treated in a way that is neither hostile nor romantically partisan: and the author's conclusions differ from those of other historians. In his description of the Hospitallers' policies, the place they occupied in the government of Latin Syria, their privileges and the way they lived, he shows how it was thay they - individuals as well as the corporate body - played such a significant part in the history of the Christian East in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This book is important to all those interested in the Knights of St John, the international Orders of mediaeval Christendom or the extra-ordinary states established by western Europeans on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean.

The Anglo-Saxon World introduces the Anglo-Saxons in their own words -- their chronicles, laws and letters, charters and charms, and above all their magnificent poems. Most of the greatest surviving poems are printed here in their entirety: the reader will find the whole of Beowulf, The Battle of Maldon, and the haunting elegiac poems. Here is a word picture of a people who came to these islands as pagans, subscribing to the Germanic heroic code, and yet within 200 years had become Christian to such effect that England was the centre of missionary endeavour and, for a time, the heart of European civilisation.Kevin Crossley-Holland places the poems and prose in context with his skilful interpretation of the Anglo-Saxon world; his translations have been widely acclaimed, and of Beowulf Charles Causley has written 'the poem has at last found its translator'. The many illustrations draw on the splendours of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts and jewellery and a wealth of archaeological finds. KEVIN CROSSLEY-HOLLAND is a poet and writer who takes a particular interest in the middle ages and in traditional tale: in addition to his translations from the Anglo-Saxon, he is also the author of versions of the Norse myths.

This book explores the practical and symbolic resources of legitimacy which the elites of medieval Scandinavia employed to establish, justify, and reproduce their social and political standing between the end of the Viking Age and the rise of kingdoms in the thirteenth century. Geographically the chapters cover the Scandinavian realms and Free State Iceland. Thematically the authors cover a wide palette of cultural practices and historical sources: hagiography, historiography, spaces and palaces, literature, and international connections, which rulers, magnates or ecclesiastics used to compete for status and to reserve haloing glory for themselves. The volume is divided in three sections. The first looks at the sacral, legal, and acclamatory means through which privilege was conferred onto kings and ruling families. Section Two explores the spaces such as aristocratic halls, palaces, churches in which the social elevation of elites took place. Section Three explores the traditional and novel means of domestic distinction and international cultural capital which different orders of elites - knights, powerful clerics, ruling families etc. - wrought to assure their dominance and set themselves apart vis-a-vis their peers and subjects. A concluding chapter discusses how the use of symbolic capital in the North compared to wider European contexts.

This book is the first translated and annotated edition of Ibn Nazif's Al-Ta'rikh al-Mansuri. Totalling 227 folios, the manuscript is a unique and valuable source full of historical accounts and anecdotes. The documents include two letters by the Emperor Frederick II in Arabic, as well as the only mention of the Albigensian Crusade in the Arabic language. Other notable material includes Ibn Nazif's notes concerning the rivalries between the various Ayyubids and the wars against Jalal al-Din Mangubirti, descriptions of the Ayyubids in Yemen, and notes on the destruction of the Sicilian Muslims and the defeats of the Spanish Muslims. Containing an extensive historical introduction, this book will appeal to scholars and students interested in the later Crusader and middle Ayyubid periods.

The Routledge History of Poverty, c.1450-1800 is a pioneering exploration of both the lives of the very poorest during the early modern period, and of the vast edifices of compassion and coercion erected around them by individuals, institutions, and states. The essays chart critical new directions in poverty scholarship and connect poverty to the environment, debt and downward social mobility, material culture, empires, informal economies, disability, veterancy, and more. The volume contributes to the understanding of societal transformations across the early modern period, and places poverty and the poor at the centre of these transformations. It also argues for a wider definition of poverty in history which accounts for much more than economic and social circumstance and provides both analytically critical overviews and detailed case studies. By exploring poverty and the poor across early modern Europe, this study is essential reading for students and researchers of early modern society, economic history, state formation and empire, cultural representation, and mobility.

This is a major new edition of the letters written and received between 1162 and 1170 by Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury and victim of the 'murder in the cathedral'. It takes the reader to the very heart of the great dispute that rocked the English kingdom in the twelfth century.

The crusades are often seen as epitomising a period when hostility between Christian West and the Muslim Near East reached an all time high. As this edited volume reveals, however, the era was one which saw both conflict and cohabitation. Tackling such questions as whether medicinal and architectural innovations came to Europe as a direct result of the Crusades, and why and how peace treaties and intermarriages were formed between the different cultures, this distinguished group of contributors reveal how the Holy Wars led on the one hand to a reinforcement of the beliefs and identities of each side, but on the other to a growing level of cultural exchange and interaction. This volume breaks new ground in not only exploring the conflict between the Christian and the Muslim worlds, but also the impact of this conflict on the cultural evolution of European and Near Eastern thought and practices. Utilising the latest scholarship and original studies of the sources, this survey sheds new light on the cultural realities of East-West relations and marks a new departure for studies of the crusades. Contributors include John France, Yehoshua Frenkel, Chris Wright, Natasha Hodgson, A.V. Murray, Sini Kangas, Lean Ni Chleirigh, Susan Edgington, Jurgen Kruger, Yvonne Friedman and Bernard Hamilton.

This Variorum collection of articles is intended to illustrate that conflict in the late Middle Ages was not only about soldiers and fighting (about the makers and the making of war), important as these were. Just as it remains in our own day, war was a subject which attracted writers (commentators, moralists and social critics among them), some of whom glorified war, while others did not. For the historian the written word is important evidence of how war, and those taking part in it, might be regarded by the wider society. One question was supremely important: what was the standing among their contemporaries of those who fought society's wars? How was war seen on the moral scale of the time? The last two sections deal with a particular war, the 'occupation' of northern France by the English between 1420 and 1450. The men who conquered the duchy, and then served to keep it under English control for those years, had to be rewarded with lands, titles, administrative and military responsibilities, even (for the clergy) ecclesiastical benefices. For these, war spelt 'opportunity', whose advantages they would be reluctant to surrender. The final irony lies in the fact that Frenchmen, returning to claim their ancestral rights once the English had been driven out, frequently found it difficult to unravel both the legal and the practical consequences of a war which had caused a considerable upheaval in Norman society over a period of a single generation.

Essays on crucial aspects of late medieval history. The essays collected here, offered by three generations of his friends and pupils, celebrate the outstanding career of Professor A.J. Pollard and pay tribute to his scholarship and enduring influence in furthering our understanding of late medieval England and France. Drawing inspiration from his own research interests and writing, which illuminated military, political and social interactions of the period, they focus on three main themes. The contrasting styles of governance adopted by English monarchs from Richard II to Henry VII; the differing responses to civil conflict revealed in a variety of localities; and the lives of men recruited to fight overseas during the Hundred Years' War, and beyond the border with Scotland in later years, are all explored here. These topics take us across England from the far north to the Channel, to London, the south-west and the Welsh lordship of Gower, while on the way also examining how townsmen resisted taxation, the gentry administered their estates and the western marches were ruled.

Since its invention by Renaissance humanists, the myth of the "Middle Ages" has held a uniquely important place in the Western historical imagination. Whether envisioned as an era of lost simplicity or a barbaric nightmare, the medieval past has always served as a mirror for modernity. This book gives an eye-opening account of the ways various political and intellectual projects-from nationalism to the discipline of anthropology-have appropriated the Middle Ages for their own ends. Deploying an interdisciplinary toolkit, author K. Patrick Fazioli grounds his analysis in contemporary struggles over power and identity in the Eastern Alps, while also considering the broader implications for scholarly research and public memory.

The Chronicle of Ibn al-Athir (1160-1233AD), entitled 'al-Kamil fi'l-Ta'rikh', is one of the outstanding sources for the history of the mediaeval world. It covers the whole sweep of Islamic history almost up to the death of its author and, with the sources available to him, he attempted to embrace the widest geographical spread; events in Iraq, Iran and further East run in counterpoint with those involving North Africa and Spain. From the time of the arrival of the Crusaders in the Levant, their activities and the Muslim response become the focus of the work. This part covers the establishment of the Crusader states and the initial weak and divided response of Muslim regimes in the area, the moribund Fatimid caliphate in Egypt and competing emirs in Syria and Mesopotamia. The strengthening of the Muslim reaction is typified by the career of Zanki, which also illustrates the important links with events in the orbit of the Abbasid caliphate and the Saljuq sultanate.

This very accessible narrative...tells the story of 'the first two important battles of 1066', Fulford Gate and Stamford Bridge, and of the leaders of the opposing English and Norwegian factions. CHOICE The evidence of later 12th- and 13th-century Norse sagas, Snorri Sturlusson's Heimskringla, and the less well known Norwegian Kings Sagas...present far more detail about the invasion and its battles than the more widely accepted sources could possibly allow... He places the invasion in a broad context. He outlines the Anglo-Scandinavian nature of the English kingdom in the eleventh century, traces the careers of the major leaders, and devotes a chapter each to the English and Norwegian military systems. JOURNAL OF MILITARY HISTORY (US) William the Conqueror's invasion in 1066 was not the only attack on England that year. On September 25, 1066, less than three weeks before William defeated King Harold II Godwinson at the battle of Hastings, that same Harold had been victorious over his other opponent of 1066, King Haraldr Hardradi of Norway at the battle of Stamford Bridge. It was an impressive victory, driving an invading army of Norwegians from the earldom of Northumbria; but it was to cost Harold dear. In telling the story of this neglected battle, Kelly DeVries traces the rise and fall of a family of English warlords, the Godwins, as well as that of the equally impressive Norwegian warlord Hardradi.KELLY DEVRIES is Associate Professor, Department of History, Loyola College in Maryland.

First full investigation into the men of Agincourt - their service, backgrounds, lives and experiences. King Henry V's brothers, Thomas, duke of Clarence, and Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, recruited the two largest retinues of the famous army of 1415, whose service culminated in victory at Agincourt. At the heart of this book are case studies of these two retinues, the personnel of which have never been the subject of close scrutiny before. These retinues were made up of, respectively, 960 and 800 men, most of whose names are known from their complete surviving muster rolls. Using this crucial information, and by employing information from a wide range of sources, from official Chancery and Exchequer records to manorial accounts and personal the lives of many of these men can be reconstructed. One central theme of this book is concerned with the men themselves, and considers issues such as where they came from in 1415, their previous military, career and personal experiences, and whether they had pre-existing ties with either their ducal commander, sub-retinue captain or comrades. It charts the experience of the retinues from before the campaign (the mustering of the army), during the campaign (the siege of Harfleur and the Battle of Agincourt) and after the campaign (the future careers of some men and the influence the campaign had on the ducal affinities). It also considers wider historiographical issues relating to the "dynamics of recruitment", military professionalism, careerism, the changing socio-economic standing of those undertaking military service in the early fifteenth century, and the size and willingness to engage in martial activity of the English military community.

Spiritual Grammar identifies a genre of religious literature that until now has not been recognized as such. In this surprising and theoretically nuanced study, F. Dominic Longo reveals how grammatical structures of language addressed in two medieval texts published nearly four centuries apart, from distinct religious traditions, offer a metaphor for how the self is embedded in spiritual reality. Reading The Grammar of Hearts (Nahw al-qulub) by the great Sufi shaykh and Islamic scholar 'Abd al-Karim al-Qushayri (d. 1074) and Moralized Grammar (Donatus moralizatus) by Christian theologian Jean Gerson (d. 1429), Longo reveals how both authors use the rules of language and syntax to advance their pastoral goals. Indeed, grammar provides the two masters with a fresh way of explaining spiritual reality to their pupils and to discipline the souls of their readers in the hopes that their writings would make others adept in the grammar of the heart.

The Latin Middle Ages were characterised by a vast array of different representations of nature. These conceptualisations of the natural world were developed according to the specific requirements of many different disciplines, with the consequent result of producing a fragmentation of images of nature. Despite this plurality, two main tendencies emerged. On the one hand, the natural world was seen as a reflection of God's perfection, teleologically ordered and structurally harmonious. On the other, it was also considered as a degraded version of the spiritual realm - a world of impeccable ideas, separate substances, and celestial movers. This book focuses on this tension between order and randomness, and idealisation and reality of nature in the Middle Ages. It provides a cutting-edge profile of the doctrinal and semantic richness of the medieval idea of nature, and also illustrates the structural interconnection among learned and scientific disciplines in the medieval period, stressing the fundamental bond linking together science and philosophy, on the one hand, and philosophy and theology, on the other. This book will appeal to scholars and students alike interested in Medieval European History, Theology, Philosophy, and Science.

The best new research on medieval clothing and textiles, drawing from a variety of angles and approaches. The essays in this volume continue the Journal's tradition of groundbreaking interdisciplinary work. The volume opens with a survey of the discipline of medieval clothing and textiles, written by founding editor Gale R. Owen-Crocker. The range of the other essays extends chronologically from the early Middle Ages through the fifteenth century and covers a variety of disciplines. Topics include the conception of the author as a "wordweaver" in the literatures of Anglo-Saxon England; intertextual literary identities established through clothing in the Nibelungenlied and the Voelsunga Saga; the historical record of clothing and textiles at the court of King John of England; medallion silks, their use in Western Europe, and their representation in art; the vestments of Beguines and other penitential movements in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; and a depiction of heraldic textile weaving inlate-medieval art. Contributors: Tina Anderlini, Joanne W. Anderson, Maren Clegg Hyer, Alejandra Concha Sahli, Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Elizabeth M. Swedo, Hugh Thomas

This book explores questions in new research by expert historians and archaeologists in their field / This book will appeal to all those interested in the Knights Hospitaller, Ottoman History, Crusader Studies, and Early Modern European History / This book will appeal to both researchers and students alike

The virtue of an interdisciplinary and multi-authored collection such as this one is that it can gather the necessary range of expertise to look into the complexities of disease and environment from different perspectives - allowing for both a scientifically- and culturally-minded readership to find interest in the discussion of epidemic and other disease. The volume brings environmental history into dialogue with the histories of medicine, science, and environmental thought, reflecting one of the best new trends in current scholarship on the relationship between humanity and non-human Nature. This edited volume will be the first to provide students and scholars with a comprehensive look at both how the environment is implicated in pre-modern disease regimes and how contemporary populations made efforts to mitigate the challenges that these disease regimes generated. It is also the first volume to take a long view by examining the environment-disease relationship across the traditional medieval-early modern divide to show both change and continuity.

A reappraisal of Bede's writings, focusing on his use of genre and rhetoric. The church history of the Anglo-Saxons can only be approached through the lens of a few writers, arguably the greatest of whom is Bede; his works illuminate an otherwise impoverished landscape of ecclesial development from conversion to established Christian church amongst the Anglo-Saxons. Bede, however, had his own agendas - monastic, political, and rhetorical. In her reappraisal of Bede's Ecclesiastical History, Lives of the Saints, History of the Abbots, the Lesser and Greater Chronicles and the Martyrology and the audience for these texts, the author draws out the role played by classical forms of genre and rhetoric in the crafting of his work.Shealso explores the underlying political influences that caused Bede to write historia as he did. In particular, she notes the role of historia in monastic affairs, especially through the generation of a rhetoric of orthodoxy and the power of the cultural capital afforded by this within the relatively newly constituted Christian community in Northumbria. Dr VICKY GUNN is Senior Lecturer, Learning and Teaching Centre, University of Glasgow.

The borders of the Roman Empire were frontiers that were often wild and dangerous. The expansion of the empire after the Punic Wars saw the Roman Republic become the dominant force in the Mediterranean as it first took Carthaginian territories in Gaul, Spain and north Africa and then moved into Greece with purpose, subjugating the area and creating two provinces, Achaea and Macedonia. The growth of the territories under Roman control continued through the rise of Julius Caesar - who conquered the rest of Gaul - and the establishment of the empire: each of the emperors could point to territories annexed and lands won. By AD 117 and the accession of Hadrian, the empire had reached its peak. It held sway from Britain to Morocco, from Spain to the Black Sea. And its wealth was coveted by those outside its borders. Just as today those from poorer countries try to make their way into Europe or North America, so those outside the empire wanted to make their way into the Promised Land - for trade, for improvement of their lives or for plunder. Thus the Roman borders became a mix - just as our borders are today - of defensive bulwark against enemies, but also control areas where import and export taxes were levied, and entrance was controlled. Some of these borders were hard: the early equivalents of the Inner German Border or Trump's Wall - Hadrian's Wall and the line between the Rhine and Danube. Others, such as these two great rivers, were natural borders that the Romans policed with their navy. This book examines these frontiers of the empire, looking at the way they were constructed and manned and how that changed over the years. It looks at the physical barriers - from the walls in Britain to the Fossatum Africae in the desert. It looks at the traders and the prices that were paid for the traffic of goods. It looks at the way that civil settlements - vici - grew up around the forts and fortlets and what life was like for soldiers, sailors and civilians. As well as artefacts of the period, the book provides a guidebook to top Roman museums and a gazetteer of visitable sites

This book explores a corpus of Epirote architecture, frescoes, sculpture, and inscriptions from the early thirteenth to the early fourteenth century / This book will appeal to those researching and studying Late Byzantine art and culture / This study offers a new perspective on Byzantine political and cultural history in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade.

Donations to the Knights Hospitaller in Britain and Ireland, 1291-1400 is the first study of donations to the Knights Hospitaller throughout England and Ireland during the late-thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The book demonstrates that patrons donated to both military and non-military orders for much the same reasons, particularly family connections or the desire for spiritual benefit, rather than an interest in crusading. Such a conclusion has important implications for the treatment of the military orders by scholars of medieval religion, who traditionally have either overlooked these orders entirely or relegated them to a subfield of crusade studies rather than treating them as a full part of mainstream religious life. By reincorporating the military orders into mainstream religious history, discussion will be furthered in a range of fields and debates, such as ecclesiastical landholding, lay-church relations, the role of women in religion, and the processes of the Reformation. By focusing on the period 1291 to 1400, the book considers the impact of the loss of the Holy Land in 1291; the subsequent diffusion in crusade activity to the Baltic and Spain; the intensification of the order's career as English royal servants in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland; and the Hospitallers' crusade to Rhodes in 1309-10. This book will appeal to scholars and students of the Hospitallers, as well as those interested in medieval Britain and Ireland.