The Jewish-Greek tradition represents an arguably distinctive strand of Judaism characterized by use of the Greek language and interest in Hellenism. This volume traces the Jewish encounter with Greek culture from the earliest points of contact in antiquity to the end of the Byzantine Empire. It honors Nicholas de Lange, whose distinguished work brought recognition to an undeservedly neglected field, in part by dispelling the common belief that Jewish-Greek culture largely disappeared after 100 CE. The authors examine literature, archaeology, and biblical translations, such as the Septuagint, in order to illustrate the substantial exchange of language and ideas. The Jewish-Greek Tradition in Antiquity and the Byzantine Empire demonstrates the enduring significance of the tradition and will be an essential handbook for anyone interested in Jewish studies, biblical studies, ancient and Byzantine history, or the Greek language.

This book's concern is with notoriously obscure ancient poets-riddlers, whom it argues to have been an essential, albeit necessarily marginal, element of the literary landscape of Antiquity, which, in addition, exerted subtle yet lasting influence on European culture. The three first essays in this book trace a direct line of influence between the early Hellenistic scholar-poet Simias of Rhodes, the late Republican Roman experimentalist Laevius and Constantine the Great's virtuoso panegyrist Optatian Porfyry, whereas the fourth essay discusses the preservation and transformation of the model invented by Simias in Byzantium. The Appendix reflects on the triumph of this intellectual paradigm in Neo-Latin Jesuit education by investigating the case of a peripheral yet highly influential Central European college at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This book is at once a contribution to the scholarship on the reception of Hellenistic poetry and to the study of ancient 'technopaegnia' (i.e. playful poetry) and their cultural influence in Antiquity, Byzantium and post-mediaeval Europe.

What did it mean to be a Frankish nobleman in an age of reform? How could Carolingian lay nobles maintain their masculinity and their social position, while adhering to new and stricter moral demands by reformers concerning behaviour in war, sexual conduct and the correct use of power? This book explores the complex interaction between Christian moral ideals and social realities, and between religious reformers and the lay political elite they addressed. It uses the numerous texts addressed to a lay audience (including lay mirrors, secular poetry, political polemic, historical writings and legislation) to examine how Biblical and patristic moral ideas were reshaped to become compatible with the realities of noble life in the Carolingian empire. This innovative analysis of Carolingian moral norms demonstrates how gender interacted with political and religious thought to create a distinctive Frankish elite culture, presenting a new picture of early medieval masculinity.

The encounter between Muslim and Hindu remains one of the defining issues of South Asian society today. This encounter began as early as the 8th century, and the first Muslim kingdom in India would be established at the end of the 12th century. This powerful kingdom, the Sultanate of Delhi, eventually reduced to vassalage almost every independent kingdom on the subcontinent. In Love's Subtle Magic, a remarkable and deeply original book, Aditya Behl uses a little-understood genre of Sufi literature to paint an entirely new picture of the evolution of Indian culture during the earliest period of Muslim domination. These curious romantic tales transmit a deeply serious religious message through the medium of lighthearted stories of love. Although composed in the Muslim courts, they are written in a vernacular Indian language. Until now, they have defied analysis, and been mostly ignored by scholars east and west. Behl shows that the Sufi authors of these charming tales purposely sought to convey an Islamic vision via an Indian idiom. They thus constitute the earliest attempt at the indigenization of Islamic literature in an Indian setting. More important, however, Behl's analysis brilliantly illuminates the cosmopolitan and composite culture of the Sultanate India in which they were composed. This in turn compels us completely to rethink the standard of the opposition between Indian Hindu and foreign Muslim and recognize that the Indo-Islamic culture of this era was already significantly Indian in many important ways.

This book charts the influence of Christian ideas about social responsibility on the legal, fiscal and operational policies of the Merovingian government, which consistently depended upon the collaboration of kings and elites to succeed, and it shows how a set of stories transformed the political playing field in early medieval Gaul. Contemporary thinkers encouraged this development by writing political arguments in the form of hagiography, more to redefine the rules and resources of elite culture than to promote saints' cults. Jamie Kreiner explores how hagiographers were able to do this effectively, by layering their arguments with different rhetorical and cognitive strategies while keeping the surface narratives entertaining. The result was a subtle and captivating literature that gives us new ways of thinking about how ideas and institutions can change, and how the vibrancy of Merovingian culture inspired subsequent Carolingian developments.

This book examines the making of the March of Wales and the crucial role its lords played in the politics of medieval Britain between the Norman conquest of England of 1066 and the English conquest of Wales in 1283. Max Lieberman argues that the Welsh borders of Shropshire, which were first, from c.1165, referred to as Marchia Wallie, provide a paradigm for the creation of the March. He reassesses the role of William the Conqueror's tenurial settlement in the making of the March and sheds new light on the ways in which seigneurial administrations worked in a cross-cultural context. Finally, he explains why, from c.1300, the March of Wales included the conquest territories in south Wales as well as the highly autonomous border lordships. This book makes a significant and original contribution to frontier studies, investigating both the creation and the changing perception of a medieval borderland.

Today medievalism is increasingly intelligible as a cultural lingua franca, produced in trans- and international contexts with a view to reaching popular international audiences, some of mass scope. This book offers new perspectives on international relations and how global concerns are made available through contemporary medievalist texts. It questions how research in medievalism may help us rethink the terms of internationalism and globalism within popular cultures, ideologies, and political formations. It investigates how the diverse media of medievalism (print; film and television; arts and crafts; fashion; digital media; clubs and fandom) affect its cultural meaning and circulation, and its social function, and engage questions of desire, gender and identity construction. As a whole, International Medievalism and Popular Culture differs from those studies which have concentrated on imaginative appropriations of the middle ages for domestic cultural contexts. It investigates rather how contemporary cultures engage with medievalism to map and model ideas of the international, the trans-national, the cosmopolitan and the global. This book includes examples from Europe, Britain, North America, Australia and the Arab world. It discusses the formation and the impact of popular medievalism in the globalised worlds of Braveheart, Disney and Harry Potter, but it also explores how the contemporary medieval imaginary generates international cultural perspectives, for example in considering Middle Eastern reception of Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven, the Byzantinism of Julia Kristeva, and Hedley Bull's postnationalist 'new medievalism'. International Medievalism in Popular Culture is an important contribution to medieval studies, cultural studies, and historical studies. It will be of value to undergraduate, postgraduate and academic readers, as well as to all interested in popular culture or medievalism.

In medieval Europe hostages were given, not taken. They were a means of guarantee used to secure transactions ranging from treaties to wartime commitments to financial transactions. In principle, the force of the guarantee lay in the threat to the life of the hostage if the agreement were broken but, while violation of agreements was common, execution of hostages was a rarity. Medieval hostages are thus best understood not as simple pledges, but as a political institution characteristic of the medieval millennium, embedded in its changing historical contexts. In the Early Middle Ages, hostageship was principally seen in warfare and diplomacy, operating within structures of kinship and practices of alliance characteristic of elite political society. From the eleventh century, hostageship diversified, despite the spread of a legal and financial culture that would seem to have made it superfluous. Hostages in the Middle Ages traces the development of this institution from Late Antiquity through the period of the Hundred Years War, across Europe and the Mediterranean World. It explores the logic of agreements, the identity of hostages, and the conditions of their confinement, while shedding light on a wide range of subjects, from sieges and treaties, to captivity and ransom, to the Peace of God and the Crusades, to the rise of towns and representation, to political communication and shifting gender dynamics. The book closes by examining the reasons for the decline of hostageship in the Early Modern era, and the rise the modern variety of hostageship that was addressed by the Nuremberg tribunals and the United Nations in the twentieth century.

The conflict between England and France in the 14th and 15th centuries never ceases to fascinate. This stimulating edited collection, inspired by the Problems in Focus volume originally published in 1971, provides a fresh and accessible insight into the key aspects of The Hundred Years War. With chapters written by leading experts in the field, based on new methodologies and recent advances in scholarship, this book places the Anglo-French wars into a range of wider contexts, such as politics, the home front, the church, and chivalry. Adopting a sustained comparative approach, with attention paid to both England and France, The Hundred Years War Revisited provides a clear and comprehensive synthesis of the major trends in research on the Hundred Years War. Concise and thought-provoking, this is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students of medieval history.

In the early 1800's, on a Hebridean beach in Scotland, the sea exposed an ancient treasure cache: 93 chessmen carved from walrus ivory. Norse netsuke, each face individual, each full of quirks, the Lewis Chessmen are probably the most famous chess pieces in the world. Harry played Wizard's Chess with them in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Housed at the British Museum, they are among its most visited and beloved objects. Questions abounded: Who carved them? Where? Ivory Vikings explores these mysteries by connecting medieval Icelandic sagas with modern archaeology, art history, forensics, and the history of board games. In the process, Ivory Vikings presents a vivid history of the 400 years when the Vikings ruled the North Atlantic, and the sea-road connected countries and islands we think of as far apart and culturally distinct: Norway and Scotland, Ireland and Iceland, and Greenland and North America. The story of the Lewis chessmen explains the economic lure behind the Viking voyages to the west in the 800s and 900s. And finally, it brings from the shadows an extraordinarily talented woman artist of the twelfth century: Margret the Adroit of Iceland.

This study argues that, in early medieval South India, it was in the literary arena that religious ideals and values were publicly contested. While Tamil-speaking South India is today celebrated for its preservation of Hindu tradition, non-Hindu religious communities have played a significant role in shaping the religious history of the region. Among the least understood of such non-Hindu contributions is that of the Buddhists, who are little understood because of the scarcity of remnants of Tamil-speaking Buddhist culture. However, the two exant Buddhist texts in Tamil that are complete - a sixth-century poetic narrative known as the Manimekalai and an eleventh-century treatise on grammar and postics, the Viracoliyam - reveal a wealth of information about their textual communities and their vision of Buddhist life in a diverse and competitive religious milieu. By focusing on these texts, Monius sheds light on their role of literature and literary culture in the information, articulation, and evolution of religious identity and community.

In this book Norman Housley, one of the most distinguished historians of the medieval period, provides an introduction to the complex history of crusading.

Steers readers through the key debates in this popular area of medieval history.
Draws on the author's 30 years' experience of crusading scholarship.
Issues addressed range from the definition of 'crusade', through the motivation and intentions of the crusaders, to the consequences of the crusades for European society

The Monastic Constitutions of Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury between 1070 and 1089, has long been recognized as one of the most important historical sources for medieval monastic life. In this major new revision of Dom David Knowles's classic editions of 1951 and 1967, C. N. L. Brooke incorporates the historical scholarship of the last generation to offer further insight into and illumination of Lanfranc and the monastic world of the eleventh century.

Volume XXI/2 of History of Universities contains the customary mix of learned articles, book reviews, conference reports, and bibliographical information, which makes this publication such an indispensable tool for the historian of higher education. Its contributions range widely geographically, chronologically, and in subject-matter. The volume is, as always, a lively combination of original research and invaluable reference material.

Gender in Medieval Culture provides a detailed examination of medieval society's views on both gender and sexuality, and shows how they are inextricably linked. Sex roles were clearly defined in the medieval world although there were exceptions to the rules, and this book examines both the commonplace world view and the exceptions to it. The volume looks not only at the social and economic considerations of gender but also the religious and legal implications, arguing that both ecclesiastical and secular laws governed behaviour. The book covers key topics, including femininity and masculinity and how medieval society constructed these terms; sexuality and sex; transgressive sexualities such as homosexuality, adultery and chastity; and the gendered body of Christ, including the idea of Jesus as mother and affective spirituality. Using a clear chapter structure for easy navigation and categorisation, as well as chapter summaries and a glossary of terms, the book will be a vital resource for students of medieval history.

With the advent of Magna Carta, royal power fell under written secular law and individual liberties were codified. Representative government, common law, and key trial rights such as habeas corpus grew out of these landmark documents. Magna Carta Magna Carta is the name later given to a document signed by king John of England under pressure from the barons and other notables of England in the summer of 1215 at a meadow called Runnymede, which is on the river Thames between London and Windsor. This remarkable document resulted from an aristocratic rebellion against the crown, sparked by king John's abusive use of his customary rights as lord of England. Though the rebellion began with the barons - who benefited most from John's concessions - success was ensured by John's alienation of the church and the rising merchant class, symbolized by the City of London. But remarkable as the original agreement was, it acquired its elevated position in the legal and constitutional history of England as much from what men thought it said as from what its provisions actually contained. Magna Carta was actually issued several times during the 12th century, often with substantial revisions. Entangled in dynastic wars at home and in France, and carrying on Crusades in the Holy Land, English kings required tremendous amounts of money to finance their armies and pay for the increasingly centralized government. Unsurprisingly, sentiments of rebellion grew stronger and stronger among the landed barons and wealthy merchants as royal demands for their money grew heavier and heavier. Thematically oriented chapters help readers differentiate fact from fiction regarding this pivotal charter in the history ofhuman freedom. Furthermore, the pivotal roles played by the Church, of the landed barons, and of the emerging merchants in England's towns in extracting the concessions from the crown are discussed in broad, yet detailed, strokes. Chapters on Magna Carta's profound influence on common law and the development of representative government follow. Fifteen biographies of key figures like Henry II, Pope Innocent III, William the Conqueror and Eleanor of Aquitaine enhance the narrative chapters, as do the extensive extracts of the Coronation Oath of Henry I, Magna Cartas of 1215 and 1225, the Charter of the Forest of 1225, and the final Confirmation of the Charters from 1297. Glossary, annotated timeline, maps, bibliography, and index are included.

The First Crusade was arguably one of the most significant events of the Middle Ages. It was the only event to generate its own epic cycle, the Old French Crusade Cycle. The central trilogy at the heart of the Cycle describes the Crusade from its beginnings to the climactic battle of Ascalon, comprising the Chanson d'Antioche, the Chanson des Chetifs and the Chanson de Jerusalem. This translation of the Chetifs and the Jerusalem accompanies and completes the translation of the Antioche and makes the trilogy available to English readers in its entirety for the first time. The value of the trilogy lies above all in the insight it gives us to medieval perceptions of the Crusade. The events are portrayed as part of a divine plan where even outcasts and captives can achieve salvation through Crusade. This in turn underlies the value of the Cycle as a recruiting and propaganda tool. The trilogy gives a window onto the chivalric preoccupations of thirteenth-century France, exploring concerns about status, heroism and defeat. It portrays the material realities of the era in vivid detail: the minutiae of combat, smoke-filled halls, feasts, prisons and more. And the two newly translated poems are highly entertaining as well, featuring a lubricious Saracen lady not in the first flush of youth, a dragon inhabited by a devil, marauding monkeys, miracles and much more. The historian will find little new about the Crusade itself, but abundant material on how it was perceived, portrayed and performed. The translation is accompanied by an introduction examining the origins of the two poems and their wider place in the cycle. It is supported by extensive footnotes, a comprehensive index of names and places and translations of the main variants.

Byrhtferth of Ramsey was one of the most learned scholars of late Anglo-Saxon England, and his two saints' Lives-of Oswald, a powerful bishop of Worcester and York in the tenth century (d. 992), and Ecgwine, the seventh-century founder of Evesham-are among the most important historical sources for our understanding of late Anglo-Saxon England.
The Life of St Oswald is the longest surviving work of Anglo-Saxon hagiography, and it is the principal source for much of our knowledge of tenth-century England, especially the monastic reform movement, the role of King Edgar, the murder of Edward king and Martyr, and the so-called "anti-monastic reaction" (of which he is the unique witness). Much less is known about St Ecgwine, both by us and by Byrhtferth, but Byrhtferth's writing has exceptional value once again for the light it throws on tenth-century monasticism and the role of King Edgar in this process.
Both Lives have been printed only once before, in the nineteenth century, in editions which are riddled with errors and which have misled scholarship for over a century. Neither work has ever been translated into English. The present edition includes facing-page translations, which will make these works accessible to a scholarly audience for the first time. Byrhtferth's Latin is unusually idiosyncratic and difficult, and was frequently misunderstood by the scribe who copied the unique manuscript in which the Lives are preserved. The texts are also accompanied by extensive notes, which explain the historical implications and the often impenetrable Latin. One of the principal features of the new edition is that corruption in the transmitted text has been emended where necessary, based on knowledge of Byrhtferth's Latin style (analyzed, for example, in the EETS edition of Byrhtferth's Enchiridion, ed. Lapidge and Baker in 1994).
A new edition of Byrhtferth's two saints' Lives has been long awaited, and will be indispensable to the study of Anglo-Saxon history and literature; the texts also throw considerable new light on the archaeology of Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical sites such as York, Worcester, Ramsey and Evesham.

Constant J. Mews offers an intellectual biography of two of the best known personalities of the twelfth century. Peter Abelard was a controversial logician at the cathedral school of Notre-Dame in Paris when he first met Heloise, who was the brilliant and outspoken niece of a cathedral canon and who was then engaged in the study of philosophy. After an intense love affair and the birth of a child, they married in secret in a bid to placate her uncle. Nonetheless the vengeful canon Fulbert had Abelard castrated, following which he became a monk at St. Denis, while Heloise became a nun at Argenteuil. Mews, a recognized authority on Abelard's writings, traces his evolution as a thinker from his earliest work on dialectic (paying particular attention to his debt to Roscelin of Compiegne and William of Champeaux) to his most mature reflections on theology and ethics. Abelard's interest in the doctrine of universals was one part of his broader philosophical interest in language, theology, and ethics, says Mews. He argues that Heloise played a significant role in broadening Abelard's intellectual interests during the period 1115-17, as reflected in a passionate correspondence in which the pair articulated and debated the nature of their love. Mews believes that the sudden end of this early relationship provoked Abelard to return to writing about language with new depth, and to begin applying these concerns to theology. Only after Abelard and Heloise resumed close epistolary contact in the early 1130s, however, did Abelard start to develop his thinking about sin and redemption--in ways that respond closely to the concerns of Heloise. Mews emphasizes both continuity and development in what these two very original thinkers had to say."

Intimate details about the personal lives of medieval people are frustratingly rare. We seldom know what the men and women of the middle ages thought about marriage, let alone about sex. The records of the church courts of the province of York, mainly dating from the fourteenth century, provides a welcome light on private, family life and on individual reactions to it. They include a wide range of fascinating cases involving disputes about the validity of marriage, consent, sex, marital violence, impotence and property disputes. They also show how widely the laws of marriage were both known and accepted. Marriage Disputes in Medieval England offers a remarkable insight into personal life in the middle ages.
"' Then Maud said, "God forbid that you should have the power to know me carnally unless you will marry me." Robert answered, "Behold my oath that if I take anyone to be my wife I will take you if you will yield to me." Maud answered, "Behold my oath that I will be at your disposal." And Robert took her in his arms and threw her to the ground in "Le Kowbos" and knew her carnally.' " --Maud Schipyn and Robert Smyth, October 17, 1355

Pre-modern Arabic biography has served as a major source for the history of Islamic civilization. In this 2000 study exploring the origins and development of classical Arabic biography, Michael Cooperson demonstrates how Muslim scholars used the notions of heirship and transmission to document the activities of political, scholarly and religious communities. The author also explains how medieval Arab scholars used biography to tell the life-stories of important historical figures by examining the careers of the Abbasid Caliph al- Ma'mun, the Shiite Imam Ali al-Rida, the Sunni scholar Ahmad Ibn Hanbal and the ascetic Bishr al-Hafi, each of whom represented a tradition of political and spiritual heirship to the Prophet. Drawing on anthropology and comparative religion, as well as history and literary criticism, the book considers how each figure responded to the presence of the others and how these responses were preserved by posterity.