Released for the first time in the English language, and marking the centennial of Albania's independence, Serbs and Albanians delivers an at once refreshing and comprehensive insight into the cultural composition of Southeast Europe. A wider audience can now appreciate the work of Milan ufflay, a controversial figure of his time whose assassination was denounced by leading intellectuals, Albert Einstein and Heinrich Mann. With a measured and often poetic voice, ufflay takes us on a journey through the Middle Ages as it unfolded on a land where opposing cultures were distilled and interwoven, dynasts and whole cities upturned and reborn.

This book deals with the remarkable life of a powerful and fiery woman at the heart of the turbulent Barons' Wars. As sister of Henry III and aunt of the future Edward I, Eleanor de Montfort was at the heart of the bloody conflict between the Crown and the English barons. At Lewes in 1264 Simon de Montfort captured the king and secured control of royal government. A woman of fiery nature, Eleanor worked tirelessly in supporting her husband's cause. She assumed responsibility for the care of the royal prisoners and she regularly dispatched luxurious gifts to Henry III and the Lord Edward. But the family's political fortunes were shattered at the battle of Evesham in August 1265 where Simon de Montfort was killed. The newly-widowed Eleanor rose to her role as matriarch of her family, sending her surviving sons - and the family treasure - overseas to France, negotiating the surrender of Dover Castle and securing her own safe departure from the realm. The last ten years of her life were spent in the Dominican convent at Montargis. Drawing on chronicles, letters and public records this book reconstructs the narrative of Eleanor's remarkable life.

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.

Gregory of Tours, the sixth-century Merovingian bishop, composed extensive historiographical and hagiographical corpora during the twenty years of his episcopacy in Tours. These works serve as important sources for the cultural, social, political and religious history of Merovingian Gaul. This book focuses on Gregory's hagiographical collections, especially the Glory of the Martyrs, Glory of the Confessors, and Life of the Fathers, which contain accounts of saints and their miracles from across the Mediterranean world. It analyses these accounts from literary and historical perspectives, examining them through the lens of relations between the Merovingians and their Mediterranean counterparts, and contextualizing them within the identity crisis that followed the disintegration of the Roman world. This approach leads to groundbreaking conclusions about Gregory's hagiographies, which this study argues were designed as an "ecclesiastical history" (of the Merovingian Church) that enabled him to craft a specific Gallo-Christian identity for his audience.

Although studies of specific time concepts, expressed in Renaissance philosophy and literature, have not been lacking, few art-historians have endeavored to meet the challenge in the visual arts. This book presents a multifaceted picture of the dynamic concepts of time and temporality in medieval and Renaissance art, adopted in speculative, ecclesiastical, socio-political, propagandist, moralistic, and poetic contexts. It has been assumed that time was conceived in a different way by those living in the Renaissance as compared to their medieval predecessors. Changing perceptions of time, an increasingly secular approach, the sense of self-determination rooted in the practical use and control of time, and the perception of time as a threat to human existence and achievements are demonstrated through artistic media. Chapters dealing with time in classical and medieval philosophy and art are followed by studies that focus on innovative aspects of Renaissance iconography.

The present volume has grown out of the conference held at Princeton University on November 12-14, 2009. Its essays explore a coherent, interrelated nexus of topics that illuminate our understanding of the cultural transactions (social, political, economic, religious and artistic) of the Greek East and Latin West: unexpected cultural appropriations and forms of resistance, continuity and change, the construction and hybridization of traditions in a wide expanse of the eastern Mediterranean. Areas that the volume addresses include the benefits and liabilities of periodization, philosophical and political exchanges, monastic syncretism between the Orthodox and Catholic faiths, issues of romance composition, and economic currency and the currency of fashion as East and West interact. Contributors are Roderick Beaton, Peter Brown, Marina S. Brownlee, Giles Constable, Maria Evangelatou, Dimitri Gondicas, Judith Herrin, Elizabeth Jeffreys, Marc D. Lauxtermann, Stuart M. McManus, John Monfasani, Maria G. Parani, Linda Safran, Teresa Shawcross and Alan M. Stahl.

A Companion to Ostrogothic Italy is a concise yet comprehensive survey of Italy's first barbarian kingdom, the Ostrogothic state (ca. 489-554 CE). The volume's 18 essays cover both traditional topics (such as the Ostrogothic army) and hitherto under-examined subjects (for example Italy's environmental history), and are designed for new students and specialists.

This volume offers the author's central articles on the medieval and early modern history of cartography for the first time in English translation. A first group of essays gives an overview of medieval cartography and illustrates the methods of cartographers. Another analyzes world maps and travel accounts in relation to mapped spaces. A third examines land surveying, cartographical practices of exploration, and the production of Portolan atlases.

In The Making of Christian Moravia Maddalena Betti examines the creation of the Moravian archdiocese, of which St Methodius was the first incumbent, in the context of ninth-century papal policy in central and south-eastern Europe. In the nineteenth and twentieth century religious and nationalistic concerns widely influenced the reconstruction of the history of the archdiocese of Methodius. Offering a new reading of already widely-used sources, both Slavonic and Latin, Maddalena Betti turns attention upon the jurisdictional conflict between Rome, the Bavarian churches and Byzantium, in order to uncover the strategies and the languages adopted by the Apostolic See to gain jurisdiction over the new territories in central and south-eastern Europe.

Thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Latin Bibles survive in hundreds of manuscripts, one of the most popular books of the Middle Ages. Their innovative layout and organization established the norm for Bibles for centuries to come. This volume is the first study of these Bibles as a cohesive group. Multi- and inter-disciplinary analyses in art history, liturgy, exegesis, preaching and manuscript studies, reveal the nature and evolution of layout and addenda. They follow these Bibles as they were used by monks and friars, preachers and merchants. By addressing Latin Bibles alongside their French, Italian and English counterparts, this book challenges the Latin-vernacular dichotomy to show links, as well as discrepancies, between lay and clerical audiences and their books. Contributors include Peter Stallybrass, Diane Reilly, Paul Saenger, Richard Gameson, Chiara Ruzzier, Giovanna Murano, Cornelia Linde, Lucie Dolezalova, Laura Light, Eyal Poleg, Sabina Magrini, Sabrina Corbellini, Margriet Hoogvliet, Guy Lobrichon, Elizabeth Solopova, and Matti Peikola.

An exploration of how AEthelwold and those he influenced deployed the promotion of saints to implement religious reform. Bishop AEthelwold of Winchester and his associates were some of the most radical monastic reformers in tenth-century Europe. In two generations, they took over most of the powerful churches in the kingdom of England and implemented a number of the policies found in their ambitious monastic manifestos. They also had a major impact on the early development of the kingdom itself, taking a role in the establishment of a shire system that lasted a thousand years, negotiations with invaders, and attempts to create a standardized English language. AEthelwold and his circle were also enthusiastic venerators of saints. This book examines a range of sources, from hagiographies to charters, from liturgy to archaeological remains, to argue that saints' cults helped these men and women secure their power, wealth, and relationships with groups outside their monasteries. The saints that AEthelwold's circle promoted most lavishly were not necessarily the ones that they studied or the ones that matched their ideological agenda. Rather, AEthelwold's monks and nuns connected themselves to a wide range of saints, including the Virgin Mary, St Swithun, AEthelthryth of Ely, Iudoc, Grimbald, Botulf, Cuthbert, and many others. Venerating these saints helped AEthelwold and his followers appeal to other groups in society, including unreformed ecclesiastics, lay nobles, and the workers on their estates. This book therefore not only has implications for the study of early English history and literature, but also for the history of western European monasticism and saints' cults more generally.

Valuable new insights into the multi-layered and multi-directional relationship of law, literature, and social regulation in pre-Conquest English society. Pre-Conquest English law was among the most sophisticated in early medieval Europe. Composed largely in the vernacular, it played a crucial role in the evolution of early English identity and exercised a formative influence on the development of the Common Law. However, recent scholarship has also revealed the significant influence of these legal documents and ideas on other cultural domains, both modern and pre-modern. This collection explores the richness of pre-Conquest legal writing by looking beyond its traditional codified form. Drawing on methodologies ranging from traditional philology to legal and literary theory, and from a diverse selection of contributors offering a broad spectrum of disciplines, specialities and perspectives, the essays examine the intersection between traditional juridical texts - from law codes and charters to treatises and religious regulation - and a wide range of literary genres, including hagiography and heroic poetry. In doing so, they demonstrate that the boundary that has traditionally separated "law" from other modes of thought and writing is far more porous than hitherto realized. Overall, the volume yields valuable new insights into the multi-layered and multi-directional relationship of law, literature, and social regulation in pre-Conquest English society.

Winner of the Early Slavic Studies Association 2018 Book Prize This volume offers a novel, trans-regional vision of Viking Age (9th-11th century) cultural and political contacts between Scandinavia and the eastern coasts of the Baltic Sea, using predominantly archaeological evidence, combined with historical sources, topography and logistical considerations.

Travel narratives and historical works shaped the perception of Muslims and the East in the Victorian and post-Victorian periods. Analyzing the discourses on Muslims which originated in the European Middle Ages, the first part of the book discusses the troubled legacy of the encounters between the East and the West and locates the nineteenth-century texts concerning the Saracens and their lands in the liminal space between history and fiction. Drawing on the nineteenth-century models, the second part of the book looks at fictional and non-fictional works of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century which re-established the "Oriental obsession," stimulating dread and resentment, and even more strongly setting the Civilized West against the Barbaric East. Here medieval metaphorical enemies of Mankind - the World, the Flesh and the Devil - reappear in different contexts: the world of immigration, of white women desiring Muslim men, and the present-day "freedom fighters."

In all of the literature on Anglo-Saxon England, rarely has the question of social class been confronted head-on. The Anglo-Saxon Elite: Northumbrian Society in the Long Eighth Century draws upon recent research into topics such as religious practice, emotions, daily life, and intellectual culture to investigate how the aristocracy of Northumbria maintained social dominance over wider society. Moreover, this monograph suggests that the crisis that brought an end to Northumbria as an independent kingdom was the product of the social contradictions produced by the ruling class as social domination developed over time. The analysis is divided into three broad parts - production, circulation, and consumption - both as a nod to Marxist historiography and also to signal a commitment to a methodology that situates the subject within a global context.

Publicly performed rituals and ceremonies form an essential part of medieval political practice and court culture. This applies not only to western feudal societies, but also to the linguistically and culturally highly diversified environment of Byzantium and the Mediterranean basin. The continuity of Roman traditions and cross-fertilization between various influences originating from Constantinople, Armenia, the Arab-Muslim World, and western kingdoms and naval powers provide the framework for a distinct sphere of ritual expression and ceremonial performance. This collective volume, placing Byzantium into a comparative perspective between East and West, examines transformative processes from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages, succession procedures in different political contexts, phenomena of cross-cultural appropriation and exchange, and the representation of rituals in art and literature. Contributors are Maria Kantirea, Martin Hinterberger, Walter Pohl, Andrew Marsham, Bjoern Weiler, Eric J. Hanne, Antonia Giannouli, Jo Van Steenbergen, Stefan Burkhardt, Ioanna Rapti, Jonathan Shepard, Panagiotis Agapitos, Henry Maguire, Christine Angelidi and Margaret Mullett.

Across the nineteenth century European history, philology, archaeology, art, and architecture turned from a common classical vocabulary and ideology to images of pasts and origins drawn primarily from the Middle Ages. The result was a paradox, as scholars and artists, schooled in the same pan-European vocabularies and methodologies nevertheless sought to discover through them unique and, frequently, oppositional national identities. These essays, edited by Patrick J. Geary and Gabor Klaniczay, focus on this all-European phenomenon with a special focus on Scandinavia and East-Central Europe, bearing witness to the inextricable links between cultural and scientific engagement, the search for national identity, and political agendas in the long nineteenth century that made the search for archaic origins an entangled history. Contributors include: Walter Pohl, Ian Wood, Sverre Bagge, Maciej Janowski, Sir David Wilson, Anders Andren, Erno Marosi, Carmen Popescu, Ahmet Ersoy, Michael Werner, Joep Leerssen, R. Howard Bloch, Pavlina Rychterova, Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri, Stefan Detchev, Florin Curta, and Peter Lango.

Gregory, bishop of Tours (573-594), was among the most prolific writers of his age and uniquely managed to cover the genres of history, hagiography, and ecclesiastical instruction. He not only wrote about events (of the secular, spiritual, and even natural variety) but about himself as an actor and witness. Though his work (especially the Histories) has been recycled and studied for centuries, our grasp of an even basic understanding of it, never mind Gregory's significance in the history of the late antique West, has hardly yet attained a definitive perspective. A Companion to Gregory of Tours brings together fourteen scholars who provide an expert guide to interpreting his works, his period, and his legacy in religious and historical studies. Contributors are: Pascale Bourgain, Roger Collins, John J. Contreni, Stefan Esders, Martin Heinzelmann, Yitzhak Hen, John K. Kitchen, Simon Loseby, Alexander Callander Murray, Patrick Perin, Joachim Pizarro, Helmut Reimitz, Michael Roberts, Richard Shaw.

From Constantinople to the Frontier: The City and the Cities provides twenty-five articles addressing the concept of centres and peripheries in the late antique and Byzantine worlds, focusing specifically on urban aspects of this paradigm. Spanning from the fourth to thirteenth centuries, and ranging from the later Roman empires to the early Caliphate and medieval New Rome, the chapters reveal the range of factors involved in the dialectic between City, cities, and frontier. Including contributions on political, social, literary, and artistic history, and covering geographical areas throughout the central and eastern Mediterranean, this volume provides a kaleidoscopic view of how human actions and relationships worked with, within, and between urban spaces and the periphery, and how these spaces and relationships were themselves ideologically constructed and understood. Contributors are Walter F. Beers, Lorenzo M. Bondioli, Christopher Bonura, Lynton Boshoff, Averil Cameron, Jeremiah Coogan, Robson Della Torre, Pavla Drapelova, Nicholas Evans, David Gyllenhaal, Franka Horvat, Theofili Kampianaki, Maximilian Lau, Valeria Flavia Lovato, Byron MacDougall, Nicholas S.M. Matheou, Daniel Neary, Jonas Nilsson, Cecilia Palombo, Maria Alessia Rossi, Roman Shliakhtin, Sarah C. Simmons, Andrew M. Small, Jakub Sypianski, Vincent Tremblay and Philipp Winterhager.

In thirteen contributions, Byzantium in Dialogue with the Mediterranean. History and Heritage shows that throughout the centuries of its existence, Byzantium continuously communicated with other cultures and societies on the European continent, as well as North Africa and in the East. In this volume, 'History' represents not only the chronological, geographical and narrative background of the historical reality of Byzantium, but it also stands for an all-inclusive scholarly approach to the Byzantine world that transcends the boundaries of traditionally separate disciplines such as history, art history or archaeology. The second notion, 'Heritage', refers to both material remains and immaterial traditions, and traces that have survived or have been appropriated. Contributors are Hans Bloemsma, Elena Boeck, Averil Cameron, Elsa Fernandes Cardoso, Cristian Caselli, Evangelos Chrysos, Konstantinos Chryssogelos, Penelope Mougoyianni, Daphne Penna, Marko Petrak, Matthew Savage, Danielle Slootjes, Karen Stock, Alex Rodriguez Suarez and Mariette Verhoeven.