The Carolingian period represented a Golden Age for the abbey of St Gall, an Alpine monastery in modern-day Switzerland. Its bloom of intellectual activity resulted in an impressive number of scholarly texts being copied into often beautifully written manuscripts, many of which survive in the abbey's library to this day. Among these books are several of Irish origin, while others contain works of learning originally written in Ireland. This study explores the practicalities of the spread of this Irish scholarship to St Gall and the reception it received once there. In doing so, this book for the first time investigates a part of the network of knowledge that fed this important Carolingian centre of learning with scholarship. By focusing on scholarly works from Ireland, this study also sheds light on the contribution of the Irish to the Carolingian revival of learning. Historians have often assumed a special relationship between Ireland and the abbey of St Gall, which was built on the grave of the Irish saint Gallus. This book scrutinises this notion of a special connection. The result is a new viewpoint on the spread and reception of Irish learning in the Carolingian period.

The essays in Living Dangerously, written by some of the leading scholars in the fields of history and literature, examine the lives of those who lived on the margins of medieval and early modern European society. While some essays explore obvious marginalized classes, such as criminals, gypsies, and prostitutes, others challenge traditional understandings of the margin by showing that female mystics, speculators in the Dutch mercantile empire, and writers of satire, for example, could fall into the margins. These essays reveal the symbiotic relationship that exists between the marginalized and the social establishment: the dominant culture needs its margins. This well-written and lively collection covers a wide geographical area, including England, Spain, Germany, Italy, France, and the Netherlands, making it an ideal resource for a broad range of courses in European history and literature. Contributors: Barbara A. Hanawalt, Richard Firth Green, Vickie Ziegler, Dyan Elliott, Anne J. Cruz, Ian Frederick Moulton, and Mary Lindemann.

Eleven major scholars of the Anglo-Saxon period consider Alfred the Great, his cultural milieu, and his achievements. With revised or revived views of the Alfredian revival, the contributors help set the agenda for future work on a most challenging period. The collection features the methods of history, art history, and literature in a newer key and with an interdisciplinary view on a period that offers less evidence than inference. Major themes linking the essays include authorship, translation practice and theory, patristic influence, Continental connections, and advances in textual criticism. The Alfredian moment has always surprised scholars because of its intellectual reach and its ambition. The contributors to this collection describe how we must now understand that ambition.

The Drosten stone - one of Scotland's premier monuments - came to light during restoration work at St Vigeans church, near Arbroath, in the 1870s. A rare example of Pictish writing, the Drosten stone is just one in an astounding collection of exquisitely preserved Pictish sculptures discovered in and around the church. The carvings on these stones revel in Pictish inventiveness, teeming with lively naturalistic animals and innovative compositions of monsters and people, as well as both Pictish symbols and everyday objects. The sculptures' iconography also draws on a deep knowledge of Christian and classical literature, witness to a highly literate and cosmopolitan society. This definitive study of St Vigeans' Pictish stones, generously illustrated with plates of the full collection, begins in the recent past, when the sculptures began to emerge as a remarkable historic entity. It then explores the history of the sculptures, including an analysis of the carvings, the geology of the stones and attempts to extract meaning and context for this unique stone collection as part of a powerful ecclesiastical landscape.

FR: Rares mais marquantes ont ete les denonciations et les condamnations des crimes ou des vices des gouvernants. Le volume interroge les formes et les raisons de ces mises en cause, alors meme que les traditions antiques, medievales ou modernes etaient plutot accommodantes envers les abus de pouvoir. EN: Denunciations and convictions of rulers' crimes or vices are uncommon but striking. This volume investigates the forms and reasons for these accusations, even though antique, medieval or modern tradition has tended to be quite accommodating towards the abuse of power.

This is an engaging account of the world of the Vikings and their gods. As the Vikings began to migrate overseas as raiders or settlers in the late eighth century, there is evidence that this new way of life, centred on warfare, commerce and exploration, brought with it a warrior ethos that gradually became codified in the Viking myths, notably in the cult of Odin, the god of war, magic and poetry, and chief god in the Norse pantheon. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when most of Scandinavia had long since been converted to Christianity, form perhaps the most important era in the history of Norse mythology: only at this point were the myths of Thor, Freyr and Odin first recorded in written form. Using archaeological sources to take us further back in time than any written document, the accounts of foreign writers like the Roman historian Tacitus, and the most important repository of stories of the gods, old Norse poetry and the Edda, Christopher Abram leads the reader into the lost world of the Norse gods.

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.

The spectacle of the wounded body figured prominently in the Middle Ages, from images of Christ's wounds on the cross, to the ripped and torn bodies of tortured saints who miraculously heal through divine intervention, to graphic accounts of battlefield and tournament wounds-evidence of which survives in the archaeological record-and literary episodes of fatal (or not so fatal) wounds. This volume offers a comprehensive look at the complexity of wounding and wound repair in medieval literature and culture, bringing together essays from a wide range of sources and disciplines including arms and armaments, military history, medical history, literature, art history, hagiography, and archaeology across medieval and early modern Europe. Contributors are Stephen Atkinson, Debby Banham, Albrecht Classen, Joshua Easterling, Charlene M. Eska, Carmel Ferragud, M.R. Geldof, Elina Gertsman, Barbara A. Goodman, Maire Johnson, Rachel E. Kellett, Ilana Krug, Virginia Langum, Michael Livingston, Iain A. MacInnes, Timothy May, Vibeke Olson, Salvador Ryan, William Sayers, Patricia Skinner, Alicia Spencer-Hall, Wendy J. Turner, Christine Voth, and Robert C. Woosnam-Savage.

Mamluk Cairo, a Crossroads for Embassies offers an up-to-date insight into the diplomacy and diplomatics of the Mamluk sultanate with Muslim and non-Muslim powers. This rich volume covers the whole chronological span of the sultanate as well as the various areas of the diplomatic relations established by (or with) the Mamluk sultanate. Twenty-six essays are divided in geographical sections that broadly respect the political division of the world as the Mamluk chancery perceived it. In addition, two introductory essays provide the present stage of research in the fields of, respectively, diplomatics and diplomacy. With contributions by Frederic Bauden, Lotfi Ben Miled, Michele Bernardini, Barbara Boloix Gallardo, Anne F. Broadbridge, Mounira Chapoutot-Remadi, Stephan Conermann, Nicholas Coureas, Malika Dekkiche, Remi Dewiere, Kristof D'hulster, Marie Favereau, Gladys Frantz-Murphy, Yehoshua Frenkel, Hend Gilli-Elewy, Ludvik Kalus, Anna Kollatz, Julien Loiseau, Maria Filomena Lopes de Barros, John L. Meloy, Pierre Moukarzel, Lucian Reinfandt, Alessandro Rizzo, Eric Vallet, Valentina Vezzoli and Patrick Wing.

First English translation of seminal essays on heresy and other aspects of medieval religious history. In the field of medieval religious history, few scholars have matched the originality of the German academic Herbert Grundmann (1902-1970). Trained at the University of Leipzig and president of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica from 1959 until his death, Grundmann published a series of brilliant books and articles that fundamentally reshaped how historians of culture and religion conceptualized the medieval past. Yet although later generations of scholarshave since approached their research from vantage points shaped by his arguments, few of his writings have been previously accessible to an Anglophone audience. This volume presents translations of six of Grundmann's most significant essays on the intertwined themes of medieval heresy, literacy, and inquisition. Together, they offer new access to Grundmann's scholarship, one which will catalyze new perspectives on the medieval religious past and enable a fresh consideration of his intellectual legacy in the twenty-first century. JENNIFER KOLPACOFF DEANE is Professor of History at the University of Minnesota, Morris.

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.

Church rituals were a familiar feature of life throughout much of the Anglo-Saxon period. In this innovative study, Helen Gittos examines ceremonies for the consecration of churches and cemeteries, processional feasts like Candlemas, Palm Sunday, and Rogationtide, as well as personal rituals such as baptisms and funerals. Drawing on little-known surviving liturgical sources as well as other written evidence, archaeology, and architecture, she considers the architectural context in which such rites were performed. The research in this book has implications for a wide range of topics, such as: how liturgy was written and disseminated in the early Middle Ages, when Christian cemeteries first began to be consecrated, how the form of Anglo-Saxon monasteries changed over time and how they were used, the centrality and nature of processions in early medieval religious life, the evidence church buildings reveal about changes in how they functioned, beliefs about relics, and the attitudes of different archbishops to the liturgy. Liturgy, Architecture, and Sacred Places in Anglo-Saxon England will be of particular interest to architectural specialists wanting to know more about liturgy, and church historians keen to learn more about architecture, as well as those with a more general interest in the early Middle Ages and in church buildings.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.