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.

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.

This book approaches the manifestation and evolution of the idea of Rome as an expression of Roman patriotism and as an (urban) archetype of utopia in late Roman thought in a period extending from AD 357 to 417. Within this period of about a human lifetime, the concepts of Rome and Romanitas were reshaped and used for various ideological causes. This monograph unfolds through a selection of sources that represent the patterns and diversity of this ideological process. The theme of Rome as a personified and anthropomorphic figure and as an epitomized notion 'applied' on the urban landscape would become part of the identity of the Romans of Rome highlighting a sense of cultural uniqueness in an era when their city's privileged status was challenged. Towards the end of the chronological limits set in this thesis various versions of Romanitas would emerge indicating new physical and spiritual potentials.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Based on the latest scholarship by experts in the field, this work provides an accessible guide to the Crusades fought for the liberation and defense of the Holy Land-one of the most enduring and consequential conflicts of the medieval world. The Crusades to the Holy Land were one of the most important religious and social movements to emerge over the course of the Middle Ages. The warfare of the Crusades affected nearly all of Western Europe and involved members of social groups from kings and knights down to serfs and paupers. The memory of this epic long-ago conflict affects relations between the Western and Islamic worlds in the present day. The Crusades to the Holy Land: The Essential Reference Guide provides almost 90 A-Z entries that detail the history of the Crusades launched from Western Europe for the liberation or defense of the Holy Land, covering the inception of the movement by Pope Urban II in 1095 up to the early 14th century. This concise single-volume work provides accessible articles and perspective essays on the main Crusade expeditions as well as the important crusaders, countries, places, and institutions involved. Each entry is accompanied by references for further reading. Readers will follow the career of Saladin from humble beginnings to becoming ruler of Syria and Egypt and reconquering almost all of the Holy Land from its Christian rulers; learn about the main sites and characteristics of the castles that were crucial to the Christian domination of the Holy Land; and understand the key aspects of crusading, from motivation and recruitment to practicalities of finance and transport. The reference guide also includes survey articles that provide readers with an overview of the original source materials written in Latin, Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Armenian, and Syriac. Presents concise, accessible articles written by more than 40 leading experts in the field that explain key concepts and describe important institutions of the Crusades Covers all main Crusades as well as the distinct countries and various personalities involved Includes maps that make clear the course of Crusades and main areas of campaigning in the Eastern Mediterranean region Documents the Christian principalities established in the course of the Crusades and the Muslim states that opposed them

A deeply considered new biography of the visionary Dominican by a leading Renaissance scholar Girolamo Savonarola, the fifteenth-century doom-saying friar, embraced the revolution of the Florentine republic and prophesied that it would become the center of a New Age of Christian renewal and world domination. This new biography, the culmination of many decades of study, presents an original interpretation of Savonarola's prophetic career and a highly nuanced assessment of his vision and motivations. Weinstein sorts out the multiple strands that connect Savonarola to his time and place, following him from his youthful rejection of a world he regarded as corrupt, to his engagement with that world to save it from itself, to his shattering confession-an admission that he had invented his prophesies and faked his visions. Was his confession sincere? A forgery circulated by his inquisitors? Or an attempt to escape bone-breaking torture? Weinstein offers a highly innovative analysis of the testimony to provide the first truly satisfying account of Savonarola and his fate as a failed prophet.

Social identity - how people define and categorize themselves - is constructed and expressed through cultural practices, cultural production and corporeality. This text takes a theoretical approach in viewing social identity as an intricate "warp and weft" in which "we-identities" are more than mere agglomerations of single threads or collectives of individual "self-identities", such as ethnicity or gender. This is important for medieval Britain prior to the 11th century due to the ways in which aspects of identity have been used as defining criteria in both modern scholarship and in contemporary historical texts.

In the medieval world, geographical knowledge was influenced by religious ideas and beliefs. Whereas this point is well analysed for the Latin-Christian world, the religious character of the Arabic-Islamic geographic tradition has not yet been scrutinised in detail. This volume addresses this desideratum and combines case studies from both traditions of geographic thinking. The contributions comprise in-depth analyses of individual geographical works as for example those of al-Idrisi or Lambert of Saint-Omer, different forms of presenting geographical knowledge such as TO-diagrams or globes as well as performative aspects of studying and meditating geographical knowledge. Focussing on texts as well as on maps, the contributions open up a comparative perspective on how religious knowledge influenced the way the world and its geography were perceived and described int the medieval world.

In Conflict, Commerce, and an Aesthetic of Appropriation in the Italian Maritime Cities, 1000-1150, Karen Rose Mathews analyzes the relationship between war, trade, and the use of spolia (appropriated objects from past and foreign cultures) as architectural decoration in the public monuments of the Italian maritime republics in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

In the ninth century, Vikings carried out raids on the Christian north and Muslim south of the Iberian peninsula (modern Spain and Portugal), going on to attack North Africa, southern Francia and Italy and perhaps sailing as far as Byzantium. A century later, Vikings killed a bishop of Santiago de Compostela and harried the coasts of al-Andalus. Most of the raids after this date were small in scale, but several heroes of the Old Norse sagas were said to have raided in the peninsula. These Vikings have been only a footnote to the history of the Viking Age. Many stories about their activities survive only in elaborate versions written centuries after the event, and in Arabic. This book reconsiders the Arabic material as part of a dossier that also includes Latin chronicles and charters as well as archaeological and place-name evidence. Arabic authors and their Latin contemporaries remembered Vikings in Iberia in surprisingly similar ways. How they did so sheds light on contemporary responses to Vikings throughout the medieval world.

The book highlights aspects of mediality and materiality in the dissemination and distribution of texts in the Scandinavian Middle Ages important for achieving a general understanding of the emerging literate culture. In nine chapters various types of texts represented in different media and in a range of materials are treated. The topics include two chapters on epigraphy, on lead amulets and stone monuments inscribed with runes and Roman letters. In four chapters aspects of the manuscript culture is discussed, the role of authorship and of the dissemination of Christian topics in translations. The appropriation of a Latin book culture in the vernaculars is treated as well as the adminstrative use of writing in charters. In the two final chapters topics related to the emerging print culture in early post-medieval manuscripts and prints are discussed with a focus on reception. The range of topics will make the book relevant for scholars from all fields of medieval research as well as those interested in mediality and materiality in general.

What does it mean to "live without why"? This was the advice of Meister Eckhart (ca. 1260-1328), both in his Latin treatises to philosophers and theologians and in his German sermons to nuns and ordinary lay persons. He seems to have meant that we should live and act out of justice or goodness and not in order to gain some reward for our deeds. This message was received with indignation by the Church hierarchy and was condemned by the Pope in 1329. How did Eckhart come to formulate it? And why was it so controversial? John M. Connolly addresses these questions by locating Eckhart's thinking about how to live within the mainstream synthesis of Christian and classical thought formulated in the High Middle Ages. He calls the classical Greek moral consensus "teleological eudaimonism," according to which correct living coincides with the attainment of happiness (eudaimonia). This involves living a life marked by the practice of the virtues, which in turn requires a consistent desire for the correct goal in life. This desire is the core notion of will. In late antiquity Augustine drew on this tradition in formulating his views about how Christians should live. This required grafting onto classical eudaimonism a set of distinctively scriptural notions such as divine providence, original sin, redemption, and grace. In the 13th century these ideas were systematized by Thomas Aquinas in his will-centered moral theology. Eckhart claimed that this tradition was profoundly mistaken. Far from being a wild-eyed mystic or visionary, he argued trenchantly from classical philosophical principles and the Christian scriptures. Connolly proposes that Eckhart's views, long obscured by the papal condemnation, deserve reconsideration today. "This book is a signal contribution to ancient and medieval philosophy. By putting Eckhart into conversation with his predecessors (i.e., Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas), Connolly does a fine job in identifying where Eckhart makes an original-and still viable-contribution to moral thought in general. This is a remarkable work, the product of long and careful thought, as well as being clearly presented. " -Bernard McGinn, Naomi Shenstone Donnelley Professor Emeritus of Historical Theology and of the History of Christianity in the Divinity School and the Committees on Medieval Studies and on General Studies, University of Chicago "It would appear that Connolly has written the right book at the right moment. Through his work, the English-speaking world can become finally acquainted with the academic discussion of the last decades concerning Eckhart and can furthermore have an original and text grounded interpretation of a relevant section of his philosophical thought." -Loris Sturlese, Professor of Medieval Philosophy, Universita del Salento

A SUNDAY TIMES HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR

'A triumph' Guardian

'Glorious ... makes the past at once familiar, exotic and thrilling.' Dominic Sandbrook

'A brilliant book' Mail on Sunday

Just like us, medieval men and women worried about growing old, got blisters and indigestion, fell in love and had children. And yet their lives were full of miraculous and richly metaphorical experiences radically different to our own, unfolding in a world where deadly wounds might be healed overnight by divine intervention, or the heart of a king, plucked from his corpse, could be held aloft as a powerful symbol of political rule.

In this richly-illustrated and unusual history, Jack Hartnell uncovers the fascinating ways in which people thought about, explored and experienced their physical selves in the Middle Ages, from Constantinople to Cairo and Canterbury. Unfolding like a medieval pageant, and filled with saints, soldiers, caliphs, queens, monks and monstrous beasts, it throws light on the medieval body from head to toe - revealing the surprisingly sophisticated medical knowledge of the time in the process.

Bringing together medicine, art, music, politics, philosophy and social history, there is no better guide to what life was really like for the men and women who lived and died in the Middle Ages.

Medieval Bodies is published in association with Wellcome Collection.