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

Monks Eleigh was one of the principal units of medieval administration, providing a legal framework for land tenure, the prosecution of crimes and misdemeanours and social control. The manor was one of the principal units of medieval administration, providing a legal framework for land tenure, the prosecution of crimes and misdemeanours and social control. For the lord of a manor it was a source of supplies and income for the maintenance of his status and power. For the tenants the manor formed the everyday focus of their working lives, because they typically owed work services on his land and were subject to the manorial court for wrong doings, the settlement of disputes, the holding of their lands and payment of various feudal dues. Manors were the standard unit of land tenure for centuries, but they changed and developed over time and differed in their administration according to the particular custom of each manor. The records of the manor of Monks Eleigh are typical of those which still exist for hundreds of manors across England. They allow us to glimpse some of the details of the people who lived and worked there over a period of some four centuries. In the earliest extents and accounts we see a concentration on the work services which the unfree tenants were obliged to do on the lord's lands in lieu of rent, including ploughing, sowing, harrowing, harvesting, carting, ditching, hurdle-making and working in the manor vineyard. Accounts list the lord's stock of animals including oxen, horses, cattle, sheep, geese, ducks, peacocks and doves. They detail repairs to manorial buildings such as the hall, barns, mill, dovecote, sheep-cotes and gates. Court rolls record admissions of tenants to land-holdings as well as fines for misdemeanours such as trespass on growing crops, assaults and thefts. By the sixteenth century the rentals show that an increasing number of tenants were using their manorial land-holdings as investments by living elsewhere and sub-letting them. In more general terms, these records can throw light on the development of manorial administration over time, the changing forms of land tenure, place name and surname studies, the decline in serfdom, popular unrest and social mobility.

The political union between England and Gascony or Aquitaine lasted from the early thirteenth century until 1453, and the long series of Gascon Rolls in the National Archives record some of the business of Aquitaine during the union. These are currently being calendared, and this volume reflects some of the research which resulted, both on the administration and record production of the Anglo-Gascon officials, and the English government of the region.

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.

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.

A Cultural History of The Human Body presents an authoritative survey from ancient times to the present. This set of six volumes covers 2800 years of the human body as a physical, social, spiritual and cultural object. Volume 1: A Cultural History of the Human Body in Antiquity (1300 BCE - 500 CE) Edited by Daniel Garrison, Northwestern University. Volume 2: A Cultural History of the Human Body in The Medieval Age (500 - 1500) Edited by Linda Kalof, Michigan State University Volume 3: A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Renaissance (1400 - 1650) Edited by Linda Kalof, Michigan State University and William Bynum, University College London. Volume 4: A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Enlightenment (1600 - 1800) Edited by Carole Reeves, Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine, University College London. Volume 5: A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Age of Empire (1800 - 1920) Edited by Michael Sappol, National Library of Medicine in Washington, DC, and Stephen P. Rice, Ramapo College of New Jersey. Volume 6: A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Modern Age (1900-21st Century) Edited by Ivan Crozier, University of Edinburgh, and Chiara Beccalossi, University of Queensland. Each volume discusses the same themes in its chapters: 1. Birth and Death 2. Health and Disease 3. Sex and Sexuality 4. Medical Knowledge and Technology 5. Popular Beliefs 6. Beauty and Concepts of the Ideal 7. Marked Bodies I: Gender, Race, Class, Age, Disability and Disease 8. Marked Bodies II: the Bestial, the Divine and the Natural 9. Cultural Representations of the Body 10. The Self and Society This means readers can either have a broad overview of a period by reading a volume or follow a theme through history by reading the relevant chapter in each volume. Superbly illustrated, the full six volume set combines to present the most authoritative and comprehensive survey available on the human body through history.

Classicizing Christian poetry has largely been neglected by literary scholars, but has recently been receiving growing attention, especially the poetry written in Latin. One of the objectives of this volume is to redress the balance by allowing more space to discussions of Greek Christian poetry. The contributions collected here ask how Christian poets engage with (and are conscious of) the double reliance of their poetry on two separate systems: on the one hand, the classical poetic models and, on the other, the various genres and sub-genres of Christian prose. Keeping in mind the different settings of the Greek-speaking East and the Latin-speaking West, the contributions seek to understand the impact of historical setting on genre, the influence of the paideia shared by authors and audiences, and the continued relevance of traditional categories of literary genre. While our immediate focus is genre, most of the contributions also engage with the ideological ramifications of the transposition of Christian themes into classicizing literature. This volume offers important and original case studies on the reception and appropriation of the classical past and its literary forms by Christian poetry.

The leading academic vehicle for scholarly publication in the field of medieval warfare. Medieval Warfare The articles here focus on activities in north-western Europe, with a reconsideration of the location of the battle of Stamford Bridge (1066), an examination of the role of open battles in the civil wars of the Anglo-Norman and Angevin kings, a re-assessment of the strategy of Edward I's war against Philip IV in 1297-98, and an analysis of the role of cavalry "coureurs" in late-medieval France. But regions further to the south and east are by no means neglected, with a dissection of the military rhetoric of Pere III of Aragon and his queen, Elionor of Sicily, and a discussion of the earliest European gunpowder recipes, from Friuli (1336) and Augsburg (1338- c. 1350). The volume also offers studies of the campaigns culminating in the battles of Firad in 634 and Qinnasrin in 1134.

Medieval Violence provides a detailed analysis of the practice of medieval brutality, focusing on a thriving region of northern France in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. It examines how violence was conceptualised in this period, and uses this framework to investigate street violence, tavern brawls, urban rebellions, student misbehaviour, and domestic violence. The interactions between these various forms of violence are examined in order to demonstrate the complex and communicative nature of medieval brutality. What is often dismissed as dysfunctional behaviour is shown to have been highly strategic and socially integral. Violence was a performance, dependent upon the spaces in which it took place. Indeed, brutality was contingent upon social and cultural structures. At the same time, the common stereotype of the thoughtlessly brutal Middle Ages is challenged, as attitudes towards violence are revealed to have been complex, troubled, and ambivalent. Whether violence could function effectively as a form of communication which could order and harmonise society, or whether it inevitably degenerated into chaotic disorder where meaning was multivalent and incomprehensible, remained a matter of ongoing debate in a variety of contexts. Using a variety of source material, including legal records, popular literature, and sermons, Hannah Skoda explores experiences of, and attitudes towards, violence, and highlights profound contemporary ambiguity concerning its nature and legitimacy.

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.

WINNER YOUNG QUILLS AWARD BEST HISTORICAL FICTION 2021 12-year-old Ada is a laundress of little consequence but the new castle commander Brian de Berclay has his evil eye on her. Perhaps she shouldn't have secretly fed the young prisoner in the tower. But when the King of England crosses the border with an army of over 3000 strong, Ada, her friend Godfrey and all at Caerlaverock suddenly find themselves under attack, with only 60 men for protection. Soon, rocks and flaming arrows rain from the sky over Castle Caerlaverock - and Ada has a dangerous choice to make.

In Animal Rationality: Later Medieval Theories 1250-1350, Anselm Oelze offers the first comprehensive and systematic exploration of theories of animal rationality in the later Middle Ages. Traditionally, it was held that medieval thinkers ascribed rationality to humans while denying it to nonhuman animals. As Oelze shows, this narrative fails to capture the depth and diversity of the medieval debate. Although many thinkers, from Albert the Great to John Buridan, did indeed hold that nonhuman animals lack rational faculties, some granted them the ability to engage in certain rational processes such as judging, reasoning, or employing prudence. There is thus a whole spectrum of positions to be discovered, many of which show interesting parallels with contemporary theories of animal rationality.

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.

In Caliphate and Kingship in a Fifteenth-Century Literary History of Muslim Leadership and Pilgrimage Jo Van Steenbergen presents a new study, edition and translation of al-Dahab al-Masbuk fi Dikr man Hagga min al-Hulafa' wa-l-Muluk, a summary history of the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca by al-Maqrizi (766-845 AH/ca. 1365-1442 CE). Traditionally considered as a useful source for the history of the hagg, al-Dahab al-Masbuk is re-interpreted here as a complex literary construction that was endowed with different meanings. Through detailed contextualist, narratological, semiotic and codicological analyses Van Steenbergen demonstrates how these meanings were deeply embedded in early-fifteenth century Egyptian transformations, how they changed substantially over time, and how they included particular claims about authorship and about legitimate and good Muslim rule.

Crusade scholarship has exploded in popularity over the past two decades. This volume captures the resulting diversity of approaches, which often cross cultures and academic disciplines. The contributors to this volume offer new perspectives on topics as varied as the application of Roman law on slavery to the situation of Muslims in the Latin East, Muslim appropriation of Latin architectural spolia, the roles played by the crusade in medieval preaching, and the impact of Latin East refugees on religious geography in late medieval Cyprus. Together these essays demonstrate how pervasive the institution of crusade was in medieval Christendom, as much at home in Europe as in the Latin East, and how much impact it carried forth into the modern era. Contributors are Richard Allington, Jessalynn Bird, Adam M. Bishop, Tomasz Borowski, Yan Bourke, Sam Zeno Conedera, Charles W. Connell, Cathleen A. Fleck, Lisa Mahoney, and C. Matthew Phillips.

The Medieval Life of Language: Grammar and Pragmatics from Bacon to Kempe explores the complex history of medieval pragmatic theory and ideas and metapragmatic awareness across social discourses. Pragmatic thinking about language and communication is revealed in grammar, semiotics, philosophy, and literature. Part historical reconstruction, part social history, part language theory, Amsler supplements the usual materials for the history of medieval linguistics and discusses the pragmatic implications of grammatical treatises on the interjection, Bacon's sign theory, logic texts, Chaucer's poetry, inquisitors' accounts of heretic speech, and life-writing by William Thorpe and Margery Kempe. Medieval and contemporary pragmatic theory are contrasted in terms of their philosophical and linguistic orientations. Aspects of medieval pragmatic theory and practice, especially polysemy, equivocation, affective speech, and recontextualization, show how pragmatic discourse informed social controversies and attitudes toward sincere, vague, and heretical speech. Relying on Bakhtinian dialogism, critical discourse analysis, and conversation analysis, Amsler situates a key period in the history of linguistics within broader social and discursive fields of practice.

The early modern era is often envisioned as one in which European genres, both narrative and visual, diverged indelibly from those of medieval times. This collection examines a disparate set of travel texts, dating from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries, to question that divergence and to assess the modes, themes, and ethnologies of travel writing. It demonstrates the enduring nature of the itinerary, the variant forms of witnessing (including imaginary maps), the crafting of sacred space as a cautionary tale, and the use of the travel narrative to represent the transformation of the authorial self. Focusing on European travelers to the expansive East, from the soft architecture of Timur's tent palaces in Samarqand to the ambiguities of sexual identity at the Mughul court, these essays reveal the possibilities for cultural translation as travelers of varying experience and attitude confront remote and foreign (or not so foreign) space.

A narrative of decline punctuated by periods of renewal has long structured perceptions of Rome's late antique and medieval history. In their probing contributions to this volume, a multi-disciplinary group of scholars provides alternative approaches to understanding the period. Addressing developments in governance, ceremony, literature, art, music, clerical education and the construction of the city's identity, the essays examine how a variety of actors, from poets to popes, productively addressed the intermittent crises and shifting dynamics of these centuries in ways that bolstered the city's resilience. Without denying that the past (both pre-Christian and Christian) consistently remained a powerful touchstone, the studies in this volume offer rich new insights into the myriad ways that Romans, between the fifth and the eleventh centuries, creatively assimilated the past as they shaped their future.

Kitab al-mustalhaq is an addendum to the treatises on Hebrew morphology by HayyuG, the most classic of the Andalusi works written during the caliphate of Cordoba and the benchmark for studies of the Hebrew language throughout the Arabic-speaking world during the medieval period. Kitab al-mustalhaq was composed in Zaragoza by Ibn Ganah after the civil war was unleashed in Cordoba in 1013. This new edition includes an historical introduction, taking account of the major contributions from the twentieth century to the present day, a description of the methodology and contents of this treatise, a description of the manuscripts, and a glossary of terminology. This new edition shows how Ibn Ganah updated his book until the end of his life.