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

This volume places the satirical works of the Middle Byzantine period in a wider political and socio-cultural context, exploring not only their various forms but also their functions and meanings. The volume is divided into four parts. The first part provides the backgrounds of the authors and texts discussed in the volume. The second concerns the manifold functions and appearances of Byzantine satirical texts. Part three offers detailed analyses of three largely unexplored texts (the Charidemos, the Philopatris, and the Anacharsis). The last section moves from the individual texts to the larger picture of satirical modes in Middle Byzantium. Contributors are Baukje van den Berg, Floris Bernard, Stavroula Constantinou, Eric Cullhed, Janek Kucharski, Marketa Kulhankova, Paul Magdalino, Henry Maguire, Przemyslaw Marciniak, Charis Messis, Ingela Nilsson, Emilie van Opstall, Panagiotis Roilos, and Nikos Zagklas. See inside the book.

The volume offers a timely (re-)appraisal of Seleukid cultural dynamics. While the engagement of Seleukid kings with local populations and the issue of "Hellenization" are still debated, a movement away from the Greco-centric approach to the study of the sources has gained pace. Increasingly textual sources are read alongside archaeological and numismatic evidence, and relevant near-eastern records are consulted. Our study of Seleukid kingship adheres to two game-changing principles: 1. We are not interested in judging the Seleukids as "strong" or "weak" whether in their interactions with other Hellenistic kingdoms or with the populations they ruled. 2. While appreciating the value of the social imaginaries approach (Stavrianopoulou, 2013), we argue that the use of ethnic identity in antiquity remains problematic. Through a pluralistic approach, in line with the complex cultural considerations that informed Seleukid royal agendas, we examine the concept of kingship and its gender aspects; tensions between centre and periphery; the level of "acculturation" intended and achieved under the Seleukids; the Seleukid-Ptolemaic interrelations. As rulers of a multi-cultural empire, the Seleukids were deeply aware of cultural politics.

Equine Medicine and Popular Romance in Late Medieval England explores a seldom-studied trove of English veterinary manuals, illuminating how the daily care of horses they describe reshapes our understanding of equine representation in the popular romance of late medieval England. A saint removes a horse’s leg the more easily to shoe him; a wild horse transforms spur wounds into the self-healing practice of bleeding; a messenger calculates time through his horse’s body. Such are the rich and conflicted visions of horse/human connection in the period. Exploring this imagined relation, Francine McGregor reveals a cultural undercurrent in which medieval England is so reliant on equine bodies that human anxieties, desires, and very orientation in daily life are often figured through them. This book illuminates the complex and contradictory yearnings shaping medieval perceptions of the horse, the self, and the identities born of their affinity.

The luxurious spending habits of Italians in the Renaissance are well known. This is the first comprehensive study of the sumptuary laws that attempted to regulate the consumption of luxuries. Catherine Kovesi Killerby provides a chronological, geographical, and thematic survey of more than 300 laws enacted in over 40 cities throughout Italy, and sets them in their social context.

Harold Godwineson was king of England from January 1066 until his death at Hastings on 14th October of that year. Although he was not the only candidate for the succession to the childless King Edward the Confessor, Harold had a far stronger claim than William of Normandy to the throne. For much of the reign of Edward the Confessor, who was married to Harold's sister Edith, the Godwine family, led by Earl Godwine, had dominated English politics. In The House of Godwine Emma Mason tells the turbulent story of a remarkable family which, until Harold's unexpected defeat, looked far more likely than the dukes of Normandy to provide the long-term rulers of England. But for the Norman conquest, an Anglo-Saxon England ruled by the Godwine dynasty would have developed very differntly from that dominated by the Normans.

Maximus the Confessor and his Companions provides the first English translations of seven documents from the seventh century which recount the legal trials, banishment, and deaths of the monk Maximus the Confessor, his disciples and friends, and Pope Martin I. The background to these documents is formed by Byzantine imperial religious policy, radical change in the Byzantine empire, Arab and Persian attacks, and the close ties which existed between Maximus and his followers and the West.

Bringing together the work of scholars from disparate fields of enquiry, this volume provides a timely and stimulating exploration of the themes of transmission and translation, charting developments, adaptations and exchanges - textual, visual, material and conceptual - that reverberated across the medieval world, within wide-ranging temporal and geographical contexts. Such transactions generated a multiplicity of fusions expressed in diverse and often startling ways - architecturally, textually and through peoples' lived experiences - that informed attitudes of selfhood and 'otherness', senses of belonging and ownership, and concepts of regionality, that have been further embraced in modern and contemporary arenas of political and cultural discourse. Contributors are Tarren Andrews, Edel Bhreathnach, Cher Casey, Katherine Cross, Amanda Doviak, Elisa Foster, Matthias Friedrich, Jane Hawkes, Megan Henvey, Aideen Ireland, Alison Killilea, Ross McIntire, Lesley Milner, John Mitchell, Nino Simonishvili, and Rachael Vause.

This is the first biography of Barbara of Cilli (1392-1451), Hungarian, Roman-German and Bohemian queen through her marriage to King and later Emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg (1368-1437). While Emperor Sigismund has enjoyed substantial historical attention, Barbara has remained in his shadow, despite her significant political, economic, and cultural influence. Barbara's image is still preserved today as the "Black Queen" or the "German Messalina". She has been transformed into a mystical or even demonic figure in folklore - a prime example of the creation and functioning of historical stereotypes - yet as a historical figure she emerges as an influential and exceptional queen.

Reading Medieval Sources is an exciting new series which leads scholars and students into some of the most challenging and rewarding sources from the European Middle Ages, and introduces the most important approaches to understanding them. Written by an international team of twelve leading scholars, this volume Money and Coinage in the Middle Ages presents a set of fresh and insightful perspectives that demonstrate the rich potential of this source material to all scholars of medieval history and culture. It includes coverage of major developments in monetary history, set into their economic and political context, as well as innovative and interdisciplinary perspectives that address money and coinage in relation to archaeology, anthropology and medieval literature. Contributors are Nanouschka Myrberg Burstroem, Elizabeth Edwards, Gaspar Feliu, Anna Gannon, Richard Kelleher, Bill Maurer, Nick Mayhew, Rory Naismith, Philipp Robinson Roessner, Alessia Rovelli, Lucia Travaini, and Andrew Woods.

Unbounded Loyalty investigates how frontiers worked before the modern nation-state was invented. The perspective is that of the people in the borderlands who shifted their allegiance from the post-Tang regimes in North China to the new Liao empire (907-1125). Naomi Standen offers new ways of thinking about borders, loyalty, and identity in premodern China. She takes as her starting point the recognition that, at the time, ""China"" did not exist as a coherent entity, neither politically nor geographically, neither ethnically nor ideologically. Political borders were not the fixed geographical divisions of the modern world, but a function of relationships between leaders and followers. When local leaders changed allegiance, the borderline moved with them. Cultural identity did not determine people's actions: Ethnicity did not exist. In this context, she argues, collaboration, resistance, and accommodation were not meaningful concepts, and tenth-century understandings of loyalty were broad and various. ""Unbounded Loyalty"" sheds fresh light on the Tang-Song transition by focusing on the much-neglected tenth century and by treating the Liao as the preeminent Tang successor state. It fills several important gaps in scholarship on premodern China as well as uncovering new questions regarding the early modern period. It will be regarded as critically important to all scholars of the Tang, Liao, Five Dynasties, and Song periods and will be read widely by those working on Chinese history from the Han to the Qing.

Religious figures of remembrance served to consolidate first dynastic rule and later nation-state legitimacy and community. This book explains the interweaving of (Eastern) Roman, medieval Serbian and Bulgarian contexts as well as Ottoman and Western European national discourses or reinvented traditions. We can distinguish a secularization and nationalization of the religious contexts in the 19th century within historicism, followed by a nationalization of God and a sacralization of the nation until the end of WWII. Contrary to the national views, the origins of the modern content of these discourses lie only to a very limited extent in the Middle Ages or in the Early Modern period, as this study shows. Please note, this is volume 2 of a 2-volume set. Click here to see volume 1.

The last decade has witnessed a striking upsurge of interest in Iberian hagiography. In painting and the fine arts through to poetic and narrative treatments composed in Castilian and Catalan, the legacies of Christ, Mary, and the saints have been approached from a range of perspectives and subjected to detailed critical scrutiny. This book, which focuses specifically on the application of theoretical and methodological approaches to analysis, asks what scholars of early Iberian hagiography can bring to the analysis of the sacred past and how the study of the discipline can be taken forward innovatively in the future. Its fourteen essays, each focusing on a different aspect of composition, seek in particular to explore interdisciplinary methodologies and the ways in which they intersect with broader discourses in other branches of research. Contributors are Carme Arronis Llopis, Fernando Banos Vallejo, Andrew M. Beresford, Sarah Jane Boss, Sarah V. Buxton, Marinela Garcia Sempere, Ryan D. Giles, Ariel Guiance, Lluis Ramon i Ferrer, Rebeca Sanmartin Bastida, Connie L. Scarborough, and Lesley K. Twomey.

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.

This is the first book devoted to the Lombard League, an association created by the city republics of northern Italy in the 12th century in order to defend their autonomy and that of the papacy in a momentous struggle against the German holy roman emperor Frederick I Barbarossa. Consequently, the League has enjoyed an iconic status, and in the 19th century was glorified as a precursor of the Italian struggle for independence in political and historical pamphlets as well as in paintings, novels and even operas. The League played a crucial role in the evolution of Italy's political landscape, but it did more than ensuring its continued fragmentation. Historiography, in fact, has overlooked the collegial cooperation among the medieval Italian polities and this volume offers new interpretations, by examining the League's structure, activity, place in political thought and its links with regional identities. Using documentary evidence, histories, letters, inscriptions and contemporary troubadour poems as well as rhetorical and juridical treatises, Dr Raccagni argues that the League was not just a momentary anti-imperial military alliance, but was rather a body that also provided collective approaches to regional problems, ranging from the peaceful resolution of disputes to the management of regional lines of communication, usurping, in some cases, imperial prerogatives. Yet the League never rejected imperial overlordship per se, and here it is revealed how it survived after the end of the conflict against Frederick I, one of its most lasting legacies being the settlement that it reached with the empire, the Peace of Constance, which became the Magna Carta of the northern Italian polities.

This book offers a full-scale study of angels and angelology in the Middle Ages. Seeking to discover how and why angels became so important in medieval society, David Keck considers a wide range of fascinating questions such as: Why do angels appear on baptismal fonts? How and why did angels become normative for certain members of the church? How did they become a required course of study? Did popular beliefs about angels diverge from the angelologies of the theologians? Why did some heretics claim to derive their authority from heavenly spirits? Keck spreads his net wide in the attempt to catch traces of angels and angelic beliefs in as many portions of the medieval world as possible. Metaphysics and mystery plays, prayers and pilgrimages, Cathars and cathedrals-all these and many more disparate sources taken together reveal a society deeply engaged with angels on all its levels and in some unlikely ways.

This is a pioneering book about the impact that knowledge produced in the Maghrib (Islamic North Africa and al-Andalus = Muslim Iberia) had on the rest of the Islamic world. It presents results achieved in the Research Project "Local contexts and global dynamics: al-Andalus and the Maghrib in the Islamic East (AMOI)", funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (FFI2016-78878-R AEI/FEDER, UE) and directed by Maribel Fierro and Mayte Penelas. The book contains 18 contributions written by senior and junior scholars from different institutions all over the world. It is divided into five sections dealing with how knowledge produced in the Maghrib was integrated in the Mashriq starting with the emergence and construction of the concept 'Maghrib' (sections 1 and 2); how travel allowed the reception in the Maghrib of knowledge produced in the Mashriq but also the transmission of locally produced knowledge outside the Maghrib, and the different ways in which such transmission took place (sections 3 and 4), and how the Maghribis who stayed or settled in the Mashriq manifested their identity (section 5). The book will be of interest not only for those whose research concentrates on the Maghrib but more generally for those who want to understand the complex and shifting dynamics between 'centres' and 'peripheries' as regards intellectual production and circulation.

By the early ninth century, the responsibility for a series of social, religious and political transformations had become an integral part of running the Carolingian empire. This became especially clear when, in 813/4, Louis the Pious and his court seized the momentum generated by their predecessors and broadened the scope of these reforms ever further. These reformers knew they represented a movement greater than the sum of its parts; the interdependence between those wielding imperial authority and those bearing responsibility for ecclesiastical reforms was driven by comprehensive, yet still surprisingly diverse expectations. Taking this diversity as a starting point, this book takes a fresh look at the optimistic first decades of the ninth century. Extrapolating from a series of detailed case studies rather than presenting a new grand narrative, it offers new interpretations of contemporary theories of personal improvement and institutional correctio, and shows the self-awareness of its main instigators as they pondered what it meant to be a good Christian in a good Christian empire.

An examination of changes in religious practice over the course of the long fourteenth century. Ripon Minster was St Wilfrid's church, and its vast parish at the edge of the Yorkshire dales was his domain, his memory living on among the people of his parish centuries after his death. Wilfrid was a saint for all seasons: histhree feast days punctuated the cycle of the agricultural year and an annual procession sought his blessings on the growing crops each May. This procession brought together many of the parish's earthly lords - the clergy and the gentry - as they carried the relics of their celestial patron. In death they hoped that they too would be remembered, and so remain a part of parish society for as long as their tombs survived or prayers were said for them in the church of Ripon. This book charts the developments in the practice of religion, and in particular the commemoration of the deceased, from the late fourteenth to the early sixteenth centuries in this important parish. In particular, it shows how the twin necessities of honouring the minster's patron saint and remembering the parish dead had a profound effect on the practice of religion in late medieval Ripon, shaping everything from the ritual calendarto weekly and daily religious routines. It provides, moreover, insights into the state of English religion on the eve of the Reformation. Stephen Werronen completed his PhD at the University of Leeds and is currently a visiting researcher at the Arnamagnaean Institute, University of Copenhagen.

An account of the naval commander Roger of Lauria and his command of warfare at sea. Just before Vespers on 30 March 1282 at the Church of the Holy Spirit on the outskirts of Palermo, a drunken soldier of the occupying French forces of Charles of Anjou accosted a young Sicilian noblewoman. It sparked a bloody conflagration, the so-called War of the Sicilian Vespers, that would ultimately involve every part of the Mediterranean. The struggle for the coveted throne of Sicily eventually enmeshed all the great powers of medieval Europe - thepope, the Byzantine Emperor and the kings of France, England and Aragon. Because the core of the Kingdom of Sicily was a wealthy, strategic island dominating the centre of the Mediterranean, the battles were fought mostly at sea.And in war at sea, a single figure proved pre-eminent: Roger of Lauria - Aragon's "Admiral of Admirals". In the course of some twenty years of naval combat, he orchestrated decisive victories in six pitched battles and numerous limited actions, never once suffering a defeat: a feat never equalled - not even by the legendary Lord Horatio Nelson. Drawing from multiple Sicilian and Catalan sources as well as Angevin and Aragonese registers, this chronological narrative details the tactics and strategy Lauria employed to become the most successful galley fleet commander of the Middle Ages, while highlighting a crucial conflict at a pivotal point in European history, long overshadowed by the Hundred Years War. CHARLES D. STANTON is a retired US naval officer and airline pilot; he gained his PhD at the University of Cambridge.

This volume presents one of the most important historical sources for medieval Islamic scholarship: The Compendium of Chronicles, written by the vizier to the Mongol Ilkhans of Iran, Rashiduddin Fazlullah. It includes a valuable survey of the Turkic and Mongolian peoples, a history of Genghis Khan's ancestors, and a detailed account of his conquests. Distinguished linguist and orientalist, Wheeler M. Thackston, provides a lucid, annotated translation that makes this key material accessible to a wide range of scholars.

Imagined Communities: Constructing Collective Identities in Medieval Europe offers a series of studies focusing on the problems of conceptualisation of social group identities, including national, royal, aristocratic, regional, urban, religious, and gendered communities. The geographical focus of the case studies presented in this volume range from Wales and Scotland, to Hungary and Ruthenia, while both narrative and other types of evidence, such as legal texts, are drawn upon. What emerges is how the characteristics and aspirations of communities are exemplified and legitimised through the presentation of the past and an imagined picture of present. By means of its multiple perspectives, this volume offers significant insight into the medieval dynamics of collective mentality and group consciousness. Contributors are Daniel Bagi, Mariusz Bartnicki, Zbigniew Dalewski, Georg Jostkleigrewe, Bartosz Klusek, Pawel Kras, Wojciech Michalski, Martin Nodl, Andrzej Pleszczynski, Euryn Rhys Roberts, Stanislaw Rosik, Joanna Sobiesiak, Karol Szejgiec, Michal Tomaszek, Tomasz Tarczynski, Przemyslaw Tyszka, Tatiana Vilkul, and Przemyslaw Wiszewski.

This biography presents a remarkable vision of Spanish society at the beginning of the 13th century by exploring the life of Berenguela of Castile (1180-1246), a queen who dominated public life for over forty years. Born at a time when the centers of Christian power were formed, Berenguela provided royal leadership in a crucial period of Iberian history. Within the context of contemporary studies of female power throughout history, Salvador Martinez brings to life Berenguela, a queen who, through her wisdom and resolve, transformed the Iberian political and cultural scene for years to come.

In Illuminating Jesus in the Middle Ages, editor Jane Beal and other scholars analyse the reception history of images and ideas about Jesus in medieval cultures (6th-15th c.). They consider representations of Jesus in the liturgy of the medieval church, Psalters and psalm commentaries, bestiaries, the Glossa ordinaria, and Middle English vitae Christi as well as among the English, the Irish, and Europeans, adherents to the cult of the Holy Name, participants in the Feast of Corpus Christi, and medieval contemplatives, including Bede, Theophylact of Ochrid, Saint Francis, Gertrude the Great, Dante, Julian of Norwich, and medieval English and European visionaries, among others. Contributors are Jane Beal, George Hardin Brown, Aaron Canty, Tomas O Cathasaigh, Thomas Cattoi, Andrew Galloway, Julia Bolton Holloway, Michael Kuczynski, Rob Lutton, Vittorio Montemaggi, Paul Patterson, Linda Stone, Lesley Sullivan Marcantonio, Larry Swain, Donna Trembinski, Nancy van Deusen, and Barbara Zimbalist.

This volume in Oxford Medieval Text contains Eadmer's Lives of Saints Oda, Dunstan, and Oswald, as well as the Miracles of Dunstan and Oswald. These three English saints, together with AEthelwold of Winchester, were key figures in the Benedictine revival of the tenth century, which saw a flowering of Anglo-Saxon religious, artistic, and literary culture. Eadmer of Canterbury (c.1060-c.1130), the secretary, confidant, and biographer of Saint Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury (1033-1109), was one of the most important historians and biographers in the period after the Norman Conquest. His works, written in Latin, look back constantly to the Anglo-Saxon past, while at the same time they accurately reflect the present-day realities of the wider European society into which England had been forcibly integrated. Manuscripts of his Lives of the Saints circulated widely in both in England and France, but apart from his Life of Anselm they have been little studied, and have remained largely untranslated. The works newly edited and translated in this edition provide many insights into the wider political history of the pre- and post-Conquest periods, as well as important evidence for the cults of the saints in Canterbury and Worcester.