Essays illuminate a wide range of topics from the Middle Ages, from the seals of an empress to priests' wives and the undead. This volume of the Haskins Society Journal demonstrates the Society's continued engagement with historical and interdisciplinary research from the early to the central Middle Ages on a broad range of topics including militarism, piety, the miraculous and the monstrous. Chapters explore material culture through a mythic eleventh-century papal banner and the seals and coins of the Empress Matilda; offer new insights into Carolingian hagiography and into the undead in the Historia rerum Anglicarum. Further chapters feature new evidence on the role of priests' wives, the tensions of multiple lordships, shifting identities in the Irish Sea world, and the didactic use of royal anger. A fresh examination of Aelred of Rievaulx's Relatio de Standaro and a re-assessment of Flemish documentary practice continue the Haskins Society's commitment to primary source analysis. Two essays on the thirteenth century, including links between Crusade spirituality and lay penitential strategies and an investigation into the economic costs of waging war, round out the volume. Contributors: DAN ARMSTRONG, DAVID S. BACHRACH, DANIEL M. BACHRACH, JILLIAN M. BJERKE, HANNAH BOSTON, MARIAH COOPER, FIONA J. GRIFFITHS, JESSE M. HARRINGTON, JEAN-FRANCOIS NIEUS, ALICE RIO, CHARITY URBANSKI, PATRICK WADDEN, MEGHAN WOOLLEY, LU ZUO

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.

This book's concern is with notoriously obscure ancient poets-riddlers, whom it argues to have been an essential, albeit necessarily marginal, element of the literary landscape of Antiquity, which, in addition, exerted subtle yet lasting influence on European culture. The three first essays in this book trace a direct line of influence between the early Hellenistic scholar-poet Simias of Rhodes, the late Republican Roman experimentalist Laevius and Constantine the Great's virtuoso panegyrist Optatian Porfyry, whereas the fourth essay discusses the preservation and transformation of the model invented by Simias in Byzantium. The Appendix reflects on the triumph of this intellectual paradigm in Neo-Latin Jesuit education by investigating the case of a peripheral yet highly influential Central European college at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This book is at once a contribution to the scholarship on the reception of Hellenistic poetry and to the study of ancient 'technopaegnia' (i.e. playful poetry) and their cultural influence in Antiquity, Byzantium and post-mediaeval Europe.

The collection Migration, Integration and Connectivity on the Southeastern Frontier of the Carolingian Empire offers insights into the Carolingian southeastern frontier-zone from historical, art-historical and archaeological perspectives. Chapters in this volume discuss the significance of the early medieval period for scholarly and public discourses in the Western Balkans and Central Europe, and the transfer of knowledge between local scholarship and macro-narratives of Mediterranean and Western history. Other essays explore the ways local communities around the Adriatic (Istria, Dalmatia, Dalmatian hinterland, southern Pannonia) established and maintained social networks and integrated foreign cultural templates into their existing cultural habitus. Contributors are Mladen Ancic, Ivan Basic, Goran Bilogrivic, Neven Budak, Florin Curta, Danijel Dzino, Kresimir Filipec, Richard Hodges, Nikola Jaksic, Miljenko Jurkovic, Ante Milosevic, Marko Petrak, Peter Stih, Trpimir Vedris.

In War, Entrepreneurs, and the State, Jeff Fynn-Paul (Leiden) assembles an internationally acclaimed selection of authors to push forward the debate on the role of entrepreneurs in making war and building states in Europe and the Ottoman Empire. Topics covered include logistics, supply, recruitment, and the finance of war. Chapters have been carefully commissioned with an eye towards complementarity. In an introduction co-written with Marjolein 't Hart and Griet Vermeesch, Fynn-Paul challenges existing discourses of military entrepreneurialism. A new benchmark is proposed: did states choose to work with entrepreneurs, or to restrict their activities and subvert the market? From the introduction and the individual chapters, a new more expansive vision of the military entrepreneur emerges. Contributors are: Carlos Alvarez-Nogal, Pepijn Brandon, William Caferro, Stephen Conway, Thomas Goossens, Aaron Graham, Rhoads Murphey, David Parrott, Helen Paul, Guy Rowlands, Kahraman Sakul, Marjolein 't Hart, Andrea Thiele, and Rafael Torres Sanchez.

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.

Byrhtferth of Ramsey was one of the most learned scholars of late Anglo-Saxon England, and his two saints' Lives-of Oswald, a powerful bishop of Worcester and York in the tenth century (d. 992), and Ecgwine, the seventh-century founder of Evesham-are among the most important historical sources for our understanding of late Anglo-Saxon England.
The Life of St Oswald is the longest surviving work of Anglo-Saxon hagiography, and it is the principal source for much of our knowledge of tenth-century England, especially the monastic reform movement, the role of King Edgar, the murder of Edward king and Martyr, and the so-called "anti-monastic reaction" (of which he is the unique witness). Much less is known about St Ecgwine, both by us and by Byrhtferth, but Byrhtferth's writing has exceptional value once again for the light it throws on tenth-century monasticism and the role of King Edgar in this process.
Both Lives have been printed only once before, in the nineteenth century, in editions which are riddled with errors and which have misled scholarship for over a century. Neither work has ever been translated into English. The present edition includes facing-page translations, which will make these works accessible to a scholarly audience for the first time. Byrhtferth's Latin is unusually idiosyncratic and difficult, and was frequently misunderstood by the scribe who copied the unique manuscript in which the Lives are preserved. The texts are also accompanied by extensive notes, which explain the historical implications and the often impenetrable Latin. One of the principal features of the new edition is that corruption in the transmitted text has been emended where necessary, based on knowledge of Byrhtferth's Latin style (analyzed, for example, in the EETS edition of Byrhtferth's Enchiridion, ed. Lapidge and Baker in 1994).
A new edition of Byrhtferth's two saints' Lives has been long awaited, and will be indispensable to the study of Anglo-Saxon history and literature; the texts also throw considerable new light on the archaeology of Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical sites such as York, Worcester, Ramsey and Evesham.

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.

Veneration of the saints is one of the defining characteristics of early medieval society and culture. This important book by a group of distinguished experts adopts for the first time an interdisciplinary approach to examine the innumerable local cults which developed in western Europe between about 400 and 1000, concentrating especially on Celtic and Anglo-Saxon saints. The volume combines wide-ranging surveys with crucial reference material, including a handlist of all known Anglo-Saxon saints.

Constant J. Mews offers an intellectual biography of two of the best known personalities of the twelfth century. Peter Abelard was a controversial logician at the cathedral school of Notre-Dame in Paris when he first met Heloise, who was the brilliant and outspoken niece of a cathedral canon and who was then engaged in the study of philosophy. After an intense love affair and the birth of a child, they married in secret in a bid to placate her uncle. Nonetheless the vengeful canon Fulbert had Abelard castrated, following which he became a monk at St. Denis, while Heloise became a nun at Argenteuil. Mews, a recognized authority on Abelard's writings, traces his evolution as a thinker from his earliest work on dialectic (paying particular attention to his debt to Roscelin of Compiegne and William of Champeaux) to his most mature reflections on theology and ethics. Abelard's interest in the doctrine of universals was one part of his broader philosophical interest in language, theology, and ethics, says Mews. He argues that Heloise played a significant role in broadening Abelard's intellectual interests during the period 1115-17, as reflected in a passionate correspondence in which the pair articulated and debated the nature of their love. Mews believes that the sudden end of this early relationship provoked Abelard to return to writing about language with new depth, and to begin applying these concerns to theology. Only after Abelard and Heloise resumed close epistolary contact in the early 1130s, however, did Abelard start to develop his thinking about sin and redemption--in ways that respond closely to the concerns of Heloise. Mews emphasizes both continuity and development in what these two very original thinkers had to say."

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.

With the advent of Magna Carta, royal power fell under written secular law and individual liberties were codified. Representative government, common law, and key trial rights such as habeas corpus grew out of these landmark documents. Magna Carta Magna Carta is the name later given to a document signed by king John of England under pressure from the barons and other notables of England in the summer of 1215 at a meadow called Runnymede, which is on the river Thames between London and Windsor. This remarkable document resulted from an aristocratic rebellion against the crown, sparked by king John's abusive use of his customary rights as lord of England. Though the rebellion began with the barons - who benefited most from John's concessions - success was ensured by John's alienation of the church and the rising merchant class, symbolized by the City of London. But remarkable as the original agreement was, it acquired its elevated position in the legal and constitutional history of England as much from what men thought it said as from what its provisions actually contained. Magna Carta was actually issued several times during the 12th century, often with substantial revisions. Entangled in dynastic wars at home and in France, and carrying on Crusades in the Holy Land, English kings required tremendous amounts of money to finance their armies and pay for the increasingly centralized government. Unsurprisingly, sentiments of rebellion grew stronger and stronger among the landed barons and wealthy merchants as royal demands for their money grew heavier and heavier. Thematically oriented chapters help readers differentiate fact from fiction regarding this pivotal charter in the history ofhuman freedom. Furthermore, the pivotal roles played by the Church, of the landed barons, and of the emerging merchants in England's towns in extracting the concessions from the crown are discussed in broad, yet detailed, strokes. Chapters on Magna Carta's profound influence on common law and the development of representative government follow. Fifteen biographies of key figures like Henry II, Pope Innocent III, William the Conqueror and Eleanor of Aquitaine enhance the narrative chapters, as do the extensive extracts of the Coronation Oath of Henry I, Magna Cartas of 1215 and 1225, the Charter of the Forest of 1225, and the final Confirmation of the Charters from 1297. Glossary, annotated timeline, maps, bibliography, and index are included.

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

The Church in Ancient Society provides a full and enjoyable narrative history of the first six centuries of the Christian Church. Ancient Greek and Roman society had many gods and an addiction to astrology and divination. This introduction to the period traces the process by which Christianity changed this and so provided a foundation for the modern world: the teaching of Jesus created a lasting community, which grew to command the allegiance of the Roman emperor.

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.

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.

Returning to themes first discussed in his book A History of Franciscan Education (Brill, 2000), Bert Roest discusses in this volume a wide range of issues pertaining to the organization of learning in the Franciscan order in the late medieval and early modern period, and the ways in which this order engaged in pastoral and missionary activities in confrontation with the rise of Protestantism. The essays in this volume break new ground in their treatment of school formation, the chronology of educational developments, and the transformation of Franciscan schools between the mid fifteenth and the mid seventeenth century. They also challenge ingrained scholarly verdicts on the efficacy of sixteenth-century mendicant homiletics, and on the role of the Franciscans in the Dutch mission from the early seventeenth century onwards.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.