The variety of experience available to medieval scholars and the vitality of medieval thought are both reflected in this collection of original essays by distinguished historians. Intellectual Life in the Middle Ages is presented to Margaret Gibson, whose own work has ranged from Boethius to Lanfranc and to the study of the Bible in the middle ages.

In Politics, Patronage and the Transmission of Knowledge in 13th - 15th Century Tabriz, an international group of specialists from different disciplines investigate the role of Tabriz as one of the foremost centres of learning, cultural productivity, and politics in post-Mongol Iran and the Middle East. While standard accounts of Islamicate history have long presented the 13th to 15th centuries as the bottom of the decline paradigm of old, the present volume demonstrates the vibrancy and originality of the intellectual and cultural production of this period by focusing on Tabriz among other capitals of the region. The volume particularly explores the transmission of knowledge and institutional and cultural patronage in the post-Mongol period. Contributors include Reuven Amitai, Nourane Ben Azzouna, Sheila Blair, Devin DeWeese, Joachim Gierlichs, Birgitt Hoffmann, Domenico Ingenito, Robert Morrison, Ertugrul OEkten, Judith Pfeiffer, Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, F. Jamil Ragep, and Patrick Wing.

"Although the Igbo constitute one of the largest ethnic nationalities of Nigeria and the West African sub-region, little is know about their political history before the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. This book is then a pioneer study of the broad changes Igbo political systems have undergone since the prehistoric period"--

The creation of a new history of the Church at the beginning of the third millennium is an ambitious but necessary project. Perhaps nowhere is it needed more than in re-describing the Church's development - its life and its thinking - in the period that followed the end of the 'early Church' in antiquity. The cultural, social and political dominance of Christendom in what we now call "the West," from about 600-1300, made the Christian Church a shaper of the modern world in respects which go far beyond its religious infleunce. Writing with her customary authority, and with a magisterial grasp of the original sources, G R Evans brings this formative era vividly to life both for the student of religious history and general reader. She concentrates as much on the colorful human episodes of the time as on broader institutional and intellectual developments. The result is a compelling and thoroughly modern introduction to devotional and theological thought in the early Middle Ages as well as to ecclesiastical and pastoral life at large.
NEW SERIES ANNOUNCEMENT
THE I.B.TAURIS HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCHThe Christian Church, first defined as a religion of love, has interacted with Judaism, Islam and other world religions in ways in which there has been as much warfare as charity. Some of the results are seen in the tensions of the modern world, tensions which are proving very hard to resolve - not least because of a lack of awareness of the history behind the thinking which has brought the Church to where it is now. In the light of that lack, a new history of the Christian Church is badly needed. There is much to be said for restoring to the general reader, whether Christian or not, a familiarity with the network of ideas about what the Church 'is' and what it should be 'doing' as a vessel of Christian life and thought. This series aims to be both fresh and traditional. It will be organised so that the boundary-dates between volumes fall in some unexpected places. It will attempt to look at its conventional subject matter from the critical perspective of the early twenty-first century, where the Church has a confusing myriad of faces. It ranges from Vatican strictures on the use of birth control and the indissolubility of marriage, and outspoken German academic theologians who challenge the Churches' authority, to the enthusiasm of black Baptist congregations in the USA joyously affirming a faith with few defining parameters. Behind all these variations is a rich history of thinking, effort and struggle. And within it, at the heart of matters, is the Church," The I.B.Tauris History of the Christian Church" seeks to discover that innermost self through the layers of its multiple manifestations over twenty centuries.
Forthcoming titles in this series:
"The Early Church" by Morwenna Ludlow, University of Oxford
"The Early Middle Ages" by G. R. Evans, University of Cambridge
"The Later Middle Ages" by Norman P Tanner,
Gregorian University
"Early Modern Christianity" by Patrick Provost-Smith, Harvard University
"The Long Eighteenth Century" by David Hempton, Boston University
"The Nineteenth Century" by Frances Knight, University of Wales, Lampeter
"The Modern Age" by Jeremy Morris, University of Cambridge

Beginning shortly after Charlemagne's death in 814, the inhabitants of his historical empire looked back upon his reign and saw in it an exemplar of Christian universality - Christendom. They mapped contemporary Christendom onto the past and so, during the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, the borders of his empire grew with each retelling, almost always including the Christian East. Although the pull of Jerusalem on the West seems to have been strong during the eleventh century, it had a more limited effect on the Charlemagne legend. Instead, the legend grew during this period because of a peculiar fusion of ideas, carried forward from the ninth century but filtered through the social, cultural, and intellectual developments of the intervening years.
Paradoxically, Charlemagne became less important to the Charlemagne legend. The legend became a story about the Frankish people, who believed they had held God's favour under Charlemagne and held out hope that they could one day reclaim their special place in sacred history. Indeed, popular versions of the Last Emperor legend, which spoke of a great ruler who would reunite Christendom in preparation for the last battle between good and evil, promised just this to the Franks. Ideas of empire, identity, and Christian religious violence were potent reagents. The mixture of these ideas could remind men of their Frankishness and move them, for example, to take up arms, march to the East, and reclaim their place as defenders of the faith during the First Crusade.
An Empire of Memory uses the legend of Charlemagne, an often-overlooked current in early medieval thought, to look at how the contours of the relationship between East and West moved across centuries, particularly in the period leading up to the First Crusade.

The State is the most powerful of political ideas but where does it come from? This broad-ranging new study traces the history of the word and the concept back to the systems of law and justice created by medieval kings and shows how legal institutions acquired political force.

In Beyond Faith: Belief, Morality and Memory in a Fifteenth-Century Judeo-Iberian Manuscript, Michelle M. Hamilton sheds light on the concerns of Jewish and converso readers of the generation before the Expulsion. Using a mid-fifteenth-century collection of Iberian vernacular literary, philosophical and religious texts (MS Parm. 2666) recorded in Hebrew characters as a lens, Hamilton explores how its compiler or compilers were forging a particular form of personal, individual religious belief, based not only on the Judeo-Andalusi philosophical tradition of medieval Iberia, but also on the Latinate humanism of late 14th and early 15th-century Europe. The form/s such expressions take reveal the contingent and specific engagement of learned Iberian Jews and conversos with the larger Iberian, European and Arab Mediterranean cultures of the 15th-century.

As one of the greatest of the military orders that were generated in the Church, the Order of the Hospital of St John was a major landowner and a significant political presence in most European states. It was also a leading player in the settlements established in the Levant in the wake of the crusades. It survives today. In this source-based and up-to-date account of its activities and internal history in the first two centuries of its existence, attention is particularly paid to the lives of the brothers and sisters who made up its membership and were professed religious. Themes in the book relate to the tension that always existed between the Hospital's roles as both a hospitaller and a military order and its performance as an institution that was at the same time a religious order and a great international corporation.

A Companion to Late Antique and Medieval Islamic Cordoba cover the history and culture of Roman, late antique, Visigoth and al-Andalus Cordoba in nineteen contributions, from the foundation of the city in the 169/168 B.C. by the praetor Marcus Claudius Marcellus to the end of the Muslim period in 1236 B.C., when the city fell into the hands of Ferdinand III the Saint, King of Castile. Making use of archaeological data and historical sources, combined with the latest research on the various fields under study, its authors give a compelling account of Cordoba’s most important archaeological, urban, political, legal, social, cultural and religious facets throughout the most exciting fifteen centuries of the city.

This book focuses on the New Testament by surveying commentaries and lectures on the Gospels of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries against a background of ecclesiastical and social history.

Although much has been written about Columbus's life in Italy and Spain, little has been written about his formative years in Portugal. This work is the first book-length analysis of Columbus's stay in Portugal and Madeira from 1476 to 1485 and his later experiences in the Portuguese islands of the Azores and the Madeiras. The work stresses the influence the Portuguese had in educating Columbus about the sea, and it depicts his famous voyage to the New World as a logical sequence of the pioneering voyages of the Portuguese in the North Atlantic and along the West Coast of Africa. The work attempts to sort legend from fact and debunks the many myths about Columbus's stays on the island of Madeira.

Examines a range of texts commemorating European holy women from the ninth through fifteenth centuries. Explores the relationship between memorial practices and identity formation. Draws upon much of the recent scholarly interest in the nature and uses of memory.

This innovative study looks at a previously unstudied dimension of medieval queenship, examining the ways in which three fourteenth-century English queens--Margaret of France, Isabella of France, and Philippa of Hainault--exercised power and authority. These women were consorts and dowagers for overlapping periods, creating a continuous transition from one queen to the next. It thus provides a unique perspective on normative queenly behaviour and political culture, formulating valuable insights into gender, status; the concept of the crown, and power and authority.

There are saints in Orthodox Christian culture who overturn the conventional concept of sainthood. Their conduct may be unruly and salacious, they may blaspheme and even kill - yet, mysteriously, those around them treat them with even more reverence. Such saints are called 'holy fools'. In this pioneering study Sergey A. Ivanov examines the phenomenon of holy foolery from a cultural standpoint. He identifies its prerequisites and its development in religious thought, and traces the emergence of the first hagiographic texts describing these paradoxical saints. He describes the beginnings of holy foolery in Egyptian monasteries of the fifth century, followed by its high point in the cities of Byzantium, with an eventual decline in the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. He also compares the important Russian tradition of holy fools, which in some form has survived to this day.

Edited and translated by: Chibnall, Marjorie;

This is a study of two topics of central importance in late medieval history: the impact of war, and the control of disorder. Making war and making law were the twin goals of the state, and the author examines the effect of the evolution of royal government in England and France. Ranging broadly between 1000 and 1400, he focuses principally on the period c.1290 to c.1360, and compares developments in the two countries in four related areas: the economic and political costs of war; the development of royal justice; the crown's attempt to control private violence; and the relationship between public opinion and government action. He argues that as France suffered near breakdown under repeated English invasions, the authority of the crown became more acceptable to the internal warring factions; whereas the English monarchy, unable to meet the expectations for internal order which arose partly from its own ambitious claims to be `keeper of the peace', had to devolve much of its judicial powers. In these linked problems of war, justice, and public order may lie the origins of English `constitutionalism' and French `absolutism'.

Between Sword and Prayer is a broad-ranging anthology focused on the involvement of medieval clergy in warfare and a variety of related military activities. The essays address, on the one hand, the issue of clerical participation in combat, in organizing military campaigns, and in armed defense, and on the other, questions surrounding the political, ideological, or religious legitimization of clerical military aggression. These perspectives are further enriched by chapters dealing with the problem of the textual representation of clergy who actively participated in military affairs. The essays in this volume span Latin Christendom, encompassing geographically the four corners of medieval Europe: Western, East-Central, Northern Europe, and the Mediterranean. Contributors are Carlos de Ayala Martinez, Genevieve Buhrer-Thierry, Chris Dennis, Pablo Dorronzoro Ramirez, Lawrence G. Duggan, Daniel Gerrard, Robert Houghton, Carsten Selch Jensen, Radoslaw Kotecki, Jacek Maciejewski, Ivan Majnaric, Monika Michalska, Michael Edward Moore, Craig M. Nakashian, John S. Ott, Katherine Allen Smith, and Anna Wasko.

The early modern period is a particularly relevant and fascinating chapter in the history of pain. This volume investigates early modern constructions of physical pain from a variety of disciplines, including religious, legal and medical history, literary criticism, philosophy, and art history. The contributors examine how early modern culture interpreted physical pain, as it presented itself for instance during illness, but also analyse the ways in which early moderns employed the idea of physical suffering as a powerful rhetorical tool in debates over other issues, such as the nature of ritual, notions of masculinity, selfhood and community, definitions of religious experience, and the nature of political power. Contributors include: Emese Balint, Maria Berbara, Joseph Campana, Andreas Dehmer, Jan Frans van Dijkhuizen, Karl A.E. Enenkel, Lia van Gemert, Frans Willem Korsten, Mary Ann Lund, Jenny Mayhew, Stephen Pender, Michael Schoenfeldt, Kristine Steenbergh, Anne Tilkorn, Jetze Touber, Anita Traninger, and Patrick Vandermeersch.

This collection of essays focuses attention on how medieval gender intersects with other categories of difference, particularly religion and ethnicity. It treats the period c.800-1500, with a particular focus on the era of the Gregorian reform movement, the First Crusade, and its linked attacks on Jews at home.

The study of the Syriac magical traditions has largely been marginalised within Syriac studies, with the earliest treatments displaying a disparaging attitude towards both the culture and its magical practices. Despite significant progress in more recent scholarship in respect of the culture, its magical practices and their associated literatures remain on the margins of the scholarly imagination. This volume aims to open a discussion on the history of the field, to evaluate how things have progressed, and to suggest a fruitful way forward. In doing so, this volume demonstrates the incredible riches contained within the Syriac magical traditions, and the necessity of their study.

From the earliest days of the organized Christian community, the bishop was the most important local official, a pivotal figure who discharged both secular and spiritual functions. As in most political arrangements, his appointment meant a transfer of power from one position of authority to another, while his tenure in office revealed the different ways in which his influence could be felt. The King's Bishops is the first detailed comparative study of patronage as an instrument of power in the relations between kings and bishops in England and Normandy after the Conquest. Esteemed medievalist Everett U. Crosby considers new perspectives of medieval state-building and the vexed relations between secular and ecclesiastical authority. Through a rich and detailed examination of the background and career of each of the bishops in the seventeen sees in England and in the seven sees in Normandy, this study re-considers the fundamental assumptions and practices - including royal prerogative, clerical independence, papal authority and family claims - underlying the structures of power in the period.

This is the first study to examine the rise and fall of a medieval religious group, the Order of Apostles, that began with orthodox support but ended in the fires of heresy. Originating in 1260 in Parma the group was founded by Gerard Segarelli who believed that a life of apostolic poverty was the true path of Christian devotion. Segarelli was initially supported by the Church but as his cohort grew in number and fame he was charged with heresy by the powerful Franciscans, was tried, and burnt as a heretic. The Order's control was assumed by Fra Dolcino who led the Apostles into direct opposition to the Roman Church and was himself executed in 1307. This is an important study presenting new findings in the history of medieval heresy, as well as placing the Order of Apostles within the larger context of political, economic and social history. By examining the rise and fall of the Apostles Pierce shows the dramatic consequences of the transformation of European society during the high Middle Ages.

These essays on late antiquity traverse a territory in which Christian and pagan imagery and practices compete, coexist, and intermingle. The iconography of the most significant late antique ceramic, African Red Slip Ware, is an important and relatively unexploited vehicle for documenting the diversity and interpenetration of late antique cultures. Literary texts and art in other media, particularly mosaics, provide imagery that complement and enhance the messages of the ceramics. Popular entertainments, pagan cults, mythic heroes, beasts, monsters, and biblical visions are themes dealt with on the patrician and popular levels. With interpretive supplements from these diverse realms, it is possible to achieve greater insight into the life, attitudes, and thought of Late Antiquity.