Bernard Itier (1163-1225) was head librarian of the monastery of Saint-Martial at Limoges. As such he had free access to the books and made notations in many of them. The largest collection of these notes comprises his chronicle: a history of the world from Creation until his own time which, in part to conserve parchment, Bernard entered in the margins of two earlier codices he had appropriated for the purpose. The work includes a 'retrospective' section, relative to the past, and a 'contemporaneous' section, similar to a journal, in which Bernard recorded current or recent events which struck his interest. His record is highly idiosyncratic, reflecting the priorities of a monk who viewed the world from, and largely in relation to, his monastery. Accordingly, despite what modern historians consider to have been momentous changes in the kingdoms and the church at the time, what most interested Bernard were the affairs of his abbey, local events, miracles or other prodigies, and instances of atypical violence. In his outlook, the kings and pope were outsiders, and sometimes threatening. He does not mention the conquests of Philip Augustus, and records with almost palpable relief the death of Innocent III, who he had feared would impose an unwelcome choice of abbot on his monastery. Andrew Lewis provides, in Bernard's Latin and in English translation, the only complete text of Bernard's chronicle ever published, and the fullest edition of his historical notes from other manuscripts which complement the chronicle.

This book focuses on the reception of classical political ideas in the political thought of the fourteenth-century Italian writer Marsilius of Padua. Vasileios Syros provides a novel cross-cultural perspective on Marsilius's theory and breaks fresh ground by exploring linkages between his ideas and the medieval Muslim, Jewish, and Byzantine traditions. Syros investigates Marsilius's application of medical metaphors in his discussion of the causes of civil strife and the desirable political organization. He also demonstrates how Marsilius's demarcation between ethics and politics and his use of examples from Greek mythology foreshadow early modern political debates (involving such prominent political authors as Niccolo Machiavelli and Paolo Sarpi) about the political dimension of religion, church-state relations, and the emergence and decline of the state.

Lanfranc of Pavia, archbishop of Canterbury from 1070 to 1089, was a scholar-monk who brought to his position a rich experience in Italy and Normandy. He was William the Conqueror's trusted collaborator in ordering the English church and kingdom. In this first full scholarly study of Lanfranc for thirty years, H. E. J. Cowdrey reconsiders Lanfranc's career, focusing on his vision, capability, and achievements. He brings him out from the shadow of his successor, St Anselm, and reveals him as among the very greatest of the archbishops of Canterbury.

The late medieval English milling industry epitomizes one of the most important technical achievements of early societies: the exploitation of wind, water and muscle power for augmenting human endeavours. Through a computerized analysis of the number and variety of mills in England from 1300 to 1540, as well as the technology, practices and personnel sustaining them, Langdon reveals the structural evolution of the milling industry, highlighting both its accomplishments and its limitations. Although it focuses on England during the later middle ages, the book's innovative methodologies and original findings will furnish useful comparative material for all scholars investigating pre-industrial societies. It also offers a challenging new perspective on the later middle ages as a time of change, in addition to providing enthusiasts of old technologies generally with a wealth of detail about one of the most recognizable and enduring features of medieval society.

Drawing on innovative research in the rapidly growing field of Mediterranean studies, this groundbreaking collection explores the key roles that Mediterranean queens played as wives, as mothers, and above all as political actors. Taken together, they form a varied and comprehensive account of the ways in which these royal women negotiated their positions within the context of the court, how they responded to widowhood and other challenging circumstances, and reactions to queens who exercised political power in ways considered to be beyond their accepted roles. Ranging from Byzantine empresses to the consorts of Moroccan sultans to queens regnant and consort in both the Italian and Iberian peninsulas, these remarkable studies offer a bracing new perspective on the concepts and practice of queenship more generally in the medieval and Early Modern eras.

Thomas Walsingham, a monk of St Albans, has been described as the last of the great medieval chroniclers. His major work, the Chronica maiora, covers the years 1376-1422, and is arguably the most important account of English history to be written in England at this time. Walsingham's text has never been published as a continuous whole. It is found in no fewer than three separate publications in the Rolls Series, and was printed from manuscripts whose exact identity was not then clearly understood. The nature of the Rolls Series publications, and the different versions of the chronicle have raised questions concerning the relationship of the various manuscripts of the Chronica maiora, and also of Walsingham's own involvement with the text. In this new edition these problems are considered and the Chronica maiora is shown to be predominantly the work of one man, Thomas Walsingham.
Volume II of the St Albans Chronicle (1394-1422) now completes the edition. Drawing on the text in Bodley 462 and confirming the work of V. H. Galbraith, the editors make clear that the Annales Ricardi Secundi et Henrici Quarti (regarded in the Rolls Series as a separate chronicle) were an integral part of the Chronica maiora. They also argue that, while Walsingham's contribution as author in the later years was much smaller than in the years to 1393 (when he was without doubt the sole author), it is most likely that he supervised the whole work; and at times, as in the vivid and dramatic descriptions of the battles of Shrewsbury and of Agincourt, his own style is again apparent.
The chronicle is of the greatest historical value for Richard II's last years and for his deposition and the accession of Henry IV. It is wholly in favour of the Lancastrian revolution of 1399 and remains 'Lancastrian' in tone to its end. It illustrates (with sympathy) Henry's difficulties in establishing the dynasty and includes unique material on his relations with his son. For Henry V's reign it provides valuable details of his Norman campaigns. Over both reigns St Albans' hatred of Lollardy and its interest in the healing of the Great Schism are apparent in the coverage given them. In the later years, the extent of the commentary on events decreases, but the information available at St Albans and written here continues to be of a high order. The chronicle remains absorbing right to its end.

The original essays in Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literature mean to provoke rather than reassure, to challenge rather than codify. Instead of summarizing existing knowledge scholars working in the field aim at opening fresh discussion; instead of emphasizing settled consensus they direct their readers to areas of enlivened and unresolved debate.
The deepest periodic division in English literary history has been between the Medieval and the Early Modern, not least because the cultural investments in maintaining that division are exceptionally powerful. Narratives of national and religious identity and freedom; of individual liberties; of the history of education and scholarship; of reading or the history of the book; of the very possibility of persuasive historical consciousness itself: each of these narratives (and more) is motivated by positing a powerful break around 1500.
None of the claims for a profound historical and cultural break at the turn of the fifteenth into the sixteenth centuries is negligible. The very habit of working within those periodic bounds (either Medieval or Early Modern) tends, however, simultaneously to affirm and to ignore the rupture. It affirms the rupture by staying within standard periodic bounds, but it ignores it by never examining the rupture itself. The moment of profound change is either, for medievalists, just over an unexplored horizon; or, for Early Modernists, a zero point behind which more penetrating examination is unnecessary. That situation is now rapidly changing. Scholars are building bridges that link previously insular areas. Both periods are starting to look different in dialogue with each other.
The change underway has yet to find collected voices behind it. Cultural Reformations volume aims to provide those voices. It will give focus, authority, and drive to a new area.

In this book, Frances Courtney Kneupper examines the apocalyptic prophecies of the late medieval Empire, which even within the sensational genre of eschatological prophecy stand out for their bitter and violent nature. In addition to depicting the savage chastisement of the clergy and the forcible restructuring of the Church, these prophecies also infuse the apocalyptic narrative with explicitly German elements-in fact, German speakers are frequently cast as the agents of these stirring events in which the clergy suffer tribulations and the Church hierarchy is torn down. These prophecies were widely circulated throughout late medieval German-speaking Europe. Kneupper explores their significance for members of the Empire from 1380 to 1480, arguing that increased literacy, the development of strong urban centers, the drive for reform, and a connection to the imperial crown were behind their popularity. Offering detailed accounts of the most significant prophecies, Kneupper shows how they fit into currents of thought and sentiment in the late medieval Empire. In particular, she considers the relationships of German prophecy to contemporary discourses on Church reform and political identity. She finds that eschatological thought was considered neither marginal nor heretical, but was embraced by a significant, orthodox population of German laypeople and clerics, demonstrating the importance of popular eschatological thought to the development of a self-conscious, reform-minded, German-identified Empire on the Eve of the Reformation.

In the Wake of the Compendia presents papers that examine the history of technical compendia as they moved between institutions and societies in ancient and medieval Mesopotamia. This volume offers new perspectives on the development and transmission of technical compilations, looking especially at the relationship between empirical knowledge and textual transmission in early scientific thinking. The eleven contributions to the volume derive from a panel held at the American Oriental Society in 2013 and cover more than three millennia of historical development, ranging from Babylonian medicine and astronomy to the persistence of Mesopotamian lore in Syriac and Arabic meditations on the properties of animals. The volume also includes major contributions on the history of Mesopotamian "rationality," epistemic labels for tested and tried remedies, and the development of depersonalized case histories in Babylonian therapeutic compendia. Together, these studies offer an overview of several important moments in the development of non-Western scientific thinking and a significant contribution to our understanding of how traditions of technical knowledge were produced and transmitted in the ancient world.

Byzantine intellectuals not only had direct access to Neoplatonic sources in the original language but also, at times, showed a particular interest in them. During the Early Byzantine period Platonism significantly contributed to the development of Christian doctrines and, paradoxically, remained a rival world view that was perceived by many Christian thinkers as a serious threat to their own intellectual identity. This problematic relationship was to become even more complex during the following centuries. Byzantine authors made numerous attempts to harmonize Neoplatonic doctrines with Christianity as well as to criticize, refute and even condemn them. The papers assembled in this volume discuss a number of specific questions and concerns that drew the interest of Byzantine scholars in different periods towards Neoplatonic sources in an attempt to identify and explore the central issues in the reception of Neoplatonic texts during the Byzantine era. This is the first volume of the sub-series "Byzantinisches Archiv - Series Philosophica", which will be dedicated to the rapidly growing field of research in Byzantine philosophical texts.

A Companion to Medieval Toledo. Reconsidering the Canons explores the limits of "Convivencia" through new and problematized readings of material familiar to specialists and offers a thoughtful initiation for the non-specialist into the historical, cultural, and religious complexity of the iconic city of Toledo. The volume seeks to understand the history and cultural heritage of the city as a result of fluctuating coexistence. Divided into three themed sections,- the essays consider additional material, new transcriptions, and perspectives that contribute to more nuanced understandings of traditional texts or events. The volume places this cultural history and these new readings into current scholarly debates and invites its readers to do the same.

The volume Planning for Death: Wills and Death-Related Property Arrangements in Europe, 1200-1600 analyses death-related property transfers in several European regions (England, Poland, Italy, South Tirol, and Sweden). Laws and customary practice provided a legal framework for all post-mortem property devolution. However, personal preference and varied succession strategies meant that individuals could plan for death by various legal means. These individual legal acts could include matrimonial property arrangements (marriage contracts, morning gifts) and legal means of altering heirship by subtracting or adding heirs. Wills and testamentary practice are given special attention, while the volume also discusses the timing of the legal acts, suggesting that while some people made careful and timely arrangements, others only reacted to sudden events. Contributors are Christian Hagen, R.H. Helmholz, Mia Korpiola, Anu Lahtinen, Marko Lamberg, Margareth Lanzinger, Janine Maegraith, Federica Mase, Anthony Musson, Tuula Rantala, Elsa Trolle OEnnerfors, and Jakub Wysmulek.

Provocative interrogation of how the Ottonian kingdom grew and flourished, focussing on the resources required. The Ottonians were the most powerful monarchs in Europe during the tenth and early eleventh century, exercising hegemony in West Francia, Burgundy, and much of Italy in addition to ruling the German realm. Despite their enormous political and military success, however, the foundations of Ottonian royal power remain highly contested and largely misunderstood, with previous scholarship tending to have considered it as depending upon the ability of the king to shape and harness the power of the nobles. This study challenges the dominant historiographical paradigm, rebutting the notion of putative power-sharing between the king and the nobility, which simply did not exist as a legal class in the Ottonian century. Rather, it argues that the foundations of royal power under the Ottonians comprised not only their own enormous wealth, but also their unique authority and ability, through the royal bannum, the authority inherent in the office of the king, to make use of the economic resources and labour of the broad free population of the realm, as well as from the Church. In so doing, the Ottonians drew upon and further developed the administrative, institutional, and ideological inheritance of their Carolingian predecessors, in the process creating the dominant polity in tenth-century Europe.

In this volume, the authors bring fresh approaches to the subject of royal and noble households in medieval and early modern Europe. The essays focus on the people of the highest social rank: the nuclear and extended royal family, their household attendants, noblemen and noblewomen as courtiers, and physicians. Themes include financial and administrative management, itinerant households, the household of an imprisoned noblewoman, blended households, and cultural influence. The essays are grounded in sources such as records of court ceremonial, economic records, letters, legal records, wills, and inventories. The authors employ a variety of methods, including prosopography, economic history, visual analysis, network analysis, and gift exchange, and the collection is engaged with current political, sociological, anthropological, gender, and feminist theories.

This is an engaging account of the world of the Vikings and their gods. As the Vikings began to migrate overseas as raiders or settlers in the late eighth century, there is evidence that this new way of life, centred on warfare, commerce and exploration, brought with it a warrior ethos that gradually became codified in the Viking myths, notably in the cult of Odin, the god of war, magic and poetry, and chief god in the Norse pantheon. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when most of Scandinavia had long since been converted to Christianity, form perhaps the most important era in the history of Norse mythology: only at this point were the myths of Thor, Freyr and Odin first recorded in written form. Using archaeological sources to take us further back in time than any written document, the accounts of foreign writers like the Roman historian Tacitus, and the most important repository of stories of the gods, old Norse poetry and the Edda, Christopher Abram leads the reader into the lost world of the Norse gods.

The society of traditional India is frequently characterized as static and dominated by caste. This study challenges older interpretations, arguing that medieval India was actually a time of dynamic change and fluid social identities. Using records of religious endowments from Andhra Pradesh, author Cynthia Talbot reconstructs a regional society of the precolonial past as it existed in practice.

"The Northern Lands: Germanic Europe, c.1270-c.1500" explores the unique regional identity that developed in the lands bordering the Baltic and North Seas during Europe's late medieval period. Offers an original thematic overview including government, law, language, family relations, urbanization, and economy
Maintains a comparative perspective
Includes English translations from key original sources
Includes illustrations, maps, and original diagrams to enhance readers understanding
Features a unique map of the Low Countries that includes the entire region and marks the frontiers between areas of Romance and Germanic language

Essays exploring the potential of the Inquisitions post mortem to shed important new light on the medieval world. The Inquisitions post mortem (IPMs) are a truly wonderful source for many different aspects of late medieval countryside and rural life. They have recently been made digitally accessible and interrogatable by the Mappingthe Medieval Countryside project, and the first fruits of these developments are presented here. The chapters examine IPMs in connection with the landscape and topography of England, in particular markets and fairs and mills;and consider the utility of proofs of age for everyday life on such topics as the Church, retaining, and the wine trade. MICHAEL HICKS is Emeritus Professor of Medieval History at the University of Winchester. Contributors: Katie A. Clarke, William S. Deller, Paul Dryburgh, Christopher Dyer, Janette Garrett, Michael Hicks, Matthew Holford, Gordon McKelvie, Stephen Mileson, Simon Payling, Matthew Tompkins, Jennifer Ward.

In Material Culture and Queenship in 14th-century France: The Testament of Blanche of Navarre (1331-1398) Marguerite Keane considers the object collection of the long-lived fourteenth-century French queen Blanche of Navarre, the wife of Philip VI (d. 1350). This queen's ownership of works of art (books, jewelry, reliquaries, and textiles, among others) and her perceptions of these objects is well -documented because she wrote detailed testaments in 1396 and 1398 in which she described her possessions and who she wished to receive them. Keane connects the patronage of Blanche of Navarre to her interest in her status and reputation as a dowager queen, as well as bringing to life the material, adornment, and devotional interests of a medieval queen and her household.

First full investigation into the men of Agincourt - their service, backgrounds, lives and experiences. King Henry V's brothers, Thomas, duke of Clarence, and Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, recruited the two largest retinues of the famous army of 1415, whose service culminated in victory at Agincourt. At the heart of this book are case studies of these two retinues, the personnel of which have never been the subject of close scrutiny before. These retinues were made up of, respectively, 960 and 800 men, most of whose names are known from their complete surviving muster rolls. Using this crucial information, and by employing information from a wide range of sources, from official Chancery and Exchequer records to manorial accounts and personal the lives of many of these men can be reconstructed. One central theme of this book is concerned with the men themselves, and considers issues such as where they came from in 1415, their previous military, career and personal experiences, and whether they had pre-existing ties with either their ducal commander, sub-retinue captain or comrades. It charts the experience of the retinues from before the campaign (the mustering of the army), during the campaign (the siege of Harfleur and the Battle of Agincourt) and after the campaign (the future careers of some men and the influence the campaign had on the ducal affinities). It also considers wider historiographical issues relating to the "dynamics of recruitment", military professionalism, careerism, the changing socio-economic standing of those undertaking military service in the early fifteenth century, and the size and willingness to engage in martial activity of the English military community.

Contrary to prevalent military historical thinking, the early medieval general was not an ignorant warrior chieftain, but an able, astute, intelligent, and often very cunning commander. Through the use of contemporary literature, art, and archaeological evidence, this study argues that these generals could and did effectively exercise command control before, during, and after battle. Using the examples of a dozen or so leaders and drawing upon over 60 battles, this study brings to light the genius and the adaptability of medieval generals.

Assembled on the occasion of Gary Dickson's retirement from the University of Edinburgh following a distinguished career as an internationally acclaimed scholar of medieval social and religious history, this volume contains contributions by both established and newer scholars inspired by Dickson's particular interests in medieval popular religion, including 'religious enthusiasm'. Together, the essays comprise a comprehensive and rich investigation of the idea of sanctity and its many medieval manifestations across time (fifth through fifteenth centuries) and in different geographical locations (England, Scotland, France, Italy, the Low Countries). By approaching the theme of sanctity from multiple disciplinary perspectives, this highly original collection pushes forward current academic thinking about medieval hagiography, iconography, social history, women's studies, and architectural history.

The contributions to Discovering the Riches of the Word. Religious Reading in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe offer an innovative approach to the study of religious reading from a long term and geographically broad perspective, covering the period from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century and with a specific focus on the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries. Challenging traditional research paradigms, the contributions argue that religious reading in this "long fifteenth century" should be described in terms of continuity. They make clear that in spite of confessional divides, numerous reading practices continued to exist among medieval and early modern readers, as well as among Catholics and Protestants, and that the two groups in certain cases even shared the same religious texts. Contributors include: Elise Boillet, Sabrina Corbellini, Suzan Folkerts, Eleonore Fournie, Wim Francois, Margriet Hoogvliet, Ian Johnson, Hubert Meeus, Matti Peikola, Bart Ramakers, Elisabeth Salter, Lucy Wooding, and Federico Zuliani.