This literary-historical book draws out and sheds light upon the mechanisms of "the ideological work" that the Arabic Majnun Layla story performed for 'Abbasid urbanite, imperial audiences in the wake of the disappearance of the "Bedouin cosmos." The study focuses upon the processes of primitivizing Majnun in the romance of Majnun Layla as part of the paradigm shift that occurred in the 'Abbasid empire after the Greco-Arabian intellectual revolution. Moreover, this book demonstrates how gender and sexuality are employed in the processes of primitivizing Majnun. As markers of "strangeness" and "foreignness" in the 'Abbasid interrogations of the multiple categories of ethnicity, culture, identity, religion and language present in their cosmopolitan milieus. Such "cultural work" is performed through the ideological uses of alterity given its mechanisms of distancing (e.g., temporal and spatial) and nearness (e.g., affective). Lastly, the Majnun Layla love story demonstrates, in its text and reception, that a Greco-Arabian and Greco-Persian subculture thrived in the centers of 'Abbasid Baghdad that molded and shaped the ways in which this love story was compiled, received and performed. Offering a corrective to the prevailing views expressed in Western scholarly writings on the Greco-Arabian encounter, this book is a major contribution to scholars and students interested in Islamic studies, Arabic and comparative literature, Middle East and gender studies.

Through violent incursions by the Vikings and the spread of Christianity, medieval Ireland maintained a distinctive Gaelic identity. From the sacred site of Tara to the manuscript illuminations in the Book of Kells, Anglo-Irish relations to the Connachta dynasty, Ireland during the middle ages was a rich and vivid culture. First published in 2005, Medieval Ireland: An Encyclopedia brings together in one authoritative resource the multiple facets of life in Ireland before and after the Anglo-Norman invasion of 1169, from the sixth to sixteenth century. Multidisciplinary in coverage, this A-Z reference work provides information on historical events, economics, politics, the arts, religion, intellectual history, and many other aspects of the period. Written by the world's leading scholars on the subject, this highly accessible reference work will be of key interest to students, researchers, and general readers alike.

First printed edition of a hugely significant source of knowledge of a turbulent period in England's history. Archbishop Simon Sudbury's register is something of a rarity. Of the eleven archbishops of Canterbury in the fourteenth century the registers of only seven have survived, and of these only two have been published: a portion of theregister of Robert Winchelsey (1295-1313) and the register of the brief episcopate of Simon Langham (1366-68). Sudbury became archbishop of Canterbury in 1375 while England was at war with France and while the church was about to split in two by schism. His register reveals all of this, but much more. There is the day-to-day administration of the church: clergy ordained, parishes filled, disputes settled, wills proved and much else. It shows Sudburyas a conscientious pastor animarum and an able administrator, as well as a skilled canon lawyer, who tried to steer a smooth course against the monetary demands of the crown, which were to lead to the Peasants' Revolt and to his own assassination on Tower Hill. This volume is a calendar edition of Archbishop Sudbury's register: it contains an English-language summary of each entry, including every place name and personal name and date. An introduction records the making of the register and a summary of its contents; notes elucidate particular points; and a full index allows easy access to references.

This book narrates the battles, conquests and diplomatic activities of the early Muslim fighters in Syria and Iraq vis-a-vis their Byzantine and Sasansian counterparts. It is the first English translation of one of the earliest Arabic sources on the early Muslim expansion entitled Futuh al-Sham (The Conquests of Syria). The translation is based on the Arabic original composed by a Muslim author, Muhammad al-Azdi, who died in the late 8th or early 9th century C.E. A scientific introduction to al-Azdi's work is also included, covering the life of the author, the textual tradition of the work as well as a short summary of the text's train of thought. The source narrates the major historical events during the early Muslim conquests in a region that covers today's Lebanon, Israel, Palestinian Territories, Jordan, Syria, Turkey and Iraq in the 7th century C.E. Among these events are the major battles against the Byzantines, such as the Battles of Ajnadayn and al-Yarmuk, the conquests of important cities, including Damascus, Jerusalem and Caesarea, and the diplomatic initiatives between the Byzantines and the early Muslims. The narrative abounds with history and Islamic theological content. As the first translation into a European language, this volume will be of interest to a wide range of readership, including (Muslim and Christian) theologians, historians, Islamicists, Byzantinists, Syrologists and (Arabic) linguists.

The death penalty was unusual in medieval Europe until the twelfth century. From that moment on, it became a key instrument of rule in European society, and we can study it in the case of Catalonia through its rich and varied unpublished documentation. The death penalty was justified by Roman Law; accepted by Theology and Philosophy for the Common Good; and used by rulers as an instrument for social intimidation. The application of the death penalty followed a regular trial, and the status of the individual dictated the method of execution, reserving the fire for the worst crimes, as the Inquisition applied against the so-called heretics. The executions were public, and the authorities and the people shared the common goal of restoring the will of God which had been broken by the executed person. The death penalty took an important place in the core of the medieval mind: people included executions in the jokes and popular narratives while the gallows filled the landscape fitting the jurisdictional limits and, also, showing rotten corpses to assert that the best way to rule and order the society is by terror. This book utilises previously unpublished archival sources to present a unique study on the death penalty in late Medieval Europe.

The history of Renaissance France is rich and varied. The Renaissance in France, as elsewhere in Europe, saw glory crowned amidst conflict and squalor. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, France seemed set to become the most powerful nation of Europe, but as the century ebbed so did her fortunes. In between, during a century of more or less permanent combat which murdered the dreams, comforts and relatives of many Frenchmen and saw a soaring economy shot down, some of the greatest building, painting and thinking to come out of the whole European Renaissance was being done. Sixteenth-century France was a colourful, confusing and often downright fatal habitat, and we moderns might profitably look on the complexity of its successes and failures, to which Prefessor Knect is a matchlessly illuminating and genial guide.

Although liminality has been studied by scholars of medieval and seventeenth-century art, the role of the threshold motif in Netherlandish art of the late fourteenth, fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries -- this late medieval/early 'early modern' period -- has been much less fully investigated. Thresholds and Boundaries: Liminality in Netherlandish Art (1385-1550) addresses this issue through a focus on key case studies (Sluter's portal of the Chartreuse de Champmol and the calendar pages of the Limbourg Brothers' Tres Riches Heures), and on important formats (altarpieces and illuminated manuscripts). Lynn F. Jacobs examines how the visual thresholds established within Netherlandish paintings, sculptures, and manuscript illuminations become sites where artists could address relations between life and death, aristocrat and peasant, holy and profane, and man and God-and where artists could exploit the "betwixt and between" nature of the threshold to communicate, paradoxically, both connections and divisions between these different states and different worlds. Building on literary and anthropological interpretations of liminality, this book demonstrates how the exploration of boundaries in Netherlandish art infused the works with greater meaning. The book's probing of the -- often ignored --meanings of the threshold motif casts new light on key works of Netherlandish art.

On Good Friday, 1626, Franciscus Quaresmius delivered a sermon in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem calling on King Philip IV of Spain to undertake a crusade to 'liberate' the Holy Land. Jerusalem Afflicted: Quaresmius, Spain, and the Idea of a 17th-century Crusade introduces readers to this unique call to arms with the first-ever edition of the work since its publication in 1631. Aside from an annotated English translation of the sermon, this book also includes a series of introductory chapters providing historical context and textual commentary, followed by an anthology of Spanish crusading texts that testify to the persistence of the idea of crusade throughout the 17th century. Quaresmius' impassioned and thoroughly reasoned plea is expressed through the voice of Jerusalem herself, personified as a woman in bondage. The friar draws on many of the same rhetorical traditions and theological assumptions that first launched the crusading movement at Clermont in 1095, while also bending those traditions to meet the unique concerns of 17th-century geopolitics in Europe and the Mediterranean. Quaresmius depicts the rescue of the Holy City from Turkish abuse as a just and necessary cause. Perhaps more unexpectedly, he also presents Jerusalem as sovereign Spanish territory, boldly calling on Philip as King of Jerusalem and Patron of the Holy Places to embrace his royal duty and reclaim what is rightly his on behalf of the universal faithful. Quaresmius' early modern call to crusade ultimately helps us rethink the popular assumption that, like the chivalry imagined by Don Quixote, the crusades somehow died along with the middle ages.

Equipped with a commission from Henry VIII, John Leland began to record the contents of English monastic libraries in 1533 before they were dispersed. His booklists were compiled as the primary resources for his comprehensive dictionary of British writers in four books, entitled De uiris illustribus. This remarkable testament to medieval and early modern habits of book collecting, but also to history and national identity, lay incomplete at Leland's death. The sole extant witness to the author's ambitious task is the autograph manuscript, now Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Top. gen. c. 4. Although antiquaries made use of De uiris illustribus over the next generations it did not see its way into print until 1709 when Anthony Hall produced a careless edition, a significant number of passages omitted, under the title Commentarii de scriptoribus Britannicis. Hall's text has formed the basis for subsequent scholarship. This new edition is based on a thorough examination of the autograph, supplemented with readings from John Bale's epitome, now Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.7.15 (753). True to Leland's original text, this new edition shows how unreliable and misleading Hall's was in many respects. It includes a complete English translation, published on facing pages accompanying the Latin text. The translation seeks to capture Leland's own excitement with his project and also to convey his shifts in interpretation during the process of revision: the text mirrors in miniature the stages of the English reformation under Henry VIII. The extensive introduction provides a full history of the manuscript, examines sources, and shows the relationship of the text to Leland's booklists and other contemporary documents.

The Body Broken is a thematic survey of Europe in the late Middle Ages, a period of huge crisis, conflict and religious change that included the Black Death, the Reformation, the Peasants' Revolt and the Renaissance. This thoroughly updated and revised second edition retains the thematic approach of the first edition, combining sweeping interpretive synthesis with careful attention to recent and revisionist scholarship. It also devotes more attention to the histories of women and religious minorities, Renaissance humanism, politics and government in Italy and eastern Europe, and the religious reformations of the early sixteenth century. Examining late medieval and Renaissance Europe in the context of its place within global history, this book covers all the key areas, including: society and the economy - disaster and demography; individuals, families and communities; trade, technology, exploration and new discoveries; politics - government and the state; political developments; war, chivalry and crusading; religion - the institutional Church; Catholic devotion; religious minorities and dissenting beliefs and practices; religious reformations; culture - schooling and intellectual developments; language, literacy and the arts. Equipped with maps, tables, illustrations, a chronology and an annotated bibliography, The Body Broken is an essential and complete student's guide to Europe in the fourteenth to early sixteenth centuries.

Pastoral Care, the religious mission of the Church to minister to the laity and care for their spiritual welfare, has been a subject of growing interest in medieval studies. This volume breaks new ground with its broad chronological scope (from the early eleventh to the late fifteenth centuries), and its interdisciplinary breadth. New and established scholars from a range of disciplines, including history, literary studies, art history and musicology, bring their specialist perspectives to bear on textual and visual source materials. The varied contributions include discussions of politics, ecclesiology, book history, theology and patronage, forming a series of conversations that reveal both continuities and divergences across time and media, and exemplify the enriching effects of interdisciplinary work upon our understanding of this important topic.

How was magic practiced in medieval times? How did it relate to the diverse beliefs and practices that characterized this fascinating period? This much revised and expanded new edition of Magic in the Middle Ages surveys the growth and development of magic in medieval Europe. It takes into account the extensive new developments in the history of medieval magic in recent years, featuring new material on angel magic, the archaeology of magic, and the magical efficacy of words and imagination. Richard Kieckhefer shows how magic represents a crossroads in medieval life and culture, examining its relationship and relevance to religion, science, philosophy, art, literature, and politics. In surveying the different types of magic that were used, the kinds of people who practiced magic, and the reasoning behind their beliefs, Kieckhefer shows how magic served as a point of contact between the popular and elite classes, how the reality of magical beliefs is reflected in the fiction of medieval literature, and how the persecution of magic and witchcraft led to changes in the law.

This book explores the liturgical experience of emotions in Byzantium through the hymns of Romanos the Melodist, Andrew of Crete and Kassia. It reimagines the performance of their hymns during Great Lent and Holy Week in Constantinople. In doing so, it understands compunction as a liturgical emotion, intertwined with paradisal nostalgia, a desire for repentance and a wellspring of tears. For the faithful, liturgical emotions were embodied experiences that were enacted through sacred song and mystagogy. The three hymnographers chosen for this study span a period of nearly four centuries and had an important connection to Constantinople, which forms the topographical and liturgical nexus of the study. Their work also covers three distinct genres of hymnography: kontakion, kanon and sticheron idiomelon. Through these lenses of period, place and genre this study examines the affective performativity hymns and the Byzantine experience of compunction.

Originally published in 1993, Medieval English Benedictine Liturgy is a detailed study of the liturgical use of medieval monasteries in England, spanning 500 years. The study examines the major votive observances that came to fruition in the twelfth century and later and argues that these important practices affected earlier monastic observances. The book's emphasis on Anglo-Saxon liturgy provides a bridge between the practices of the English Benedictines before and after the Conquest. The book also traces the chronological progress of three individual observances and extends where possible into the sixteenth century. The book argues that, at a broader level, while liturgy has been recognized as an indispensable part of the study of the context and use of medieval chant and polyphony.

This volume comprises nine articles on Islamic astronomy published since 1989 by Benno van Dalen. Van Dalen was the first historian of Islamic astronomy who made full use of the new possibilities of computers in the early 1990s. He implemented various statistical and numerical methods that can be used to determine the mathematical properties of medieval astronomical tables, and utilized these to obtain entirely new, until then unattainable historical results concerning the interdependence of individual tables and hence of entire astronomical works. His programmes for analysing tables, making sexagesimal calculations and converting calendar dates continue to be widely used. The five articles in the first part of this collection explain the principles of a range of statistical methods for determining unknown parameter values underlying astronomical tables and present extensive step-by-step examples for their use. The four articles in the second part provide extensive studies of materials in unpublished primary sources on Islamic astronomy that heavily depend on these methods. The volume is completed with a detailed index.

First published in 1898, and following on from Volume 1, this second volume charts the history of medieval warfare from 1278 to 1485. Written by Sir Charles Oman, one of the great medievalists of his time, this book remains for students and general readers one of the best accounts of military art in the Middle Ages. Many of the chapters have been re-written in view of new research. This edition is based on Methuen's 1978 revised and enlarged edition, which includes new chapters on the Swiss Confederacy, the Tartars, the Ottoman Turks, The Italian Condottieri, the English campaigns in France in the 15th century, the Wars of the Roses, and the early employment of artillery.

Edition of the returns made by English merchants, recording the transactions of foreign traders. The "Views of Hosts" is the name given to the returns which merchant "hosts" in London, Southampton and Hull were required to provide for the Exchequer. They listed the imports and purchases made by their foreign merchant "guests", who came mostly from Italy, Spain and the Low Countries. The returns, printed here in full for the first time, provide details of the goods traded in and out of these ports, and also the names of the foreign merchants, and of the local men and women who bought their wares and sold English goods to them in return. The volume thus not only throws light on individual merchants and craftsmen living and working in these ports, but will also be of interest tothose concerned with the patterns and practices of English trade in the fifteenth century. The returns themselves are complemented with full apparatus and notes; introduction; biographies of more than 500 English people mentionedin the texts, as well almost 130 foreign merchants; and a glossary of commodities.

In 1517, the usually tranquil friary in the Hungarian town of Koermend found itself at the centre of controversy when its Augustinian friars, charged with drunkenness, sexual abuses and liturgical negligence, were driven out and replaced with observant Franciscans. The agent of change in this conflict, cardinal Thomas Bakocz, claimed to be acting in the name of 'cloister reform' motivated by a religious agenda, while the Augustinians portrayed themselves as the victims of a political game. Based on the surviving interrogations of a papal enquiry into these events, this book illuminates the tensions and potential conflict that lurked within the religious culture of a seemingly unremarkable and remote town. The story of the friary trial of Koermend provides a fascinating window into religion and society of Europe at the dawn of the Reformation, investigating the processes by which ordinary people emerge as historical agents from the written records. By focussing on their experiences as represented in the trial documents the book reveals the spaces and borders of individual and communal action within the dynamic of lay-clerical relations negotiated in a friary reform at the beginning of the 16th century. Furthermore, the moral nature of the accusations levelled at the Augustinians - and whether these were justified or instigated for political reasons - offers further insights into the nature of late-medieval Catholicism and the claims of Protestant reformers.

Becket's life was lived on a European stage, his cause was conducted in a European setting, and the cult of the new martyr spread with extraordinary rapidity to the furthest reaches of Latin Christendom before the end of the twelfth century. The fifteen studies collected here reflect not only the global reach of the subject but the diverse expertise of their author, whose edition and translation of the Correspondence of Archbishop Thomas Becket (2000) and acclaimed biography (Thomas Becket, 2004) have established her place in Becket studies. Based on the critical examination of manuscripts and texts, this collection focuses first on the papal curia and Becket's household in exile. The following studies deal with Becket's letters and their authorship, the coronation of the young King Henry (1170), and Henry II's reconciliation at Avranches (1172). The final part traces the explosion of Becket's cult, the transmission of hagiographical and liturgical texts to France, Germany, and Portugal, and the role of diverse agencies of dissemination: Henry II's daughters, for example, in Saxony, Castile, and Sicily, and the Cistercian and Augustinian orders whose networks of houses embraced the whole of Europe.

In this collection of studies by James M. Powell, two related centres of attention can be seen. One is the campaigns undertaken by western Europeans in the eastern Mediterranean, chiefly in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries - the Crusades - the reasons for them and manner in which they were organized and promoted. The other is the Kingdom of Sicily under Frederick II, himself a Crusader, and its society and economy, including its Muslim population. A characteristic feature is the author's interest in ordinary participants and the attempt to get behind the generalizations of macro-historians to the extent that may be possible.

This volume of studies explores a particularly complex period in Byzantine history, the thirteenth century, from the Fourth Crusade to the recapture of Constantinople by exiled leaders from Nicaea. During this time there was no Greek state based on Constantinople and so no Byzantine Empire by traditional definition. Instead, a Venetian/Frankish alliance ruled from the capital, while many smaller states also claimed the mantle of Byzantium. Even after 1261 when the Latin Empire of Constantinople was replaced by a restored Greek state, political fragmentation persisted. This fragmentation makes the study of individuals more difficult but also more valuable than ever before, and this volume demonstrates the very considerable advances in historical understanding that may be gained from prosopographical approaches. Specialist historians of the Byzantine successor states of the period, and of their most important neighbours, here examine the self-projection and interactions of these states, combining military history and diplomacy, commercial and theological contacts, and the experiences and self-description of individuals. This wide-ranging series of articles uses a great diversity of sources - Arabic, Armenian, Bulgarian, Greek, Latin, Persian and Serbian - to exploit the potential of the novel methodology employed and of prosopography as an additional historical tool of analysis.

How were the Crusades made possible? There have been studies of ancient, medieval and early modern warfare, as well as work on the finances and planning of Crusades, but this volume is the first specifically to address the logistics of Crusading. Building on previous work, it brings together experts from the fields of medieval Western, Byzantine and Middle Eastern studies to examine how the marches and voyages were actually made. Questions of manpower, types and means of transportation by land and sea, supplies, financial resources, roads and natural land routes, sea lanes and natural sailing routes - all these topics and more are covered here. Of particular importance is the attention given to the horses and other animals on which transport of supplies and the movement of armies depended.

Katherine of Alexandria was a major object of devotion within medieval Europe, ranking second only to the Virgin Mary in the canon of female saints. Yet despite her undoubted importance, relatively little is known about the significance and function of her cult within the German-speaking territories that stood at the heart of Europe. Anne Simon's study adds a welcome new interdisciplinary perspective to the study of Saint Katherine and the wider ecclesiastical landscape of a medieval Europe poised on the edge of religious change. Taking as a case study the wealthy and politically influential merchant city of Nuremberg, this book draws on a wide variety of textual and visual sources to explore interrelated themes: the shaping of urban space through the cult of Saint Katherine; her role in the moulding and advertising patrician identity and alliances through cultural patronage; and patrician use of the saint to showcase the city's political, economic, cultural and religious importance at the heart of the Holy Roman Empire. Further , the book reveals the construction of exemplarity in Saint Katherine's legend and miracles and their resonance within the context of the city and the Dominican Convent of Saint Katherine, whose nuns came from the same status-aware, confident patrician elite that so loyally supported successive Emperors. Filling a significant gap in current research, the work has much to offer scholars of medieval history, hagiography, art history, German studies, cultural and urban studies. Hence it not only expands our understanding of Saint Katherine's importance in German-speaking territories, but also adds to the picture of her cult in its European perspective.

[This] is a book that should become compulsory reading for anyone studying crusading literature or the use of miracles in medieval narratives. - HISTORY First comprehensive study of miracles in Crusade narrative, showing how and why they were deployed by their authors. The medieval Latin Christian narratives of the crusades are replete with references to miracles, visions and signs. Mysterious white-clad knights lead crusader armies to victory in battle, Christ and the saints offer guidance in visions, and great signs are seen in the skies. However, despite the frequent appearance of these themes in the sources, and the evident importance of these ideas to the narratives which describe them, scholars have often analysed examples in isolation. This book represents the first far-reaching examination of the miraculous in crusade narrative, offering an analysis of the role of miracles, marvels, visions, dreams, signs and augury in narratives of the crusades of 1096 to 1204 and produced between c.1099 and c.1250. It argues that the miraculous and its related themes represented a powerful tool for the authors of crusade narrative because of its ability to convey divine agency and will, ideas which were central to the belief held among Latin Christian contemporaries that crusade was divinely inspired and spiritually salvific. Overall, the volume demonstrates how the authors of crusade narrative drew upon various intellectual authorities on the miraculous in the service of their narrative agendas and reveals how the use of the miraculous changed as authors were forced to respond to the challenges of narrating crusade during this period.