In the mid-ninth century, Francia was rocked by the first royal divorce scandal of the Middle Ages: the attempt by King Lothar II of Lotharingia to rid himself of his queen, Theutberga and remarry. Even 'women in their weaving sheds' were allegedly gossiping about the lurid accusations made. Kings and bishops from neighbouring kingdoms, and several popes, were gradually drawn into a crisis affecting the fate of an entire kingdom. This is the first professionally published translation of a key source for this extraordinary episode: Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims's De divortio Lotharii regis et Theutbergae reginae. This text offers eye-opening insight both on the political wrangling of the time and on early medieval attitudes towards magic, penance, gender, the ordeal, marriage, sodomy, the role of bishops, and kingship.The translation includes a substantial introduction and annotations, putting the case into its early medieval context and explaining Hincmar's sometimes-dubious methods of argument. -- .

This collection of essays by European and American scholars addresses the changing nature and appeal of crusading during the period which extended from the battle of Nicopolis in 1396 to the battle of Mohacs in 1526. Contributors focus on two key aspects of the subject. One is developments in the crusading message and the language in which it was framed. These were brought about partly by the appearance of new enemies, above all the Ottoman Turks, and partly by shifting religious values and innovative currents of thought within Catholic Europe. The other aspect is the wide range of responses which the papacy's repeated calls to holy war encountered in a Christian community which was increasingly heterogeneous in character. This collection represents a substantial contribution to the study of the Later Crusades and of Renaissance Europe.

This book is about the ways that ordinary people in town and country creatively define themselves, their families and their social networks. It explores, for the period c. 1450-1560, inheritance strategies, personal possessions and their meanings, attitudes to commemoration after death, the daily fashioning of identity and the interactions between imagination and daily life. The book is also about how the surviving textual evidence may be used to reconstruct these perceptions and experiences and the implications of such reconstruction for cultural history in the current crises of interpretation. Above all, this book emphasizes the cultural significance of the creative imagination.

While focusing on the relationship between the papacy and the 14th-century crusades, this study also illuminates other fields of activity in Avignon, such as papal taxation and interaction with Byzantium. Using recent research, Housley covers all areas where crusading occurred--including the eastern Mediterranean, Spain, eastern Europe, and Italy--and analyzes the Curia's approach to related issues such as peacemaking between warring Christian powers, the work of Military Orders, and western attempts to maintain a trade embargo on Mamluk, Egypt. Placing the papal policies of Avignon firmly in context, the author demonstrates that the period witnessed the relentless erosion of papal control over the crusades.

This book brings together the disciplines of history and psychology. It is the first study to apply attachment theory to self-narratives of the past, namely examples of life-writing (letters and proto-autobiographies) from medieval England, written in broad religious contexts. It examines whether God could appear as an adequate attachment figure in times of high mortality and often inadequate childrearing practices, and whether the emphasis on God's proximity to believers benefited their psychological reorganisation. The main method of enquiry is discourse analysis based on the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) coding.

Offers an important insight into the evocative history of Turkey before the coming of Ottoman power.

Translated from the original French, this classic work examines the history of the Turkey that eventually gave rise to an imperial power whose influence spanned East and West.

Few other cities can compare with Rome's history of continuous habitation, nor with the survival of so many different epochs in its present. This volume explores how the city's past has shaped the way in which Rome has been built, rebuilt, represented and imagined throughout its history. Bringing together scholars from the disciplines of architectural history, urban studies, art history, archaeology and film studies, this book comprises a series of studies on the evolution of the city of Rome and the ways in which it has represented and reconfigured itself from the medieval period to the present day. Moving from material appropriations such as spolia in the medieval period, through the cartographic representations of the city in the early modern period, to filmic representation in the twentieth century, we encounter very different ways of making sense of the past across Rome's historical spectrum. The broad chronological arrangement of the chapters, and the choice of themes and urban locations examined in each, allows the reader to draw comparisons between historical periods. An imaginative approach to the study of the urban and architectural make-up of Rome, this volume will be valuable not only for historians of art and architecture, but also for students of cultural history and film studies.

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.

Medieval Londoners were a diverse group, some born in the city, and others drawn to the capital from across the realm and from overseas. For some, London became the sole focus of their lives, while others retained or developed networks and loyalties that spread far and wide. The rich evidence for the medieval city, including archaeological and documentary evidence, means that the study of London and its inhabitants remains a vibrant field. Medieval Londoners brings together archaeologists, historians, art-historians and literary scholars whose essays provide glimpses of medieval Londoners in all their variety. This volume is offered to Caroline M. Barron, Emeritus Professor of the History of London at Royal Holloway, University of London, on the occasion of her 80th birthday. Her remarkable career - over some fifty years - has revitalized the way in which we consider London and its people. This volume is a tribute to her scholarship and her friendship and encouragement to others. It is thanks to Caroline M. Barron that the study of medieval London remains as vibrant today as it has ever been.

Concerned with the memories of medieval people, this book focuses on the historical value of oral and written traditions.

For the first time in Medieval Memories, tombstones, medieval encyclopedias and legal testimonies figure alongside moral guidebooks, miracle stories and chronicles as material for the gendered perceptions of the medieval past.

This volume offers the first comprehensive analysis of wills in late medieval Krakow. It presents the origins of testamentary acts in the Kingdom of Poland and its centre, Krakow, and their subsequent transformation from so called 'canonical wills' to 'communal wills'. Wysmulek discusses the socio-cultural role of wills and sets them in their contemporary legal, social, and economic context. In doing so, he uncovers their influence on property ownership and family relations in the city, as well as on the religious practices of the burghers. Ultimately, this work seeks to change the perception of wills by treating the testamentary act itself as an important agent of historical social change - a 'tool of power'.

Examines how great missionary figures were crucial to their own time and were not only agents of change, but also some of Europe's first historians.

Missionaries brought Christian belief and culture to the pagan societies of Dark Age Europe.

The roles and aims of the missionaries provide a starting point for the history of early medieval Europe. While spiritualism is examined Ian Wood also focuses on the darker side of missionary life - flagellation, starvation, torture - as well as sanctity. Contemporary willing and unwilling evangelism relates to some of these first Christian pioneers.

Roger Collins provides a comprehensive account of the centuries during which Europe became a new culturally coherent, if politically divided, entity. This third edition of a classic textbook history of early medieval Europe is fully updated, rewritten and revised to take account of the latest scholarship and to improve its literary style. This volume:

- examines how the social, economic and cultural structures of Antiquity were replaced by their medieval equivalents
- defines the European context by looking at the external forces which helped to shape it through conflict
- explores key topics such as the fall of the Roman Empire, the rise of both Christianity and Islam, the Vikings, and the expansion of Latin Christian culture into eastern Europe

Featuring maps, genealogies, a chronology and bibliography to aid understanding, this third edition provides an essential reference work for those studying early medieval Europe.

This book is a study of the exercise of royal authority before the Norman Conquest. Six centuries separate the 'adventus Saxonum' from the battle of Hastings: during those long years, the English kings changed from warlords, who exacted submission by force, into law-givers to whom obedience was a moral duty. In the process, they created many of the administrative institutes which continued to serve their successors. They also created England: the united kingdom of the English people.

In the spring of 1453, the Ottoman Turks advanced on Constantinople in pursuit of an ancient Islamic dream: capturing the thousand-year-old capital of Christian Byzantium. During the siege that followed, a small band of badly organised defenders, outnumbered ten to one, confronted the might of the Ottoman army in a bitter contest fought on land, sea and underground, and directed by two remarkable men - Sultan Mehmet II and the Emperor Constantine XI. In the fevered religious atmosphere, heightened by the first massed use of artillery bombardment, both sides feared that the end of the world was nigh. The outcome of the siege, decided in a few short hours on 29 May 1453, is one of the great set-piece moments of world history.

This is the first book devoted to the cultural history in the pre-modern period of people we now describe as having learning disabilities. Using an interdisciplinary approach, including historical semantics, medicine, natural philosophy and law, it considers a neglected field of social and medical history and makes an original contribution to the problem of a shifting concept such as 'idiocy'. Medieval physicians, lawyers and the schoolmen of the emerging universities wrote the texts which shaped medieval definitions of intellectual ability and its counterpart, disability. In studying such texts, which form part of our contemporary scientific and cultural heritage, we gain a better understanding of which people were considered to be intellectually disabled and how their participation and inclusion in society differed from the situation today. -- .

The reign of Pope Gregory VII (1073-85) is critically important in the history of the medieval Church and Papacy. This original and authoritative study, the first for over fifty years, records the remarkable career of the Pope who started life as a humble clerk of the Roman church, gave his name to the Gregorian Reforms, and finally died in exile at Salerno. His reign prepared the way for an age of strong papal monarchy throughout medieval Europe.

The Middle Ages was a time of great upheaval - the period between the seventh and fourteenth centuries saw great social, political and economic change. The radically distinct cultures of the Christian West, Byzantium, Persian-influenced Islam, and al-Andalus resulted in different responses to the garden arts of antiquity and different attitudes to the natural world and its artful manipulation. Yet these cultures interacted and communicated, trading plants, myths and texts. By the fifteenth century the garden as a cultural phenomenon was immensely sophisticated and a vital element in the way society saw itself and its relation to nature. A Cultural History of Gardens in the Medieval Age presents an overview of the period with essays on issues of design, types of gardens, planting, use and reception, issues of meaning, verbal and visual representation of gardens, and the relationship of gardens to the larger landscape.

Medieval women's history is entering a new stage. In the last thirty years medievalists have recovered the sources about women, and have moved women to the foreground of narratives to view society from their vantage point. The historians in this collection are looking for ways to expand the ways we examine and write about medieval women. They are interested in the great and the obscure, and women from different times and places. All attempt to get closer to the life as lived, personified in individual stories. As such, these essays prompt us to rethink what we can know about medieval women, how we can know it, and how we can write about them to expand our insights.

The first English-language survey of medieval and modern Sardinia, this volume offers access to long-awaited European scholarship on a critical missing link in the Mediterranean. Based on new archaeological fieldwork and current research from a variety of academic perspectives- architecture, colonialism, ecclesiastic history, cartography, demography, law, musicology, politics, trade, and urban planning-the authors provide the foundation to incorporate Sardinia into a broader European history. Among other contributions, archaeology adds critical insight into the relationship between Christian, Muslim, and Jewish inhabitants of Sardinia, through examinations of urban and rural settlement patterns. This volume aims to stimulate further analysis of the critical role Sardinia has played as one of the largest and most strategically located islands in the Mediterranean. Contributors are Laura Biccone, Nathalie Bouloux, Henri Bresc, Marco Cadinu, Roberto Coroneo, Laura Galoppini, Henrike Haug, Michelle Hobart, Rossana Martorelli, Giampaolo Mele, Marco Milanese, Giovanni Murgia, Gian Giacomo Ortu, Daniela Rovina, Olivetta Schena, Cecilia Tasca, Raimondo Turtas, and Corrado Zedda.