Over the course of the fourth through seventh centuries, Rome witnessed a succession of five significant political and military crises, including the Sack of Rome, the Vandal occupation, and the demise of the Senate. Historians have traditionally considered these crises as defining events, and thus critical to our understanding of the 'decline and fall of Rome.' In this volume, Michele Renee Salzman offers a fresh interpretation of the tumultuous events that occurred in Rome during Late Antiquity. Focusing on the resilience of successive generations of Roman men and women and their ability to reconstitute their city and society, Salzman demonstrates the central role that senatorial aristocracy played, and the limited influence of the papacy during this period. Her provocative study provides a new explanation for the longevity of Rome and its ability, not merely to survive, but even to thrive over the last three centuries of the Western Roman Empire.

August 2019 saw numerous commemorations of the year 1619, when what was said to be the first arrival of enslaved Africans occurred in North America. Yet in the 1520s, the Spanish, from their imperial perch in Santo Domingo, had already brought enslaved Africans to what was to become South Carolina. The enslaved people quickly defected to local Indigenous populations, and compelled their captors to flee. Deploying such illuminating research, The Dawning of the Apocalypse is a riveting revision of the "creation myth" of settler colonialism and how the United States was formed. Here, Gerald Horne argues forcefully that, in order to understand the arrival of colonists from the British Isles in the early seventeenth century, one must first understand the "long sixteenth century"-from 1492 until the arrival of settlers in Virginia in 1607. During this prolonged century, Horne contends, "whiteness" morphed into "white supremacy," and allowed England to co-opt not only religious minorities but also various nationalities throughout Europe, thus forging a muscular bloc that was needed to confront rambunctious Indigenes and Africans. In retelling the bloodthirsty story of the invasion of the Americas, Horne recounts how the fierce resistance by Africans and their Indigenous allies weakened Spain and enabled London to dispatch settlers to Virginia in 1607. These settlers laid the groundwork for the British Empire and what became the United States of America.

First published in 1854, this comprehensive work charts over three volumes the history of poor relief in England from the Saxon period through to the establishment of the Poor Law Amendment Act in 1834 and its reception. This edition, updated in 1898, also includes a biography of the author, Sir George Nicholls. Volume I examines poor relief from the Saxon period to the reign of Queen Anne. This set of books will be of interest to those studying the history of the British welfare state and social policy.

Essays offer a lively snapshot of important topics. The essays presented here draw on a number of different approaches and perspectives to address and illuminate key aspects and issues of the period. Longitudinal studies of king's confessors and corrodies of the crown provide insights into the intersection of political, religious and demographic currents over the longue duree, and are complemented by studies of documentary sources of various kinds - newsletters, chronicles, and municipal archives - to challenge current understandings of important events and processes such as the deposition of Edward II, the evolving identity of the parliamentary peers, and Richard II's vision for the house of Lancaster. Prosopographical and biographical studies of post-plague clerics, and of knights within comital affinities and within their own individual affinity groups, shed light on county communities and gentry society; they also demonstrate the impact of the Black Death on society at large, especially on the question of religious continuity and discontinuity at the parish level. Contributors: Paul Dryburgh, Pierre Gaite, Chris Given-Wilson, Michael Jones, Taylor Kniphfer, Samuel Lane, Jonathan Mackman, Alison McHardy, Matt Raven, David Robinson.

This book investigates the uses of crusader medievalism - the memory of the crusades and crusading rhetoric and imagery - in Britain, from Walter Scott's The Talisman (1825) to the end of the Second World War. It seeks to understand why and when the crusades and crusading were popular, how they fitted with other cultural trends of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, how their use was affected by the turmoil of the First World War and whether they were differently employed in the interwar years and in the 1939-45 conflict. Building on existing studies and contributing the fruits of fresh research, it brings together examples of the uses of the crusades from disparate contexts and integrates them into the story of the rise and fall crusader medievalism in Britain.

Theology and Poetry in Early Byzantium examines the kontakia and thought-world of Romanos the Melodist, the sixth-century hymnographer whose vibrant and engaging compositions had a far-reaching influence in the history of Byzantine liturgy. His compositions bring biblical narratives to life through dialogue, encourage a level of participation unparalleled in homiletics and push the boundaries of liturgical expression of theology. This book provides an original analysis of Romanos' poetry, drawing attention to the coherence of his theology and the performative nature of his rhetoric. The main theological themes which emerge encourage the congregation to enact the life of Christ and anticipate the new creation: restoration of humanity to God, re-creation in the incarnation and life of Christ, and liturgical participation and transformation in that life. By analysing the rhetorical performance of theology in the kontakia, the book provides new insights into religious practice in late antiquity.

This is a study of science in Muslim society. The first volume starts at the rise of science in the eighth century and explores the efforts of nineteenth century Muslim thinkers and reformers to regain the lost ethos that had given birth to the rich scientific heritage of earlier Muslim civilization. The second volume reveals the undermining effect of European imperialism on western-oriented religious reformers and secular intellectuals, for whom science and political reform went together, and concludes with a chapter on the state of science in contemporary Muslim societies and the efforts to institutionalize science today.

From Justinian to Branimir explores the social and political transformation of Dalmatia between c.500 and c.900 AD. The collapse of Dalmatia in the early seventh century is traditionally ascribed to the Slav migrations. However, more recent scholarship has started to challenge this theory, looking instead for alternative explanations for the cultural and social changes that took place during this period. Drawing on both written and material sources, this study utilizes recent archaeological and historical research to provide a new historical narrative of this little-known period in the history of the Balkan peninsula. This book will appeal to scholars and students interested in Byzantine and early medieval Europe, the Balkans and the Mediterranean. It is important reading for both historians and archaeologists.

Theory of Conics, Geometrical Constructions and Practical Geometry: A History of Arabic Sciences and Mathematics Volume 3, provides a unique primary source on the history and philosophy of mathematics and science from the mediaeval Arab world. The present text is complemented by two preceding volumes of A History of Arabic Sciences and Mathematics, which focused on founding figures and commentators in the ninth and tenth centuries, and the historical and epistemological development of 'infinitesimal mathematics' as it became clearly articulated in the oeuvre of Ibn al-Haytham. This volume examines the increasing tendency, after the ninth century, to explain mathematical problems inherited from Greek times using the theory of conics. Roshdi Rashed argues that Ibn al-Haytham completes the transformation of this 'area of activity,' into a part of geometry concerned with geometrical constructions, dealing not only with the metrical properties of conic sections but with ways of drawing them and properties of their position and shape. Including extensive commentary from one of world's foremost authorities on the subject, this book contributes a more informed and balanced understanding of the internal currents of the history of mathematics and the exact sciences in Islam, and of its adaptive interpretation and assimilation in the European context. This fundamental text will appeal to historians of ideas, epistemologists and mathematicians at the most advanced levels of research.

A study of the performance of queenship by two Tudor monarchs, showing the strategies they used to assert their power. Catherine of Aragon (r.1509-33) and her sister-in-law Margaret Tudor (r.1503-13) presided as queens over the glittering sixteenth-century courts of England and Scotland, alongside their husbands Henry VIII of England and James IVof Scotland. Although we know a great deal about these two formidable sixteenth-century kings, we understand very little about how their two queens contributed to their reigns. How did these young, foreign women become effective and trusted consorts, and powerful political figures in their own right? This book argues that Catherine and Margaret's performance of queenship combined medieval queenly virtues with the new opportunities for influence and power offered by Renaissance court culture. Royal rituals such as childbirth and the Royal Maundy, courtly spectacles such as tournaments, banquets and diplomatic summits, or practices such as arranged marriages and gift-giving, were all moments when Catherine and Margaret could assert their honour, status and identity as queens. Their husbands' support for their activities at court helped bring them the influence and patronage necessary to pursue their ownpolitical goals and obtain favour and rewards for their servants and followers. Situating Catherine and Margaret's careers within the history of the royal courts of England and Scotland and amongst their queenly peers, this book reveals these two queens as intimately connected agents of political influence and dynastic power.

This volume provides a unique primary source on the history and philosophy of mathematics and science from the mediaeval Arab world. The fourth volume of A History of Arabic Sciences and Mathematics is complemented by three preceding volumes which focused on infinitesimal determinations and other chapters of classical mathematics. This book includes five main works of the polymath Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) on astronomy, spherical geometry and trigonometry, plane trigonometry and studies of astronomical instruments on hour lines, horizontal sundials and compasses for great circles. In particular, volume four examines: the increasing tendency to mathematize the inherited astronomy from Greek sources, namely Ptolemy's Almagest; the development of celestial kinematics; new research in spherical geometry and trigonometry required by the new kinematical theory; the study on astronomical instruments and its impact on mathematical research. These new historical materials and their mathematical and historical commentaries contribute to rewriting the history of mathematical astronomy and mathematics from the 11th century on. Including extensive commentary from one of the world's foremost authorities on the subject, this fundamental text is essential reading for historians and mathematicians at the most advanced levels of research.

This volume was conceived with the double aim of providing a background and a further context for the new Dumbarton Oaks English translation of the Life of St Neilos from Rossano, founder of the monastery of Grottaferrata near Rome in 1004. Reflecting this double aim, the volume is divided into two parts. Part I, entitled "Italo-Greek Monasticism," builds the background to the Life of Neilos by taking several multi-disciplinary approaches to the geographical area, history and literature of the region denoted as Southern Italy. Part II, entitled "The Life of St Neilos," offers close analyses of the text of Neilos's hagiography from socio-historical, textual, and contextual perspectives. Together, the two parts provide a solid introduction and offer in-depth studies with original outcomes and wide-ranging bibliographies. Using monasticism as a connecting thread between the various zones and St Neilos as the figure who walked over mountains and across many cultural divides, the essays in this volume span all regions and localities and try to trace thematic arcs between individual testimonies. They highlight the multicultural context in which Southern Italian Christians lived and their way of negotiating differences with Arab and Jewish neighbors through a variety of sources, and especially in saints' lives.

The emergence of Islam in the seventh century AD still polarises scholars who seek to separate religious truth from the historical reality with which it is associated. However, history and prophecy are not solely defined by positive evidence or apocalyptic truth, but by human subjects, who consider them to convey distinct messages and in turn make these messages meaningful to others. These messages are mutually interdependent, and analysed together provide new insights into history. It is by way of this concept that Olof Heilo presents the decline of the Eastern Roman Empire as a key to understanding the rise of Islam; two historical processes often perceived as distinct from one another. Eastern Rome and the Rise of Islam highlights significant convergences between Early Islam and the Late Ancient world. It suggests that Islam's rise is a feature of a common process during which tensions between imperial ambitions and apocalyptic beliefs in Europe and the Middle East cut straight across today's theological and political definitions. The conquests of Islam, the emergence of the caliphate, and the transformation of the Roman and Christian world are approached from both prophetic anticipations in the Ancient and Late Ancient world, and from the Medieval and Modern receptions of history. In the shadow of their narratives it becomes possible to trace the outline of a shared history of Christianity and Islam. The "Dark Ages" thus emerge not merely as a tale of sound and fury, but as an era of openness, diversity and unexpected possibilities. Approaching the rise of Islam as a historical phenomenon, this book opens new perspectives in the study of early religion and philosophy, as well as providing a valuable resource for students and scholars of Islamic Studies.

Shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize A radical rethinking of the Anglo-Saxon world that draws on the latest archaeological discoveries This beautifully illustrated book draws on the latest archaeological discoveries to present a radical reappraisal of the Anglo-Saxon built environment and its inhabitants. John Blair, one of the world's leading experts on this transformative era in England's early history, explains the origins of towns, manor houses, and castles in a completely new way, and sheds new light on the important functions of buildings and settlements in shaping people's lives during the age of the Venerable Bede and King Alfred. Building Anglo-Saxon England demonstrates how hundreds of recent excavations enable us to grasp for the first time how regionally diverse the built environment of the Anglo-Saxons truly was. Blair identifies a zone of eastern England with access to the North Sea whose economy, prosperity, and timber buildings had more in common with the Low Countries and Scandinavia than the rest of England. The origins of villages and their field systems emerge with a new clarity, as does the royal administrative organization of the kingdom of Mercia, which dominated central England for two centuries. Featuring a wealth of color illustrations throughout, Building Anglo-Saxon England explores how the natural landscape was modified to accommodate human activity, and how many settlements--secular and religious-were laid out with geometrical precision by specialist surveyors. The book also shows how the Anglo-Saxon love of elegant and intricate decoration is reflected in the construction of the living environment, which in some ways was more sophisticated than it would become after the Norman Conquest.

This book offers a new appraisal of the ancestry and career of Godfrey of Bouillon (c.1060-1100), a leading participant in the First Crusade (1096-99), and the first ruler of Latin Jerusalem (1099-1100), the polity established by the crusaders after they captured the Holy City. While previous studies of Godfrey's life have tended to focus on his career from the point at which he joined the crusade, this book adopts a more holistic approach, situating his involvement in the expedition in the light of the careers of his ancestors and his own activities in Lotharingia, the westernmost part of the kingdom of Germany. The findings of this enquiry shed new light on the repercussions of a range of critical developments in Latin Christendom in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries, including the impact of the 'Investiture Conflict' in Lotharingia, the response to the call for the First Crusade in Germany, Godfrey's influence upon the course of the crusade, his role in its leadership, and his activities during the initial phases of Latin settlement in the Holy Land in its aftermath.

This volume offers the first fully scholarly translation into English of the Tale of Livistros and Rodamne, a love romance written around the middle of 13th century at the imperial court of Nicaea, at the time when Constantinople was still under Latin dominion. With its approximately 4700 verses, Livistros and Rodamne is the longest and the most artfully composed of the eight surviving Byzantine love romances. It was almost certainly written to be recited in front of an aristocratic audience by an educated poet experienced in the Greek tradition of erotic fiction, yet at the same time knowledgeable of the Medieval French and Persian romances of love and adventure. The poet has created a very 'modern' narrative filled with attractive episodes, including the only scene of demonic incantation in Byzantine fiction. The language of the romance is of a high poetic quality, challenging the translator at every step. Finally, Livistros and Rodamne is the only Byzantine romance that consistently constructs the Latin world of chivalry as an exotic setting, a type of occidentalism aiming to tame and to incorporate the Frankish Other in the social norms of the Byzantine Self after the Fall of Constantinople to the Latins in 1204.

This study of El Cid, first published in English in 1934, is by the leading authority on the medieval history and literature of Spain. The Cid occupies a unique position among national heroes. Others such as King Arthur and Roland are but shadowy figures in the historical record, but El Cid is very much better documented. This book also paints a striking picture of eleventh-century Spain, bringing out the importance of the country as a link between Christian and Muslim civilization.

The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and the Temple of Solomon, better known as the Knights Templar or simply the Templars, are the most famous of the Crusading knightly orders. Formed in 1119 to protect Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land, this curious hybrid of military unit and monastic brotherhood were the staunchest defenders of the Crusader States of Outremer for nearly two centuries. Knights joining the Templars renounced their worldly possessions and vowed to follow a strict code, which included the command to fight the infidel enemy bravely regardless of the odds. They provided Christian armies with a lethal cutting edge in open battle, launching fanatical charges to break the enemy formations, as well as garrisoning a network of forts as a stubborn bulwark against reconquest. Zvonimir Grbasic outlines their history, narrating many of their greatest victories and defeats in detail (such as Montgisard and the Horns of Hattin), describes their organization and hierarchy, training and daily life. These elite warriors, both the knights and the lowlier ranks, are illustrated with the author's beautiful original paintings and drawings.

This book shines a much needed light on the city in the later Medieval Ages. Essays include studies of buildings and objects in the city and its immediate surrounds, both from archaeological and thematic approaches. In addition, a number of chapters reflect on the legacy and influence medieval art and architecture had on the later city. The volume also provides detailed studies of some of the most important master masons, glassmakers and carpenters in the medieval city, as well as of patrons, building types and institutional development

Law mattered in later medieval England and Ireland. A quick glance at the sources suggests as much. From the charter to the will to the court roll, the majority of the documents which have survived from later medieval England and Ireland, and medieval Europe in general, are legal in nature. Yet despite the fact that law played a prominent role in medieval society, legal history has long been a marginal subject within medieval studies both in Britain and North America. Much good work has been done in this field, but there is much still to do. This volume, a collection of essays in honour of Paul Brand, who has contributed perhaps more than any other historian to our understanding of the legal developments of later medieval England and Ireland, is intended to help fill this gap. The essays collected in this volume, which range from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, offer the latest research on a variety of topics within this field of inquiry. While some consider familiar topics, they do so from new angles, whether by exploring the underlying assumptions behind England's adoption of trial by jury for crime or by assessing the financial aspects of the General Eyre, a core institution of jurisdiction in twelfth- and thirteenth-century England. Most, however, consider topics which have received little attention from scholars, from the significance of judges and lawyers smiling and laughing in the courtroom to the profits and perils of judicial office in English Ireland. The essays provide new insights into how the law developed and functioned within the legal profession and courtroom in late medieval England and Ireland, as well as how it pervaded the society at large.

Custom was fundamental to medieval legal practice. Whether in a property dispute or a trial for murder, the aggrieved and accused would go to lay court where cases were resolved according to custom. What custom meant, however, went through a radical shift in the medieval period. Between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, custom went from being a largely oral and performed practice to one that was also conceptualized in writing. Based on French lawbooks known as coutumiers, Ada Maria Kuskowski traces the repercussions this transformation - in the form of custom from unwritten to written and in the language of law from elite Latin to common vernacular - had on the cultural world of law. Vernacular Law offers a new understanding of the formation of a new field of knowledge: authors combined ideas, experience and critical thought to write lawbooks that made disparate customs into the field known as customary law.

Family, Work, and Household presents the social and occupational life of a late medieval Iberian town in rich, unprecedented detail. The book combines a diachronic study of two regionally prominent families-one knightly and one mercantile-with a detailed cross-sectional urban study of household and occupation. The town in question is the market town and administrative centre of Manresa in Catalonia, whose exceptional archives make such a study possible. For the diachronic studies, Fynn-Paul relied upon the fact that Manresan archives preserve scores of individual family notarial registers, and the cross-sectional study was made possible by the Liber Manifesti of 1408, a cadastral survey which details the property holdings of individual householders to an unusually thorough degree. In these pages, the economic and social strategies of many individuals, including both knights and burghers, come to light over the course of several generations. The Black Death and its aftermath play a prominent role in changing the outlook of many social actors. Other chapters detail the socioeconomic topography of the town, and examine occupational hierarchies, for such groups as rentiers, merchants, leatherworkers, cloth workers, women householders, and the poor.

The imagery of Hell, the Christian account of the permanent destinations of the human soul after death, has fascinated people over the centuries since the emergence of the Christian faith. These landmark volumes provide the first large-scale investigation of this imagery found across the Byzantine and post-Byzantine world. Particular emphasis is placed on images from churches across Venetian Crete, which are comprehensively collected and published for the first time. Crete was at the centre of artistic production in the late Byzantine world and beyond and its imagery was highly influential on traditions in other regions. The Cretan examples accompany rich comparative material from the wider Mediterranean - Cappadocia, Macedonia, the Peloponnese and Cyprus. The large amount of data presented in this publication highlight Hell's emergence in monumental painting not as a concrete array of images, but as a diversified mirroring of social perceptions of sin.

First commissioned by Bishop Gerard I of Cambrai (1012-1051) in 1023 or 1024, the Gesta episcoporum Cameracensium was the work of two authors, the second of whom completed the text shortly after the death of Bishop Gerard. The three books of the Gesta shed considerable light on the policies and actions of many of the key political and religious figures in an economically and intellectually vibrant region on the frontier between the German and French kingdoms. The Deeds of the Bishops of Cambrai, translated in this volume into English for the first time, provides unique insights into the relationship between the German king and the bishops within the context of the so-called imperial church system, the rise of both secular and ecclesiastical territorial lordships, the conduct of war, the cult of the saints, monastic reform, and evolving conceptions of the proper social order of society. Including extensive commentary, apparatus of explanatory notes, maps, genealogies, this text will be of considerable value both in undergraduate and graduate courses as well as to scholars.