Edward Augustus Freeman (1823 1892) was Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, and one of the pre-eminent historians of his generation. Politics was a constant interest for Freeman, who was also a regular contributor to the Saturday Review. While he wrote on a variety of historical topics, from ancient Greece to the German Federation, and had a great interest in architecture, this six-volume work, published between 1867 and 1879, was his magnum opus. Freeman reconsiders how the history of the Conquest is understood and examines its causes and results, examining the history of medieval England from the fifth until the twelfth centuries. Volume 6 provides a comprehensive index for the set. These volumes will interest both scholars of early England and the Conquest and modern historiographers.

Scholars have recently begun to study collections of Byzantine historical excerpts as autonomous pieces of literature. This book focuses on a series of minor collections that have received little or no scholarly attention, including the Epitome of the Seventh Century, the Excerpta Anonymi (tenth century), the Excerpta Salmasiana (eighth to eleventh centuries), and the Excerpta Planudea (thirteenth century). Three aspects of these texts are analysed in detail: their method of redaction, their literary structure, and their cultural and political function. Combining codicological, literary, and political analyses, this study contributes to a better understanding of the intertwining of knowledge and power, and suggests that these collections of historical excerpts should be seen as a Byzantine way of rewriting history. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9780429351020, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

In 1484, William Caxton, the first publisher of English-language books, issued The Golden Legend, a translation of the most well-known collection of saints' lives in Europe. This study analyzes the molding of the Legenda aurea into a book that powerfully attracted the English market. Modifications included not only illustrations and changes in the arrangement of chapters, but also the addition of lives of British saints and translated excerpts from the Bible, showing an appetite for vernacular scripture and stories about England's past. The publication history of Caxton's Golden Legend reveals attitudes towards national identity and piety within the context of English print culture during the half century prior to the Henrician Reformation.

The Inventive Peasant Arnaud du Tilh had almost persuaded the learned judges at the Parlement of Toulouse, when on a summer's day in 1560 a man swaggered into the court on a wooden leg, denounced Arnaud, and reestablished his claim to the identity, property, and wife of Martin Guerre. The astonishing case captured the imagination of the Continent. Told and retold over the centuries, the story of Martin Guerre became a legend, still remembered in the Pyrenean village where the impostor was executed more than 400 years ago.

Now a noted historian, who served as consultant for a new French film on Martin Guerre, has searched archives and lawbooks to add new dimensions to a tale already abundant in mysteries: we are led to ponder how a common man could become an impostor in the sixteenth century, why Bertrande de Rols, an honorable peasant woman, would accept such a man as her husband, and why lawyers, poets, and men of letters like Montaigne became so fascinated with the episode.

Natalie Zemon Davis reconstructs the lives of ordinary people, in a sparkling way that reveals the hidden attachments and sensibilities of nonliterate sixteenth-century villagers. Here we see men and women trying to fashion their identities within a world of traditional ideas about property and family and of changing ideas about religion. We learn what happens when common people get involved in the workings of the criminal courts in the "ancien regime," and how judges struggle to decide who a man was in the days before fingerprints and photographs. We sense the secret affinity between the eloquent men of law and the honey-tongued village impostor, a rare identification across class lines.

Deftlywritten to please both the general public and specialists, "The Return of Martin Guerre" will interest those who want to know more about ordinary families and especially women of the past, and about the creation of literary legends. It is also a remarkable psychological narrative about where self-fashioning stops and lying begins.

This wide-ranging study offers a new understanding of Old Norse kinship in which the individual self was expanded to encompass its kin. Family interactions in Old Norse myth and legend were often fraught, competitive, even violent as well as loving, protective and supportive. Focusing particularly on intergenerational relationships in the legendary sagas, the Poetic Edda and Snorra Edda, this book reveals not only why ambivalence was so characteristic of mythic-heroic kinship relations but how they were able to endure, even thrive, in spite of such pressures. Close attention is paid to the way gender inflects the dynamic between parents and their children and to the patronymic naming system which prevailed in Old Norse society, while outdated assumptions about the existence of a special relationship between a man and his sister's son inherited from earlier Germanic society are reassessed for the first time in decades. What emerges from this wide-ranging study is a new understanding of Old Norse kinship as a dynamic transpersonal process rather than a presocial fact, in which the individual self was expanded to encompass its kin. Taking the lead from recent anthropological research into kinship and with exciting implications for our understanding of Old Norse personhood, emotions, and the life course, this book challenges its readers to rethink many of the basic ontological assumptions which they bring to their interpretations of Old Norse myth and legend.

During the last 1500 years, Rome was the inspiration of artists, the coronation stage of German emperors, the distant desire of pilgrims, and the seat of the Roman popes. Yet Rome also lies within the northern range of P. falciparum malaria, the deadliest strain of the disease, against which northern Europeans had no intrinsic or acquired defenses. As a result, Rome lured a countless number of unacclimated transalpine Europeans to their deaths in the period from 500 to 1850 AD. This book examines how Rome's allure to European visitors and its resident malaria species impacted the historical development of Europe. It covers the environmental and biological factors at play and focuses on two of the periods when malaria potentially had the greatest impact on the continent: the heyday of the medieval German Empire and its conflicts with the papacy (c. 800-1300) and the Protestant Reformation (c.1500). Through explorations into the history of religion, empire, disease, and culture, this book tells the story of how the veritable capital of the world became the graveyard of nations.

This edited collection, written by both established and new researchers, reveals the experiences of litigating women across premodern Europe and captures the current state of research in this ever-growing field. Individually, the chapters offer an insight into the motivations and strategies of women who engaged in legal action in a wide range of courts, from local rural and urban courts, to ecclesiastical courts and the highest jurisdictions of crown and parliament. Collectively, the focus on individual women litigants - rather than how women were defined by legal systems - highlights continuities in their experiences of justice, while also demonstrating the unique and intersecting factors that influenced each woman's negotiation of the courts. Spanning a broad chronology and a wide range of contexts, these studies also offer a valuable insight into the practices and priorities of the many courts under discussion that goes beyond our focus on women litigants. Drawing on archival research from England, Scotland, Ireland, France, the Low Countries, Central and Eastern Europe, and Scandinavia, Litigating Women is the perfect resource for students and scholars interested in legal studies and gender in medieval and early modern Europe.

Published in 1997, this is a translation of the Intnerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi, 'The Itenerary of the Pilgrims and the deeds of King Richard,' based on the edition produced in 1864 by William Stubbs as volume 1 of his chronicles and memorials of the reign of King Richard I. This Chronicle is the most comprehensive and complete account of the Third Crusade, covering virtually all the events of the crusade in roughly chronological order, and adding priceless details such as descriptions of King Richard the Lionhearts personel appearance, shipping, French fashions and discussion of the international conventions of war. It is of great interest to medieval historians in general, not only historians of the crusade. The translation is accompanied by an introduction and exhaustive notes which explain the manuscript tradition and the sources of the text and which compare this chronicle with the works of other contemporary writers on the crusade, Christian and Muslim. The translation has been produced specifically for university students taking courses on the Crusades, but it will appeal to anyone with an interest in the Third Crusade and the history of the Middle Ages.

This edited collection, written by both established and new researchers, reveals the experiences of litigating women across premodern Europe and captures the current state of research in this ever-growing field. Individually, the chapters offer an insight into the motivations and strategies of women who engaged in legal action in a wide range of courts, from local rural and urban courts, to ecclesiastical courts and the highest jurisdictions of crown and parliament. Collectively, the focus on individual women litigants - rather than how women were defined by legal systems - highlights continuities in their experiences of justice, while also demonstrating the unique and intersecting factors that influenced each woman's negotiation of the courts. Spanning a broad chronology and a wide range of contexts, these studies also offer a valuable insight into the practices and priorities of the many courts under discussion that goes beyond our focus on women litigants. Drawing on archival research from England, Scotland, Ireland, France, the Low Countries, Central and Eastern Europe, and Scandinavia, Litigating Women is the perfect resource for students and scholars interested in legal studies and gender in medieval and early modern Europe.

The links between Cornwall, a county frequently considered remote and separate in the Middle Ages, and the wider realm of England are newly discussed. Winner of The Federation of Old Cornwall Societies (FOCS) Holyer an Gof Cup for non-fiction, 2020. Stretching out into the wild Atlantic, fourteenth-century Cornwall was a land at the very ends of the earth. Within itsboundaries many believed that King Arthur was a real-life historical Cornishman and that their natal shire had once been the home of mighty giants. Yet, if the county was both unusual and remarkable, it still held an integral place in the wider realm of England. Drawing on a wide range of published and archival material, this book seeks to show how Cornwall remained strikingly distinctive while still forming part of the kingdom. It argues that myths,saints, government, and lordship all endowed the name and notion of Cornwall with authority in the minds of its inhabitants, forging these people into a commonalty. At the same time, the earldom-duchy and the Crown together helped to link the county into the politics of England at large. With thousands of Cornishmen and women drawn east of the Tamar by the needs of the Crown, warfare, lordship, commerce, the law, the Church, and maritime interests, connectivity with the wider realm emerges as a potent integrative force. Supported by a cast of characters ranging from vicious pirates and gentlemen-criminals through to the Black Prince, the volume sets Cornwall in the latest debates about centralisation, devolution, and collective identity, about the nature of Cornishness and Englishness themselves. S.J. DRAKE is a Research Associate at the Institute of Historical Research. He was born and brought up in Cornwall.

In spite of the striking abundance of extant primary material, Byzantine epigraphy remains uncharted territory. The volume of the Proceedings of the 49th SPBS Spring Symposium aims to promote the field of Byzantine epigraphy as a whole, and topics and subjects covered include: Byzantine attitudes towards the inscribed word, the questions of continuity and transformation, the context and function of epigraphic evidence, the levels of formality and authority, the material aspect of writing, and the verbal, visual and symbolic meaning of inscribed texts. The collection is intended as a valuable scholarly resource presenting and examining a substantial quantity of diverse epigraphic material, and outlining the chronological development of epigraphic habits, and of individual epigraphic genres in Byzantium. The contributors also discuss the methodological questions of collecting, presenting and interpreting the most representative Byzantine inscriptional material, and addressing epigraphic material to make it relevant to a wider scholarly community.

Ancestor worship is often assumed by contemporary European audiences to be an outdated and primitive tradition with little relevance to our societies, past and present. This book questions that assumption and seeks to determine whether ancestor ideology was an integral part of religion in Viking Age and early medieval Scandinavia. The concept is examined from a broad socio-anthropological perspective, which is used to structure a set of case studies which analyse the cults of specific individuals in Old Norse literature. The situation of gods in Old Norse religion has been almost exclusively addressed in isolation from these socio-anthropological perspectives. The public gravemound cults of deceased rulers are discussed conventionally as cases of sacral kingship, and, more recently, religious ruler ideology; both are seen as having divine associations in Old Norse scholarship. Building on the anthropological framework, this study introduces the concept of 'superior ancestors', employed in social anthropology to denote a form of political ancestor worship used to regulate social structure deliberately. It suggests that Old Norse ruler ideology was based on conventional and widely recognised religious practices revolving around kinship and ancestors and that the gods were perceived as human ancestors belonging to elite families.

This selection of over 200 texts, nearly all appearing for the first time in English translation, provides a close-up look at the crusades against the Hussite heretics of 15th-century Bohemia, from the perspective of the official Church - or at their struggles for religious freedom, from the Hussites' own point of view. It also throws light on the meaning of the crusading movement and on the nature of warfare in the late Middle Ages. There is no single documentary account of the conflict, but the riveting events can be reconstructed from a wide range of contemporary sources: chronicles, sermons, manifestos, songs, bulls, imperial correspondence, military and diplomatic communiques, liturgy, military ordinances, trade embargos, epic poems, letters from the field, Jewish documents, speeches, synodal proceedings, and documents from popes, bishops, emperors and city councils. These texts reveal the zeal and energy of the crusaders but also their deep disunity, growing frustration and underlying fears - and likewise the heresy, determination and independence of the Hussites. Five times the cross was preached and the vastly superior forces of the official church and the empire marched into Bohemia to suppress the peasant armies. Five times they were humiliated and put to flight.

The Old French 'Rothelin' Continuation of William of Tyre's Historia provides one of the best contemporary narratives of the history of the crusades and of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem in the mid-thirteenth century. Covering the period 1229-61, it has vivid accounts of the disastrous expeditions led by Count Theobald of Champagne (1239-40) and King Louis IX of France (1248-54) as well as of other events in the East. But the text contains far more than this, with a detailed description of Jerusalem itself, songs of protest written by crusaders, and a variety of marvels and adventures, including stories of Alexander the Great, and the poisonous snakes encountered by the Roman army under Cato. This text is here translated into English for the first time, together with a narrative for the same years taken from another Old French Continuation of William of Tyre's work, part of L'Estoire de Eracles. Both accounts are translated from the Receuil des historiens des croisades: Historiens occidentaux vol. 2 (Paris, 1859). An introduction and full notes make these thirteenth-century events and ideas accessible to students of medieval history and to anyone interested in the lives and patterns of thought of people of that time.

The Story of Attila in Prose is the first critical edition and translation of the thirteenth century Franco-Italian prose text the Estoire d'Atile en prose. Preserved in two anonymous and untitled manuscripts composed between the last quarter of the thirteenth century and the beginning of the fourteenth century, the story recounts the fictional founding of Venice after the invasion of Aquileia by Attila the Hun. The manuscripts, located in Zagreb and Venice, detail Attila's pagan mother, her union with a dog, and his feral birth, as well as his unusual death during a chess match and the origins of the Holy Grail. This edition and translation are based on the Zagreb manuscript, which was only recently discovered. The book includes a full critical apparatus containing rejected readings and variants from the Venetian manuscript, and a thorough introduction that discusses the literary value of the text, its possible sources, and its influence on later literature. It is important reading for both historians of medieval Europe and literary critics.

Provides an accessible summary of where the field is at, perfect for researchers and upper level students of the history of knowledge. At the end of each chapter are suggestions for related and complementary chapters within the book, to ensure students can see how the examples related to one another and the comparison's made in the volume. The volume offers a broad inclusive view of knowledge practices and all the chapters offer a praxeological approach to their sources. Threatened Knowledge enables researchers and students to understand how actors in different historical periods and regions of the world describe the order in which they lived, how they defined an order worth preserving, and when a specific order lost its function the role the actors' self-conception took. The chapters cover a range of examples from Carolingian Europe and the British Commonwealth to single cities like Cairo or even share brokers' halls in America around 1900. Providing students with a useful range of example to draw upon but also the tools to conduct their own research into other centres of knowledge.

The best introduction to the terrible international impact of the Black Death. Unique, sensational and shocking, this revelatory book provides the best overview of the Europe-wide history of the Black Death. The author's painstakingly comprehensive research throws fresh light on the nature of the disease, its origin, its spread, on an almost day-to-day basis, across Europe, Asia Minor, the Middle East and North Africa, its mortality rate and its impact on history. These latter two aspects are of central importance here, for it is demonstrated that the plague's death rates have consistently been under-estimated and that they were in fact much higher, making the disease's long-term effects on history even more profound. First paperback edition published 2006. OLE J. BENEDICTOW is Professor of History at the University of Oslo.

First published in 1934, this book is a history of Christ's College, Cambridge, from its foundation in 1437, through its relocation to its current site, up to the charter of 1505. The original college, founded by parochial rector William Byngham, was named God's House and occupied a site which is now part of King's College. It was given its first royal licence in 1446 and moved to its present site in 1448. The college received its present name and charter when it was refounded in 1505 by Lady Margaret Beaufort, the mother of King Henry VII. This book recounts the history of Christ's during this period, using archival evidence and illustrations to offer a fascinating picture of the less well known early stages of the college's development.

Offers a fresh perspective on the role of the court in late medieval Scotland, framing it within the wider field of court studies, highlighting its centrality to the effective government for which James IV is renowned. James IV is regarded by many historians as the most charismatic and politically successful of Scotland's rulers, with his royal court, and the institution of the royal household which underpinned it, at the heart of his reign. This book, the first comprehensive examination of the subject, takes the structures and personnel of the household - from councillors to stable-hands - as the foundation for its study of the court and its role. Beginning by looking at the distinction between household and court and the structures imposed by the household on the court, Hepburn utilises this framework to explore the lives of the people moving within it, both in terms of their duties as royal servants and their broader social and political worlds. The book argues that these people were both audience and performer in the court, receiving and producing messages about the king, royal government and the status of groups and individuals. Association with the household also became a feature of life for people away from the court, through the household-related terms in which they were described and through the lands they held. Overall, it highlights the central role of the court in the effective conduct of royal government for which James IV is renowned.

Debating medieval Europe serves as an entry point for studying and teaching medieval history. Rather than simply presenting foundational knowledge or introducing sources, it provides the reader with frameworks for understanding the distinctive historiography of the period, digging beneath the historical accounts provided by other textbooks to expose the contested foundations of apparently settled narratives. It opens a space for discussion and debate, as well as providing essential context for the sometimes overwhelming abundance of specialist scholarship. Volume I addresses the early Middle Ages, covering the period c. 450-c. 1050. The chapters are organised chronologically, and cover such topics as the Carolingian Order, England and the 'Atlantic Archipelago', the Vikings and Ottonian Germany. It features a highly distinguished selection of medieval historians, including Paul Fouracre and Janet L. Nelson. -- .

From the Cloister to the State examines the French order of Fontevraud, one of the largest monastic networks under female leadership in medieval and early modern Europe. Founded in 1100 and comprised of both monks and nuns, the order had grown to consist of at least seventy-eight priories by the late Middle Ages. Endowed with vast territorial possessions throughout western France, Fontevraud became one of the most powerful religious institutions in the country. However, unaware of its institutional might and economic wealth, scholars have tended to focus on Fontevraud's seemingly unusual gender hierarchy, while bypassing inquiries on practices of abbatial authority in Fontevraud and beyond. This book reveals medieval Fontevraud as an aristocratic cloister where noble women governed. It also discusses the value of Fontevraud's extensive network for the geopolitical ambitions of the dukes of Brittany, the counts of Bourbon-Vendome, and, during the Wars of Religion, the kings of France. In addition to Fontevraud's political role during the Wars of Religion, the book also examines the order's reforms implemented by Marie de Bretagne and her successors Renee and Louise de Bourbon-Vendome. These Bourbon abbesses centralized the order's administration, cut the ties between priories and local aristocratic families, and successfully established the Bourbon-Vendomes as the only patrons of the vast and wealthy network. This book is essential reading for scholars and students of medieval and early modern history, as well as those interested in political history and the history of religion.

Nordic Elites in Transformation, c. 1050-1250, Volume II explores the structures and workings of social networks within the elites of medieval Scandinavia to reveal the intricate relationship between power and status. Section one of this volume categorizes basic types of personal bonds, both vertical and horizontal, while section two charts patterns of local, regional and transnational elite networks from wide-scope, longitudinal perspectives. Finally, the third section turns to case-studies of networks in action, analyzing strategies and transactions implied by uses of social resources in specific micro-political settings. A concluding chapter discusses how social power in the North compared to wider European experiences. A wide range of sources and methodologies is applied to reveal how networks were established, maintained, and put to use - and how they transformed in processes of centralizing power and formalizing hierarchies. The engagement with and analysis of intriguing primary source material has produced a key teaching tool for instructors and essential reading for students interested in the workings of medieval Scandinavia, elite class structures, and Social and Political History more generally.

Originally published in 1983, The Norman Heritage looks at the Norman Conquest as a turning point in English history. The book argues that not only was this the last time that England was successfully invaded, but it followed a complete change in the ruling dynasty, the introduction of military feudalism, the reform of the church and the rapid spread of monasticism. The book suggests that such social and political changes were accompanied by dramatic architectural and topographical developments. Frenzied building activity resulted in the construction of cathedrals, churches, monasteries and castles and stone was used on a scale unknown since the end of the Roman Empire. The Norman desire to exercise regional political control and to simulate trade resulted in a rash of newly planned towns across the country. In many more subtle ways, Anglo-Saxon landscape was altered and modified by Norman coercion and influence. Through their energy and administrative ability, the Normans transformed the face of town and country alike, and this book traces the impact of the Norman Conquest upon the British scene, through both a historical narrative, surviving structural remains of buildings and the patterns of settlements, communications and land use that developed during this period.

Originally published in 1972, Medieval Monarchy in Action covers a period extending from the reign of Henry I to the early years of Henry IV. The book examines how the Saxon and Salian monarchs of the tenth and eleventh centuries built the foundations of the German Empire, this volume contains fifty documents which present the reader with the vivid picture of the imperial activities. The book contains original source material, including diplomas issued by the emperors, most of which have never before been published in English. Both the introduction and documents reveal the workings of the imperial chancery, the utilization of the Church as the foundation for building a strong monarchy, and the careful conscription of learned ecclesiastics into the royal bureaucracy. The period of Saxon-Salian dominance is an important area of study for papal-imperial relations in the Middle Ages and also for modern European history.