This book examines the view of women held by medieval common lawyers and legislators, and considers medieval women's treatment by and participation in the processes of the common law. Surveying a wide range of points of contact between women and the common law, from their appearance (or not) in statutes, through their participation (or not) as witnesses, to their treatment as complainants or defendants, it argues for closer consideration of women within the standard narratives of classical legal history, and for re-examination of some previous conclusions on the relationship between women and the common law. It will appeal to scholars and students of medieval history, as well as those interested in legal history, gender studies and the history of women.

Settlement and Crusade in the Thirteenth Century sheds new light on formerly less explored aspects of the crusading movement and the Latin East during the thirteenth century. In commemoration of the 800th anniversary of the construction of 'Atlit Castle, a significant section of this volume is dedicated to the castle, which was one of the most impressive built in the Latin East. Scholarly debate has centred on the reasons behind the construction of the castle, its role in the defence of the Kingdom of Jerusalem during the thirteenth century, and its significance for the Templar order. The studies in this volume shed new light on diverse aspects of the site, including its cemetery and the surveys conducted there. Further chapters examine Cyprus during the thirteenth century, which under the Lusignan dynasty was an important centre of Latin settlement in the East, and a major trade centre. These chapters present new contributions regarding the complex visual culture which developed on the island, the relation between different social groups, and settlement patterns. Adopting a multidisciplinary approach, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of the medieval period, as well as those interested in the Crusades, archaeology, material culture, and art history.

Ruling England, now in its second edition, is a key text for students wishing to understand the complexities of medieval kingship in England from 1042-1217. Beginning just before the Norman Conquest, and ending with the ratification of Magna Carta, this book is divided into three parts: Late Anglo-Saxon England, Anglo-Norman England and Angevin England. Richard Huscroft considers the reign of each king during these periods, including their relationships with the nobility, local government, the courts and the Church and poses the central question of how the ruler of the most sophisticated kingdom in twelfth century Europe was eventually compelled to submit to the humiliation of Magna Carta at the start of the thirteenth. This new edition has been fully revised and updated to take into account the latest scholarship. Throughout the book key areas of historiographical debate are highlighted and analysed, including nationhood, feudalism and Magna Carta. The narrative is supported by maps, a genealogy of the kings of England, a chronology, a glossary and an introduction to the principal narrative sources and their authors to provide a thorough introduction to the political history of medieval England. This book will be essential reading for students of English medieval history.

Over the past two decades or so, medieval geopolitics have come to occupy an increasingly prominent place in the collective imagination and writings of International Relations scholars. Although these accounts differ significantly in terms of their respective analytical assumptions, theoretical concerns and scholarly contributions, they share at least one common arguably, defining element: a belief that a careful study of medieval geopolitics can help resolve a number of important debates surrounding the nature and dynamics of "international" relations. There are however three generic weaknesses characterizing the extant literature: a general failure to examine the existing historiography of medieval geopolitics, an inadequate account of the material and ideational forces that create patterns of violent conflict in medieval Latin Christendom, and a failure to take seriously the role of "religion" in the geopolitical relations of medieval Latin Christendom.

This book seeks to address these shortcomings by providing a theoretically guided and historically sensitive account of the geopolitical relations of medieval Latin Christendom. It does this by developing a theoretically informed picture of medieval geopolitics, theorizing the medieval-to-modern transition in a new and fruitful way, and suggesting ways in which a systematic analysis of medieval geopolitical relations can actually help to illuminate a range of contemporary geopolitical phenomena. Finally, it develops an historically sensitive conceptual framework for understanding geopolitical conflict and war more generally.

This book makes use of extensive primary source material such as chronicles, legal records, and medical treatises as well as appropriate secondary works drawn from historical and scientific scholarship, providing students with a comprehensive overview of disease in England. It examines how infectious diseases such as plague, syphilis, or the English Sweat and everyday medical issues, such as dysentery, affected people and how/why they spread. Enabling students to see the link between disease and society. This book examines how people tried to cope with disease in a variety of ways, such as improvements in hygiene and provides comparisons with present issues. Allowing students to see the differences and similarities with the social reaction to and ways people dealt with disease in the past and now.

Edition, with full explanatory material, of the documents concerning the building of All Souls, Oxford: a vital source for our knowledge of the period. The accounts covering the construction of All Souls, Oxford, in the five years from its foundation in 1438 are among the most important documentary sources for English medieval building history, and provide an almost unique recordof the physical creation of an Oxford college. They are here published in full for the first time, with commentary and analysis by the late Simon Walker. Supplementary material includes plans and documentation of the site, a description of the buildings, and an inventory of the college rooms in the sixteenth century. Simon Walker was Professor of History, University of Sheffield; Julian Munby is head of Buildings Archaeology at Oxford Archaeology.

1215 - the penultimate year of the reign of a king with the worst reputation of any in our history - saw England engulfed by crisis. Weakened by the loss of Normandy, King John faced insurrection by his disgruntled barons. With the assistance of the Archbishop of Canterbury, they drew up a list of their demands. In June, in a quiet Thames-side water-meadow, John attached his regal seal - under oath - to a charter that set limits on regal power. In return, the barons renewed their vows of fealty. Groundbreaking though 'Magna Carta' was, it had scant immediate impact as England descended into civil war that would still be raging when John died the following year. Dan Jones's vivid account of the vicissitudes of feudal power politics and the workings of 13th-century government is interwoven with a exploration of the lives of ordinary people: how and where they worked, what they wore, what they ate, and what role the Church played in their lives.

What did medieval authors know about their world? Were they parochial and focused on just their monastery, town, or kingdom? Or were they aware of the broader medieval Europe that modern historians write about? This collection brings the focus back to medieval authors to see how they described their world. While we see that each author certainly had their own biases, the vast majority of them did not view the world as constrained to their small piece of it. Instead, they talked about the wider world, and often they had informants or textual sources that informed them about the world, even if they did not visit it themselves. This volume shows that they also used similar ideas to create space and identity - whether talking about the desert, the holy land, or food practices in their texts. By examining medieval authors and their own perceptions of their world, this collection offers a framework for discussions of medieval Europe in the twenty-first century.

In many respects this book, first published in 1961, marked a somewhat radical departure from contemporary historical writings. It is neither a constitutional nor a political history, but a historical definition and explanation of the main features which characterised the three kinds of government which can be discerned in the Middle Ages ? government by the Pope, the King, the People. The author's enviable knowledge of the sources ? clerical, secular, legal, constitutional, liturgical, literary ? as well as of modern literature enables him to demonstrate the principles upon which the papal government, the royal government, and the government of the people rested. He shows how the traditional theocratic forms of government came to be supplanted by forms of government based on the will of the people. Although concerned with the Middle Ages, the book also contains much that is of topical interest to the discerning student of modern institutions. Medieval history is made understandable to modern man by modern methods.

"Conceptually well organized, stylistically clear, intellectually thoughtful, and pedagogically useful."

- Thomas Head, Speculum

"For its humane and learned approach to its enormous canvas, as well as for the cogency with which it penetrates at speed to the essentials of a vanished historical epoch, this History of the Church in the Middle Ages deserves a very wide audience indeed."

- Barrie Dobson, English Historical Review

"To have written a scholarly and very readable history of the Western Church over a millennium is a remarkable tour de force, for which Donald Logan is to be warmly congratulated."

- C.H Lawrence, The Tablet

"A feat of historical synthesis, most confident in its telling of the coming of Christianity. Books like Logan's are needed more than ever before."

- Miri Rubin, TLS

In this fascinating survey, F. Donald Logan introduces the reader to the Christian church, from the conversion of the Celtic and Germanic peoples to the discovery of the New World. He reveals how the church unified the people of Western Europe as they worshipped with the same ceremonies and used Latin as the language of civilized communication. From remote, rural parish to magnificent urban cathedral, A History of the Church in the Middle Ages explores the role of the church as a central element in determining a thousand years of history.

This new edition brings the book right up to date with recent scholarship, and includes an expanded introduction exploring the interaction of other faiths - particularly Judaism and Islam - with the Christian church.

This volume examines the Melkite church from the Arab invasion of Syria in 634 until 969. The Melkite Patriarchates were established in Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria and, following the Arab campaigns in Syria and Egypt, they all came under the new Muslim state. Over the next decades the Melkite church underwent a process of gradual marginalization, moving from the privileged position of the state confession to becoming one of the religious minorities of the Caliphate. This transition took place in the context of theological and political interactions with the Byzantine Empire, the Patriarchate of Constantinople, the Papacy and, over time, with the reborn Roman Empire in the West. Exploring the various processes within the Melkite church this volume also examines Caliphate-Byzantine interactions, the cultural and religious influences of Constantinople, the synthesis of Greek, Arab and Syriac elements, the process of Arabization of communities, and Melkite relations with distant Rome.

The manuscript Seville, Biblioteca Colombina y Capitular 5-2-25, a composite of dozens of theoretical treatises, is one of the primary witnesses to late medieval music theory. Its numerous copies of significant texts have been the focus of substantial scholarly attention to date, but the shorter, unattributed, or fragmentary works have not yet received the same scrutiny. In this monograph, Cook demonstrates that a small group of such works, linked to the otherwise unknown Magister Johannes Pipudi, is in fact much more noteworthy than previous scholarship has observed. The not one but two copies of De arte cantus are in fact one of the earliest known sources for the Libellus cantus mensurabilis, purportedly by Jean des Murs and the most widely copied music theory treatise of its day, while Regulae contrapunctus, Nota quod novem sunt species contrapunctus, and a concluding set of notes in Catalan are early witnesses to the popular Ars contrapuncti treatises also attributed to des Murs. Disclosing newly discovered biographical information, it is revealed that Pipudi is most likely one Johannes Pipardi, familiar to Cardinal Jean de Blauzac, Vicar-General of Avignon. Cook provides the first biographical assessment for him and shows that late fourteenth-century Avignon was a plausible chronological and geographical milieu for the Seville treatises, hinting provocatively at a possible route of transmission for the Libellus from Paris to Italy. The monograph concludes with new transcriptions and the first English translations of the treatises.

Angeliki Laiou (1941-2008), one of the leading Byzantinists of her generation, broke new ground in the study of the social and economic history of the Byzantine Empire. Women, Family and Society in Byzantium, the first of three volumes to be published posthumously in the Variorum Collected Studies Series, brings together eight articles published between 1993 and 2009. Demonstrating Professor Laiou's characteristic attention to the relationship between ideology and social practice, the first five articles concern the status of women as evidenced through legal, narrative, hagiographical, and archival sources, while the final three investigate conceptions of law and justice, the vocabulary and typology of peasant rebellions, and the and the form and evolution of political agreements in Byzantine society.

The third edition of The Beast Within has been updated throughout to include current scholarship, new discussion of definitions, and fresh perspectives on critical animal theory that places animals, rather than humans, at the center of the discourse. Organized thematically, Salisbury incorporates many new sections and subsections to reveal the multifaceted history of the relationship between humans and animals: domestication, animal diseases and pandemics, dogfights, cockfights, Islamic dietary restrictions, menageries and zoos, and animals as entertainers. To show how modern concerns have been informed by medieval precedents, sections have been expanded to uncover medieval understandings of animal sexuality, animals before the law, and vegetarianism and modern 'fake meat'. The logical narrative concludes with chapters on 'Animals as Humans' and 'Humans as Animals', demonstrating that the lines between humans and animals have become increasingly blurred from the fourth to the twenty-first century. With an interdisciplinary approach that discusses humans and animals in relation to domestication, symbolism, science, law, religion, food and diet, sexuality, and entertainment, The Beast Within is an essential resource for all students of animal history, literature, and art in the Middle Ages.

Our current image of the Christian population of al-Andalus after AD711 reflects the way history has been written. The Christians almost disappeared from the historical record as the historians of the conquering Muslims concentrated on the glories of the Ummayads.This book reconsiders, through their own words, the fate of the Christians of al-Andalus. The texts discusses two chronicles in Latin on the fate of Hispania, the problematic accounts of Christian martyrs in Cordoba, a Muslim historian's account of how his Christian ancestors survived the conquest and other texts reflecting the acculturation of Christians into Islamic society.

From the mid-twelfth century onwards, the development of European hospitals was shaped by their claim to the legal status of religious institutions, with its attendant privileges and responsibilities. The questions of whom hospitals should serve and why they should do so have recurred — and been invested with moral weight — in successive centuries, though similarities between medieval and modern debates on the subject have often been overlooked. Hospitals’ legal status as religious institutions could be tendentious and therefore had to be vigorously defended in order to protect hospitals’ resources. This status could also, however, be invoked to impose limits on who could serve in and be served by hospitals. As recent scholarship demonstrates, disputes over whom hospitals should serve, and how, find parallels in other periods of history and current debates.

The carole was the principal social dance in France and England from c. 1100 to c. 1400 and was frequently mentioned in French and English medieval literature. However, it has been widely misunderstood by contributors in recent citations in dictionaries and reference books, both linguistic and musical. The carole was performed by all classes of society - kings and nobles, shepherds and servant girls. It is described as taking place both indoors and outdoors. Its central position in the life of the people is underlined by references not only in what we might call fictional texts, but also in historical (or quasi-historical) writings, in moral treatises and even in a work on astronomy. Dr Robert Mullally's focus is very much on details relevant to the history, choreography and performance of the dance as revealed in the primary sources. This methodology involves attempting to isolate the term carole from other dance terms not only in French, but also in other languages. Mullally's groundbreaking study establishes all the characteristics of this dance: etymological, choreographical, lyrical, musical and iconographical.

First published in 1924, Max Beer's work comprises the history of social thought from the fourth to the fourteenth century. He considers in detail the heretical social movement and the story is brought up to the period of the peasants' wars and the social struggles in the towns, which form the prelude to modern times. The work also deals with the period from the latter half of the fourteenth century to the outbreak of the French Revoluion.

Intellectually and visually stimulating, this important landmark book looks at the religious, political, social and artistic significance of the Imperial tombs of the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD). It traces the evolutionary development of the most elaborately beautiful imperial tombs to examine fundamental issues on death and the afterlife in one of the world's most sophisticated civilizations. Selected tombs are presented in terms of their structure, artistic programs and their purposes. The author sets the tombs in the context of Chinese attitudes towards the afterlife, the politics of mausoleum architecture, and the artistic vocabulary which was becoming the mainstream of Chinese civilization.

A comprehensive study into the history of Hagia Sophia with particular focus on the current and last century, providing a solid groundwork for researchers and students alike / By studying a variety of perspectives, this book is able to provide a detailed overview of the historical, political, religious, cultural, and social debates surrounding Hagia Sofia / Flashpoint Hagia Sophia discusses the current perspectives surrounding the site and their origins going back to its construction, which will appeal to those working in Archaeology, History, Politics, and International Relations

Byzantine Empresses provides a series of biographical portraits of the most significant Byzantine women who ruled or shared the throne between 527 and 1204. It presents and analyses the available historical data in order to outline what these empresses did, what the sources thought they did, and what they wanted to do.

From satyrs and sea creatures to griffins and dragons, monsters lay at the heart of the medieval world. Believed to dwell in exotic, remote areas, these inexplicable parts of God's creation aroused fear, curiosity and wonder in equal measure. Powerfully captured in the illustrations of manuscripts, such as bestiaries, travel books and devotional works, they continue to delight audiences today with their vitality and humour. Medieval Monsters shows how strange creatures sparked artists' imaginations to remarkable heights. Half-human hybrids of land and sea mingle with bewitching demons, blemmyae, cyclops and multi-headed beasts of nightmare and comic grotesques. Over 100 wondrous and terrifying images offer a fascinating insight into the medieval mind.

Volume I: 'Translated and Edited with a Preliminary Essay on the Intercourse between China and the Western Nations previous to the Discovery of the Cape Route'. Containing the travels of Friar Odoric of Pordenone, 1316-30, and letters and reports from missionary friars from Cathay and India, 1292-1338, in English translation. With a list of 'illustrations from drawings by the author'. The supplementary material includes the 1866 annual report. Volume II: Contains contemporary notices of Cathay under the Mongols, from Rashiduddin; Pegolotti's notices of the land route to Cathay and of Asiatic trade in the fourteenth century; Marignolli's recollections of eastern travel; Ibn Battuta's travels in Bengal and China; the journey of Benedict Goes from Agra to Cathay; all in English translation, with Latin and Italian texts of Odoric's narrative. For a revised version of the whole work, see Second Series 33, 37, 38, 41. This is a new print-on-demand hardback edition of the volumes first published in 1866.

In his Birkbeck Lectures, first published in 1969, Professor Ullmann throws new light on a familiar subject. He shows that the Carolingian renaissance had a wider and deeper meaning than has often been thought, especially in its political and ideological aspects. Displaying his mastery of both primary and secondary sources, Professor Ullmann presents an integrated history. He shows an epoch which holds a key to the better understanding not only of the subsequent medieval centuries, but also of modern Europe. This book opened new vistas in political, ideological and social history as well as in historical theology and jurisprudence and showed how relevant knowledge of the past is for the understanding of the present.