In the medieval world, geographical knowledge was influenced by religious ideas and beliefs. Whereas this point is well analysed for the Latin-Christian world, the religious character of the Arabic-Islamic geographic tradition has not yet been scrutinised in detail. This volume addresses this desideratum and combines case studies from both traditions of geographic thinking. The contributions comprise in-depth analyses of individual geographical works as for example those of al-Idrisi or Lambert of Saint-Omer, different forms of presenting geographical knowledge such as TO-diagrams or globes as well as performative aspects of studying and meditating geographical knowledge. Focussing on texts as well as on maps, the contributions open up a comparative perspective on how religious knowledge influenced the way the world and its geography were perceived and described int the medieval world.

Released for the first time in the English language, and marking the centennial of Albania's independence, Serbs and Albanians delivers an at once refreshing and comprehensive insight into the cultural composition of Southeast Europe. A wider audience can now appreciate the work of Milan ufflay, a controversial figure of his time whose assassination was denounced by leading intellectuals, Albert Einstein and Heinrich Mann. With a measured and often poetic voice, ufflay takes us on a journey through the Middle Ages as it unfolded on a land where opposing cultures were distilled and interwoven, dynasts and whole cities upturned and reborn.

This book deals with the remarkable life of a powerful and fiery woman at the heart of the turbulent Barons' Wars. As sister of Henry III and aunt of the future Edward I, Eleanor de Montfort was at the heart of the bloody conflict between the Crown and the English barons. At Lewes in 1264 Simon de Montfort captured the king and secured control of royal government. A woman of fiery nature, Eleanor worked tirelessly in supporting her husband's cause. She assumed responsibility for the care of the royal prisoners and she regularly dispatched luxurious gifts to Henry III and the Lord Edward. But the family's political fortunes were shattered at the battle of Evesham in August 1265 where Simon de Montfort was killed. The newly-widowed Eleanor rose to her role as matriarch of her family, sending her surviving sons - and the family treasure - overseas to France, negotiating the surrender of Dover Castle and securing her own safe departure from the realm. The last ten years of her life were spent in the Dominican convent at Montargis. Drawing on chronicles, letters and public records this book reconstructs the narrative of Eleanor's remarkable life.

Church rituals were a familiar feature of life throughout much of the Anglo-Saxon period. In this innovative study, Helen Gittos examines ceremonies for the consecration of churches and cemeteries, processional feasts like Candlemas, Palm Sunday, and Rogationtide, as well as personal rituals such as baptisms and funerals. Drawing on little-known surviving liturgical sources as well as other written evidence, archaeology, and architecture, she considers the architectural context in which such rites were performed. The research in this book has implications for a wide range of topics, such as: how liturgy was written and disseminated in the early Middle Ages, when Christian cemeteries first began to be consecrated, how the form of Anglo-Saxon monasteries changed over time and how they were used, the centrality and nature of processions in early medieval religious life, the evidence church buildings reveal about changes in how they functioned, beliefs about relics, and the attitudes of different archbishops to the liturgy. Liturgy, Architecture, and Sacred Places in Anglo-Saxon England will be of particular interest to architectural specialists wanting to know more about liturgy, and church historians keen to learn more about architecture, as well as those with a more general interest in the early Middle Ages and in church buildings.

How does power manifest itself in individuals? Why do people obey authority? And how does a family, if they are the source of such dominance, convey their superiority and maintain their command in a pre-modern world lacking speedy communications, standing armies and formalised political jurisdiction? Here, Stuart Airlie expertly uses this idea of authority as a lens through which to explore one of the most famous dynasties in medieval Europe: the Carolingians. Ruling the Frankish realm from 751 to 888, the family of Charlemagne had to be ruthless in asserting their status and adept at creating a discourse of Carolingian legitimacy in order to sustain their supremacy. Through its nuanced analysis of authority, politics and family, Making and Unmaking the Carolingians, 751-888 outlines the system which placed the Carolingian dynasty at the centre of the Frankish world. In doing so, Airlie sheds important new light on both the rise and fall of the Carolingian empire and the nature of power in medieval Europe more generally.

The Medieval Life of Language: Grammar and Pragmatics from Bacon to Kempe explores the complex history of medieval pragmatic theory and ideas and metapragmatic awareness across social discourses. Pragmatic thinking about language and communication is revealed in grammar, semiotics, philosophy, and literature. Part historical reconstruction, part social history, part language theory, Amsler supplements the usual materials for the history of medieval linguistics and discusses the pragmatic implications of grammatical treatises on the interjection, Bacon's sign theory, logic texts, Chaucer's poetry, inquisitors' accounts of heretic speech, and life-writing by William Thorpe and Margery Kempe. Medieval and contemporary pragmatic theory are contrasted in terms of their philosophical and linguistic orientations. Aspects of medieval pragmatic theory and practice, especially polysemy, equivocation, affective speech, and recontextualization, show how pragmatic discourse informed social controversies and attitudes toward sincere, vague, and heretical speech. Relying on Bakhtinian dialogism, critical discourse analysis, and conversation analysis, Amsler situates a key period in the history of linguistics within broader social and discursive fields of practice.

Based on the latest scholarship by experts in the field, this work provides an accessible guide to the Crusades fought for the liberation and defense of the Holy Land-one of the most enduring and consequential conflicts of the medieval world. The Crusades to the Holy Land were one of the most important religious and social movements to emerge over the course of the Middle Ages. The warfare of the Crusades affected nearly all of Western Europe and involved members of social groups from kings and knights down to serfs and paupers. The memory of this epic long-ago conflict affects relations between the Western and Islamic worlds in the present day. The Crusades to the Holy Land: The Essential Reference Guide provides almost 90 A-Z entries that detail the history of the Crusades launched from Western Europe for the liberation or defense of the Holy Land, covering the inception of the movement by Pope Urban II in 1095 up to the early 14th century. This concise single-volume work provides accessible articles and perspective essays on the main Crusade expeditions as well as the important crusaders, countries, places, and institutions involved. Each entry is accompanied by references for further reading. Readers will follow the career of Saladin from humble beginnings to becoming ruler of Syria and Egypt and reconquering almost all of the Holy Land from its Christian rulers; learn about the main sites and characteristics of the castles that were crucial to the Christian domination of the Holy Land; and understand the key aspects of crusading, from motivation and recruitment to practicalities of finance and transport. The reference guide also includes survey articles that provide readers with an overview of the original source materials written in Latin, Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Armenian, and Syriac. Presents concise, accessible articles written by more than 40 leading experts in the field that explain key concepts and describe important institutions of the Crusades Covers all main Crusades as well as the distinct countries and various personalities involved Includes maps that make clear the course of Crusades and main areas of campaigning in the Eastern Mediterranean region Documents the Christian principalities established in the course of the Crusades and the Muslim states that opposed them

A narrative of decline punctuated by periods of renewal has long structured perceptions of Rome's late antique and medieval history. In their probing contributions to this volume, a multi-disciplinary group of scholars provides alternative approaches to understanding the period. Addressing developments in governance, ceremony, literature, art, music, clerical education and the construction of the city's identity, the essays examine how a variety of actors, from poets to popes, productively addressed the intermittent crises and shifting dynamics of these centuries in ways that bolstered the city's resilience. Without denying that the past (both pre-Christian and Christian) consistently remained a powerful touchstone, the studies in this volume offer rich new insights into the myriad ways that Romans, between the fifth and the eleventh centuries, creatively assimilated the past as they shaped their future.

The Crusades: A History is the definitive account of a key topic in medieval and religious history. Jonathan Riley-Smith, a world authority on the subject, explores the organisation of a crusade, the experience of crusading and the crusaders themselves, producing a textbook that is as accessible as it is comprehensive. This exciting new third edition includes: - Substantial new material on crusade theory, historiography and translated texts - An expanded scope that extends the text to cover the decline of crusading in the nineteenth century - Valuable pedagogical features, such as a revised bibliography, maps, illustrations and a brand new chronology This book is essential reading for all students and scholars seeking to understand the Crusades and their significance in world history.

In Force of Words, Haraldur Hreinsson examines the social and political significance of the Christian religion as the Roman Church was taking hold in medieval Iceland in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries. By way of diverse sources, primarily hagiography and sermons but also material sources, the author shows how Christian religious ideas came into play in the often tumultuous political landscape of the time. The study illuminates how the Church, which was gathering strength across entire Europe, established itself through the dissemination of religious vernacular discourse at the northernmost borders of its dominion.

A deeply considered new biography of the visionary Dominican by a leading Renaissance scholar Girolamo Savonarola, the fifteenth-century doom-saying friar, embraced the revolution of the Florentine republic and prophesied that it would become the center of a New Age of Christian renewal and world domination. This new biography, the culmination of many decades of study, presents an original interpretation of Savonarola's prophetic career and a highly nuanced assessment of his vision and motivations. Weinstein sorts out the multiple strands that connect Savonarola to his time and place, following him from his youthful rejection of a world he regarded as corrupt, to his engagement with that world to save it from itself, to his shattering confession-an admission that he had invented his prophesies and faked his visions. Was his confession sincere? A forgery circulated by his inquisitors? Or an attempt to escape bone-breaking torture? Weinstein offers a highly innovative analysis of the testimony to provide the first truly satisfying account of Savonarola and his fate as a failed prophet.

This collection of essays offers a comprehensive study of the impact of cultural life and intellectual thought on society in Medieval India. Doubtless, if the impact of interaction between the followers of Hindu and Islamic traditions of culture under the Arab and Ghaznavid rulers remained confined, to Sind and the Panjab from the eighth to the twelfth centuries AD, the Ghurian conquest of north India led to far-reaching socio-political changes in the subcontinent. The scientific instruments and devices that found their way with the emigrants from the neighbouring countries after the foundation of the sultanate in the beginning of the thirteenth century became the accompaniments of civilised life and generated new components of elite culture. The essays in this volume shift the focus from the pre-occupation with battles and court politics that dominate the studies of the period and help us understand the complex social phenomena. The essays arranged are first concerned with intellectual life and thought and then come those that deal with literary works containing historical information of supplementary and corroborative importance. The works analysed not only cast light on currents and cross currents resulting from the role played by the elite but also open new vistas for further investigation. The discovery of new sources is of methodological significance as they provide insights into certain aspects not much known. The contributors are scholars of eminence and belong to India, England, USA and Australia.

A Cultural History of The Human Body presents an authoritative survey from ancient times to the present. This set of six volumes covers 2800 years of the human body as a physical, social, spiritual and cultural object. Volume 1: A Cultural History of the Human Body in Antiquity (1300 BCE - 500 CE) Edited by Daniel Garrison, Northwestern University. Volume 2: A Cultural History of the Human Body in The Medieval Age (500 - 1500) Edited by Linda Kalof, Michigan State University Volume 3: A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Renaissance (1400 - 1650) Edited by Linda Kalof, Michigan State University and William Bynum, University College London. Volume 4: A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Enlightenment (1600 - 1800) Edited by Carole Reeves, Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine, University College London. Volume 5: A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Age of Empire (1800 - 1920) Edited by Michael Sappol, National Library of Medicine in Washington, DC, and Stephen P. Rice, Ramapo College of New Jersey. Volume 6: A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Modern Age (1900-21st Century) Edited by Ivan Crozier, University of Edinburgh, and Chiara Beccalossi, University of Queensland. Each volume discusses the same themes in its chapters: 1. Birth and Death 2. Health and Disease 3. Sex and Sexuality 4. Medical Knowledge and Technology 5. Popular Beliefs 6. Beauty and Concepts of the Ideal 7. Marked Bodies I: Gender, Race, Class, Age, Disability and Disease 8. Marked Bodies II: the Bestial, the Divine and the Natural 9. Cultural Representations of the Body 10. The Self and Society This means readers can either have a broad overview of a period by reading a volume or follow a theme through history by reading the relevant chapter in each volume. Superbly illustrated, the full six volume set combines to present the most authoritative and comprehensive survey available on the human body through history.

In the ninth century, Vikings carried out raids on the Christian north and Muslim south of the Iberian peninsula (modern Spain and Portugal), going on to attack North Africa, southern Francia and Italy and perhaps sailing as far as Byzantium. A century later, Vikings killed a bishop of Santiago de Compostela and harried the coasts of al-Andalus. Most of the raids after this date were small in scale, but several heroes of the Old Norse sagas were said to have raided in the peninsula. These Vikings have been only a footnote to the history of the Viking Age. Many stories about their activities survive only in elaborate versions written centuries after the event, and in Arabic. This book reconsiders the Arabic material as part of a dossier that also includes Latin chronicles and charters as well as archaeological and place-name evidence. Arabic authors and their Latin contemporaries remembered Vikings in Iberia in surprisingly similar ways. How they did so sheds light on contemporary responses to Vikings throughout the medieval world.

Based on a collaboration between historians of Chinese and European politics, Political Communication in Chinese and European History, 800-1600 offers a first comprehensive overview of current research on political communication in middle-period European and Chinese history. The chapters present new work on the sources and processes of political communication in European and Chinese history partly through juxtaposing and combining formerly separate historiographies and partly through direct comparison. Contrary to earlier comparative work on empires and state formation, which aimed to explain similarities and differences with encompassing models and new theories of divergence, the goal is to further conversations between historians by engaging regional historiographies from the bottom up.

Little is known about the Christianization of east-central and eastern Europe, due to the fragmentary nature of the historical record. Yet occasionally, unexpected archaeological discoveries can offer fresh angles and new insights. This volume presents such an example: the discovery of a Byzantine-like church in Alba Iulia, Transylvania, dating from the 10th century - a unique find in terms of both age and function. Next to its ruins, another church was built at the end of the 11th century, following a Roman Catholic architectural model, soon to become the seat of the Latin bishopric of Transylvania. Who built the older, Byzantine-style church, and what was the political, religious and cultural context of the church? How does this new discovery affect our perception of the ecclesiastical history of Transylvania? A new reading of the archaeological and historical record prompted by these questions is presented here, thereby opening up new challenges for further research. Contributors are: Daniela Marcu Istrate, Florin Curta, Horia I. Ciugudean, Aurel Dragota, Monica-Elena Popescu, Calin Cosma, Tudor Salagean, Jan Nicolae, Dan Ioan Muresan, Alexandru Madgearu, Gabor Thoroczkay, Eva Toth-Revesz, Boris Stojkovski, Serban Turcus, Adinel C. Dinca, Mihai Kovacs, Nicolae Calin Chifar, Marius Mihail Pasculescu, and Ana Dumitran.

The notions of other peoples, cultures, and natural conditions have always been determined by the epistemology of imagination and fantasy, providing much freedom and creativity, and yet have also created much fear, anxiety, and horror. In this regard, the pre-modern world demonstrates striking parallels with our own insofar as the projections of alterity might be different by degrees, but they are fundamentally the same by content. Dreams, illusions, projections, concepts, hopes, utopias/dystopias, desires, and emotional attachments are as specific and impactful as the physical environment. This volume thus sheds important light on the various lenses used by people in the Middle Ages and the early modern age as to how they came to terms with their perceptions, images, and notions. Previous scholarship focused heavily on the history of mentality and history of emotions, whereas here the history of pre-modern imagination, and fantasy assumes center position. Imaginary things are taken seriously because medieval and early modern writers and artists clearly reveal their great significance in their works and their daily lives. This approach facilitates a new deep-structure analysis of pre-modern culture.