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Books > History > World history > 500 to 1500
In Tales of the Iron Bloomery Bernt Rundberget examines the
ironmaking in southern Hedmark in Norway in the period AD 700-1300.
Excavations show that this method is distinctive and geographically
limited; this is expressed by the technology, organization,
development and large-scale production. The ironmaking practice had
its origins in increasing demands for iron, due to growth in
urbanization, church power, kingship and mercantile networks.
Rundberget's main hypothesis is that iron became the economic basis
for political developments, from chiefdom to kingdom. Iron
extraction activity grew from the late Viking Age, throughout the
early medieval period, before it came to a sudden collapse around
AD 1300. This trend correlates with the rise and fall of the
kingdom.
The making, eating, and sharing of food throughout society
represents an important and exciting area of study with the
potential to advance the field of scholarship, particularly in the
context of Scandinavian Studies. This book analyses the historical,
legal, and literary sources of the region during the medieval
period to explore different aspects of Scandinavian culture
relating to food and drink: production, consumption (including
feasts), trading (distribution), and the associated social rituals.
Using new and innovative approaches, this collection of studies
offers broad insights into a great variety of social practices and
includes fresh information on not only social history but also
traditional topics such as trade, commercial exchange, legal
regulation, and political organisation. The book unites
contributors from a variety of backgrounds, further enriching the
content of a collection that promises to make a significant
contribution to the state of current research.
This book surveys current archaeological and historical thinking
about the dimly understood characteristics of daily life in Great
Britain during the fifth and sixth centuries. Arthurian legends are
immensely popular and well known despite the lack of reliable
documentation about this time period in Britain. As a result,
historians depend upon archaeologists to accurately describe life
during these two centuries of turmoil when Britons suffered
displacement by Germanic immigrants. Daily Life in Arthurian
Britain examines cultural change in Britain through the fifth and
sixth centuries-anachronistically known as The Dark Ages-with a
focus on the fate of Romano-British culture, demographic change in
the northern and western border lands, and the impact of the
Germanic immigrants later known as the Anglo-Saxons. The book
coalesces many threads of current knowledge and opinion from
leading historians and archaeologists, describing household
composition, rural and urban organization, food production,
architecture, fashion, trades and occupations, social classes,
education, political organization, warfare, and religion in
Arthurian times. The few available documentary sources are analyzed
for the cultural and historical value of their information.
Presents maps and illustrations of Britain during the relevant time
periods Includes a bibliography of major print and quality internet
resources accessible to the public Provides an index of key
concepts, sites, historic persons, events, and materials Contains
an appendix on the nature of archaeological evidence
In On Both Sides of the Strait of Gibraltar Julio Samso studies the
history of medieval astronomy in al-Andalus (Muslim Spain), the
Maghrib and the Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula. He
proves that the Arabic, Latin, Hebrew, Castilian and Catalan
sources belong to the same tradition whose origin can be dated in
the 11th century due to the changes in Ptolemy's astronomical
theory introduced by the Toledan astronomer Ibn
al-Zarqalluh/Azarquiel. The book also analyses the role of
al-Andalus and the Iberian Peninsula in the transmission of Islamic
astronomy to Europe and justifies the fact that Eastern Islamic
works published after ca. 950 CE were not accessible to medieval
European scholars because they had not reached al-Andalus.
In The Crown, the Court and the Casa da India, Susannah Humble
Ferreira examines the social and political context that gave rise
to the Portuguese Overseas Empire during the reigns of Joao II
(1481-95) and Manuel I (1495-1521). In particular the book
elucidates the role of the Portuguese royal household in the
political consolidation of Portugal in this period. By looking at
the relationship of the Manueline Reforms, the expulsion of the
Jews and the creation of the Santa Casa da Misericordia to the
political threat brought on by the expansion of Ferdinand of Aragon
into the Mediterranean, the author re-evaluates the place of the
overseas expansion in the policies of the Portuguese crown.
What did the ten commandments have to teach? Using the commentaries
of a group of scholars from c. 1150-1350, such as Peter Lombard,
Robert Grosseteste, and Bonaventure, along with confessors'
manuals, mystery plays and sermon material, this book investigates
the place of the Decalogue in medieval thought. Beginning with the
overarching themes of law and number, it moves to consider what
sort of God is revealed in the commandments of the first stone
tablet, and uncovers the structure that lay behind the precepts
dealing with one's neighbour. Interpreting the commandments allows
us to look at issues of method and individuality in the medieval
schools, and ask whether answers intended for the classroom could
make an impression on the wider world.
Burghersh revealed as conscientious diocesan; new light on his
involvement in invasion of Isabella and Mortimer in 1326. Henry
Burghersh, bishop of Lincoln from 1320 until 1340, has not been
treated kindly by historians. The largely hostile view expressed by
early fourteenth-century chroniclers gives us a portrait of a man
promoted to the office ofbishop solely as a result of family
influence and royal intervention, but who subsequently betrayed the
monarch who had favoured him, lending support to the rebellion of
Thomas of Lancaster in 1322 and plotting with Queen Isabellato
overthrow her husband. This edition of Burghersh's episcopal
register reveals a different character. The bishop emerges as a
conscientious diocesan and an administrator of considerable
ability, while the evidence of his itinerary throws new light on
the question of his involvement in the invasion of Isabella and
Mortimer in 1326. The volume includes the first part of Burghersh's
institution register, comprising admissions of clergy to parochial
benefices, appointments of heads of religious houses, and
ordinations of vicarages and chantrys, in the archdeaconries of
Lincoln, Stow and Leicester. Dr NICHOLAS BENNETT is Vice-Chancellor
and Librarian of Lincoln Cathedral.
The twenty studies collected in this volume focus on the transition
from the Middle Ages to the modern world. The method leads from
technical investigations on William Durant the Younger (ca.
1266-1330) and Hermann Conring (1606-1681) through reflection on
the nature of historical knowledge to a break with historicism, an
affirmation of anachronism, and a broad perspective on the history
of Europe. The introduction explains when and why these studies
were written, and places them in the context of contemporary
historical thinking by drawing on Wittgenstein's Philosophical
Investigations. This book will appeal to historians with an
interest in historical theory, historians of late medieval and
early modern Europe, and students looking for the meaning of
history.
In Faces of Charisma: Image, Text, Object in Byzantium and the
Medieval West, a multi-disciplinary group of scholars advances the
theory that charisma may be a quality of art as well as of person.
Beginning with the argument that Weberian charisma of person is
itself a matter of representation, this volume shows that to study
charismatic art is to experiment with a theory of representation
that allows for the possibility of nothing less than a breakdown
between art and viewer and between art and lived experience. The
volume examines charismatic works of literature, visual art, and
architecture from England, Northern Europe, Italy, Ancient Greece,
and Constantinople and from time periods ranging from antiquity to
the beginning of the early modern period. Contributors are Joseph
Salvatore Ackley, Paul Binski, Paroma Chatterjee, Andrey Egorov,
Erik Gustafson, Duncan Hardy, Stephen Jaeger, Jacqueline E. Jung,
Lynsey McCulloch, Martino Rossi Monti, Gavin Richardson, and Andrew
Romig.
Dante's Gluttons: Food and Society from the Convivio to the Comedy
explores how the medieval Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)
uses food to express and condition the social, political, and
cultural values of his time. Combining medieval history, food
studies, and literary criticism, Dante's Gluttons historicizes food
and eating in Dante, beginning in his earliest collected poetry and
arriving at the end of his major work. For Dante, the consumption
of food is not a frivolity, but a crux of life, and gluttony is the
abdication of civic and spiritual responsibility and a danger to
both the individual body and soul, as well as the greater
collective. This book establishes how one of the world's preeminent
authors uses the intimacy and universality of food as a touchstone,
forging a community bound by a gastronomic language rooted in the
deeply human relationship with material sustenance.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which
commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out
and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and
impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes
high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using
print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in
1981.
The Companion to the Hanseatic League discusses the importance of
the Hanseatic League for the social and economic history of
pre-modern northern Europe. Established already as early as the
twelfth century, the towns that formed the Hanseatic League created
an important network of commerce throughout the Baltic and North
Sea area. From Russia in the east, to England and France in the
west, the cities of the Hanseatic League created a vast northern
maritime trade network. The aim of this volume is to present a
"state" of the field English-language volume by some of the most
respected Hanse scholars. Contributors are Mike Burkhardt, Ulf
Christian Ewert, Rolf Hammel-Kiesow, Donald J. Harreld, Carsten
Jahnke, Michael North, Jurgen Sarnowsky and Stephan Selzer.
The Historia Selebiensis Monasterii is an account of the origins of
the earliest Norman abbey to be founded in the north of England
following the Conquest of 1066, and of the history of the monastery
in its first one hundred and six years. The history was written by
a young monk of Selby in 1174, and the unique medieval manuscript
in which it survives appears to have been sent from Selby to the
French monastery of Auxerre, from where the author claimed the
founder-monk of Selby came. Weaving together historical narrative
and miracles associated with the relic held at Selby Abbey, the
middle finger of St Germanus of Auxerre, the author produced a
lively and entertaining account designed to record the history of
his monastery and promote the cult of the relic around which it had
grown up. At the same time he created a past, and a corporate
memory of that past, for his community. This volume contains a
critical edition of the Historia, with English translation, and
textual notes and historical commentary. The Introduction explores
the dynamics of the text - its purpose, composition, and use of
sources - and its significance as a source for monastic history. It
offers a reassessment of the origins of the first Norman abbey in
northern England.
Consilia played an important role in not only medieval but also
early modern professional health literature. A literary 'consilium'
consisted of a written statement of one particular case, including
the patient's condition and disease as well as advice concerning
medical treatment. In the sixteenth century, consilia literature
was a common component of the practices of many eminent physicians.
This is illustrated through an analysis of consilia from twenty-two
different collections and anthologies by fifteen selected authors,
who represent university professors, personal physicians, and urban
physicians from early modern Italy, France, and German-speaking
Central Europe. A closer look at nearly 7,000 consilia shows how
important a link they were within the medical community. A detailed
view of consilia intended for patients suffering from the 'French
disease' reveals details about, for instance, the most common
treatments for syphilis - mercury and guaiacum - alongside many
other interesting and important details.
This volume explores a core medieval myth, the tale of an Arthurian
knight called Wigalois, and the ways it connects the
Yiddish-speaking Jews and the German-speaking non-Jews of the Holy
Roman Empire. The German Wigalois / Viduvilt adaptations grow from
a multistage process: a German text adapted into Yiddish adapted
into German, creating adaptations actively shaped by a minority
culture within a majority culture. The Knight without Boundaries
examines five key moments in the Wigalois / Viduvilt tradition that
highlight transitions between narratological and
meta-narratological patterns and audiences of different
religious-cultural or lingual background.
In Liturgy, Books and Franciscan Identity in Medieval Umbria, Anna
Welch explores how Franciscan friars engaged with manuscript
production networks operating in Umbria in the late thirteenth and
early fourteenth centuries to produce the missals essential to
their liturgical lives. A micro-history of Franciscan liturgical
activity, this study reassesses methodologies pertinent to
manuscript studies and reflects on both the construction of
communal identity through ritual activity and historiographic
trends regarding this process. Welch focuses on manuscripts
decorated by the ateliers of the Maestro di Deruta-Salerno (active
c. 1280) and Maestro Venturella di Pietro (active c. 1317), in
particular the Codex Sancti Paschalis, a missal now owned by the
Australian Province of the Order of Friars Minor.
The Cosmographia is one of the most inventive and enigmatic works
of medieval literature. Mark Kauntze argues that this allegory of
creation is best understood as a product of the vibrant
intellectual culture of twelfth-century France. Bernard Silvestris
established the authority of his treatise by imitating those
ancient philosophers and poets who were assiduously studied in the
contemporary schools. But he also revised and updated them, to
develop a compelling intervention into twelfth-century debates
about man's place in nature and the relationship between theology
and natural science. Using a wealth of manuscript evidence, Kauntze
reconstructs the school context in which Bernard worked, and shows
how the Cosmographia itself became an object of scholarly
annotation and imitation in the later Middle Ages.
A Companion to Seals in the Middle Ages is a cross-disciplinary
collection of fourteen essays on medieval sigillography. It is
organized thematically, and it emphasizes important, often
cutting-edge, methodologies for the study of medieval seals and
sealing cultures. As the chronological, temporal and geographic
scope of the essays in the volume suggests, the study of the
medieval seal-its manufacture, materiality, usage, iconography,
inscription, and preservation-is a rich endeavour that demands
collaboration across disciplines as well as between scholars
working on material from different regions and periods. It is hoped
that this collection will make the study of medieval seals more
accessible and will stimulate students and scholars to employ and
further develop these material and methodological approaches to
seals. Contributors are Adrian Ailes, Elka Cwiertnia, Paul
Dryburgh, Emir O. Filipovi, Oliver Harris, Philippa Hoskin, Ashley
Jones, Andreas Lehnertz, John McEwan, Elizabeth A. New, Jonathan
Shea, Caroline Simonet, Angelina A. Volkoff, and Marek L. Wojcik.
This landmark volume combines classic and revisionist essays to
explore the historiography of Sardinia's exceptional transition
from an island of the Byzantine empire to the rise of its own
autonomous rulers, the iudikes, by the 1000s. In addition to
Sardinia's contacts with the Byzantines, Muslim North Africa and
Spain, Lombard Italy, Genoa, Pisa, and the papacy, recent and older
evidence is analysed through Latin, Greek and Arabic sources,
vernacular charters and cartularies, the testimony of coinage,
seals, onomastics and epigraphy as well as the Sardinia's early
medieval churches, arts, architecture and archaeology. The result
is an important new critique of state formation at the margins of
Byzantium, Islam, and the Latin West with the creation of lasting
cultural, political and linguistic frontiers in the western
Mediterranean. Contributors are Hervin Fernandez-Aceves, Luciano
Gallinari, Rossana Martorelli, Attilio Mastino, Alex Metcalfe,
Marco Muresu, Michele Orru, Andrea Pala, Giulio Paulis, Giovanni
Strinna, Alberto Virdis, Maurizio Virdis, and Corrado Zedda.
In A Raven's Battle-cry Charlene M. Eska presents a critical
edition and translation of the previously unpublished medieval
Irish legal tract Anfuigell. Although the Old Irish text itself is
fragmentary, the copious accompanying commentaries provide a wealth
of legal, historical, and linguistic information not found
elsewhere in the medieval Irish legal corpus. Anfuigell contains a
wide range of topics relating to the role of the judge in deciding
difficult cases, including kingship, raiding, poets, shipwreck,
marriage, fosterage, divorce, and contracts relating to land and
livestock.
Prince, Pen, and Sword offers a synoptic interpretation of rulers
and elites in Eurasia from the fourteenth to the eighteenth
century. Four core chapters zoom in on the tensions and connections
at court, on the nexus between rulers and religious authority, on
the status, function, and self-perceptions of military and
administrative elites respectively. Two additional concise chapters
provide a focused analysis of the construction of specific
dynasties (the Golden Horde and the Habsburgs) and narratives of
kingship found in fiction throughout Eurasia. The contributors and
editors, authorities in their fields, systematically bring together
specialised literature on numerous Eurasian kingdoms and empires.
This book is a careful and thought-provoking experiment in the
global, comparative and connected history of rulers and elites.
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