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. Volume 2 examines the reign of Edward the Confessor (1042 1066), which Freeman identifies as the first stage in the Anglo-Norman political struggle. Encompassing an analysis of military events and political characters, this volume also provides a thorough account of William the Conqueror's early years in Normandy.

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. Volume 3 focuses almost exclusively on the tumultuous events of 1066. Freeman analyses Harold's reign, the interregnum, and the later reign of William in Normandy. Additionally, he provides a thorough account of military events in Normandy and England, and detailed descriptions of battles.

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. Volume 4, dedicated to the reign of William (1066 1087), describes his rule, examining it in micro-periods in terms of the political and religious aspects of the conquest of England. William's relationships with his foreign and domestic neighbours are analysed and the realm's stability during this time is assessed.

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. Volume 5 considers the effects of the Conquest, examining the reigns of William Rufus, Henry I, and Stephen in the light of those effects, rather than providing a narrative history of these reigns. Language and architecture also come under analysis in this volume.

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.

As the politico-economic exploits of vikings in and around the Frankish realm remain, to a considerable extent, obscured by the constraints of a fragmentary and biased corpus of (near-)contemporary evidence, this volume approaches the available interdisciplinary data on a cumulative and conceptual level, allowing overall spatiotemporal patterns of viking activity to be detected and defined - and thereby challenging the notion that these movements were capricious, haphazard, and gratuitous in character. Set against a backdrop of continuous commerce and knowledge exchange, this overarching survey demonstrates the existence of a relatively uniform, sequential framework of wealth extraction, encampment, and political engagement, within which Scandinavian fleets operated as adaptable, ambulant polities - or 'hydrarchies'. By delineating and visualising this framework, a four-phased conceptual development model of hydrarchic conduct and consequence is established, whose validity is substantiated by its application to a number of distinct regional case studies. The parameters of this abstract model affirm that Scandinavian movements across Francia were the result of prudent and expedient decision-making processes, contingent on exchanged intelligence, cumulative experience, and the ongoing individual and collective need for socioeconomic subsistence and enrichment. Monarchs and Hydrarchs will appeal to both students and specialists of the Viking Age, whilst serving as an equally valuable resource to those investigating early medieval Francia, Scandinavia, and the North Sea world as a whole.

St. Margaret of Antioch was one of the most popular saints in medieval England and, throughout the Middle Ages, the various Lives of St. Margaret functioned as a blueprint for a virginal life and supernatural assistance to pregnant women during the dangerous process of labor. In her narrative, Margaret is accosted by various demons and, having defeated each monster in turn, she is taken to the place of her martyrdom where she prays for supernatural boons for her adherents. This book argues that Margaret's monsters are a key element in understanding Margaret's importance to her adherents, specifically how the sexual identities of her adherents were constructed and maintained. More broadly, this study offers three major contributions to the field of medieval studies: first, it argues for the utility of a diachronic analysis of Saints' Lives literature in a field dominated by synchronic analyses; second, this diachronic analysis is important to interpreting the intertext of Saints' Lives, not only between different Lives but also different versions of the same Life; and third, the approach further suggests that the most valuable socio-cultural information in hagiographic literature is found in the auxiliary characters and not in the figure of the saint him/herself.

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 is the first English translation of the 'Chronicle of Prussia', which was written by Nicolaus von Jeroschin, in middle German verse, during the period from 1330 to 1341. It is a history of the Teutonic Knights, encompassing the period between the foundation of the order, in 1190, and 1331. The translator's introduction sets the work in its historical and cultural context. The text was written at the instigation of the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, to make an account of the ethos and history of the order's conquest of Prussia available 'to all German people'. Its purpose was to remind the order's knight brothers and its supporters of its origins and past achievements, but above all it was intended to establish the legitimacy of Prussia as a locus for crusades, setting the scene for the order's 'golden age' in the second half of the fourteenth century. The chronicle's content is divided into three sections: it opens with a description of the founding of the order in Acre. There follows a discourse on the nature of spiritual and earthly warfare, which echoes the ideology of crusading warfare first articulated by Bernhard of Clairvaux in his treatise De laude novae militiae. The final, longest, section recounts the wars of the Teutonic Knights against the Prussians and Lithuanians from 1230 until the narrative breaks off abruptly in 1331. The chronicle is the main historical source document for the period it covers and was widely disseminated during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It is also an engaging and lively account of warfare and colonisation on the eastern frontier of Latin Christianity.

Explores the importance of religious beliefs, objects, and practices to the development and evolution of markets and marketplaces in material, geographic, and ideological terms providing students and scholars with an accessible introduction to the latest research in the field to inform their studies. Truly global, the chapters cover Europe, South Asia, South America, Africa and the Middle East allowing students to compare the role religion played in the development of the marketplace in the pre-modern world. This is an interdisciplinary volume, bringing together scholars of literature, history, archaeology, and sociology to investigate religion and the marketplace providing students with a fuller picture of the field.

Explores the importance of religious beliefs, objects, and practices to the development and evolution of markets and marketplaces in material, geographic, and ideological terms providing students and scholars with an accessible introduction to the latest research in the field to inform their studies. Truly global, the chapters cover Europe, South Asia, South America, Africa and the Middle East allowing students to compare the role religion played in the development of the marketplace in the pre-modern world. This is an interdisciplinary volume, bringing together scholars of literature, history, archaeology, and sociology to investigate religion and the marketplace providing students with a fuller picture of the field.

The Hussite Chronicle is the most important single narrative source for the events of the early Hussite movement. The author is Laurence of Brezova (c.1370-c.1437), a member of the Czech lower nobility and a supporter of the Hussite creed. The movement arose as an initiative for religious and social reform in fifteenth-century Bohemia and was energized by the burning of the priest Jan Hus in 1415. Church and empire attempted to suppress the movement and raised five crusades against the dissenters. The chronicle offers to history and scholarship a nuanced understanding of what can be regarded as an essential component for a proper understanding of late medieval religion. It is also a considered account of aspects of the later crusades. This is the first English-language translation of the chronicle.

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 origins, development and use of the two-edged knightly sword of the European middle ages, from the great migrations to the Renaissance. Forty years of intensive research into the specialised subject of the straight two-edged knightly sword of the European middle ages are contained in this classic study. Spanning the period from the great migrations to the Renaissance, Ewart Oakeshott emphasises the original purpose of the sword as an intensely intimate accessory of great significance and mystique. There are over 400 photographs and drawings, each fully annotated and described in detail, supported by a long introductory chapter with diagrams of the typological framework first presented in The Archaeology of Weapons and further elaborated in The Sword in the Age of Chivalry. There are appendices on inlaid blade inscriptions, scientific dating, the swordsmith's art, and a sword of Edward III. Reprinted as part of Boydell's History of the Sword series.

Public religious practice lay at the heart of civic society in late medieval Europe. In this illuminating study, Andrew Brown draws on the rich and previously little-researched archives of Bruges, one of medieval Europe's wealthiest and most important towns, to explore the role of religion and ceremony in urban society. The author situates the religious practices of citizens - their investment in the liturgy, commemorative services, guilds and charity - within the contexts of Bruges' highly diversified society and of the changes and crises the town experienced. Focusing on the religious processions and festivities sponsored by the municipal government, the author challenges much current thinking on, for example, the nature of 'civic religion'. Re-evaluating the ceremonial links between Bruges and its rulers, he questions whether rulers could dominate the urban landscape by religious or ceremonial means, and offers new insight into the interplay between ritual and power of relevance throughout medieval Europe.

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.

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.

The growing importance of Central and Inner Asia and the Silk Road is much discussed at present. This book compares the nature of present day networks in these regions with the patterns of similar connections which existed at the time of the Mongol Empire in the thirteenth century and its successor states. It considers settlement patterns, technology and technology transfer, trade, political arrangements, the role of religion and the impact of the powerful states which border the region. Overall, the book demonstrates that the Mongol Empire anticipated many of the networks and connections which exist in the region at present.

Devastated by two decades of war and ravaged by the spread of the plague, large parts of Italy fell quickly into the hands of a group known to history as the Lombards. By the early 570s the Lombards were firmly established in Italy, which they ruled without ever fully unifying it. The events of the late sixth century shaped early medieval Italy. They also affected how Italian history was written: the Lombards were blamed for plunging the peninsula into the darkness of the Middle Ages, finally ending Roman civilization. But was it really a 'barbarian invasion' that created medieval Italy? What was the role of the imperial authorities and the papacy? In Warfare and the Making of Early Medieval Italy, Eduardo Fabbro brings a new take on the changes that shook Italy at the end of the sixth century. Moving past traditional narratives of barbarians and battles, the book re-evaluates the impact of war in creating early medieval Italy. Fabbro brings to the fore a complex picture that includes not only invading barbarians but also rebelling soldiers, disgruntled farmers, vexed commanders, and cunning adventurers trying to make the best of a bad situation. Through a complete reassessment of contemporary and later sources, this book rewrites the history of the first decades of Lombard rule and shows that warfare's impact went far beyond battles and invasions; it rewired the social and political links that bound the region.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.tandfebooks.com/doi/view/10.4324/9781351116022, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 licence. DOI https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351116022 Published with the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation. This volume is an investigation of how Augustine was received in the Carolingian period, and the elements of his thought which had an impact on Carolingian ideas of 'state', rulership and ethics. It focuses on Alcuin of York and Hincmar of Rheims, authors and political advisers to Charlemagne and to Charles the Bald, respectively. It examines how they used Augustinian political thought and ethics, as manifested in the De civitate Dei, to give more weight to their advice. A comparative approach sheds light on the differences between Charlemagne's reign and that of his grandson. It scrutinizes Alcuin's and Hincmar's discussions of empire, rulership and the moral conduct of political agents during which both drew on the De civitate Dei, although each came away with a different understanding. By means of a philological-historical approach, the book offers a deeper reading and treats the Latin texts as political discourses defined by content and language.

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.

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.

Scholarship often treats the post-Roman art produced in central and north-western Europe as representative of the pagan identities of the new 'Germanic' rulers of the early medieval world. In this book, Matthias Friedrich offers a critical reevaluation of the ethnic and religious categories of art that still inform our understanding of early medieval art and archaeology. He scrutinises early medieval visual culture by combining archaeological approaches with art historical methods based on contemporary theory. Friedrich examines the transformation of Roman imperial images, together with the contemporary, highly ornamented material culture that is epitomized by 'animal art.' Through a rigorous analysis of a range of objects, he demonstrates how these pathways produced an aesthetic that promoted variety (varietas), a cross-cultural concept that bridged the various ethnic and religious identities of post-Roman Europe and the Mediterranean worlds.

Highlights Jennifer O'Reilly's distinctive approach to historical sources / Gathers difficult to find work into one volume / Provides a substantial contribution to our understanding of medieval England and Ireland

The Countryside of Hospitaller Rhodes 1306-1423 explores the main themes of settlement, population and defence of the countryside of Rhodes from 1306 to 1423, approximately halfway through the period of Hospitaller rule. Based largely on the Hospital's Rhodian archive, this book is the scientific presentation of 208 documents brought together with detailed English summaries to help readers understand the documents and their technical features. While the majority of research into this subject has previously been focused on the town of Rhodes, this book concentrates instead on the late-medieval countryside, providing a new angle from which to view this complex period. Through a corpus of Hospitaller texts, it presents many aspects of the Hospitaller Order's history as well as exploring other crucial developments in the period, including both a discussion of Cristoforo Buondelmonti's description of Rhodes, and a section dedicated to the sources used within this work. The Countryside of Hospitaller Rhodes provides an ideal for academics and postgraduates of the crusades.