Volume XXI/1 of History of Universities contains the customary mix of learned articles, book reviews, conference reports, and bibliographical information, which makes this publication such an indispensable tool for the historian of higher education. Its contributions range widely geographically, chronologically, and in subject-matter. The volume is, as always, a lively combination of original research and invaluable reference material.

Volume XVI/2 of History of Universities contains the customary mix of learned articles, book reviews, conference reports, and bibliographical information, which makes this publication such an indispensable tool.

"Hybridity, Identity and Monstrosity in Medieval Britain" examines an island made turbulent by conquest and civil war. Focusing upon history writing, ethnography, and saints' lives, this book details how community was imagined in the twelfth century; what role the monsterization of the Welsh, Irish and Jews played in bringing about English unity; and how writers who found the blood of two peoples mixed in their bodies struggled to find a vocabulary to express their identity. Its chapters explores the function and origin of myths like the unity and separateness of the English, the barbarism of the Celtic Fringe, the innate desire of Jews to murder Christian children as part of their Pesach ritual. Populated by wonders like a tempest formed of blood, a Saracen pope, strange creatures suspended between the animal and the human, and corpses animated with uncanny life, "Hybridity, Identity and Monstrosity in Medieval Britain" maps how collective identities form through violent exclusions, and details the price paid by those who find themselves denied the possibility of belonging.

The last decade has witnessed a striking upsurge of interest in Iberian hagiography. In painting and the fine arts through to poetic and narrative treatments composed in Castilian and Catalan, the legacies of Christ, Mary, and the saints have been approached from a range of perspectives and subjected to detailed critical scrutiny. This book, which focuses specifically on the application of theoretical and methodological approaches to analysis, asks what scholars of early Iberian hagiography can bring to the analysis of the sacred past and how the study of the discipline can be taken forward innovatively in the future. Its fourteen essays, each focusing on a different aspect of composition, seek in particular to explore interdisciplinary methodologies and the ways in which they intersect with broader discourses in other branches of research. Contributors are Carme Arronis Llopis, Fernando Banos Vallejo, Andrew M. Beresford, Sarah Jane Boss, Sarah V. Buxton, Marinela Garcia Sempere, Ryan D. Giles, Ariel Guiance, Lluis Ramon i Ferrer, Rebeca Sanmartin Bastida, Connie L. Scarborough, and Lesley K. Twomey.

This volume consists of 19 studies by leading historians of the Mamluks. Drawing on primary Arabic sources, the studies discuss central political, military, urban, social, administrative, economic, financial and religious aspects of the Mamluk Empire that was established in 1250 by Mamluks (manumitted military slaves, mostly Turks and Circassians). It was a Sunni orthodox state that had a formidable military, a developed and sophisticated economy, a centralized Arab bureaucracy and prestigious religious and educational institutions.
There are special articles about Cairo, Damascus, Jerusalem, Safed and Acre. The last part of the volume describes the Mamluk military class that survived in Egypt (although in a transformed form) under the Ottoman suzerainty after the Empire annexed Egypt and Syria in 1517.
With contributions by Reuven Aharoni, Reuven Amitai, Frederic Bauden, Jonathan Berkey, Daniel Crecelius, Joseph Drory, Jane Hathaway, Robert Irwin, Donald Little, Nimrod Luz, Carl Petry, Thomas Philipp, Yossef Rapoport, Andri Raymond, Donald S. Richards, Warren Schultz and Hannah Taragan

These twenty-one chapters by scholars in various fields provide a fresh context for understanding Eleanor of Aquitaine's multi-faceted career and reputation. Her fame (and infamy) still fascinates us. She is a pivotal figure in the history of the twelfth century because of her lordly inheritance as well as the eminence--and political and diplomatic scope--of her marital rank as queen, first of France and then of England. Some essays in this collection reassess the often fragmentary historical information about her life, while others investigate her reputation in later literary and historical contexts.

Based on close analyses of contemporary texts, and backed by an examination of the origins of the elements transferred and of the process of transmission, the contributors to this volume focus on the perception and adaptation of knowledge and cultural elements in the West. Taking a variety of approaches, they shed light on the changing lines of communication between the Byzantine empire and other parts of the Mediterranean, on the one hand, and the Burgundian, Frankish and Anglo-Saxon realms and the Papacy on the other.

Stone statues, indigenous to the early Turks, appeared in the vast territory of the Asian steppes, from Southern Siberia to Central Asia and across the foothills of the Ural Mountains. The custom originated among Cumans in Eastern Europe. The skill of erecting anthropomorphic stelae required proficiency in processing different kinds of stone and wood, and was characterized by artistic value of representations, as well as by the timeless aesthetics of the canon. The author presents the results of her formative studies into the collection of the Cuman sculptures of the Veliko-Anadol Forest Museum, Ukraine. The book delves into the history of research on Cuman stone stelae, resulting in great reading for all archeologists and historians alike.

The twelve essays in this volume, each written by a leading specialist, present an accessible and comprehensive introduction to Italian Renaissance society, intellectual history, and politics, with each contribution reflecting the most recent innovations in the way that historians view and study the period.

This book is the first in-depth study of the production and use of Bibles in late medieval and early modern England. Over three and a half centuries, from the nascent universities and Latin Bibles of the thirteenth century to the death of Edward VI in 1553, it puts a new perspective on the advent of moveable type print and religious reform. Based on the analysis of hundreds of biblical manuscripts and prints it reveals how scribes, printers, readers, and patrons have reacted to religious and political turmoil. The material evidence undermines traditional narratives, revealing, for example, evidence of Church worship in English prior to the Reformation, or seeing Henry VIII's Great Bible as a useless book.

A detailed examination of a distinctive group of female religious communities, founded by royal families in Anglo-Saxon England, this title shows that the fortunes of the nunneries were inextricably linked with those of the royal families who were their patrons. It explores how they often had to reconcile potentially conflicting demands from the secular and ecclesiastical worlds and looks at the opportunities the nunneries provided for royal women to exercise the types of public power and authority that in the early middle ages were often the preserve of men. Within the royal family nexus, entry into the church was a gendered role performed by its women and an option that was not generally available to royal males. As a result some remarkable women were able both to run major religious houses and to intervene in contemporary family politics. All too often the roles of such women in church and state have been underplayed in conventional ecclesiastical and political histories; this title hopes to restore some of the respect that these powerful women undoubtedly enjoyed in their own lifetimes.

Imagined Communities: Constructing Collective Identities in Medieval Europe offers a series of studies focusing on the problems of conceptualisation of social group identities, including national, royal, aristocratic, regional, urban, religious, and gendered communities. The geographical focus of the case studies presented in this volume range from Wales and Scotland, to Hungary and Ruthenia, while both narrative and other types of evidence, such as legal texts, are drawn upon. What emerges is how the characteristics and aspirations of communities are exemplified and legitimised through the presentation of the past and an imagined picture of present. By means of its multiple perspectives, this volume offers significant insight into the medieval dynamics of collective mentality and group consciousness. Contributors are Daniel Bagi, Mariusz Bartnicki, Zbigniew Dalewski, Georg Jostkleigrewe, Bartosz Klusek, Pawel Kras, Wojciech Michalski, Martin Nodl, Andrzej Pleszczynski, Euryn Rhys Roberts, Stanislaw Rosik, Joanna Sobiesiak, Karol Szejgiec, Michal Tomaszek, Tomasz Tarczynski, Przemyslaw Tyszka, Tatiana Vilkul, and Przemyslaw Wiszewski.

"The Journal of Socho" is one of the most individual self-portraits in the literary history of medieval Japan. Its author, Saiokuken Socho (1448-1532)--the preeminent linked-verse ("renga") poet of his time--was an eyewitness to Japan's violent transition from the medieval to the early modern age. Written between 1522 and 1527, during the Age of the Country at War ("Sengoku jidai"), his journal provides a vivid portrayal of cultural life in the capital and in the provinces, together with descriptions of battles and great warrior families, the dangers of travel through war-torn countryside, and the plight of the poor.
The journal records four of Socho's journeys between Kyoto and Suruga Province, where he served as the poet laureate of the Imagawa house, as well as several shorter excursions and periods of rest at various hermitages. The diverse upbringing of its author--a companion of nobles and warlords, a student of the orthodox poetic neoclassicism of the "renga" master Sogi, and a devotee of the iconoclastic Zen prelate Ikkyu--afforded him rich insights into the cultural life of the period.
"The Journal of Socho" is remarkable for its breadth and freshness of observation, whether of the activities of literary men and the affairs of great courtiers and daimyo or of the daily lives of local warriors and commoners. This variety of cultural detail is matched by the journal's wealth of prose genres: travel diary, eremitic writing, historical chronicle, conversation, and correspondence. In addition, Socho has given us more than 600 verses that together illustrate most of the principal poetic genres of the time: "renga," "waka," "choka," "wakan renku," and comic or unorthodox "haikai" verses.

This book examines one of the most fundamental issues in twelfth-century English politics: justice. It demonstrates that during the foundational period for the common law, the question of judgement and judicial ethics was a topic of heated debate - a common problem with multiple different answers. How to be a judge, and how to judge well, was a concern shared by humble and high, keeping both kings and parish priests awake at night. Using theological texts, sermons, legal treatises and letter collections, the book explores how moralists attempted to provide guidance for uncertain judges. It argues that mercy was always the most difficult challenge for a judge, fitting uncomfortably within the law and of disputed value. Shining a new light on English legal history, Justice and mercy reveals the moral dilemmas created by the establishment of the common law. -- .

This biography presents a remarkable vision of Spanish society at the beginning of the 13th century by exploring the life of Berenguela of Castile (1180-1246), a queen who dominated public life for over forty years. Born at a time when the centers of Christian power were formed, Berenguela provided royal leadership in a crucial period of Iberian history. Within the context of contemporary studies of female power throughout history, Salvador Martinez brings to life Berenguela, a queen who, through her wisdom and resolve, transformed the Iberian political and cultural scene for years to come.

In Illuminating Jesus in the Middle Ages, editor Jane Beal and other scholars analyse the reception history of images and ideas about Jesus in medieval cultures (6th-15th c.). They consider representations of Jesus in the liturgy of the medieval church, Psalters and psalm commentaries, bestiaries, the Glossa ordinaria, and Middle English vitae Christi as well as among the English, the Irish, and Europeans, adherents to the cult of the Holy Name, participants in the Feast of Corpus Christi, and medieval contemplatives, including Bede, Theophylact of Ochrid, Saint Francis, Gertrude the Great, Dante, Julian of Norwich, and medieval English and European visionaries, among others. Contributors are Jane Beal, George Hardin Brown, Aaron Canty, Tomas O Cathasaigh, Thomas Cattoi, Andrew Galloway, Julia Bolton Holloway, Michael Kuczynski, Rob Lutton, Vittorio Montemaggi, Paul Patterson, Linda Stone, Lesley Sullivan Marcantonio, Larry Swain, Donna Trembinski, Nancy van Deusen, and Barbara Zimbalist.

From 1095 to the end of the thirteenth century, the crusades touched the lives of many thousands of British people, even those who were not crusaders themselves. In this introductory survey, Kathryn Hurlock compares and contrasts the crusading experiences of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Taking a thematic approach, Hurlock provides an overview of the crusading movement, and explores key aspects of the crusades, such as: - Where crusaders came from - When and why the papacy chose to recruit crusaders - The impact on domestic life, as shown through literature, religion and taxation - Political uses of the crusades - The role of the military orders in Britain This wide-ranging and accessible text is the ideal introduction to this fascinating subject in early British history.

Margaret, saint and 11th-century Queen of the Scots, remains an often-cited yet little-understood historical figure. Her world was the product of perspectives and models from Nordic, Kievan, Hungarian, Anglo-Saxon, Norman, and Scottish traditions, with all the expectations and admonitions which they pressed upon her. Likewise, her cult evolved within interconnected dynastic, political, ecclesiastical, and papal agendas. This book proposes to bridge the gap between what is known about Margaret and what has been surmised in order to provide a contextual understanding of her life and early cult. Catherine Keene's analysis of sources in terms of both time and place - including her Life of Saint Margaret, translated for the first time - allows for an informed understanding of the forces that shaped this captivating woman.

The current debate about the best methods of European organization - central or regional - is influenced by an awareness of regional identity, which offers an alternative to the rigidities of organization by nation-state. Yet where does the sense of regionalism come from? What are the distinctive factors that transform a geographical area into a particular 'region'? Tom Scott addresses these questions in this study of one apparently 'natural' region - the Upper Rhine - between 1450 and 1600. This region has been divided between three countries and so historically marginalized, yet Dr Scott is able to trace the existence of a sense of historical regional identity cutting across national frontiers, founded on common economic interests. But that identity was always contingent and precarious, neither 'natural' nor immutable.

This work presents a brief narrative of the title subject, interweaving deft evaluations of the critical points of historical thought.

Artillery in the Era of the Crusades provides a detailed examination of the use of mechanical artillery in the Levant through the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Rather than focus on a selection of sensational anecdotes, Michael S. Fulton explores the full scope of the available literary and archaeological evidence, reinterpreting the development of trebuchet technology and the ways in which it was used during this period. Among the arguments put forward, Fulton challenges the popular perception that the invention of the counterweight trebuchet was responsible for the dramatic transformation in the design of fortifications around the start of the thirteenth century. See inside the book.

Current concerns about the survival of marine life and the fishing industry have contributed to a rising interest in their past development. While much of the scholarship is focused on the recent past, this collection of essays presents new interpretations in the pre-industrial history of the fisheries by highlighting the consequences of the northern fisheries through an interdisciplinary approach, including the environment, economy, politics, and society in the medieval and early modern periods. A wide variety of topics related to the fisheries, such as settlement and spatial organisation, processing methods, trade, profitability and taxation, consumption, communication and cooperation, ranging from the Viking Age until industrialisation are dealt with in a long term perspective, offering new insights in the intriguing relationship between marine life and humanity. Contributors are Ines Amorim, James H. Barrett, Christiaan van Bochove, Petra van Dam, Chloe Deligne, Carsten Jahnke, Alison M. Locker, Thomas H. McGovern, Sophia Perdikaris, Marnix Pieters, Peter Pope, Bo Poulsen, Callum M. Roberts, Louis Sicking, Dries Tys, Adri van Vliet, Annette de Wit, Justyna Wubs-Mrozewicz.