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

This pioneering volume illuminates the practice of giving, endowing and exchanging gifts in the early Middle Ages, from Anglo-Saxon England to the Islamic world. Focusing especially on the language associated with medieval gift giving, this important new work examines how people visualized and thought about gift giving and, importantly, how they distinguished between the giving of gifts and other social, economic, political and religious exchanges. The authors demonstrate that gift giving was already complex, distinctive and sometimes contentious before the twelfth century and operated within a broad international context. They draw from the sources a deeper understanding of the early Middle Ages by looking at real cases and real people: peasants, the elderly and women, as well as elites. The culture of medieval gift has often been treated as archaic and exotic; this book, by contrast, reveals people going about their lives as individuals in down-to-earth and sometimes familiar ways.

Jack Cade's rebellion of 1450 was one of the most important popular uprisings to take place in England during the Middle Ages. It began as an orchestrated demonstration of political protest by the inhabitants of south-eastern England against the corruption, mismanagement, and oppression of Henry VI's government. When no assurance of any remedy came from the king the rising soon collapsed into violence. This is the first full-length study of Cade's revolt to be published this century. I. M. W. Harvey charts the course of the rebellion and its associated troubles during the early 1450s, and explores the nature of the society which gave rise to these upheavals. She makes full use of the available contemporary evidence, as well as the work of subsequent historians, in order to uncover the identities of the rebels, explain their actions, assess their relations with the magnates, and to examine their achievements. Dr Harvey's lucid and scholarly analysis of Jack Cade's rebellion helps make intelligible the eventual collapse of Henry VI's reign into the Wars of the Roses.

The focus of this collection of articles by Donald J. Kagay is the effect of the expansion of royal government on the societies of the medieval Crown of Aragon. He shows how the extensive episodes of warfare during the 13th and 14th centuries served as a catalyst for the extension of the king's law and government across the varied topography and political landscape of eastern Spain. In the long conflicts against Spanish Islam and neighbouring Christian states, the relationships of royal to customary law, of monarchical to aristocratic power, and of Christian to Jewish and Muslim populations, all became issues that marked the transition of the medieval Crown of Aragon to the early modern states of Catalonia, Aragon and Valencia, and finally to the modern Spanish nation.

What visitor to Mexico City, unaware of its pre-Hispanic history, could imagine that right under a Christian Church may still lie the remains of the sinister tzompantli, the Aztecs' altar of skulls? Professor Jorge Hardoy poses this question and many more in his comprehensive summary of the ancient cities where Latin America's peoples lived before the Spaniards arrived in the sixteenth century. Because Aztec Tenochtitlan, today Mexico City, and Inca Cuzco represent the culmination of the two most advanced civilizations encountered by the Spainsh conquistadors, the author explores these cities end-to-end. He also studies such older civic memorial centers as Teotichuacan, Tula, Monte Alban, Uxmal, Chichen Itza, Tikal, Palenque, Tiahuanaco, Chan Chan, Pachacamac, Machu Picchu, and lesser know sites, most virtually, if not totally, abandoned centuries before the Conquest. Such inclusive coverage makes for a lively discussion of some fifteen hundred years of urban life as immortalized in the architecture, art, and crafts of long vanished civilizations. There is an extensive bibliography, many photographs, maps, charts and city plans showing urban layouts of temples, which tell much about the life of the inhabitants. His book shows that while new findings come to light each year, so much buried history lies waiting to be found that archaology will always be an ever unfolding drama. This book was first published in 1973.

The hidden story of a little-known but transformative period in the formation of England as a nation. The Viking Great Army that swept through England between AD 865 and 878 altered the course of British history. Since the late 8th century, Viking raids on the British Isles had been a regular feature of life, but the winter of 865 saw a fundamental shift that would change the political, economic and social landscape forever. Instead of making quick smash-and-grab summer raids for silver and slaves, Vikings now remained in England for the winter and became immersed in its communities. Some settled permanently, acquiring land and forming a new hybrid Anglo-Scandinavian culture. The Viking army was here to stay. Its presence was a catalyst for new towns and new industries, while transformations in power politics would ultimately see the rise of King Alfred the Great and make Wessex the pre-eminent kingdom of Anglo-Saxon England. Drawing on the most up-to-date discoveries and the latest scientific techniques, the authors' recent research at the Viking Great Army's winter camp at Torksey in Lincolnshire has revolutionized what we know about its size, activities and social makeup, as has the wealth of newly recovered evidence from metal-detectorists. Unfolding like a great detective story, this account traces the movements of the Great Army across the country, piecing together a new picture of Viking Age England in unprecedented detail, from swords, coins, jewelry and the burials of great warriors to the everyday objects that ordinary farmers and craftsmen discarded. It is the definitive story of a vital period in British history.

"Envisaging Heaven in the Middle Ages" considers medieval notions of heaven in theological and mystical writings; in visions of the otherworld; and in medieval arts such as drama, poetry, music and vernacular literature.
The volume considers the influence of images and visions of heaven on the secular literature by some of the greatest writers of the period, such as Chretien de Troyes and Chaucer. The coherence and beauty of these notions make heaven one of the most impressive medieval cathedrals of the mind.
The book shows that the idea of heaven in the Middle Ages was as varied as those who wrote about it, and reveals the extent to which the Christian afterlife was (as it is today) a projection of human hopes and fears.
The book also reveals the extent to which the Christian afterlife was (as it is today) a projection of human hopes and fears. Because "the reality" of heaven was one based on speculation, as well as fancy, medieval heavens were products both of ingenious thought and of creative, wishful imagination.
With contributions from such experts as Peter Dronke, Robin Kirkpatrick, Peter Meredith, Bernard McGinn, Barbara Newman and A.C. Spearing, this collection will be essential reading for all those interested in medieval religion and culture.

The essays in this volume deal with the history of the Middle East from c.550 to 1000 AD. There are three main themes: Syria in Late Antiquity and the changes and continuities with the early Islamic period; relations between Muslims and the Byzantine Empire from the 8th to the 11th centuries; and the development of government and the economy in the early caliphate. Throughout there is an emphasis on social and economic trends and the integration of written and archaeological evidence to elucidate the complex developments in this pivotal part of the world. In different ways all the papers discuss the formation of the Islamic world and the way in which the legacy of Antiquity, economic, social and cultural, affected the emergence of what we think of as this "Islamic World". These papers will be of interest to historians of Islam and Byzantium but also western mediaevalists interested in comparing processes of change at opposite ends of the Mediterranean.

These essays take advantage of a new, exciting trend towards interdisciplinary research on the Charlemagne legend. Written by historians, art historians, and literary scholars, these essays focus on the multifaceted ways the Charlemagne legend functioned in the Middle Ages and how central the shared (if nonetheless fictional) memory of the great Frankish ruler was to the medieval West. A gateway to new research on memory, crusading, apocalyptic expectation, Carolingian historiography, and medieval kingship, the contributors demonstrate the fuzzy line separating "fact" and "fiction" in the Middle Ages.

This comprehensive and absorbing book traces the cultural history of Southeast Asia from prehistoric (especially Neolithic, Bronze-Iron age) times through to the major Hindu and Buddhist civilizations, to around AD 1300. Southeast Asia has recently attracted archaeological attention as the locus for the first recorded sea crossings; as the region of origin for the Austronesian population dispersal across the Pacific from Neolithic times; as an arena for the development of archaeologically-rich Neolithic, and metal using communities, especially in Thailand and Vietnam, and as the backdrop for several unique and strikingly monumental Indic civilizations, such as the Khmer civilization centred around Angkor. Southeast Asia is invaluable to anyone interested in the full history of the region.

Through close readings of both familiar and obscure medieval texts, the contributors to this volume attempt to read England as a singularly powerful entity within a vast geopolitical network. This capacious world can be glimpsed in the cultural flows connecting the Normans of Sicily with the rulers of England, or Chaucer with legends arriving from Bohemia. It can also be seen in surprising places in literature, as when green children are discovered in twelfth-century Yorkshire or when Welsh animals begin to speak of the long history of their land's colonization. The contributors to this volume seek moments of cultural admixture and heterogeneity within texts that have often been assumed to belong to a single, national canon, discovering moments when familiar and bounded space erupt into unexpected diversity and infinite realms.

Magic, sorcery and witchcraft are among the most common themes of the great medieval Icelandic sagas and poems, the problematic yet vital sources that provide our primary textual evidence for the Viking Age that they claim to describe. Yet despite the consistency of this picture, surprisingly little archaeological or historical research has been done to explore what this may really have meant to the men and women of the time. This book examines the evidence for Old Norse sorcery, looking at its meaning and function, practice and practitioners, and the complicated constructions of gender and sexual identity with which these were underpinned. Combining strong elements of eroticism and aggression, sorcery appears as a fundamental domain of women's power, linking them with the gods, the dead and the future. Their battle spells and combat rituals complement the men's physical acts of fighting, in a supernatural empowerment of the Viking way of life. What emerges is a fundamentally new image of the world in which the Vikings understood themselves to move, in which magic and its implications permeated every aspect of a society permanently geared for war. In this fully-revised and expanded second edition, Neil Price takes us with him on a tour through the sights and sounds of this undiscovered country, meeting its human and otherworldly inhabitants, including the Sami with whom the Norse partly shared this mental landscape. On the way we explore Viking notions of the mind and soul, the fluidity of the boundaries that they drew between humans and animals, and the immense variety of their spiritual beliefs. We find magic in the Vikings' bedrooms and on their battlefields, and we meet the sorcerers themselves through their remarkable burials and the tools of their trade. Combining archaeology, history and literary scholarship with extensive studies of Germanic and circumpolar religion, this multi-award-winning book shows us the Vikings as we have never seen them before.

Bestsellers and masterpieces: The changing medieval canon addresses the strange fact that, in both European and Middle Eastern medieval studies, those texts that we now study and teach as the most canonical representations of their era were in fact not popular or even widely read in their day. On the other hand, those texts that were popular, as evidenced by the extant manuscript record, are taught and studied with far less frequency. The book provides cross-cultural insight into both the literary tastes of the medieval period and the literary and political forces behind the creation of the 'modern canon' of medieval literature. -- .

To veteran travelers of the American Southwest, the name Chaco Canyon invokes an inaccessible, vast land of tremendous vistas and huge, empty stone houses. Today, the Canyon appears as a barren land and most visitors are struck by its apparent inhospitable nature. Yet almost 1000 years ago, during the Medieval period, Chaco Canyon was the hub of a flourishing Pueblo Indian society, with 12 multi-story great houses built of stone and wood, a dozen great kivas (large, subterranean ceremonial structures), and hundreds of smaller habitation sites, pueblos along the intermittent drainage known today as Chaco Wash. This society peaked in the year AD 1100, when more than 150 Chacoan towns, in addition to the 12 great houses in Chaco Canyon, and perhaps 30,000 people across the greater San Juan Basin of the southwestern United States were affiliated with Chaco. This landmass, which extends across portions of the four modern states of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado, is roughly equal in size to the country of Ireland.

Chacoan society endured for more than 200 hundred years, evolving and changing in the period from AD 950 to about 1150. The peak of Chacoan society can be more narrowly dated from AD 1020 to 1130. Undoubtedly, many leaders came and went during these hundred years. But, we have no written records to name these leaders. Unlike the history of other continents, in the Americas, the absence of written aboriginal languages means that written chronologies of the events, processes, and lives of people do not exist. This simple fact makes reconstruction and understanding of America's pre-European past very challenging. The archaeological record does speak to us. Thematic chapters guide readers to the emergence of Chacoan society, its cultural and environmental settings, and the Pueblo people. Other chapters detail what is known of Chacoan society c. 1100, how it was settled, and where its people probably dispersed to. Also, given the nature of the topic, information about the discovery and investigations of Chacoan society by Europeans and Americans is provided. An annotated timeline provides easy reference to key dates and events. Biographical sketches offer a look at the people who have formed our thoughts about and approaches to Chacoan society, and twenty annotated excerpted primary and secondary documents walk readers through Canyon related material. A glossary of terms is provided, as are illustrations and maps. The work concludes with recommended sources for further inquiry, websites, video, and print.

First published in 1967, this superb collection of essays on trade in the Middle Ages has been a major contribution to modern medieval studies. Professor Carus-Wilson examines:

* fifteenth-century Bristol
* trade with Iceland
* the Merchant Adventurers of London
* the thirteenth-century cloth industry (with its highly developed capitalist system)
* the export of English woollen cloth
* the wine trade.

Each paper is firmly rooted in original research and contemporary sources such as customs returns and company minutes, and, in addition, her expose of the dubious accuracy of Aulnage accounts is widely recognised as a classic.

This book was first published in 1962. Until the era of the Industrial Revolution wool was, without question, the most important raw material in the English economic system. The staple article of the country's export trade in the Middle Ages, it remained until the nineteenth century the indispensable basis of her greatest industry. This book looks at the decline of cloth industry in East Anglia sine the mid-sixteenth century.

Completely updated to include important primary research, archaeological findings and debates from the last decade, this third edition of F. Donald Logan's successful book examines the Vikings and their critical role in history.

The author uses archaeological, literary and historical evidence to analyze the Vikings' overseas expeditions and their transformation from raiders to settlers. Focusing on the period from 800-1050, it studies the Vikings across the world, from Denmark and Sweden right across to the British Isles, the North Atlantic and the New World.

This edition includes:

• 
  
• a new epilogue explaining the aims of the book
• 
  
• updated further reading sections
• 
  
• maps and photographs.

By taking this new archaeological and primary research into account, the author provides a vital text for history students and researchers of this fascinating people.

A masterful history of the great dynasty of the Netherlands' Middle Ages. 'A sumptuous feast of a book' The Times, Books of the Year 'Thrillingly colourful and entertaining' Sunday Times 'A thrilling narrative of the brutal dazzlingly rich wildly ambitious duchy' Simon Sebag Montefiore 5 stars! Daily Telegraph 'A masterpiece' De Morgen 'A history book that reads like a thriller' Le Soir At the end of the fifteenth century, Burgundy was extinguished as an independent state. It had been a fabulously wealthy, turbulent region situated between France and Germany, with close links to the English kingdom. Torn apart by the dynastic struggles of early modern Europe, this extraordinary realm vanished from the map. But it became the cradle of what we now know as the Low Countries, modern Belgium and the Netherlands. This is the story of a thousand years, a compulsively readable narrative history of ambitious aristocrats, family dysfunction, treachery, savage battles, luxury and madness. It is about the decline of knightly ideals and the awakening of individualism and of cities, the struggle for dominance in the heart of northern Europe, bloody military campaigns and fatally bad marriages. It is also a remarkable cultural history, of great art and architecture and music emerging despite the violence and the chaos of the tension between rival dynasties.

The medieval film genre is not, in general, concerned with constructing a historically accurate past, but much analysis nonetheless centers on highlighting anachronisms. This book aims to help scholars and aficionados of medieval film think about how the re-creation of an often mythical past performs important cultural work for modern directors and viewers. The essays in this collection demonstrate that directors intentionally insert modern preoccupations into a setting that would normally be considered incompatible with these concepts. The Middle Ages provide an imaginary space far enough removed from the present day to explore modern preoccupations with human identity.

This is an exploration of how the legend of Thor has been adopted, adapted and transformed through history. The myths of the Norse god Thor were preserved in the "Icelandic Eddas", set down in the early Middle Ages. The bane of giants and trolls, Thor was worshipped as the last line of defence against all that threatened early Nordic society. Thor's significance persisted long after the Christian conversion and, in the mid-eighteenth century, Thor resumed a symbolic prominence among northern countries. Admired and adopted in Scandinavia and Germany, he became central to the rhetoric of national romanticism and to more belligerent assertions of nationalism. Resurrected in the latter part of the twentieth century in "Marvel Magazine", Thor was further transformed into an articulation both of an anxious male sexuality and of a parallel nervousness regarding American foreign policy. Martin Arnold explores the extraordinary regard in which Thor has been held since medieval times and considers why and how his myth has been adopted, adapted and transformed.

Music theorists labelled the musical art of the 1330s and 1340s as 'new' and 'modern'. A close reading of writings on music theory and the polyphonic repertory from the first half of the fourteenth century reveals a modern musical art that arose due to specific innovations in music notation. The French ars nova employed as its theoretical fundament a new system for arranging musical time proposed by the astronomer and mathematician Jean des Murs. Challenging prevailing accounts of the ars nova, this book presents the 'new art' within the intellectual context of its time, revises the datings of Jean des Murs's writings on music theory, and presents the intersection of theory and practice for a crucial era in the history of music. Through contemporaneous accounts, Desmond explores how individuals were involved in 'changing' music in early fourteenth-century France, and the technical developments they pursued that precipitated this stylistic change.

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.