In Sefer Tagin Fragments from the Cairo Genizah, Marc Michaels transcribes and recreates fragments of arguably the earliest found manuscript of the manual for sofrim (scribes) concerning the decorative tagin (tittles) and 'strange' letter forms that adorn certain words in the Torah. Comparing these found fragments against other core and secondary sources of Sefer Tagin (including several pages of a new secondary source), Michaels establishes the most likely readings to assist the reconstruction of the fragments and shed light on the original intention of the author of Sefer Tagin.

This book is a study of the character and compilation of Justinian's Digest, the main volume of Justinian's Corpus Iuris Civilis (528-534 AD). This is often considered as one of the most influential works in the history of Western culture. It remains significant, partly because it is still a part of the law in six countries in Southern Africa, and partly because of its role in the evolution over fifteen hundred years of the theory and practice of human rights - a theme explored in Professor Honore's previous book studying Ulpian (2nd ed, OUP 2002).
The book gives a detailed account of the probable methods used in the compilation of the Digest and distinguishes the respective roles of imperial ministers, law professors, and advocates. It also examines the broader issues raised by the Digest's creation - how it was conceived by its compilers, its purpose, and its impact.

The present volume contains seventeen essays on the Mamluk Sultanate, an Islamic Empire of slaves whose capital was in Cairo between the 13th and the 16th centuries, written by leading historians of this period. It discusses topics as varied as social and cultural issues, women in Mamluk society, literary and poetical genres, the politics of material culture, and regional and local politics. The volume presents state of the art scholarship in the field of Mamluk studies as well as an in-depth review of recent developments. Mamluk studies have expanded considerably in recent years and today interests hundreds of active researchers worldwide who write in numerous languages and constitute a vivid and strong community of researchers, some of whose best research is presented in this volume. With contributions by Reuven Amitai; Frederic Bauden; Yuval Ben-Bassat; Joseph Drory; Elise Franssen; Yehoshua Frenkel; Li Guo; Daisuke Igarashi; Yaacov Lev; Bernadette Martel-Thoumian; Carl Petry; Warren Schultz; Boaz Shoshan; Hana Taragan; Bethany J. Walker; Michael Winter; Koby Yosef; Limor Yungman.

Scientific Practices in European History, 1200-1800 presents and situates a collection of extracts from both widely known texts by such figures as Copernicus, Newton, and Lavoisier, and lesser known but significant items, all chosen to provide a perspective on topics in social, cultural and intellectual history and to illuminate the concerns of the early modern period. The selection of extracts highlights the emerging technical preoccupations of this period, while the accompanying introductions and annotations make these occasionally complex works accessible to students and non-specialists. The book follows a largely chronological sequence and helps to locate scientific ideas and practices within broader European history. The primary source materials in this collection stand alone as texts in themselves, but in illustrating the scientific components of early modern societies they also make this book ideal for teachers and students of European history.

For a long time it was thought that there were no Middle Dutch sermons dating from the thirteenth century. It was only after J.P. Gumbert had redated the manuscript from The Hague containing the "Limburg Sermons" that its contents could be assigned to that century. Most of the "Limburg Sermons" appear to be translations of the Middle High German "St. Georgen sermons," But sixteen of these texts are known only in Middle Dutch, and among these is to be found material drawn from the works of Hadewijch and Beatrijs van Nazareth. Thus the "Limburg Sermons" emerge to take their place in the famous tradition of Brabantine mysticism.

How did the life course, with all its biological, social and cultural aspects, influence the lives, writings, and art of the inhabitants of early medieval England? This volume explores how phases of human life such as childhood, puberty, and old age were identified, characterized, and related in contemporary sources, as well as how nonhuman life courses were constructed. The multi-disciplinary contributions range from analyses of age vocabulary to studies of medicine, name-giving practices, theology, Old English poetry, and material culture. Combined, these cultural-historical perspectives reveal how the concept and experience of the life course shaped attitudes in early medieval England. Contributors are Jo Appleby, Debby Banham, Darren Barber, Caroline R. Batten, James Chetwood, Katherine Cross, Amy Faulkner, Jacqueline Fay, Elaine Flowers, Daria Izdebska, Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Thijs Porck, and Harriet Soper.

Stories of court life, money, torture, swindles, sex, dreams and disease, combine the comic with the sinister and bizarre. Always entertaining, and told with wit and eloquence, the result is a wonderful first-person account of everyday life in medieval Baghdad and its surroundings. This two volume set includes translations of sections of Tankukhi's manuscript that only came to light at a later date and which are both little known and rare. This unique set contains a new introduction by one of the leading scholars of the Middle East, Robert Irwin.

The chastity belt is one of those objects people have commonly identified with the "dark" Middle Ages. This book analyzes the origin of this myth and demonstrates how a convenient misconception, or rather contorted imagination, of an allegedly historical practice has led to profoundly erroneous interpretations of alleged control mechanisms used by jealous husbands in the Middle Ages.

Church and Chronicle in the Middle Ages is a collection of essays presented to John Taylor, former Life Fellow and medieval scholar at the University of Leeds. The essays in the volume have two clear foci, also those of John Taylor's own work: the study of history-writing in the middle ages and the late medieval church. With contributions key scholars on topics such as the hagiography of Saint-Wandrille, Swein Forkbeard and the historians, personal seals in 13th-century England, women in the Plumpton Correspondence and medievalism in counter-reformation Sicily, this volume is a rich and varied collection of medieval scholarship and a fitting tribute to Taylor's work from his friends and colleagues.

From the Arthurian epic poem Parzival to Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and the Assassin's Creed video game series, the Knights Templar have captivated artists and audiences alike for centuries. In modern times, the Templars have featured in many narrative contexts, evolving in a range of contrasting story roles: the grail guardian, the heroic knight, the villainous knight, and the keeper of conspiracies. This study explores why these gone but not forgotten warrior monks remain prominent in popular culture, how history influenced the myth, and how the myth has influenced literature, film and video games.

Research on early medieval Cyprus has focused on the late antique "golden age" (late fourth/early fifth to seventh century) and the so-called Byzantine "Reconquista" (post-AD 965) while overlooking the intervening period. This phase was characterized, supposedly, by the division of the political sovereignty between the Umayyads and the Byzantines, bringing about the social and demographic dislocation of the population of the island. This book proposes a different story of continuities and slow transformations in the fate of Cyprus between the late sixth and the early ninth centuries. Analysis of new archaeological evidence shows signs of a continuing link to Constantinople. Moreover, together with a reassessment of the literary evidence, archaeology and material culture help us to reappraise the impact of Arab naval raids and contextualize the confrontational episodes throughout the ebb and flow of Eastern Mediterranean history: the political influence of the Caliphate looked stronger in the second half of the seventh century, the administrative and ecclesiastical influence of the Byzantine empire was held sway from the beginning of the eighth to the twelfth century. Whereas the island retained sound commercial ties with the Umayyad Levant in the seventh and eighth centuries, at the same time politically and economically it remained part of the Byzantine sphere. This belies the idea of Cyprus as an independent province only loosely tied to Constantinople and allows us to draw a different picture of the cultural identities, political practices and hierarchy of wealth and power in Cyprus during the passage from Late Antiquity to the early Middle Ages.

In Alliances and Treaties between Frankish and Muslim Rulers Michael Koehler presents a fully integrated study of Frankish-Muslim diplomacy in the period from the First Crusade through to the thirteenth century. It is a ground-breaking study that challenges preconceived notions of the relations between Frankish and Muslim rulers in the Middle East. Commonly portrayed as an era of conflict, the period appears here as one in which conventions of diplomatic cooperation were commonplace. This book is one of the few works in the fields of Crusader Studies and Middle Eastern Studies that draws to the same extent on Arabic and Western sources; two textual traditions that have usually been studied in isolation from each other.

Britain is a treasure trove of medieval architecture. Almost every village and town in the land has a church that was built during the period, whose history is legible - to those who know how to look - in every arch, capital, roof vault, and detail of window tracery. By learning how to identify the stylistic phases that resulted from shifts in architectural fashion, it is possible to date each part of a church to within a decade or two; this book introduces all the key features of each succeeding style, from Anglo-Saxon and Norman through to the three great gothic styles, Early English, Decorated and Perpendicular. It will be indispensable to anyone who enjoys exploring medieval churches, and who wants to understand and appreciate their beauty more deeply.

From the early fourteenth century to the end of the sixteenth, the Anglo-Scottish borderlands witnessed one of the most intense periods of warfare and disorder ever seen in modern Europe. As a consequence of near-constant conflict between England and Scotland, Borderers suffered at the hands of marauding armies, who ravaged the land, destroying crops, slaughtering cattle, burning settlements and killing indiscriminately. Forced by extreme circumstances, many Borderers took to reiving to ensure the survival of their families and communities, and for the best part of 300 years, countless raiding parties made their way over the border. The story of the Reivers is one of survival, stealth, treachery, ingenuity and deceit, expertly brought to life in Alistair Moffat's acclaimed book.

The Persistence of Medievalism seeks to examine the ways medieval genre shapes contemporary public culture. Through an exploration of several contemporary cultural phenomena, this book reveals the narrative underpinnings of public discourse. The ways these particular forms of storytelling shape our assumptions are examined by Angela Jane Weisl through a series of examples that demonstrate the intrinsic ways medievalism persists in the modern world, thus perpetuating archaic ideas of gender, ideology, and doctrine.

This book focuses on the New Testament by surveying commentaries and lectures on the Gospels of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries against a background of ecclesiastical and social history.

The defeat of the Spanish Armada did not put an end to Spanish sea power, nor to Spain's ambitions in northern Europe. By the mid-1590s, Spain had recovered from the disaster of 1588, and the renewed naval wars together with the outbreak of rebellion in Ireland form the principal themes of this book. R. B. Wernham sets out to examine these major events of the last years of Queen Elizabeth's reign and to assess their impact on English policy. Professor Wernham shows how much of the impetus in foreign policy derived from the Earl of Essex, whose personal ambition and practical incompetence brought frustration and danger, and ultimately led him through rebellion to the scaffold. It was left to Mountjoy in Ireland, to Leveson and a new generation of sea commanders, and above all to Robert Cecil, to bring war and rebellion to a reasonably satisfactory conclusion. The Return of the Armadas is a superbly integrated and lucidly written study in grand strategy by a leading historian of Elizabethan affairs. It carries to its conclusion the story begun in his After the Armada.

The essays collected in The Five Senses in Medieval and Early Modern England examine the interrelationships between sense perception and secular and Christian cultures in England from the medieval into the early modern periods. They address canonical texts and writers in the fields of poetry, drama, homiletics, martyrology and early scientific writing, and they espouse methods associated with the fields of corpus linguistics, disability studies, translation studies, art history and archaeology, as well as approaches derived from traditional literary studies. Together, these papers constitute a major contribution to the growing field of sensorial research that will be of interest to historians of perception and cognition as well as to historians with more generalist interests in medieval and early modern England. Contributors include: Dieter Bitterli, Beatrix Busse, Rory Critten, Javier Diaz-Vera, Tobias Gabel, Jens Martin Gurr, Katherine Hindley, Farah Karim-Cooper, Annette Kern-Stahler, Richard Newhauser, Sean Otto, Virginia Richter, Elizabeth Robertson, and Kathrin Scheuchzer

The Routledge Encyclopedias of the Middle Ages comprises of sixteen comprehensive reference titles covering a range of regions and themes in the Medieval period. First published between 1993 and 2006, the Encyclopedias provide complete and multidisciplinary guides to topics such as Women and Gender, Archaeology, Islamic and Jewish Civilization and Science, Technology and Medicine, as well as a number of regions including Italy, Scandinavia, France, England and the Middle East. Written by leading experts in the field, these reference works will be valuable resources not only to students and scholars of the middle ages, but also those studying a number of humanities and social sciences. They are also accessible to general and introductory readers.

The eighth century has not been analysed as a period of economic history since the 1930s, and is ripe for a comprehensive reassessment. The twelve papers in this book range over the whole of Europe and the Mediterranean from Denmark to Palestine, covering Francia, Italy and Byzantium on the way. They examine regional economies and associated political structures, that is to say the whole network of production, exchange, and social relations in each area. They offer both authoritative overviews of current work and new and original work. As a whole, they show how the eighth century was the first century when the post-Roman world can clearly be seen to have emerged, in the regional economies of each part of Europe.

This volume addresses the widespread medieval phenomenon of transgression as both a result of and the cause for the exclusion and persecution of those who were considered different. It is widely accepted that the essence of a manuscript cannot be fully grasped without studying its marginalia. Glosses sit on the margins of the text and clarify it, adding a whole new dimension to it and becoming an inextricable part of its content. Similarly, no society can be fully understood without knowledge of what lies on its margins, for the outliers of any given culture provide us with just as much information as its alleged foundational principles. In a time when the Western world ponders building walls up against perceived threats and frightening differences, this multidisciplinary collection of essays based on original and innovative pieces of research shows that it was mostly through tearing down walls that we learned our way forward.

Simon de Montfort, the leader of the English barons, was the first leader of a political movement to seize power from a reigning monarch. The charismatic de Montfort and his forces had captured most of south-eastern England by 1263 and at the battle of Lewes in 1264 King Henry III was defeated and taken prisoner. De Montfort became de facto ruler of England and the short period which followed was the closest England was to come to complete abolition of the monarchy until Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth. The Parliament of 1265 - known as De Montfort's Parliament - was the first English parliament to have elected representatives. Only fifteen months later de Montfort's gains were reversed when Prince Edward escaped captivity and defeated the rebels at the Battle of Evesham. Simon de Montfort was killed. Following this victory savage retribution was exacted on the rebels and authority was restored to Henry III. Adrian Jobson captures the intensity of de Montfort's radical crusade through these most revolutionary years in English history in this spirited and dramatic narrative.

The process of colonisation that followed the Norman Conquest defined much of the history of England over the next 150 years, structurally altering the distribution of land and power in society. This theme is defined in a previously unpublished lecture on Colonial England, given in 1994, but it runs through all the sixteen essays in this collection. J.C. Holt's subjects include Domesday Book, the establishment of knight-service, aristocratic structures and nomenclature, the relation of family to property, security of title and inheritance, among other matters. He comments on the work of Maitland, Round and Stenton and ends with studies of the treaty of Winchester (1153), the rasus regis, and Magna Carta.

The Danelaw brings together an impressive body of work. Cyril Hart deals with both the main outline of the Danelaw, its administration and institutions, and its detail: the origin and development of particular provinces, boroughs, sokes and wapentakes; Danelaw charters and wills; battles, including Maldon seen in terms of topography; families, such as that of Athelstan 'Half King'; and individuals including Hereward the Wake, rescued from Victorian Romanticism and put on as sound a historical basis as the evidence will permit.