In Entombed Epigraphy and Commemorative Culture Timothy M. Davis presents a history of early muzhiming-the most versatile and persistent commemorative form employed in the elite burials of pre-modern China. While previous scholars have largely overlooked the contemporary religious, social, and cultural functions of these epigraphic objects, this study directly addresses these areas of concern, answering such basic questions as: Why were muzhiming buried in tombs? What distinguishes commemorative biography from dynastic history biography? And why did muzhiming develop into an essential commemorative genre esteemed by the upper classes? Furthermore, this study reveals how aspiring families used muzhiming to satisfy their obligations to deceased ancestors, establish a multi-generational sense of corporate identity, and strengthen their claims to elite status.

The Religious Polemics of the Muslims of Late Medieval Christian Iberia examines the corpus of polemical literature against the Christians and the Jews of the protected Muslims (Mudejars). Commonly portrayed as communities in cultural and religious decay, Monica Colominas convincingly proves that the discourses against the Christians and the Jews in Mudejar treatises provided authoritative frameworks of Islamic normativity which helped to legitimize the residence of their communities in the Christian territories. Colominas argues that, while the primary aim of the polemics was to refute the views of their religious opponents, Mudejar treatises were also a tool used to advance Islamic knowledge and to strengthen the government and social cohesion of their communities.

Was Elizabeth I worshipped by her subjects? Many twentieth-century scholars have suggested that the Virgin Queen was a cult-figure who replaced the Virgin Mary. But how could this be in a Protestant state officially opposed to idolatry? Helen Hackett examines these issues through readings of a wide variety of Elizabethan texts. She traces some of the cross-currents in Elizabethan culture, and considers both Elizabeth and the Virgin Mary in terms of the history of representations of gender, sexuality and power.

Edited with a facing-page English translation from the Latin text by: Chibnall, Marjorie;

A beautifully illustrated history of the Renaissance told through the lives of its most important and influential patrons. 'Exceptionally sumptuous... This vivid history brings to life the vices and virtues of the feuding ruling families of Italy.' Michael Prodger, The Times 'Full of treasures to be uncovered... A chance to visit a glittering, at times rather gory, world that is different and yet dreamily familiar to our own.' BBC History Revealed From the late Middle Ages, the independent Italian city-states were taken over by powerful families who installed themselves as dynastic rulers. Inspired by the humanists, the princes of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy immersed themselves in the culture of antiquity, commissioning palaces, villas and churches inspired by the architecture of ancient Rome, and offering patronage to artists and writers. Many of these princes were related by blood or marriage, creating a web of alliances that held society together but whose tensions sometimes threatened to tear it apart; thus were their lives dominated as much by the waging of war as the nurture of artistic talent. In a narrative that is as rigorous and closely researched as it is accessible and informative, Mary Hollingsworth sets the princes' aesthetic achievements in the context of the volatile, ever-shifting politics of a tumultuous period of history.

Medieval queens led richly complex lives and were highly visible women active in a man's world. Linked to kings by marriage, family, and property, queens were vital to the institution of monarchy.
In this comprehensive and accessible introduction to the study of queenship, Theresa Earenfight documents the lives and works of queens and empresses across Europe, Byzantium, and the Mediterranean in the Middle Ages. The book:
* introduces pivotal research and sources in queenship studies, and includes exciting and innovative new archival research
* highlights four crucial moments across the full span of the Middle Ages - ca. 300, 700, 1100, and 1350 - when Christianity, education, lineage, and marriage law fundamentally altered the practice of queenship
* examines theories and practices of queenship in the context of wider issues of gender, authority, and power.
This is an invaluable and illuminating text for students, scholars and other readers interested in the role of royal women in medieval society.

Never before have the women of the Capetian royal dynasty in France been the subject of a study in their own right. The new research in Capetian Women challenges old paradigms about the restricted roles of royal women, uncovering their influence in social, religious, cultural, and even political spheres. The scholars in the volume consider medieval chroniclers' responses to the independent actions of royal women as well as modern historians' use of them as vehicles for constructing the past. The essays also delineate the creation of reginal identity through cultural practices such as religious patronage and the commissioning of manuscripts, tomb sculpture, and personal seals.

The Cathars and the Albigensian Crusade brings together a rich and diverse range of medieval sources to examine key aspects of the growth of heresy and dissent in southern France in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and the Church's response to that threat through the subsequent authorisation of the Albigensian crusade. Aimed at students and scholars alike, the documents it discusses - papal letters, troubadour songs, contemporary chronicles in Latin and the vernacular, and inquisitorial documents - reflect a deeper perception of medieval heresy and the social, political and religious implications of crusading than has hitherto been possible. The reader is introduced to themes which are crucial to our understanding of the medieval world: ideologies of crusading and holy war, the complex nature of Catharism, the Church's implementation of diverse strategies to counter heresy, the growth of papal inquisition, southern French counter-strategies of resistance and rebellion, and the uses of Latin and the vernacular to express regional and cultural identity. This timely and highly original collection not only brings together previously unexplored and in some cases unedited material, but provides a nuanced and multi-layered view of the religious, social and political dimensions of one of the most infamous conflicts of the High Middle Ages. This book is a valuable resource for all students, teachers and researchers of medieval history and the crusades.

Five hundred years after his death at the stake, Girolamo Savonarola remains one of the most fascinating figures of the Italian Renaissance. This volume, which contains an introduction by historian Alison Brown, is the first comprehensive collection of Savonarola's works in English. It includes translations of his sermons and treatises on pastoral ministry, prophecy, politics and moral reform, as well as the correspondence with Alexander VI that led to Savonarola's silencing and excommunication. Also included are first-hand accounts of religio-civic festivities instigated by Savonarola and of his last moments. This collection demonstrates the remarkable extent of Savonarola's contributions to the religious, political and aesthetic debates of the late fifteenth century. Winner of the 2004 Scaglione Publication Award for a manuscript in Italian literary studies awarded by the MLA.

Annie Abram was born in London in 1869 and died in Sussex in 1930. As an historian, she contributed significantly to the twentieth-century historiography of late medieval England, researching the social, cultural and religious mores of the English laity and clergy. This title, first published in 1919, comprehensively explores the fabrics of late medieval society using evidence drawn from historical and literary works, official documents and illustrated manuscripts. Largely concentrating on the years between the start of the Black Death in 1348 and the end of the fifteenth century, a period in which we see important developments in the character and organisation of medieval England, chapters discuss the make-up of social order, life in a medieval town, the position of women in society, and the Church's relationship with the laity. A complementary title to Social Life in England in the Fifteenth Century (Routledge Revivals, 2013), this fascinating work will be of great value to history students requiring a detailed overview of the framework of late medieval English society and culture.

The Medieval Church: A Brief History argues for the pervasiveness of the Church in every aspect of life in medieval Europe. It shows how the institution of the Church attempted to control the lives and behaviour of medieval people, for example, through canon law, while at the same time being influenced by popular movements like the friars and heresy. This fully updated and illustrated second edition offers a new introductory chapter on 'the Basics of Christianity,' for students who might be unfamiliar with this territory. The book now has new material on some of the key individuals in church history: Benedict of Nursia, Hildegard of Bingen, Bernard of Clairvaux and Francis of Assisi as well as a more comprehensive study throughout of the role of women in the medieval church. Lynch and Adamo seek to explain the history of the Church as an institution, and to explore its all-pervasive role in medieval life. In the course of the thousand years covered in this book, we see the members and leaders of the Western Church struggle with questions that are still relevant today: What is the nature of God? How does a church keep beliefs from becoming diluted in a diverse society? What role should the state play in religion? The book is now accompanied by a website with textual, visual, and musical primary sources making it a fantastic resource for students of medieval history.

Theorizing Legal Personhood in Late Medieval England is a collection of eleven essays that explore what might be distinctly medieval and particularly English about legal personhood vis-a-vis the jurisdictional pluralism of late medieval England. Spanning the mid-thirteenth to the mid-sixteenth centuries, the essays in this volume draw on common law, statute law, canon law and natural law in order to investigate emerging and shifting definitions of personhood at the confluence of legal and literary imaginations. These essays contribute new insights into the workings of specific literary texts and provide us with a better grasp of the cultural work of legal argument within the histories of ethics, of the self, and of Eurocentrism. Contributors are Valerie Allen, Candace Barrington, Conrad van Dijk, Toy Fung Tung, Helen Hickey, Andrew Hope, Jana Mathews, Anthony Musson, Eve Salisbury, Jamie Taylor and R.F. Yeager.

This lively narrative, written by a monk, relates the history of the abbey of Saffron Walden from its foundation around 1136 to the year 1203. Its characters include the English kings, the earls of Essex, and other local landowners, large and small, as well as the monks and other ecclesiastics. Its interest extends far beyond the local: the editors' introduction and notes establish the chronicle's position as a valuable historical source.

Heinrich Von Treitschke (1834-1896) was a prolific German historian and political writer during the nineteenth century. An ardent admirer of Prussianism, Treitschke was also deeply anti-Semitic and anti-socialist. This translation by Eden and Cedar Paul of The Origins of Prussianism, published in 1942 and reissued in 1969, made Treitschke's 1862 classic essay available in English for the first time. It is a fascinating account of the thirteenth-century colonization of Old Prussia by the Teutonic Knights and the unification of Germany, which highlights his most prominent beliefs in the value of the State and the superiority of the German race. Treitschke's essay will fascinate anyone with an interest in the history of Old Prussia and nineteenth-century German politics and academic thought.

Albert of Aachen's History of the Journey to Jerusalem presents the story of the First Crusade (1095-1099) and the first generation of Latin settlers in the Levant (1099-1119). Volume 2, The Early History of the Latin States, provides a surprising level of detail about the reign of King Baldwin I (1100-1118), especially its earlier years and the crusading expeditions of 1101. It offers much more information than the only other substantial Latin account of the same events, by Fulcher of Chartres, and where it can be tested against other narratives, including Arabic and Greek sources, it proves to be worthy of both trust and respect. Susan B. Edgington's English translation has been widely praised, following its first publication in the Oxford Medieval Texts series, and is here presented with a new introduction and updated notes and bibliography.

Aron Gurevich was a towering figure of twentieth century medieval historical research. This extraordinarily rich and multifaceted volume presents provides a comprehensive introduction to this great scholar's life and work. These thoughtful essays demonstrate not only the deep Russian roots of Aron Gurevich's thought but how he developed his own independent vision of the past in dialogue with pre-revolutionary Russian forms of German Neo-Kantianism, the Tartu-Moscow school of semiotics, and the heritage of Mikhail Bakhtin. Much more than a traditional Gedenkschrift, the editors have provided us with a first rate document in the intellectual history of twentieth century Russia and Europe. Patrick Geary, Andrew W. Mellon Professor, IAS, Princeton, and Distinguished Professor of History Ermeritus, UCLA Contributors are Peter Burke, Andrew Cowell, Charles J. Halperin, Eve Levin, Eva Osterberg, Harbans Mukhia, Michael Richter, Svetlana Luchitskaya, Roger Markwick, Boris Stepanov, Thomas Izbicki, Jean Pierre Delville, Alexandra Korros, and Yelena Mazour-Matusevich.

Manmade marvels of the later medieval courts--animated golden birds, mechanical angels, and other fantastic machines--were not merely amusing distractions, but also agents of social negotiation and political import. In "Manmade Marvels," the dancing metal peacocks, animated statuary, and spectacular illusions of the romance tradition are disembedded from traditional literary representation as supernatural fictions, and situated in the political culture where mechanical marvels were fashioned to delight courts, garner prestige, and symbolize power. This book provides a synthesis of court politics and technological history, intellectual traditions, and the practices of everyday life. Lightsey restores these marvels to the cultural roles they played as they were created by craftsmen and consumed by elite culture, invigorating our understanding of the role of craft in embellishing noble lives with the marvelous.

This book brings together challenging new essays from some of the leaders in Italian scholarship in three countries, to show the range of work that is currently being done not only on Florence but also on Naples, Ferrara and Lucca and on the relationship between cities and countryside.

Annie Abram was born in London in 1869 and died in Sussex in 1930. She contributed significantly to the twentieth-century historiography of late medieval England, researching the social, cultural and religious mores of the English laity and clergy. First published in 1909, this title explores the impact of economic changes on society during the fifteenth century. This was a period of important developments both socially and economically, which witnessed the rise of the middle class through industrialisation, agrarian change, and the growing economic and commercial character of towns. The chapters discuss these areas, as well as the industrial position of women and children, the economic position of the Church and the development of a national character. This is a fascinating classic work, which will be of great value to students researching the socio-economic history of late medieval England.

This original and authoritative text reveals how chivalry was part of the problem of violence in medieval Europe, not merely it's solution. If one ideal was to internalize restraint in knights, chivalry also worshipped hands-on violence, as a close reading of chivalric literature shows. In a developing society, chivalric ideals and practices were both praised and feared by those who sought its reform.

Nineteen contributions by eminent scholars cover topics in Greek Epigraphy, Ancient History, Archaeology, and the Historiography of Archaeology. The section on Epigraphy and Ancient History has a particular focus on Attica, whereas material from Eretria, Delphi, the Argolid, Aetolia, Macedonia, Samothrace, and Aphrodisias widens the picture. The section on Archaeology discusses cultural variation as well as matters of cult, myth, and style, especially in Attica, from the Chalcolithic to the Roman period. The final section on the History of Archaeology reviews the early history of archaeological research at sites such as Piraeus, Rhamnous, Marathon, Oropos, Pylos, and Eretria, based on unpublished archival sources as well as on preliminary sketches and architectural drawings by 19th century artists.

"Taking the Jewish community as a focal point, this book thoroughly explores the various "borders" geographical divides, religious affiliations, gender boundaries, genre divisions that ruled the lives and intellectual production of late medieval Jews"--Provided by publisher.

This title, first published in 1989, was one of the first to directly address the legal dimension of bastard feudalism. John Bellamy explores the role and vulnerability of local officials and juries, the nature of the endemic land wars and the interference in the justice system by those at the top of the social chain. What emerges is a focus on the role of land in disputes, the importance of royal favour and political advantage and the attempt to suppress disruption. This is an interesting title, which will be of particular value to students researching the nature of late medieval and early Tudor feudalism, royal patronage and legal procedure.

This volume complements the selections of Wilferd Madelung's articles previously published by Variorum (Religious Schools and Sects in Medieval Islam, and Religious and Ethnic Movements in Medieval Islam). The first articles here examine legal and political aspects of early Shi`ism. The following studies relate to doctrinal views of the Zaydi imams al-Qasim b. Ibrahim al-Rassi and al-Natiq bi-l-Haqq and to Zaydi attitudes to Sufism. The final group focuses on the Isma`iliyya, their social and political history and aspects of their religious thought. A detailed index completes the volume.