The word "medieval" is often used in a negative way when talking about contemporary issues. Why the Middle Ages Matter refreshes our thinking about this historical era, and our own, by looking at some pressing concerns from today's world, asking how these issues were really handled in the medieval period, and showing why the past matters now. The contributors here cover topics such as torture, marriage, sexuality, imprisonment, refugees, poverty, work, the status of women, disability, race, political leadership and end of life care. They focus on a variety of regions, from North Africa and the Middle East, through Western and Central Europe, to the British Isles.

This collection challenges many negative stereotypes of medieval people, revealing a world from which, for instance, much could be learned about looking after the spiritual needs of the dying, and about integrating prisoners into the wider community through an emphasis on reconciliation between victim and criminal. It represents a new level of engagement with issues of social justice by medievalists and provides a highly engaging way into studying the middle ages. All the essays are written so as to be accessible to students, and each is accompanied by a list of further readings.

The word "medieval" is often used in a negative way when talking about contemporary issues. Why the Middle Ages Matter refreshes our thinking about this historical era, and our own, by looking at some pressing concerns from today's world, asking how these issues were really handled in the medieval period, and showing why the past matters now. The contributors here cover topics such as torture, marriage, sexuality, imprisonment, refugees, poverty, work, the status of women, disability, race, political leadership and end of life care. They focus on a variety of regions, from North Africa and the Middle East, through Western and Central Europe, to the British Isles.

This collection challenges many negative stereotypes of medieval people, revealing a world from which, for instance, much could be learned about looking after the spiritual needs of the dying, and about integrating prisoners into the wider community through an emphasis on reconciliation between victim and criminal. It represents a new level of engagement with issues of social justice by medievalists and provides a highly engaging way into studying the middle ages. All the essays are written so as to be accessible to students, and each is accompanied by a list of further readings.

Through the Virgin Mary, Remensnyder examines the dynamics of Christian and non-Christian identity in the pre-modern Spanish world. Rather than focusing on the Virgin Mary, she instead uses the Virgin as a lens to understand how people established identities for themselves in the contexts of domination and devotion. The first half of the book looks at how Spanish Christians used the Virgin's martial functions to draw lines of demarcation between themselves and non-Christians both metaphoric differences such as doctrinal differences and religious polemic and physical ones of war. She could also embody religious borderlands, the places of hybrid and fluid spiritual identities. The second half of the book looks at how the Virgin served as a place of passage where religious lines could be crossed through conversion. The book considers Christian stories that depict Mary as a particularly effective agent in the conversion of Jews, Muslims, and natives of the Americas. The project also examines those Jews, Muslims, and Indians who converted to Christianity: the Virgin was a figure of power through whom they could express their new hybrid identities.