The best new research on medieval clothing and textiles, drawing from a range of disciplines. This sixth volume of Medieval Clothing and Textiles ranges widely, as ever, across England and Europe. It presents two groundbreaking articles in novel areas of textile and dress scholarship: an introduction to a previouslyunexamined class of embroidery (decorative manuscript repair), and an English-language overview of scholarly research on historical dress in Latvia. Among the other topics considered in the volume are two very different listingsof clothing items from medieval Germany: an invented lexicon by the mystic Hildegard of Bingen, and an accounting of specific real garments worn by ordinary people and donated to finance the building of Strasbourg Cathedral. Papers also consider the mercantile world of clothing in medieval London: one gathers insight on dealers of secondhand clothing from the evidence of historical documents, while the other examines the social rise of the mercers in the light of their representation in literature, and their connections to the literary world. Further articles consider luxurious dress accessories with both worldly and spiritual significance, and analyse a French manual for Englishhousewives, illuminating the often-overlooked topic of home linen production. Contributors: Hilary Davidson, Ieva Pigozne, Valerie L. Garver, Christine Sciacca, Sarah L. Higley, William Sayers, Roger A. Ladd, Kate KelseyStaples, Charlotte A. Stanford

The practice and the representation of flaying in the middle ages and after are considered in this provocative collection. Skin is the parchment upon which identity is written; class, race, ethnicity, and gender are all legible upon the human surface. Removing skin tears away identity, and leaves a blank slate upon which law, punishment, sanctity, ormonstrosity can be inscribed; whether as an act of penal brutality, as a comic device, or as a sign of spiritual sacrifice, it leaves a lasting impression about the qualities and nature of humanity. Flaying often functioned as animaginative resource for medieval and early modern artists and writers, even though it seems to have been rarely practiced in reality. From images of Saint Bartholomew holding his skin in his arms, to scenes of execution in Havelok the Dane, to laws that prescribed it as a punishment for treason, this volume explores the idea and the reality of skin removal - flaying - in the Middle Ages. It interrogates the connection between reality and imagination in depictions of literal skin removal, rather than figurative or theoretical interpretations of flaying, and offers a multilayered view of medieval and early modern perceptions of flaying and its representations in Europeanculture. Its two parts consider practice and representation, capturing the evolution of flaying as both an idea and a practice in the premodern world. Larissa Tracy is Associate Professor, Longwood University. Contributors: Frederika Bain, Peter Dent, Kelly DeVries, Valerie Gramling, Perry Neil Harrison, Jack Hartnell, Emily Leverett, Michael Livingston, Sherry C.M. Lindquist, Asa Mittman, Mary Rambaran-Olm, William Sayers, Christine Sciacca, Susan Small, Larissa Tracy, Renée Ward

Some of the great and lasting achievements of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance are the architectural wonders of soaring cathedrals and grand castles and palaces. While many of these edifices survive, many more are lost, and it is within the pages of illuminated manuscripts that we often find the best record of the appearance of these amazing buildings. This volume illustrates the creative ways in which medieval artists represented architecture, offering insight into what these buildings meant for medieval people. Such structures were not just made to be inhabited--they symbolized grandeur, power, and even heaven on earth. Building the Medieval World accompanies an exhibition of the same name on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum from March 2 through May 16, 2010.
Building the Medieval World is the fourth in the popular Medieval Imagination series of small, affordable books drawing on manuscript illumination in the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum and the British Library. Each volume focuses on a particular theme and provides an accessible, delightful introduction to the imagination of the medieval world.

When one thinks of women in the Middle Ages, the images that often come to mind are those of damsels in distress, mystics in convents, female labourers in the field, and even women of ill repute. In reality, however, medieval conceptions of womanhood were multifaceted, and women's roles were varied and nuanced. Female stereotypes existed in the medieval world, but so too did women of power and influence. The pages of illuminated manuscripts reveal to us the many facets of medieval womanhood and slices of medieval life-from preoccupations with biblical heroines and saints to courtship, childbirth, and motherhood. While men dominated artistic production, this volume demonstrates the ways in which female artists, authors, and patrons were instrumental in the creation of illuminated manuscripts.