New insights into key texts and interpretive problems in the history of England and Europe between the eighth and thirteenth centuries. This volume of the Haskins Society Journal demonstrates the Society's continued interest in a broad range of geographical contexts and methodological approaches to medieval history. Chapters include a much-needed reassessment of AElfthryth and her place in the society and governance of tenth-century England, as well as a comprehensive survey of the conceptualization of excommunication in post-Carolingian Europe to c.1200. Further essays explore aspects of the Norman world of southern Italy, including the dynamics of political coalitions and kinship networks, ethnic identity, and material culture. The Journal continues to highlight close analyses of key primary sources,with a study of Angevin kingship in the writings of Hugh of Lincoln and Adam of Eynsham, and an examination of Ralph of Niger's Old Testament exegesis and criticism of crusading in the late twelfth century. A ground-breaking newstudy assesses the utility of colonialism as a valid model for understanding the extraction of sacred resources and relics from the crusader lands. The volume closes with a crucial reconsideration of the agency and power of medieval French peasants as attested in medieval cartularies, opening new approaches for further research into this critical and complex social group.

This is the first translation of the Hystoria de via or ‘Monte Cassino Chronicle,’ one of the few surviving crusader sources from Southern Italy, where it was probably compiled (partly from known sources) between the 1130s and 1140s. The chronicle’s original sections offer new and fresh insight on the knowledge and reception of the First Crusade in Southern Italy, and the devotional and pilgrimage practices which surrounded it. The introduction contextualises the chronicle in the environment which produced it, discussing the historiographical tradition at Montecassino, the likely sources for the Hystoria, and its significance as an original source. The introduction also comments extensively on the theological framework of the Hystoria, which offers an intensely religious view of the crusade as pilgrimage, and insists particularly on the primacy of violence in its vision of Christian devotional practice, and the crusade as continuous movement through suffering for the pilgrims. The translation, which is both faithful to the text and highly readable, is accompanied by detailed references and a full commentary. The volume makes an important addition to the canon of crusader sources and provides a little-known example for specialists of the literature of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages.

A translation of The Book of the Civilised Man by Daniel of Beccles brings to light the social and cultural life of medieval people in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries through a previously little-known text. Known in Latin as Urbanus magnus, it is a complex and illuminating text which covers an array of topics related to social mores in the Middle Ages, including: how to be a good and moral citizen, how to dine courteously, how to maintain standards of hygiene, how to regulate your diet, and how to run your household. Often described as one of the earliest 'courtesy texts', this translation will reveal a text which cannot be easily categorised in any genre but is relevant widely for anyone with an interest in medieval life. An expansive text of enormous breadth, this translation will provide scholars new insight in areas such as social hierarchy, citizenship, morality, friendship, family ties, household administration, food consumption, standards of etiquette, and much more.

A translation of The Book of the Civilised Man by Daniel of Beccles brings to light the social and cultural life of medieval people in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries through a previously little-known text. Known in Latin as Urbanus magnus, it is a complex and illuminating text which covers an array of topics related to social mores in the Middle Ages, including: how to be a good and moral citizen, how to dine courteously, how to maintain standards of hygiene, how to regulate your diet, and how to run your household. Often described as one of the earliest 'courtesy texts', this translation will reveal a text which cannot be easily categorised in any genre but is relevant widely for anyone with an interest in medieval life. An expansive text of enormous breadth, this translation will provide scholars new insight in areas such as social hierarchy, citizenship, morality, friendship, family ties, household administration, food consumption, standards of etiquette, and much more.

Analyses of different aspects of the history of warfare in the Mediterranean in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The kingdom of Sicily plays a huge part in the history of the Norman people; their conquest brought in a new era of invasion, interaction and integration in the Mediterranean, However, much previous scholarship has tended to concentrate on their activities in England and the Holy Land. This volume aims to redress the balance by focusing on the Hautevilles, their successors and their followers. It considers the operational, tactical, technical and logistical aspects of the conduct of war in the South throughout the eleventh and twelfth centuries, looking also at its impact on Italian and Sicilian multi-cultural society. Topics include the narratives of the Norman expansion, exchanges and diffusion between the "military cultures" of the Normans and the peoples they encountered in the South, and their varied policies of conquest, consolidation and expansion in the different operational theatres of land and sea.

The bitch. That's what the crew call me. The bitch. They say it behind my back. But I can hear them. My name's Helen, I was born in Sparta, but I went away for love. They used to say I was the most beautiful woman in the world. The minstrels are already making up stories about how little I've won and how much I've lost. Lying tales. They weren't there, after all. But I was. From her childhood in Sparta, through the turbulent years of her marriage, and of course her disappearance with Paris and its consequences, Helen of Troy tells her own story. In a lyrical and musical style, Helen sheds her legendary persona and walks from the page as a real woman of flesh and blood; the archetype of all the women who, throughout history, have followed their hearts, forsaking wealth and power.