Essays into numerous aspects of the Domesday Book, shedding fresh light on its mysteries. Compiled from the records of a survey of the kingdom of England commissioned by William the Conqueror in 1085, Domesday Book is a key source for the history of England. However, there has never been a critical edition of the textand so, despite over 200 years of intense academic study, its evidence has rarely been exploited to the full. The essays in this volume seek to realize the potential of Domesday Book by focussing on the manuscript itself. There are analyses of abbreviations, letter forms, and language; re-assessments of key sources, the role of tenants-in-chief in producing them, and the nature of the Norman settlement that their forms illuminate; a re-evaluation of the data and its referents; and finally, fresh examinations of the afterlife of the Domesday text and how it was subsequently perceived. In identifying new categories of evidence and revisiting old ones, these studies point to a better understanding of the text. There are surprising insights into its sources and developing programme and, intriguingly, a system of encoding hitherto unsuspected. In its turn the import of its data becomes clearer, thereby shedding new light on Anglo-Norman society and governance. It is in these terms that this volume offers a departure in Domesday studies and looks forward to the resolution of long-standing problems that have hitherto bedevilled the interpretation of an iconic text. David Roffe and K.S.B. Keats-Rohan are leading Domesday scholars who have published widely on Domesday Book and related matters. Contributors: Howard B. Clarke, Sally Harvey, K.S.B. Keats-Rohan, Andrew Lowerre, John Palmer, David Roffe, Ian Taylor, Pamela Taylor, Frank Thorn, Ann Williams.

Fruits of the most recent research on the worlds of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. This volume of the Haskins Society Journal furthers the Society's commitment to historical and interdisciplinary research on the early and central Middle Ages, focusing on the Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, and Angevin worlds.The topics of the essays range from the complexities of landholding and service in England after the Norman Conquest and the place of Portugal in the legal renaissance of the twelfth century, to the purpose and audiences of copiesof Anglo-Saxon charters produced by the late medieval community at Bury St Edmunds. There is an investigation of the hitherto overlooked narrative role of material objects in Orderic Vitalis'History, continuing the Journal's investigation of source-specific analyses, together with an exploration of the date and reliability of an important, but neglected, witness to the Norman conquest of Sicily. Other essays look at the longue duree of the ascetic practice of self-flagellation and its emergence in eleventh-century Italy; the place and meaning of religious practices in crusading, using the De expugnatione Lyxbonensi as laboratory; and aural and visual experience in the life and musical opus of Godric of Finchale. Contributors: Howard B. Clarke, Sarah Foot, John Howe, Monika Otter, Daniel Roach, Charles D. Stanton, Susanna A. Throop, Andre Vitoria.

A rich collection of articles on multiple aspects of Anglo-Norman and Norman studies, forming an indispensable addition to an understanding of this important period of history. This volume of Anglo-Norman Studies demonstrates yet again the multi-disciplinarity and European range of the series. As befits the proceedings of a conference held in Normandy at Bayeux, it contains two articles on the renowned Tapestry, and a consideration of the campaign of 1066; there are also several papers on the medieval duchy, their topics including its early tenth-century origins, the abbesses of Norman nunneries, abbatial investitures in the context of religious reform, the reign of Robert Curthose, the charters of a major aristocratic family, and historical writing in and around late twelfth- and early thirteenth-century Normandy. Alongside these are articleson landscape and belief, villein manumissions and the theology of the incarnation, the evolution of criminal law in Scotland, Bohemond of Antioch, the architectural historian John Bilson, and important aspects of twelfth-centurypoetry. David Bates is a Professorial Fellow at the University of East Anglia and was until recently a Visiting Professor at the University of Caen Basse-Normandie. Contributors: Lesley Abrams, Bernard S. Bachrach, Steven Biddlecombe, Alexandrina Buchanan, Howard B. Clarke, Edoardo D'Angelo, Gregory Fedorenko, Jean-Herve Foulon, George Garnett, Veronique Gazeau, Paul R. Hyams, Sylvette Lemagnen, Monika Otter, Daniel Power, Alice Taylor, C.S. Watkins.

Essays into numerous aspects of the Domesday Book, shedding fresh light on its mysteries. Compiled from the records of a survey of the kingdom of England commissioned by William the Conqueror in 1085, Domesday Book is a key source for the history of England. However, there has never been a critical edition of the textand so, despite over 200 years of intense academic study, its evidence has rarely been exploited to the full. The essays in this volume seek to realize the potential of Domesday Book by focussing on the manuscript itself. There are analyses of abbreviations, letter forms, and language; re-assessments of key sources, the role of tenants-in-chief in producing them, and the nature of the Norman settlement that their forms illuminate; a re-evaluation of the data and its referents; and finally, fresh examinations of the afterlife of the Domesday text and how it was subsequently perceived. In identifying new categories of evidence and revisiting old ones, these studies point to a better understanding of the text. There are surprising insights into its sources and developing programme and, intriguingly, a system of encoding hitherto unsuspected. In its turn the import of its data becomes clearer, thereby shedding new light on Anglo-Norman society and governance. It is in these terms that this volume offers a departure in Domesday studies and looks forward to the resolution of long-standing problems that have hitherto bedevilled the interpretation of an iconic text. DAVID ROFFE and K.S.B. KEATS-ROHAN are leading Domesday scholars who have published widely on Domesday Book and related matters.

This volume is based on possibly the biggest single Europe-wide project in urban history. In 1955 the International Commission for the History of Towns established the European historic towns atlas project in accordance with a common scheme in order to encourage comparative urban studies. Although advances in urban archaeology since the 1960s have highlighted the problematic relationship between the oldest extant town plan and the actual origins of a town, the large-scale cadastral maps as they have been made available by the European historic towns atlas project are still necessary if we want to understand the evolution of the physical form of our towns. By 2014 the project consisted of over 500 individual publications from over 18 different countries across Europe. Each atlas comprises at least a core-map at the scale of 1:2500, analytical maps and an explanatory text. The time has come to use this enormous database that has been compiled over the last 40 years. This volume, itself based on a conference related to this topic that was held in the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin in 2006, takes up this challenge. The focus of the volume is on the question of how seigneurial power influenced the creation of towns in medieval Europe and of how this process in turn influenced urban form. Part I of the volume addresses two major issues: the history of the use of town plans in urban research and the methodological challenges of comparative urban history. Parts II and III constitute the core of the book focusing on the dynamic relationship between lordship and town planning in the core area of medieval Europe and on the periphery. In Part IV the symbolic meaning of town plans for medieval people is discussed. Part V consists of critical contributions by an archaeologist, an art historian and an historical geographer. By presenting case studies by leading researchers from different European countries, this volume combines findings that were hitherto not available in English. A comparison of the English and German bibliographies, attached to this volume, reveals some interesting insights as to how the focus of research shifted over time. The book also shows how work on urban topography integrates the approaches of the historian, archaeologist and historical geographer. The narrative of medieval urbanization becomes enriched and the volume is a genuine contribution to European studies.

The latest collection of articles on Anglo-Norman topics, with a particular focus on Wales. The 2007 conference on Anglo-Norman Studies, the thirtieth in the annual series, was held in Wales, and there is a Welsh flavour to the proceedings now published. Five of the thirteen papers cover Welsh topics in the long twelfthcentury: Church reform, political culture, the supposed resurgence of Powys as a political entity, and interpreter families in the Marches, besides a broad and compelling historiographical survey of the place of the Normans in Welsh history. Twelfth-century England is represented by papers on chivalry and kingship [in literature and life], the Evesham surveys, lay charters, and Henry of Blois and the arts. Essays which focus on the southern Italian city ofTrani and on the crusader history of Ralph of Caen explore wider Norman identities. Finally, there are two broad surveys contextualizing the Anglo-Norman experience: on the careers of the clergy and on how warriors were identified before heraldry. CONTRIBUTORS: HUW PRYCE, LAURA ASHE, JULIA BARROW, HOWARD B. CLARKE, JOHN REUBEN DAVIES, JUDITH EVERARD, NATASHA HODGSON, CHARLES INSLEY, ROBERT JONES, PAUL OLDFIELD, DAVID STEPHENSON, FREDERICK SUPPE,JEFFREY WEST.

The techniques and insights of modern social science are applied to early medieval history in this extraordinary work. Professor Duby offers a chronological account of the European economy from its primitive beginnings, through a period when an extensive trading community developed, to an era when circulation of money and urban growth came to overshadow agricultural activities. Drawing on his extensive knowledge of the history of the countryside, particularly the French countryside, he has authoritatively identified the moving forces behind economic behavior and economic growth in the early Middle Ages.