Looking at a neglected period in the social history of modernization, David Levine investigates the centuries that followed the year 1000, when a new kind of society emerged in Europe. New commercial routines, new forms of agriculture, new methods of information technology, and increased population densities all played a role in the prolonged transition away from antiquity and toward modernity.

In the Middles Ages, the edges of one's world could represent different meanings. On the one hand, they might have been situated in far-away regions, mainly in the east and north, that one most often only knew from hearsay and which were inhabited by strange beings: humans with their faces on their chest, without a mouth, or with dog heads. On the other hand, the edges of one's world could just mean the borders of the community where one lived and that one sometimes might not have had the possibility to cross during one s whole life.

The First Crusade (1096-1099) was an extraordinary undertaking. Because the repercussions of that expedition have rippled on down the centuries, there has been an enormous literature on the subject. Yet, unlike so many other areas of medieval history, until now the First Crusade has failed to attract the attention of historians interested in social dynamics. This book is the first to examine the sociology of the sources in order to provide a detailed analysis of the various social classes which participated in the expedition and the tensions between them. In doing so, it offers a fresh approach to the many debates surrounding the subject of the First Crusade.

This book presents essays on current research in medieval and early modern environmental history by historians and social scientists.

This collection presents an innovative series of essays about the medieval culture of Feud and Violence.

Long before the European Renaissance, while the Western world was languishing in what was once called the “Dark Ages,” the Arab world was ablaze with the knowledge, invention, and creativity of its Golden Age. Through the astrologers, physicians, philosophers, mathematicians, and alchemists of the Muslim world, this knowledge was carried from Samarkand and Baghdad to Cordoba and beyond, influencing Western thinkers from Thomas Aquinas to Copernicus and helping to inspire the cultural phenomenon of the Renaissance.

Readers will be introduced to Byzantine women and children, men and eunuchs, emperors, patriarchs, aristocrats and slaves. They will explore churches and fortifications, monasteries and palaces, from Constantinople to Cyprus and Syria in the east, and to Apulia and Venice in the west. Secular and sacred art, profane and spiritual literature will be revealed to the reader, who will be encouraged to read, see, smell and touch. The worlds of Byzantine ceremonial and sanctity, liturgy and letters, Orthodoxy and heresy will be explored, by both leading and innovative international scholars.

This volume show the many facets of contact in al-Andalus and Medieval Iberia, with issues still vital after more than a millennium as cultures face off and open or close frontiers to ideas, customs, ideologies and the arts.

Our understanding of medieval Central and Eastern Europe is being revitalized by new directions in cultural history. Careful and detailed portraits of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century life in the region shed new light on the city, the court, the school and university, the economy, and prevailing ideas, and expand our vision of the interplay between religion, politics, music and memory.

This volume collects papers given at the conference ""Documents and the History of the Early Islamic Mediterranean World"", including editions of unpublished documents and historical studies, which make use of documentary evidence from al-Andalus, Sicily, Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula, Syria and Khurasan.

This book presents an historical overview of the Frankish realms in Central Europe during the Carolingian period. Against this background Part II of the book examines the cultural inventory deposited by the scribal culture in Central Europe as represented by manuscripts, crystals, ivories and gem encrusted liturgical art. Part III deals with such examples of Carolingian wall painting and architecture as are still evident in Central Europe.

Despite the wealth of scholarship in recent decades on medieval women, we still know much less about the experiences of women in the early Middle Ages than we do about those in later centuries. In Women and Aristocratic Culture in the Carolingian World, Valerie L. Garver offers a fresh appraisal of the cultural and social history of eighth- and ninth-century women. Examining changes in women's lives and in the ways others perceived women during the early Middle Ages, she shows that lay and religious women, despite their legal and social constrictions, played integral roles in Carolingian society.

The Roman empire tends to be seen as a whole whereas the early middle ages tends to be seen as a collection of regional histories, roughly corresponding to the land-areas of modern nation states. As a result, early medieval history is much more fragmented, and there have been few convincing syntheses of socio-economic change in the post-Roman world since the 1930s. In recent decades, the rise of early medieval archaeology has also transformed our source-base, but this has not been adequately integrated into analyses of documentary history in almost any country.

There is a growing interest in the history of relations among the English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish as the United Kingdom and Ireland begin to construct new political arrangements and to become more fully integrated into Europe. This book brings together the latest work on how these relations developed between 900 and 1300, a period crucial for the formation of national identities.

The mid-twelfth century saw the sudden appearance of a remarkable group of writers: the `new historians', authors such as Geffrei Gaimar, Benoît de Sainte-Maure, Wace, Jordan Fantosme and Ambroise, who were the earliest historical writers to use French. Each had his own style and authorial persona; yet together, despite their considerable differences, they pioneered a common form of historical writing which is quite distinct from the styles of previous vernacular writers.

This book studies twelfth-century humanism in the guise of an all-embracing discourse in which the human and the divine are found to be on equal footing.

In this highly illustrated book, David Hinton looks at what possessions meant to people at every level of society in Britain in the middle ages, from elaborate gold jewellery to clay pots, and provides a fascinating window into the society of the middle ages. Gold and Gilt, Pots and Pins is about things worn and used in Britain throughout the Middle Ages, from the great treasure hoards that mark the end of the Roman Empire to the new expressions of ideas promoted by the Renaissance and Reformation.

This volume seeks to explore theoretical frameworks, methodology and field practice suited to the late antique Mediterranean. Broad themes such as long-term change, topography, the economy and social life are covered, but in terms of specific issues and evidential problems currently being tackled by scholars of late antiquity.

Why did the Normans translate English law, the law of the people they had conquered, from Old English into Latin? Solving this puzzle meant asking questions about what medieval writers thought about language and translation, what created the need and desire to translate, and how translators went about the work. These are the questions Reversing Babel attempts to answer by providing evidence that comes from the world in which not just Norman translators of law but any translators of any texts, regardless of languages, did their translating.

An introduction to English literature from 1100 to 1500. By placing medieval writers in their historical context - the four centuries between the Norman Conquest and the Renaissance - Professor Burrow explains not only how they wrote, but why.

Surveys the influence of the Psalms in the Middle Ages, giving a unique window into the intellectual, spiritual, and emotional culture of the period.

Empire of Magic offers a genesis and genealogy for medieval romance and the King Arthur legend through the history of Europe's encounters with the East in crusades, travel, missionizing, and empire formation. It also produces definitions of "race" and "nation" for the medieval period and posits that the Middle Ages and medieval fantasies of race and religion have recently returned.

Most of the essays in this volume originated as papers for the conference “Early Modern Medievalisms: The Interplay between Scholarly Reflection and Artistic Production”, organized at the University of Leiden, 21– 23 August 2008.