This book traces the political evolution of the Iberian peninsula from a group of late Roman imperial provinces to the monarchies of the mid-fifteenth century. The book consists of a series of essays on the main chronological periods of medieval Spain, and sketches the major political, economic, social and intellectual features of each age and the interaction of Christian, Jew and Muslim. There is currently no other volume in English or Spanish that provides such a wealth of analysis or description and yet which covers the entire medieval period.

Between the years AD 1000 and 1500, western Christendom absorbed by conquest and attracted through immigration a growing number of Jews. This community was to make a valuable contribution to rapidly developing European civilisation but was also to suffer some terrible setbacks, culminating in a series of expulsions from the more advanced westerly areas of Europe. At the same time, vigorous new branches of world Jewry emerged and a rich new Jewish cultural legacy was created. In this important historical synthesis, Robert Chazan discusses the Jewish experience over a 500 year period across the...

The economy of the Carolingian empire (753-877), extended from the Pyrenees and the northern shores of the Mediterranean to the North Sea, and from the Atlantic coast to the Elbe and Saale rivers. Aspects of land and people, agrarian production and technique, craft and industry, and regional and international commerce are analyzed, and the Carolingian economy is reassessed in a European context.

This history of the early European middle ages combines the rich literature of women's history with original research in mainstream history and traditional chronology. Beginning at the end of the Roman empire, the book recreates the lives of ordinary women and their personal stories. It uses the few documents produced by women, along with archaeological evidence, art, and the written records of medieval men.

The Wars of the Roses was a period of major crisis in English politics and in the lives of the English landowning classes. This book attempts to explain why the Wars occurred, and with what results, by placing them in the context of the ruling classes' expectations of kingship and governance at that time. The book draws on a large amount of detailed work written over the past twenty-five years on local and national politics, to present a coherent synthesis of what can seem a baffling and incoherent period.

This book offers an introduction to medieval economic thought, as it emerges from the works of the twelfth to the fifteenth century academic theologians, lawyers and other sources. Using Italian merchants' writings, vernacular poetry, parliamentary legislation, and manorial court rolls, it discusses property, charity, the role of money, weights, measures, coinage, trade, fair price and fair wage. It makes a relatively neglected subject accessible by exploring the relationship between theory and practice.

This is a scholarly and up-to-date narrative of the epic reign of the "Norman" King Roger II, the founder of the kingdom of Sicily during the first half of the twelfth century. It is a thoughtful analysis of the kingdom's mixed east-west culture and the development of its royal government; the most advanced in twelfth-century Europe. Although many recent studies have addressed important aspects of medieval southern Italy, this is the first work in nearly ninety years to be devoted specifically to Roger's life and reign.