This is a study of landholding and alliance in England in the years 950 to 1086, a period in which the fortunes of lay lords and their families rose and fell dramatically. It was also a period of dizzying tenurial change, in which the fluctuations in landed wealth and alliances shed light on the economic and geographic balance between the monarchy and the aristocracy, and on how this balance helped shape Conquest England. A number of key historical issues are investigated: the impact of Cnut's conquest on England, the quality of Edward the Confessor's kingship, the means by which the Norman...

This book studies the processes by which the pagan Roman Empire was transformed into the Christian Middle Ages. Drawing on the perspectives of social history, archaeology and anthropology, it focuses on the strategies of Bishop Caesarius of Arles (470SH542 AD) to promote Christian values, practices and beliefs among the pagans, Jews and Christians of southern France, and on the resistance provoked by his efforts among the population. This is the first book in English about Caesarius, and the only book to discuss southern Gaul during the sixth century.

This study of the social, geographical, and disciplinary composition of the University of Paris in the early fourteenth century--the most detailed of its kind ever attempted--is based on the reconstruction of a remarkable document: the financial record of tax levied on university members in the academic year 1329-1330. After a thorough examination of this document, the book explores residential patterns, the relationship of students, masters, and tutors, social class and levels of wealth, interaction with the royal court, and the geographical background of university scholars.

This revisionary study of Muslims living under Christian rule during the Spanish "reconquest" delves into the subtleties of identity under the thirteenth-century Crown rule of Aragon. Brian Catlos uncovers a social dynamic in which sectarian differences comprise only one of the many factors in the causal complex of political, economic and cultural reactions. Beginning with the final stage of independent Muslim rule in the Ebro valley region, he traces the subtle and often surprising transformation of Islamic society into mudejar society under Christian domination.

The English Franciscan William of Ockham (c.1285 1347) was one of the most influential philosophers and theologians in late medieval Europe. Fresh scholarship has shown his profound impact on logic, metaphysics, epistemology and the philosophy of language in the late Middle Ages and beyond. Following a dispute between the papacy and his Order, Ockham abandoned his academic career and devoted himself to anti-papal polemics. Scholars have produced divergent and often contradictory interpretations of Ockham as a political thinker: a destructive critic of the medieval Church, a medieval Catholic...

Silence and Sign Language in Medieval Monasticism explores the rationales for religious silence in early medieval abbeys and the use of nonverbal forms of communication among monks when rules of silence forbade them from speaking. After examining the spiritual benefits of personal silence as a form of protection against the perils of sinful discourse in early monastic thought, this work shows how the monks of the Abbey of Cluny (founded in 910 in Burgundy) were the first to employ a silent language of meaning-specific hand signs that allowed them to convey precise information without recourse...

This is the first analysis of the full breadth of papal involvement in late medieval Britain, using local sources in conjunction with material from the Vatican Archives. It deals with the Avignon Papacy's relations with Scotland and northern England during a period in which papal involvement at the local level was unusually wide-ranging, but still was generally accepted. It examines how papal practices affected both clerics and lay people in northern Britain, the nature and importance of any opposition aroused, and how far the popes and their agents had to adapt to local circumstances.

This study develops our understanding of medieval society through an examination of its charitable activities. In a detailed study of the forms in which relief was organised in medieval Cambridge and Cambridgeshire, the book unravels the economic and demographic factors which created the need for relief as well as the forms in which the community offered it. With continual reference to the religious teachings of priests and friars and the changing ideas of lay piety, Dr Rubin relates the changing forms of charitable giving to the shift in attitudes towards community and social order, towards...

This volume examines the nature of aristocratic society in the Spanish kingdoms of Leon and Castile in the twelfth century. Drawing on an extensive range of original sources, many of them unpublished, it highlights the unrivaled wealth, status and power enjoyed by some members of the aristocracy. It also explores the multifarious roles that lay magnates were expected to fulfill: as family protectors, landlords and judges; as courtiers, diplomats and military commanders; and, not least, as patrons of the church.

This is a full-scale study of the political thought of the Italian jurist, Baldus de Ubaldis (1327 1400). Baldus shared with his teacher and colleague, Bartolus of Sassoferrato, the greatest fame and influence amongst the Commentators, the school of jurists which dominated Roman law studies in the late Middle Ages and remained highly influential throughout the sixteenth century and beyond. Baldus was also a canonist of renown. Although Baldus was certainly the juristic peer of Bartolus, he has previously attracted far less attention from modern scholars. This book is particularly concerned...