The Chronicle of the Czechs by Cosmas of Prague (d. 1125) is a masterwork of medieval historical writing, deeply erudite, consciously researched, and narrated in high rhetorical style. Regarded as the foundational narrative of Czech history, it is the source of the oldest stories about the land, people, and rulers of Bohemia and Moravia. Lisa Wolverton provides the first annotated English translation of this eminently enjoyable and teachable work. The first of the three books of the Chronicle describe the earliest people to arrive in Bohemia, the first rulers and the origins of the Premyslid...

In the growing field of early medieval texts in translation, this book presents a full English translation of the 'Lives of Liutbirga of Wendhausen', the first anchoress in Saxony, and Hathumoda, the first abbess of Gandersheim.

Anne T. Thayer is the Paul and Minnie Diefenderfer Associate Professor of Mercersburg and Ecumenical Theology and Church History at Lancaster Theological Seminary. Katharine J. Lualdi is professor of history and on the faculty of the Honors Program at the University of Southern Maine. Thayer and Lualdi share an interest in late medieval and early modern Christianity and have collaborated on the edited volume Penitence in the Age of Reformations.

Widukind, a monk at the prominent monastery of Corvey in Saxony during the middle third of the tenth century, is known to posterity through his Res gestae Saxonicae, an exceptionally rich account of the Saxon people and the reigns of the first two rulers of the Ottonian dynasty, Henry I (919-936) and Otto I (936-973). Widukind, likely of noble birth, received a thorough education in both biblical and classical texts. When writing the Gestae, Widukind also had available the extensive library at Corvey, with its large collection of ancient texts as well as numerous works from the eighth and...