"An innovative and important book."--Speculum "This valuable book . . . poses in a most interesting form the question of the relationship generally between literary theory and literary practice."--Times Higher Education Supplement "Stimulating and learned. . . . This book should serve as a milestone in medieval literary theory."--Yearbook of English Studies "No professional medievalist with a serious interest in literature can afford to leave this book unread."--British Book News "A work of great importance. . . . Minnis's effort takes its own direction and...
"An innovative and important book."--Speculum "This valuable book . . . poses in a most interesting form the question of the relationship gener...
Focusing on the inner workings of the First Crusade in a way that no other work has done, "The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading" delves into the Crusade's organization, its finances, and the division of authority and responsibility among its leaders and their relationships with one another and with their subordinates.
In the year 1095, Pope Urban II initiated what is known today as the First Crusade. His summons of the lay knights to the faith between 1095 and 1096 was Urban II's personal response to an appeal that had reached him from eastern Christians, the Pope referred to the...
Focusing on the inner workings of the First Crusade in a way that no other work has done, "The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading" delves into...
In the popular imagination, the Middle Ages are often associated with lawlessness. As historians have long recognized, however, medieval culture was characterized by an enormous respect for law, legal procedure, and the ideals of justice and equity. Many of our most important modern institutions and legal conceptions grew out of medieval law in its myriad forms (Roman, canon, common, customary, and feudal).
Institutional structures represent only a small portion of the wider cultural field affected by--and affecting--law. In Law and the Illicit in Medieval Europe such...
In the popular imagination, the Middle Ages are often associated with lawlessness. As historians have long recognized, however, medieval culture wa...
Barbarian Tides The Migration Age and the Later Roman Empire Walter Goffart "Goffart has produced yet another major study on the migration of the Northern barbarians into the late Roman Empire. Although called a sequel to his Barbarians and Romans, this is a completely rethought, significantly expanded and rewritten version."--Choice "An important book which should be read attentively by all scholars of the late Roman West and early medieval Europe, and which will also be instructive to those interested in the intellectual history of early-modern and contemporary European...
Barbarian Tides The Migration Age and the Later Roman Empire Walter Goffart "Goffart has produced yet another major study on the migration of the Nort...
The Cistercian Evolution The Invention of a Religious Order in Twelfth-Century Europe Constance Hoffman Berman "An extremely important book, one that will redefine the ways we conceive of medieval religiosity and politics."--Virginia Quarterly Review "A significant contribution to the study of the history of monasticism in the twelfth century."--EHR "Stimulating, controversial, and compelling, Constance Berman's major revisions of early Cistercian history, The Cistercian Evolution, should be read by historians of monasticism and will greatly interest scholars in the...
The Cistercian Evolution The Invention of a Religious Order in Twelfth-Century Europe Constance Hoffman Berman "An extremely important book, one that ...
In Gender and Christianity in Medieval Europe, six historians explore how medieval people professed Christianity, how they performed gender, and how the two coincided. Many of the daily religious decisions people made were influenced by gender roles, the authors contend. Women's pious donations, for instance, were limited by laws of inheritance and marriage customs; male clerics' behavior depended upon their understanding of masculinity as much as on the demands of liturgy. The job of religious practitioner, whether as a nun, monk, priest, bishop, or some less formal participant,...
In Gender and Christianity in Medieval Europe, six historians explore how medieval people professed Christianity, how they performed gender,...
Medieval Italy gathers together an unparalleled selection of newly translated primary sources from the central and later Middle Ages, a period during which Italy was famous for its diverse cultural landscape of urban towers and fortified castles, the spirituality of Saints Francis and Clare, and the vernacular poetry of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. The texts highlight the continuities with the medieval Latin West while simultaneously emphasizing the ways in which Italy was exceptional, particularly for its cities that drove Mediterranean trade, its new communal forms of...
Medieval Italy gathers together an unparalleled selection of newly translated primary sources from the central and later Middle Ages, a peri...
Knighthood and chivalry are commonly associated with courtly aristocracy and military prowess. Instead of focusing on the relationship between chivalry and nobility, Jesus D. Rodriguez-Velasco asks different questions. Does chivalry have anything to do with the emergence of an urban bourgeoisie? If so, how? And in a more general sense, what is the importance of chivalry in inventing and modifying a social class?
In "Order and Chivalry," Rodriguez-Velasco explores the role of chivalry in the emergence of the middle class in an increasingly urbanized fourteenth-century Castile. The book...
Knighthood and chivalry are commonly associated with courtly aristocracy and military prowess. Instead of focusing on the relationship between chiv...
In "Dark Age Bodies" Lynda L. Coon reconstructs the gender ideology of monastic masculinity through an investigation of early medieval readings of the body. Focusing on the Carolingian era, Coon evaluates the ritual and liturgical performances of monastic bodies within the imaginative landscapes of same-sex ascetic communities in northern Europe. She demonstrates how the priestly body plays a significant role in shaping major aspects of Carolingian history, such as the revival of classicism, movements for clerical reform, and church-state relations. In the political realm, Carolingian...
In "Dark Age Bodies" Lynda L. Coon reconstructs the gender ideology of monastic masculinity through an investigation of early medieval readings of ...
Despite the recent outpouring of scholarship on "Piers Plowman," Lawrence Warner contends, we know much less about the poem's production, transmission, and readership than one might think. When did William Langland write each of the three versions of the poem, and when did they enter wide circulation? What role did scribes and other agents play in these processes? "The Lost History of "Piers Plowman"" engages with these questions to bring about a fundamental shift in our understanding of the genesis and development of the Middle English poem.
According to received history, the poem...
Despite the recent outpouring of scholarship on "Piers Plowman," Lawrence Warner contends, we know much less about the poem's production, transmiss...
