Historian Hans-Werner Goetz presents here a comprehensive depiction of life in the earlier Middle Ages that focuses on everyday history. According to Goetz it is nearly impossible to write a history of everyday life during the Middle Ages since the written sources of that age had entirely different purposes, never describing everyday life for its own sake. However, by drawing on chronicles, legal documents and even fiction, Goetz is able to produce a lively picture of this era, illuminating everyday life as it was conditioned by institutional, physical, and social environments.

Medievalists, historians, and women's studies specialists will welcome this translation of Herbert Grundmann's classic study of religious movements in the Middle Ages because it provides a much-needed history of medieval religious life--one that lies between the extremes of doctrinal classification and materialistic analysis--and because it represents the first major effort to underline the importance of women in the development of the language and practice of religion in the Middle Ages.

Medievalists, historians, and women's studies specialists will welcome this translation of Herbert Grundmann's classic study of religious movements in the Middle Ages because it provides a much-needed history of medieval religious life--one that lies between the extremes of doctrinal classification and materialistic analysis--and because it represents the first major effort to underline the importance of women in the development of the language and practice of religion in the Middle Ages.

Religious Movements in the Middle Ages describes a lay religious movement of the eleventh and...