This is a comprehensive sourcebook for the study of western Europe from the 5th to the 15th century. The era was one of immense diversity and openness to new ideas and outreach in areas ranging from technology to natural philosophy. The material collected in this volume covers a wide range of documentation, including chronicles, legal and official state and church documents, biographies, poems and letters. As a whole, they illustrate the complexity as well as the unity of the medieval world, covering the whole of Europe. Subjects covered range from the worlds of monasteries, the papacy, the...