Böcker i Cambridge Medieval Textbooks-serien

In this concise and accessible survey of Ireland from AD 400 to 1500, Clare Downham critiques the notion that Irish society was archaic and that the main agents of change were foreign invasions. Instead she uses the under-explored primary sources to highlight internal changes in religion, politics, culture, and more.

This study provides a new overview of chivalry, which formed a fundamental element of medieval society. Chivalry shaped elite warrior status and profession, influenced warfare and violence, took on religious piety, and shaped ideas of love and relations between men and women of high status throughout half a millennium of early European history.

How did medieval Europeans use and change their environments, think about the natural world, and handle the natural forces affecting their lives? This is a pioneering survey of medieval relations with the natural world which integrates approaches from social and economic history and environmental studies.

At its height, the Carolingian empire spanned a million square kilometres of western Europe as the largest political unit for centuries. This comprehensive survey traces the empire's history from its origins around 700, through its expansion in the eighth century, to the struggle to hold it together in the ninth.

This advanced undergraduate textbook is the first comparative survey of heresy and its response throughout the medieval world. Spanning England to Persia, it examines heresy, error, and religious dissent - and efforts to end them through correction, persuasion, or punishment - among Latin Christians, Greek Christians, Jews, and Muslims.

In this important synthesis of medieval Jewish history, Robert Chazan discusses the Jewish experience in Europe between AD 1000 and 1500. As well as being the story of medieval Jewry, the book also illuminates important aspects of majority life in Europe.

A comprehensive history of Russia from the reign of Vladimir I the Saint through to Ivan IV the Terrible. This revised edition includes the results of recent studies and the author's own research to present an analysis of political, social, and economic history, foreign relations, culture and religion.

This is a major survey of the barbarian migrations in the west and their role in the creation of early medieval Europe. Drawing on a broad range of historical and archaeological sources, Guy Halsall outlines pre-migration society, the causes and mechanics of movement, and the process of settlement.

This book provides a clear, scholarly narrative of the epic reign of the 'Norman' king Roger II, founder of the kingdom of Sicily, during the early twelfth century. It was the first work for almost ninety years to be devoted specifically to Roger's life and reign.

This authoritative survey draws on historical and archaeological sources in the narration of 750 years of the history of southeastern Europe. It explores the rise of medieval states, the conversion to Christianity, the monastic movement and the role of material culture in the representation of power.

This textbook brings together for the first time the political, administrative and social history of England in the thirteenth century within a single volume.

This book provides students of both medieval history and political thought with an accessible and lucid introduction to the early development of certain ideas fundamental to the organisation of the modern world and contains a full bibliography to assist students wishing to pursue the subject in greater depth.

This is a one-volume political and ecclesiastical history of medieval Scotland. It analyses the development of the institutions of the Scottish state, conflict and co-operation between the crown and the nobility, relations with external powers, the history of the Scottish church, and the formation of a distinctive Scottish identity.

Between 1130 and 1266 Sicily was a Norman kingdom experiencing similar rule to that imposed on England after 1066. This new book is the first to examine the Sicilian rule and achievements of Roger II and his descendants.

A concise, general history of the crusades from the first calls to arms in the later eleventh century to the fall of the last crusader strongholds in Syria and Palestine in 1291. Incorporating over forty years' research, this is the ideal introductory textbook for all students of the crusades.

The Waldensians constituted the only heretical group to have survived to the dawn of the so-called 'modern' period. Emerging first in around 1170 they were condemned as heretics, yet they survived across Europe until the sixteenth century. This 1999 book tells their unique story of quiet separateness, fear and persecution.

This book is a comprehensive study of the constitutional developments of the monastic and religious orders in Britain between 1000 and 1300, and their place within the political, social and economic fabric of the wider community, covering Wales and Scotland as well as England.

This book traces the political evolution of the Iberian peninsula from a group of late Roman imperial provinces to the Spanish and Portuguese monarchies of the Trastamara and Braganza dynasties of the mid-fifteenth century. It sketches the major political, economic, social and intellectual features of each age and the interaction of Christian, Jew and Muslim in the Iberian peninsula.

This book is a comprehensive evaluation of the Carolingian economy. Aspects of land and people, agrarian production and technique, craft and industry, and regional and international commerce are analysed, and the Carolingian economy is reassessed in a European context.

The Wars of the Roses were a period of major crisis in English politics and in the lives of the English landowning classes. This book attempts to explain why the Wars happened, and with what results, by placing them in the context of the ruling classes' expectations of kingship and governance at this time.

Women in Early Medieval Europe is a history of the early European middle ages through the eyes of women, recreating their lives and telling personal stories of individuals, using the few documents produced by women themselves along with archaeological evidence, art, and the written records of medieval men.

Provides an introduction to the history of medieval Wales, with emphasis on political developments. It traces the growth of Welsh princely power, and the invasion and settlement of Welsh territories by Norman adventurers.

This book is a study of the transformation of the role of the pope in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries.

This groundbreaking comparative history of the early centuries of Bohemia, Hungary and Poland sets the development of each polity in the context of the central European region as a whole. Focusing on the origins of the realms and their development in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the book concludes with the thirteenth century when significant changes in social and economic structures occurred. The book presents a series of thematic chapters on every aspect of the early history of the region covering political, religious, economic, social and cultural developments, including an investigation of origin myths that questions traditional national narratives. It also explores the ways in which west European patterns were appropriated and adapted through the local initiatives of rulers, nobles and ecclesiastics in central Europe. An ideal introduction to the essential themes in medieval central European history, the book sheds important new light on regional similarities and differences.

This major survey of political life in late medieval Europe provides a framework for understanding the developments that shaped this turbulent period. Rather than emphasising crisis, decline, disorder or the birth of the modern state, this account centres on the mixed results of political and governmental growth across the continent. The age of the Hundred Years War, schism and revolt was also a time of rapid growth in jurisdiction, taxation and representation, of spreading literacy and evolving political technique. This mixture of state formation and political convulsion lay at the heart of the 'making of polities'. Offering a full introduction to political events and processes from the fourteenth century to the sixteenth, this book combines a broad, comparative account with discussion of individual regions and states, including eastern and northern Europe alongside the more familiar west and south.

This book demolishes the widely held view that the phrase 'medieval business' is an oxymoron. The authors review the entire range of business in medieval western Europe, probing its Roman and Christian heritage to discover the economic and political forces that shaped the organization of agriculture, manufacturing, construction, mining, transportation and marketing. Businessmen's responses to the devastating plagues, famines, and warfare that beset Europe in the late Middle Ages are equally well covered. Medieval businessmen's remarkable success in coping with this hostile new environment was 'a harvest of adversity' that prepared the way for the economic expansion of the sixteenth century. Two main themes run through this book. First, the force and direction of business development in this period stemmed primarily from the demands of the elite. Second, the lasting legacy of medieval businessmen was less their skillful adaptations of imported inventions than their brilliant innovations in business organization.

This is a concise survey of the economy of the Byzantine Empire from the fourth century AD to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Organised chronologically, the book addresses key themes such as demography, agriculture, manufacturing and the urban economy, trade, monetary developments, and the role of the state and ideology. It provides a comprehensive overview of the economy with an emphasis on the economic actions of the state and the productive role of the city and non-economic actors, such as landlords, artisans and money-changers. The final chapter compares the Byzantine economy with the economies of western Europe and concludes that the Byzantine economy was one of the most successful examples of a mixed economy in the pre-industrial world. This is the only concise general history of the Byzantine economy and will be essential reading for students of economic history, Byzantine history and medieval history more generally.

This book is an introduction to medieval economic thought, mainly from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, as it emerges from the works of academic theologians and lawyers and other sources - from Italian merchants' writings to vernacular poetry, Parliamentary legislation, and manorial court rolls. It raises a number of questions based on the Aristotelian idea of the mean, the balance and harmony underlying justice, as applied by medieval thinkers to the changing economy. How could private ownership of property be reconciled with God's gift of the earth to all in common? How could charity balance resources between rich and poor? What was money? What were the just price and the just wage? How was a balance to be achieved between lender and borrower and how did the idea of usury change to reflect this? The answers emerge from a wide variety of ecclesiastical and secular sources.

This is the first one-volume survey in English of religion and devotion in Europe between 1215 and 1515, focussing on spirituality rather than on institutional history. Intended primarily as a student textbook, it provides essential background for a proper appreciation of medieval western society.

Edward III is usually remembered for his stirring victories over the French and Scots. Yet these triumphs occurred against a backdrop of economic upheaval. Waugh examines the strains on English life in this remarkable era.