Böcker i Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: New Series-serien

Dr Robson gives a full account of Wyclif's career as an Oxford don - the little-known period of his life before in 1372 he became a controversialist - so answering the question, why was Wyclif when he became a public figure already acknowledged the leading master in Oxford?

This is a detailed study of the large and important diocese of Lincoln under three sixteenth-century bishops, Smith, Wolsey and Atwater.

Professor Vaughan's book on the life and works of Matthew Paris is a full-scale study of one of the most important of the medieval chroniclers of European as well as British history. First published in 1958, it is re-issued in recognition of its continuing importance as an essential reference for all students of medieval and ecclesiastical history.

Sovereignty has always been an important concept in political thought, and at no time in European history was it more important than during the perplexed conditions of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

Dr Luscombe considers the influence of Abelard's principal teachings among his contemporaries and successors. His aim is to explain the conflicting estimates of Abelard which were current in the twelfth century and later, and to provide a full account of the writings and varied fortunes of Abelard's disciples.

No tax in Europe can compare with tithes in its duration, the extent of its application and the economic burden it imposed. In this study Professor Constable considers the tithes paid to and by monks in the Middle Ages.

Gilbert Foliot, successively Abbot of Gloucester and Bishop of Hereford and London, and archenemy of Archbishop Thomas Becket, is a figure of the first importance in the English Church of the twelfth century.

The early historians of the Franciscan order traced the causes of the troubles of the order in their time to Elias, a contemporary and friend of St Francis and an early Minister General. Elias was blamed for opening the way to all relaxations of discipline and disregard of the founder's teaching, and all conflicts and persecutions. Mrs Brooke shows that responsibility cannot be placed on one man, but on many of the early friars. She gives a more historical account of Elias, showing that he was never as dominant a figure as has been supposed. The early conflicts of the order are shown to have been more complex, more interesting and more probable than the fourteenth-century controversialists would allow. The second part of the book describes the achievements of Elias's successors as Minister General, and the important laws they passed. Mrs Brooke has been able to reconstruct the early constitutions, now lost, in greater detail than has previously been attempted.

At the height of his power and influence the justiciar was the king's chief political and judicial officer, superintending the administrative machinery and acting as regent in the king's absence abroad. He was also a feudal lord or bishop; and the study of the careers of the chief justiciars, as soldiers and politicians, judges and financiers, throws light on the workings of feudal society and on the technical administrative means by which royal power was effectively exercised. Dr West traces the history of the office from the first need for the delegation of royal power under William 1 until the Anglo-Norman dominion broke up and government became too complicated. As an administrative post it attained its greatest importance in the formative periods of administrative development under Henry 1 and later under Henry 11. Unlike the offices of sheriff and chancellor the justiciarship has never been systematically examined. Dr West's book is a pioneer account of the most important office under the king and an examination of a central theme of English constitutional and administrative history.

This is a revised edition of R. C. Smail's classic account of the military achievements of the Crusaders in the context of a 'feudal society organized for war'. A new bibliographical introduction and an updated bibliography have been provided by Christopher Marshall, while the original plates section has been replaced by a series of new subjects. In covering the period 1097-1193, this edition also complements Dr Marshall's own Warfare in the Latin East, 1192-1291, also available in a paperback edition.