Books in the Oxford Studies In Medieval European History series

The Jacquerie of 1358 is one of the most famous and mysterious peasant uprisings of the Middle Ages. This book, the first extended study of the Jacquerie in over a century, resolves long-standing controversies about whether the revolt was just an irrational explosion of peasant hatred or simply an extension of the Parisian revolt.

An analysis of the lived experience of Christian married life in Christian medieval Europe, this study examines the process of getting married and wedding celebrations; the married life of lay couples and clergy, their sexuality, and any remarriage; and alternative living, including concubinage, polygyny, and the single life.

This study reinterprets the relationship between the medieval papacy and independent states, suggesting that kings and governments were able to increase their effective power through close relationships with the international papacy, making the papacy integral to the creation of centralized national states and kingdoms in Europe.

Historians have tended to understand medieval conduct through the eyes of Enlightenment historians, seeing superior conduct as 'knightly' behaviour, categorising it as chivalry. This book shows what superior lay conduct was in Europe before chivalry, and maps how and why chivalry emerged and redefined superior conduct in the late twelfth century.

The first full-length study of Scottish royal government in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, detailing how, when, and where the kings of Scotland started ruling through their own officials, developing their own system of courts, and fundamentally extending their power over their own people.

A new history of medieval Rome, told not from the standpoint of the Church, but of the Romans themselves. This volume examines Rome's cultural, political, religious, legal, and social identity to discover how the city functioned between 900 and 1150.

What happened to slavery in Europe in the centuries following the fall of the Roman Empire? This book is the only history of slavery and serfdom to span the whole of early medieval Western Europe and addresses issues of slave-taking and slave-trading; people who became slaves as a result of a debt or a crime; even people who chose to become slaves.

A ground breaking study, On Hospitals explores welfare institutions in western law in the middle ages and establishes a legal model for the hospital. Running against orthodox opinion, Watson places welfare institutions, rather than Church-run organisations, at the heart of the medieval hospital's history.

Alessio Fiore discusses the transformation of the fabric of power in the kingdom of Italy in the period between the late eleventh century and the early twelfth century: a period in which the structures of local power and the instruments of local political communications were dramatically reshaped.

Covering Western Europe (c. 1240-1450) and drawing upon a rich body of sources, this volume analyses how lay people understood the phenomenon of demonic presence and possession and used it to identify and unravel problems in their lives.

Barbara Bombi examines diplomacy between England and the papal curia during the first phase of the Anglo-French conflict known as the Hundred Years' War (1305-1360), exploring the development of diplomatic systems, and how they were impacted by conflict and political change.

Historians have long understood the period 1100 to 1500 to be the key phase in the genesis of the modern state. In this innovative work, Andrea Gamberini examines the case of late medieval Lombardy to show that the advent of the state did not extinguish the traditional values and principles of political cohabitation that had long been in place.

The first extensive analysis of the function and significance of urban panegyric, a flexible literary genre which enjoyed a marked and renewed popularity in the Central Middle Ages. Oldfield connects urban panegyric to major underlying transformations in the medieval cities of England, Flanders, France, Germany, Iberia, and Italy.

Graphic Signs of Authority in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages offers a cultural history of the graphic monogrammatic tools from antiquity to the Middle Ages. It examines the sign of the cross, christograms, monograms, and other similar devices, and how they were used during a time of great socio-political and religious change.

A new and wide-ranging examination of kinship in medieval Europe, which explores the origins of kinship studies in the nineteenth century, the ancient philosophical traditions that influenced the social thought of pre-modern Europe, and how kinship was perceived and experienced in early Europe between the late Roman Empire and the twelfth century.

There have always been multiple, and competing, ideas about the meaning of citizenship and the identity of the citizen. This volume exploits the rich archival sources of five major towns in medieval England - Bristol, Coventry, London, Norwich, and York - and the concept of citizenship to present a new picture of town government and urban politics.

The first overall study of diplomacy in Early Renaissance Italy for 60 years, explaining how Italian diplomacy came to play such a central role in the development of international relations in Europe, in the spread and application of humanism, and in new modes of political and cultural thought.

The stigmatization as 'bastards' of children born outside of wedlock is commonly thought to have emerged early in Medieval European history, but Sara McDougall demonstrates that until well into the late twelfth century a child's prospects depended more upon the social status and lineage of both parents than of the legitimacy of their marriage.

Tells the story of the formation of a new state in north-western Europe and the rise of the Burgundian house in the fifteenth century, and how a power-hungry dynasty was able to reach a new equilibrium with the elites. The outcome had the lasting effect of laying the foundation for the modern states of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxemburg.