Books in the The Middle Ages Series series

"The definitive study... A learned, lively, and highly readable book, now the essential introduction to the subject."-Choice

Composed at the height of the Hundred Years War by Geoffroi de Charny, one of the most respected knights of his age, A Knight's Own Book of Chivalry is an invaluable guide to fourteenth-century knighthood.

The Trotula was the most influential compendium on women's medicine in medieval Europe. Green here presents the first modern English translation of the so-called standardized Trotula ensemble, a composite form of the texts that was produced in the mid-thirteenth century and circulated widely in learned circles.

In The Kingdom of Sicily, 1100-1250, Karla Mallette writes the first literary history of the Kingdom of Sicily in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The study contains an extensive selection of poems and documents translated from the Arabic, Latin, Old French, and Italian.

Includes the first readable English translation of the Laws of Edward the Confessor and a much-needed critical edition of its Latin text.

Using sermons, exorcisms, letters, biographies of the saints, inscriptions, autobiographical and legal documents—some of which are translated nowhere else—J. N. Hillgarth shows how the Christian church went about the formidable task of converting western Europe. The book covers such topics as the relationship between the Church and the Roman state, Christian attitudes toward the barbarians, and the missions to northern Europe. It documents as well the cult of relics in popular Christianity and the emergence of consciously Christian monarchies.

"Gives the reader a portrayal of the social institutions of a Germanic people far richer and more exhaustive than any other available source."—from the Foreword, by Edward PetersFrom the bloody clashes of the third and fourth centuries there emerged a society that was neither Roman nor Burgundian, but a compound of both. The Burgundian Code offers historians and anthropologists alike illuminating insights into a crucial period of contact between a developed and a tribal society.

Contains essays about a segment of the past that runs roughly from the end of antiquity to the thirteenth century. This volume includes essays about the past that is written about and the writing that brings it to life.

Thomas DuBois unravels for the first time the history of the Nordic religions in the Viking Age. "A seminal study of Nordic religions that future scholars will not be able to avoid."-Church History

Starting from the assumption of a far greater cultural gulf between the learned and the lay in the medieval world than between rich and poor, Elf Queens explores the church's systematic campaign to demonize fairies and infernalize fairyland and the responses this provoked in vernacular romance.

"This book is quite simply the most important, intellectually ambitious, and far-reaching endeavor in recent years."-Stephen G. Nichols, Johns Hopkins University

Medieval robots took such forms as talking statues, mechanical animals, or silent metal guardians; some served to entertain or instruct while others performed surveillance or discipline. Medieval Robots explores the forgotten history of real and imagined machines that captivated Europe from the ninth through the fourteenth centuries.

In A History of Old English Meter, R. D. Fulk offers a wide-ranging reference on Anglo-Saxon meter. Fulk examines the evidence for chronological and regional variation in the meter of Old English verse, studying such linguistic variables as the treatment of West Germanic parasite vowels, contracted vowels, and short syllables under secondary and tertiary stress, as well as a variety of supposed dialect features. Fulk''s study of such variables points the way to a revised understanding of the role of syllable length in the construction of early Germanic meters and furnishes criteria for distinguishing dialectal from poetic features in the language of the major Old English poetic codices. On this basis, it is possible to draw conclusions about the probable dialect origins of much verse, to delineate the characteristics of at least four discrete periods in the development of Old English meter, and with some probability to assign to them many of the longer poems, such as Genesis A, Beowulf, and the works of Cynewulf.A History of Old English Meter will be of interest to scholars of Anglo-Saxon, historians of the English language, Germanic philologists, and historical linguists.

Originally published in 1939 and available here in English, Land and Lordship has been one of the most influential works of the twentieth-century medieval scholarship.

Provides a facing-page translation of the "Book of Chivalry". This book describes the prowess and piety of knights, their capacity to express themselves, their common assumptions, and their views on masculine virtue, women, and love.

Describing in detail weaponry and armor, daily life on the march or in camp, clothing, food, medical care, military law, and titles of the Byzantine army of the seventh century, this text offers insights into the Byzantine military ethos. It also provides data for the historian, and even for the ethnologist.

Charlemagne could not have revived the Roman empire in the West without the military machine built up over the course of the eighth century. Early Carolingian Warfare is the first book to study how the Frankish dynasty established its power and cultivated its military expertise in order to reestablish the regnum Francorum.

"This long-awaited book makes available . . . the most important collection of material on women's diseases and their treatments for the period from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries."-Social History of Medicine

"Helps to place our understanding of medieval witchcraft into a broader context... Sheds light on the various genres of literature in which magic was discussed."-Speculum

Drawn from two medieval collections of form letters for all manner of business and personal affairs, Lost Letters of Medieval Life depicts early thirteenth-century England through the everyday correspondence of people of all classes, from peasants and shopkeepers to bishops and earls.

Represents all the major areas of current work on the Romance of the Rose, both in America and in Europe.

This is the first English translation of a 13th-century work which set down the customary law of Clermont in the Beauvais region of France as it was practiced and understood. The work covers both procedural and substantive law, including the facts and decisions of nearly 100 cases.

Proffers diverse perspectives on the prehistory of government in Northern France, Spain, Germany, the Low Countries, and England. This book brings political, social, ecclesiastical, and cultural history to bear on topics such as aristocracies, women, rituals, commemoration, and manifestations of power through literary, legal, and scriptural means.

"The History of the Lombards constitutes one of the most important literary sources for the early history of Europe, and the vision and energy of its author make it ... the most complex of the histories of the Germanic peoples between the sixth and the ninth centuries."-from the Introduction

In Dark Speech, Robin Chapman Stacey explores the fascinating interaction between performance and law in Ireland between the seventh and ninth centuries.

Applies approaches to literacy, legal studies, memory, ritual, and the manorial economy to reexamine the transformation of medieval power. This book opens up perspectives on problems of power, in particular the idea and practice of accountability.

This first full-length treatment of the Barons' Crusade examines the call for holy war and its consequences in Hungary, France, England, Constantinople, and the Holy Land.