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The Medieval World »

Authors: Peter Linehan (Editor), Janet L. Nelson
ISBN-13: 9780415181518, ISBN-10: 0415181518
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Taylor & Francis, Inc.
Date Published: November 2001
Edition: (Non-applicable)

Author Biography: Peter Linehan

Book Synopsis

This groundbreaking collection brings the Middle Ages to life and conveys the distinctiveness of this diverse, constantly changing period. Thirty-eight scholars bring together one medieval world from many disparate worlds, from Connacht to Constantinople and from Tynemouth to Timbuktu.

This extraordinary set of reconstructions presents the reader with a vivid re-drawing of the medieval past, offering fresh appraisals of the evidence and modern historical writing.

Chapters are thematically linked in four sections:

identities

beliefs, social values and symbolic order

power and power-structures

elites, organizations and groups.

Packed full of original scholarship, The Medieval World is essential reading for anyone studying medieval history.

Library Journal

To help reconstruct the medieval period for the contemporary reader, Linehan (History and the Historians of Medieval Spain) and Nelson (The Frankish World, 750-900) have enlisted contributions from 38 scholars, who come from Europe and Japan as well as the United States. Underrepresented, according to the editors themselves, are economic and German history, the latter owing to the lack of German historians among the contributors. The contributions are grouped thematically into four sections. The first section examines the coexistence of various identities as it tracks the differences and interactions between Orthodox East and Catholic West and among Christians, Muslims, Jews, and pagans. The second section's theme is the symbolic universe that existed for these peoples the beliefs and societal values, the role of ritual, and the relations between the sexes. The third part looks at power relationships and the organizational structure that generated power, while the fourth considers the roles played by distinct groups, both elite and nonelite. These range from an examination of an English parish and its clergy to the role of Roman lawyers in easing the transition from a pre-Christian to a Christian world. This compilation of essays will be of interest to both scholars and students of the Middle Ages and is recommended for academic libraries. Robert J. Andrews, Duluth P.L., MN Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

	List of illustrations
	List of contributors
	Abbreviations
1	Introduction	1
2	Courts in East and West	14
3	At the Spanish Frontier	37
4	Muslims in Christian Iberia, 1000-1526: varieties of Mudejar experience	60
5	How many Medieval Europes? The 'pagans' of Hungary and regional diversity in Christendom	77
6	Christians, Barbarians and Monsters: the European discovery of the world beyond Islam	93
7	The Establishment of Medieval Hermeticism	111
8	What the Crusades meant to Europe	131
9	The Crusades and the Persecution of the Jews	146
10	Strange Eventful Histories: the Middle Ages in the cinema	163
11	Political Rituals and Political Imagination in the Medieval West from the Fourth Century to the Eleventh	189
12	Modern Mythologies of Medieval Chivalry	214
13	The Unique Favour of Penance: the Church and the people, c.800-c.1100	229
14	Gender Negotiations in France during the central Middle Ages: the literary evidence	246
15	Symbolism and Medieval Religious Thought	267
16	Sexuality in the Middle Ages	279
17	Sin, Crime and the Pleasures of the Flesh: the medieval Church judges sexual offences	294
18	Through a Glass Darkly: seeing medieval heresy	308
19	The Corpse in the Middle Ages: the problem of the division of the body	327
20	The Crucifixion and the Censorship of Art around 1300	342
21	Space, Culture and Kingdoms in Early Medieval Europe	366
22	The Outward Look: Britain and beyond in medieval Irish literature	381
23	Powerful Women in the Early Middle Ages: queens and abbesses	398
24	Perceptions of an Early Medieval Urban Landscape	416
25	Assembly Politics in Western Europe from the Eighth Century to the Twelfth	432
26	Beyond the Comune: the Italian city-state and its inheritance	451
27	Timbuktu and Europe: trade, cities and Islam in 'medieval' West Africa	469
28	Medieval Law	485
29	Rulers and Justice, 1200-1500	503
30	The King's Counsellors' two Faces: a Portuguese perspective	518
31	Fullness of Power? Popes, bishops and the polity of the Church, 1215-1517	534
32	A New Legal Cosmos: late Roman lawyers and the early medieval Church	557
33	Medieval Monasticism	576
34	Aspects of the Early Medieval Peasant Economy as revealed in the Polyptych of Prum	605
35	Privilege in Medieval Societies from the Twelfth to the Fourteenth Century, or: How the exception proves the rule	621
36	What did the Twelfth-Century Renaissance Mean?	635
37	The English Parish and its Clergy in the Thirteenth Century	648
38	Everyday Life and Elites in the later Middle Ages: the civilised and the barbarian	671
39	On 1500	691
	Index	711