The Medieval World

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.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction I. Identities: Selves and Others 2. Courts in East and West, Jonathan Shepard; 3. At the Spanish Frontier, Peter Linehan; 4. Muslims in Christian Iberia, 1000-1526, David Nirenberg; 5. How many Medieval Europes? The 'pagans' of Hungary and regional diversity in Christendom, Nora Berend; 6. Christians, Barbarians and Monsters. The European discovery of the world beyond Islam, Peter Jackson; 7. The Establishment of Medieval Hermeticism, Charles Burnett; 8. What the Crusades meant to Europe, Christopher Tyerman; 9. The Crusades and the Persecution of Jews, Jack Watt; 10. Strange Eventful Histories; the Middle Ages in the cinema, Stuart Airlie. II. Beliefs, Social Values and Symbolic Order 11. Political Rituals and Political Imagination in the Medieval West from the 4th Century to the 12th, Philippe Buc; 12. Modern Mythologies of Medieval Chivalry, Dominique Barthélemy; 13. The Unique Favour of Penance: the Church and the People, c.800-c.1100, Sarah Hamilton; 14. Gender Negotiations in France during the Middle Ages; the literary evidence, Linda Paterson; 15. Symbolism and medieval religious thought, David d'Avray; 16. Sexuality in the Middle Ages, Ruth Mazo Karras; 17. Sin, Crime and the Pleasures of the Flesh; the medieval Church judges sexual offences, James Brundage; 18. Through a Glass Darkly: seeing medieval heresy, Peter Biller; 19. The Corpse in the Middle Ages: the problem of the division of the body, Agostino Paravicini Bagliani; 20. The Crucifixion and the Censorship of Art around 1300, Paul Binski. III. Power and Power-structures 21.Space, Culture and Kingdoms in Early Medieval Europe, Paul Fouracre; 22. The Outward Look: Britain and Beyond in medieval Irish literature, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh; 23. Powerul Women in the early Middle Ages; queens and abbesses, Pauline Stafford; 24. Perceptions of an Early Medieval Urban Landscape, Christina La Rocca; 25. Assembly Politics in Western Europe from the 8th Century to the 12th, Timothy Reuter; 26. Beyond the Comune: the Italian city-state and its inheritance, Mario Ascheri; 27. Timbuktu and Europe: trade, cities and Islam in 'medieval' West Africa, Timothy Insoll; 28. Medieval Law, Susan Reynolds; 29. Rulers and Justice, 1200-1500, Magnus Ryan; 30. The King's Counsellors' Two Faces: a Portuguese perspective, Maria João Branco; 31. Fullness of Power? Popes, bishops, and the polity of the Church 1215-1517, James Burns. IV. Elites, Organisations and Groups 32. A new legal cosmos: Late Roman Lawyers and the Early Medieval Church, Caroline Humfress; 33. Medieval Monasticism, Janet L. Nelson; 34. Aspects of the Early Medieval Peasant Economy as revealed in the Polyptych of Prüm, Yoshiki Morimoto; 35. Privilege in Medieval Societies from the twelfth to the fourteenth century, or: How the exception proves the rule, Alain Boureau; 36. What does the Twelfth-Century Renaissance mean?, Jacques Le Goff; 37. The English Parish and its Clergy in the Thirteenth Century, C.H.Lawrence; 38. Everyday Life and Elites in the later Middle Ages: the civilised and the barbarian, Gabor Klaniczay; 39. On 1500, Elizabeth A.R.Brown