Conservative thinkers of the early Middle Ages conceived of sensual gratification as a demonic snare contrived to debase the higher faculties of humanity, and they identified pagan writing as one of the primary conduits of decadence.
Altes, wiederentdecktes Menschheitswissen – das uns neue Orientierung gibtWir leben im Zeitalter der Krise – und haben doch kaum eine Vorstellung davon, wie wir dem Imperativ des «Immer mehr» entkommen können.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, competing scholarly communities sought to define a Spain that was, at least officially, entirely Christian, even if many suspected that newer converts from Islam and Judaism were Christian in name only.
In Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition in the Middle Ages, Michelle Karnes revises the history of medieval imagination with a detailed analysis of its role in the period's meditations and theories of cognition.
People in the Middle Ages had chantry chapels, mortuary rolls, the daily observance of the Office of the Dead, and even purgatory-but they were still unable to talk about death.
To read accounts of late medieval banquets is to enter a fantastical world where live lions guard nude statues, gilded stags burst into song, and musicians play from within pies.
If the vibrancy on display in Thinking in the Past Tense is any indication, the study of intellectual history is enjoying an unusually fertile period in both Europe and North America.
A historian of medieval art and architecture with a rich appreciation of literary studies, Stephen Murray brings all those fields to bear on a new approach to understanding the great Gothic churches of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
This "e;elegant and engaging"e; biography dramatically reinterprets the life and reign of the sixteenth-century Holy Roman Emperor: "e;a masterpiece"e; (Susannah Lipscomb, Financial Times).
A spectacularly illustrated history of an enigmatic surgical diagramThe Wound Mana medical diagram depicting a figure fantastically pierced by weapons and ravaged by injuries and diseaseswas reproduced widely across the medieval and early modern globe.
"e;Marilyn Yalom has written the rare book that illuminates something that always has been dimly perceived but never articulated, in this case that that the power of the chess queen reflects the evolution of female power in the western world.
An illuminating history of how religious belief lost its uncontested status in the WestThis landmark book traces the history of belief in the Christian West from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, revealing for the first time how a distinctively modern category of belief came into being.
This volume questions the extent to which Medieval studies has emphasized the period as one of change and development through reexamining aspects of the medieval world that remained static.
This book examines the views of Greek Church Fathers on hoarding, saving, and management of economic surplus, and their development primarily in urban centres of the Eastern Mediterranean, from the late first to the fifth century.
The Ottoman Empire was the last great Muslim political entity, emerging in the later Middle Ages and continuing its existence until the early 20th century and the creation of the modern state of Turkey.
Most people have heard of Lady Godiva and her horseback tax protest in the 11th century and Joan of Arc who in the 15th century fought against the English for the French gaining sainthood in 1920.
In this first ever book-length treatment, 11 scholars with a variety of backgrounds in medieval studies, film studies, and medievalism discuss how historical and fictional medieval women have been portrayed on film and their connections to the feminist movements of the 20th and 21st centuries.
This essay collection is a wide-ranging exploration of Vikings, the television series that has successfully summoned the historical world of the Norse people for modern audiences to enjoy.
Modern readers can sometimes be unsure about the language and the literary conventions of medieval and Renaissance verse--lyrical works written at a time before poetry was assumed to be about personal expression.
Our understanding of Celtic astrology is based mainly on the speculations of modern authors--mostly drawn from classical Greek and Roman writings--and suffers from many misconceptions.
This new English translation of the Faroe-Islander Saga (Faereyinga saga)--a great medieval Icelandic saga--tells the story of the first settlers on these wind-swept islands at the edge of the Scandinavian world.
