Bücher der Reihe Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series

By exploring the uniquely dense urban network of the Low Countries, Janna Coomans debunks the myth of medieval cities as apathetic towards filth and disease. Based on new archival research and adopting a bio-political and spatial-material approach, Coomans traces how cities developed a broad range of practices to protect themselves and fight disease. Urban societies negotiated challenges to their collective health in the face of social, political and environmental change, transforming ideas on civic duties and the common good. Tasks were divided among different groups, including town governments, neighbours and guilds, and affected a wide range of areas, from water, fire and food, to pigs, prostitutes and plague. By studying these efforts in the round, Coomans offers new comparative insights and bolsters our understanding of the importance of population health and the physical world - infrastructures, flora and fauna - in governing medieval cities.

This is a study of the place of patron saints in Frankish society during the Carolingian and early Capetian periods. The book focuses on the composition of works in praise of dead holy people - hagiography - and the veneration of their physical remains - the cult of saints.

This book examines the selected writings of John of Wales, a thirteenth-century Franciscan scholar. Though overshadowed historically by men like Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure, John contributed significantly to the preaching explosion of the later Middle Ages, devoting his scholastic energies to the production of encyclopedic preaching aids for the growing number of the devout and learned emerging from the new universities. Through a detailed analysis of his world view, the author establishes John's strong interest in politics and contemporary social issues and helps to explain why his writings appealed to young preachers and the popular imagination. John's historic popularity and literary influence are also fully explored. His works seem to have been an important source of classical material for European literary texts of the period, and therefore, in addition to historians and theologians, this unprecedented book will appeal to those interested in the survival and transmission of Greek and Latin literature.

The first critical study of Jeanne de Penthievre (c.1326-1384), duchess of Brittany and an important political player of the early Hundred Years' War, sheds light on status, gender, and cooperation as crucial components of late medieval power structures.

Flodoard of Rheims (893/4-966) is one of the tenth century's most intriguing but neglected historians, who wrote in the tumultuous decades that followed the collapse of the pan-European Carolingian empire. This important re-appraisal of his life and work casts new light on the political and cultural history of tenth-century Europe.

This in-depth and accessible analysis of the rhetoric of dissidents, outsiders and truth-tellers challenges preconceptions about free speech and political criticism in the early Middle Ages, revealing that there was room for political dissent in this period, as long as critics employed the right rhetoric and adhered to scripted roles.

Despite the growing centralisation of medieval papal government, this study argues that twelfth-century papal councils - a critical mechanism for contemporary papal government - relied on input from local clerics to formulate the conciliar decrees and, later, ensure their dissemination, thereby limiting the influence of the papacy.

Original and engaging, this substantial contribution to the study of the Rus Primary Chronicle, the most important piece of evidence for the history of the Rus in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, includes the first English-language translations of key Slavonic sources.

This interdisciplinary study explores how classical ideals of generosity influenced the writing and practice of gift giving in medieval Europe. Focusing on classical texts, such as those by Seneca the Younger and Cicero, Lars Kjaer reveals how historians have underestimated the influence of classical literature and philosophy on medieval culture.

The barbarian law codes, compiled between the sixth and eighth centuries, were copied remarkably frequently in the Carolingian ninth century. They provide crucial evidence for early medieval society, including the settlement of disputes, the nature of political authority, literacy, and the construction of ethnic identities. Yet it has proved extremely difficult to establish why the codes were copied in the ninth century, how they were read, and how their rich evidence should be used. Thomas Faulkner tackles these questions more systematically than ever before, proposing new understandings of the relationship between the making of law and royal power, and the reading of law and the maintenance of ethnic identities. Faulkner suggests major reinterpretations of central texts, including the Carolingian law codes, the capitularies adding to the laws, and Carolingian revisions of earlier barbarian and Roman laws. He also provides detailed analysis of legal manuscripts, especially those associated with the leges-scriptorium.

Did the Crusades trigger significant intellectual activity? To what extent and in what ways did the Latin residents of the Crusader States acquire knowledge from Muslims and Eastern Christians? And how were the Crusader states influenced by the intellectual developments which characterized the West in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries? This book is the first to examine these questions systematically using the complete body of evidence from one major urban centre: Acre. This reveals that Acre contained a significant number of people who engaged in learned activities, as well as the existence of study centres housed within the city. This volume also seeks to reconstruct the discourse that flowed across four major fields of learning: language and translation, jurisprudence, the study of Islam, and theological exchanges with Eastern Christians. The result is an unprecedentedly rich portrait of a hitherto neglected intellectual centre on the Eastern shores of the medieval Mediterranean.

Using a range of evidence, Chandler addresses the political development of the Carolingian Spanish March as part of the Carolingian 'experiment'. Tracing the region's relationship with the monarchy over two centuries, he revises traditional views of ethnic motivations for action and prior interpretations of the constitutional birth of Catalonia.

Cultural exchange between English and Irish neighbours in the 'four obedient shires' went both ways. Sparky Booker examines the nature of these complex interactions, the tensions that existed between assimilation and the preservation of distinct cultural identities, and the impact this had on English identity in Ireland.

The political integration and Christianization of Saxony has long been counted among Charlemagne's failures. This accessible account of the conquest re-evaluates this view and shows how the success of this transformation has important implications for how we view governance, the institutional church, and Christian communities in the early Middle Ages.

This comprehensive overview of early medieval ideas about dreams and visions explores their important roles within the learned cultures of the period. It is a major contribution to discussions about the intellectual place of dreams and visions, and underlines the creative nature of early medieval engagement with authoritative texts.

Almost every English town and village has a parish church, but how was its construction financed and managed? This original and authoritative study explains how economic change, local politics and architectural creation combined in late-medieval England to complete one of the most demanding tasks that any parish could undertake.

Focusing on the Catalonian city of Manresa, this book offers one of the first long-term studies of an Iberian town during the late medieval crisis. Drawing together original sources and surveys, Jeff Fynn-Paul places the city's social, political and economic development within the broader context of late medieval urban decline.

This pioneering study explores early medieval Frankish identity as a window into the formation of a distinct Western conception of ethnicity. It offers a new basis for comparing the history of collective and ethnic identity in the Christian West with other contexts, especially the Islamic and Byzantine worlds.

This highly original study explores the religious life of early medieval Germany through its ritual books. Interdisciplinary in perspective, it sheds light on the histories of important manuscripts from the city of Mainz, challenging long-held assumptions about the ritual traditions and political dynamics of the Ottonian Church.

This book provides a narrative of the rise of the French state, showing that the crown's centralising judicial administration co-existed with large-scale aristocratic violence. Royal power grew as much through efforts to negotiate and settle these conflicts as it did through efforts to suppress them.

Looking beyond the notion of a 'Feudal Revolution' in Europe between 800 and 1100, this book reveals that the profound socio-economic changes that took place in the transition from Carolingian to post-Carolingian Europe were a continuation of processes unleashed by Carolingian reform, rather than a result of political failure.

An examination of the gentry as land holders, pillars of society, political leaders, family members and individuals.

By analysing medieval records of the trial of Cathar and Waldensian heretics in the South of France, this book sheds light on itinerancy within heretical movements, challenges old methodologies in the study of dissent and examines the different fears felt by deponents and how those fears affected their actions.

The union of Normandy and England in 1066 recast the political map of north-western Europe. This book explores the nature of the new relationships and exchanges between Flanders and the Anglo-Norman realm, from knightly tournaments, cross-Channel commerce, the mechanics of medieval immigration and the oldest surviving English treaties.

This book explores a key economic institution, the medieval tithe, as a social and political phenomenon in eleventh-century Germany and Italy. It views episcopal churches and their possessions as social networks, revealing how bishops used the ecclesiastical tithe to manage ties of loyalty and dependence within their dioceses.

This first study of Roger Bacon in English for sixty years sets his thought within the religious and intellectual context of the Franciscan order. Amanda Power's provocative new reading argues that his most famous works were intended to defend, renew and promulgate the faith within Christendom and beyond.

This study examines the historical context of Cassiodorus' Variae as a collection, rather than as an assemblage of individual case studies on sixth-century Italy. It reveals the author's motives in preparing the epistolary collection and, in doing so, sheds new light on early medieval political, ecclesiastical, fiscal and legal affairs.

An important exploration of the reign of Edward I - one of England's most lionised, feared and successful monarchs. Through three detailed case studies, Caroline Burt explores how his governance was reflected at a local level and re-evaluates his motivations and achievements, presenting an entirely new interpretation of his reign.

During the Middle Ages, rape and abduction were understood together as forms of theft. This study of illicit sexuality in medieval England is the first to explore these overlapping offences, examining how women operated within the legal system and the impact this had on their lives.