A renowned historian and archaeologists presents 400 crypts in France while exploring the idea of the medieval crypt from the 4th to the 12th century
Category: Medieval Books
Cult of Saint Martin
REVIEW: Medieval Music, Legend, and the Cult of St Martin. The Local Foundations of a Universal Saint
Agincourt 1415 – A List of Books
The battle at Agincourt is famous for the heroic fight between the outnumbered English archers and the French chivalry. Here is a list of recent scholarship
Alternative Agriculture: A History From the Black Death to the Present Day
Joan Thirsk pioneered the view of medieval and early modern agriculture as a many-sided business. This book is a late result of her research into this complex world.
The Eastern Mediterranean Frontier of Latin Christendom
New book focus on how pilgrims and crusaders pushed the frontier forward in the Eastern Mediterranean after the millennium
Jewish Culture and Society in Medieval France and Germany
These studies explore the history of the Jewish minority of Ashkenaz (northern France and the German Empire) during the High Middle Ages
The North-Eastern Frontiers of Medieval Europe
By the mid-twelfth century the lands on the Eastern Coast of the Baltic Sea, from Finland to the frontiers of Poland, were Catholic Europe’s final frontier
The North-Eastern Frontiers of Medieval Europe. The Expansion of Latin Christendom in the Baltic Lands
Edited by Alan V. Murray, University of Leeds, UKSeries : The Expansion of Latin Europe, 1000-1500
Ashgate Variorum 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4094-3680-5
ISBN Short: 9781409436805
ABSTRACT:
By the mid-twelfth century the lands on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea, from Finland to the frontiers of Poland, were Catholic Europe’s final frontier: a vast, undeveloped expanse of lowlands, forest and waters, inhabited by peoples belonging to the Finnic and Baltic language groups. In the course of the following three centuries, Finland, Estonia, Livonia and Prussia were incorporated into the Latin world through processes of conquest, Christianisation and settlement, and brought under the rule of Western monarchies and ecclesiastical institutions. Lithuania was left as the last pagan polity in Europe, yet able to accept Christianity on its own terms in 1386. The Western conquest of the Baltic lands advanced the frontier of Latin Christendom to that of the Russian Orthodox world, and had profound and long lasting effects on the institutions, society and culture of the region lasting into modern times. This volume presents 21 key studies (2 of them translated from German for the first time) on this crucial period in the development of North-Eastern Europe, dealing with crusade and conversion, the establishment of Western rule, settlement and society, and the development of towns, trade and the economy. It includes a classified bibliography of the main works published in Western languages since World War II together with an introduction by the editor.
CONTENTS:
- Introduction.
- Part One Historiographical Approaches:
Crusades and colonisation in the Baltic: a historiographic analysis, Sven Ekdahl
Approaches to the conversion of the Finns: ideologies, symbols, and archaeological features, Derek Fewster; - Part Two Crusade, Conquest and Conversion:
Sweden’s conquest of Finland: a clash of cultures?, Philip Line
From Fulco to Theoderic: the changing face of the Livonian mission, Peep Peter Rebane
The military activity of the Order of the Sword Brothers (1202-1236), Ēvalds Mugurēvičs
Military orders and the beginning of crusades in Prussia, Maria Starnawska
Prussian mission and the invitation of the Teutonic Order into Kulmerland, László Pósán
The arrival of Christianity in Lithuania: baptism and survival (1341-1387), Michal Giedroyć. - Part Three State Formation:
Acquisition of the acquired: the establishing of a real administration in Livonia, Muntis Auns; The military occupation of Semgallia in the 13th century, William Urban
Estonia under Danish rule, Niels Skyum-Nielsen
The Teutonic Order in Prussia, Karol Górski. - Part Four Population and Society:
Finns as aliens and compatriots in the late medieval kingdom of Sweden, Marko Lamberg
Genesis of the Livonian town in the 13th century, Enn Tarvel; Interactions between indigenous and Western culture in Livonia in the 13th to 16th centuries, Ēvalds Mugurēvičs
Languages in a medieval North European city: an example from medieval Tallinn, Tiina Kala
The Teutonic Order and the non-German population of Prussia, Reinhard Wenskus - Part Five Economy: The profits of the Cross: merchant involvement in the Baltic crusade (c. 1180-1230), Mark R. Munzinger
The Hanseatic League and the Eastern Baltic: towns, trade and politics in medieval Livonia from the 13th to the mid-16th century, Andris Šnē - Index.
ABOUT THE EDITOR:
Dr Alan V. Murray is Senior Lecturer in Medieval Studies and Editorial Director, International Medieval Bibliography, University of Leeds, UK.
The Emperor Theophilos and the East, 829–842
Theophilos, 829 -842, was the last emperor of Byzantium adhering to iconoclasm. New book reinterprets major xplores the role of his Oriental politics.
Denmark and Europe in the Middle Ages
Professor Michael H. Gelting is both renowned for his wide-ranging achievements as a medieval historian as well as kindness towards students. A recent collection of studies celebrate his inspirational work.
Animals and Early Modern Identity
Animals were everywhere in premodern times. From mighty horses to humble sparrows princes as well as paupers were obliged to live with and interact with animals of all sorts. A new book explores these intimate interrelations between persons and animals.
Animals and Early Modern Identity
By Pia F. Cuneo (Ed.)
Ashgate 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4094-5743-5
ISBN Short: 9781409457435
ABSTRACT:
Animals were everywhere in the early modern period and they impacted, at least in some way, the lives of every kind of early modern person, from the humblest peasant to the greatest prince. Artists made careers based on depicting them. English gentry impoverished themselves spending money on them. Humanists exercised their scholarship writing about them. Pastors saved souls delivering sermons on them. Nobles forged alliances competing with them. Foreigners and indigenes negotiated with one another through trading them.
The nexus between animal-human relationships and early modern identity is illuminated in this volume by the latest research of international scholars working on the history of art, literature, and of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Germany, France, England, Spain, and South Africa. Collectively, these essays investigate how animals – horses, dogs, pigs, hogs, fish, cattle, sheep, birds, rhinoceroses, even sea-monsters and other creatures – served people in Europe, England, the Americas, and Africa to defend, contest or transcend the boundaries of early modern identities.
Developments in the methodologies employed by scholars to interrogate the past have opened up an intellectual and discursive space for – and a concomitant recognition of – the study of animals as a topic that significantly elucidates past and present histories. Relevant to a considerable array of disciplines, the study of animals also provides a means to surmount traditional disciplinary boundaries through processes of dynamic interchange and cross-fertilization.
CONTENTS:
- Introduction, Pia F. Cuneo.
- Man’s best friend? Dogs and pigs in early modern Germany, Alison G. Stewart
- Every living beast: collecting animals and art in early modern Munich, Susan Maxwell
- Where the sun don’t shine: animals and animality in Louis XIV’s royal labyrinth of Versailles (1668-74), Peter Sahlins
- ‘For amusement, merry-making and good company’: horse racing at a German princely court, Miriam Hall Kirch
- Breeding nobility: raising horses at early modern German courts, Magdalena Bayreuther
- Horses and elite identity in early modern England: the case of Sir Richard Newdigate II of Arbury Hall, Warwickshire (1644-1710), Peter Edwards.
- Horses as love-objects: shaping social and moral identities in Hans Baldung Griens’ Bewitched Groom (circa 1544) and in 16th-century hippology, Pia F. Cuneo
- On the bit: Prince Maurits, Simon Stevin, and the Spanish warhorse, Ingrid Cartwright
- The tusked hog: Richard III’s boarish identity, Karen Raber; Who are the animals in the Geese Book?, Corine Schleif
- Settler stock: animals and power in the mid-17th-century contact at the Cape, circa 1652-62, Sandra Swart.
- Individuality and the understanding of animals in the early modern Spanish empire, Abel A. Alves
- World of wonders: exotic animals in European imagery, 1515-1650, Larry Silver
- French early modern sea-monsters and modern identities, via Bruno Latour, Louisa Mackenzie
- Ways of being, ways of knowing: fish, fishing, and forms of identity in 17th-century English culture, Elspeth Graham
- Pedagogy and the art of dressage in the Italian Renaissance, Juliana Schiesari
- Index.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Pia F. Cuneo is Professor of Art History at the University of Arizona, USA. Her current work focuses on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century hippology, and she competes locally in dressage.
Aggersborg
New book tells the full story of the Viking-Age Settlement and Fortress at Aggersborg in Northern Jutland from the reign of Harold Bluetooth
Royal Viking Fortresses
The Ring Fortresses of Harold Bluetooth represent a remarkable engineering feat of 10th century Scandinavia. New book presents the latest research
Trelleborg, Aggersborg, Fyrkat, Nonnebakken and now Vallø are five of the most intriguing witnesses to the grandeur of the Royal project of Harold Blutooth.
Although they differ slightly in terms of size and the type of fortifications (some were fitted with moats, others not), it is obvious the circular fortresses were all built to the same specifications around AD 970 to 80. It is immediately obvious that the individual fortresses functioned as parts of a larger military system. However, the exact character of this military complex and its function (s) has been heavily debated for a long time. Were they defensive structures? Meant as ports for ships going on state-sanctioned Viking raids? Or were they perhaps regarded as ready camps for fugitives?
One of the challenges in answering these questions, is that there is in fact a lot to be learned from further excavations in and around the fortresses. Some of these are being withheld as part of the general opinion among archaeologists that it pays of to let future and more clever archaeologists do the work. Other explorations have simply not been carried out as yet.
Between 2007 – 10 a specific set of questions were raised and a number of archaeological explorations were undertaken in order to answer these. The overall question was whether it had been possible to sail up to the fortresses and to what extent this had played a part in their location.
Recently the finds from this campaign were published in a report. The overall conclusion was that yes, the fortresses had been built in close connection with central transport routes running through the landscape and that they especially had access to the central water ways of that time. Whether located on the open coast as Aggersborg or on rivers like Fyrkat and Trelleborg, it was definitely possible to sail up through the waterlogged foreland and marshy wetland. However, only at one of the fortresses (Trelleborg) has it been possible to find remains of actual handling of Viking ships. The investigation concludes by pointing to the fact that actual shipyards might have been located even further inland, where sourcing of tree was simply easier.
The results of the excavations and explorations from 2017 – 2010 were recently published. Although in Danish, there is a very extensive English summary and anyone especially interested in the warfare of the Vikings should try and lay their hands on it.
Kongens Borge [The Fortresses of the King]
Rapport over undersøgelserne 2007-2010
By Andres Siegfried Dobat (ed)
Århus University Press 2013
ISBN 978 87 888415 76 6
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New Viking Ring Fortress Discovered
Viking Age Base-Camps along the Dutch Coast
The Age of the Vikings
Fascinating new book by Anders Winroth introduces the reader to an updated version of The Age of the Vikings
New Perspectives on Medieval Scotland
From 1093 - 1286 Scotland became a nation, fully recognized by the rest of Europe. This book offers new perspectives on the role of literacy and the growing institutions of Medieval Scotland
Scottish Independence and the Idea of Britain
When did Scots first think of Scotland as an independent kingdom? What did they think was Scotland's place in Britain before the age of Wallace and Bruce?
Everyday Life in Medieval Scotland
A History of Everyday Life in Medieval Scotland 1000 – 1600 presents different aspects of the ordinary daily life and the experiences and beliefs of the Scottish people