First discovered in a Hungarian library in 1838, the Rohonc Codex keeps privileged company with some of the most famous unsolved writing systems in the world, notably the Voynich manuscript, the Phaistos Disk, and Linear A. Written entirely in cipher, this 400-year-old, 450-page-long, richly illustrated manuscript initially gained considerable ......
Explores the western European idea of the witches' sabbath, based on translations of five texts dating from the 1430s, and examines how these texts went on to influence conceptions of diabolical witchcraft for centuries to come.
Examines the social roles, cultural meanings, and active agency of precious stones in jeweled crowns, illustrated lapidaries, and illustrated travel accounts in the European Middle Ages.
Medieval Women, Art, and Knowledge in the Regime du corps
Early modern central Africa comes to life in an extraordinary atlas of vivid watercolors and drawings that Italian Capuchin Franciscans, veterans of Kongo and Angola missions, composed between 1650 and 1750 for the training of future missionaries. These "practical guides" present the intricacies of the natural, social, and religious environment of ......
A collection of writings by papal advisor and historian Francesco Guicciardini (1483-1540), including letters, treatises, reports, and orations spanning his long career in service to the Medici.
Explores how the Fifth Crusade was remembered and commemorated during its triumphs and immediately after its disastrous conclusion. Provides a study of medieval war memory, showing that in the early decades of the thirteenth century, remembering war was an important means of creating and expressing collective and individual belonging.
Consorts of the Caliphs is a seventh/thirteenth-century compilation of anecdotes about thirty-eight women who were, as the title suggests, consorts to those in power, most of them concubines of the early Abbasid caliphs and wives of latter-day caliphs and sultans. This slim but illuminating volume is one of the few surviving texts by Ibn al-Sa'i ......
During the Middle Ages, travelers in Africa and Asia reported that monstrous races thrived beyond the boundaries of the known world. This work offers an introspective look at these races and their interaction with Western art, literature and philosophy.
Contains 13 essays which encompass just over four-and-a-half centuries of the thousands of years of Jerusalem's past from the Muslim conquest in 638 until the eve of the Crusader onslaught in 1099. Topics include the physical infrastructure, the authorities and the local population, art and archite
