Service As Religious Metaphor and Social Reality in Early Medieval Europe
In Servants of God, Slaves of the Church, Lisa Kaaren Bailey uncovers the surprising intimacy between sacred devotion and coerced labor in early medieval Europe. From queens who scrubbed monastery floors to enslaved women forced into lifelong service, acts of humility and acts of subjugation often looked the same, and were interpreted through the ......
The Trickster Tales of Al-?ariri in an Age of Commentary
An account of Arabic literary history through the lens of the reception of the Maqamat of al-?ariri, a twelfth-century collection of fifty trickster stories Before World Literature offers an account of Arabic literary history through the lens of the reception of one of the most widely read Arabic texts of the postclassical period: the Maqamat of ......
Between the late sixth and the early thirteenth centuries, Venice underwent huge changes. From the periphery of the Byzantine Empire, Venice acquired complete independence and emerged as one of the major powers in the Mediterranean. In the early Middle Ages, the Venetians avoided absorption by neighboring rulers, all the while progressively ......
Power and Women in Southeast and Central Europe in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Period (1300-1600) offers a nuanced exploration of female authority across a region shaped by dynastic struggles, Ottoman expansion, and shifting political cultures. This volume brings together case studies from royal courts, urban patriciates, monastic milieus, ......
Mass-produced of tin-lead alloys and cheap to make and purchase, medieval badges were brooch-like objects displaying familiar images. Circulating widely throughout Europe in the High and late Middle Ages, badges were usually small, around four-by-four centimeters, though examples as tiny as two centimeters and a few as large as ten centimeters ......
Medieval Holy Women and the Desire for Death investigates the tension between death as necessary for bringing about union with God and as the end of life on earth. For medieval Christians, only death could offer complete union with God. For medieval women in particular, death was figured as a desirable end to their embodied lives; at least, this ......
Christian Sanctuaries from Late Antiquity Through the Middle Ages
In Shrines, Relics, and Saints,the eminent medievalist Andre Vauchez explores the evolution of spaces in Christianity-chapels, monasteries, holy wells, grottos, and other holy places-that are considered sacred because they house the relics of a saint or because they preserve the memory of an appearance by a saint, angel, or the Virgin Mary. ......
Christian Sanctuaries from Late Antiquity Through the Middle Ages
In Shrines, Relics, and Saints,the eminent medievalist Andre Vauchez explores the evolution of spaces in Christianity-chapels, monasteries, holy wells, grottos, and other holy places-that are considered sacred because they house the relics of a saint or because they preserve the memory of an appearance by a saint, angel, or the Virgin Mary. ......
Overturning the myth that medieval marriages were loveless, shown through a close analysis of troubadour poetry and historical records Medieval marriages are often understood to have been loveless, due partly to assumptions about arranged matches that have been reinforced by scholars who suggest that troubadour poetry was not concerned with ......
