Now reissued in an updated paperback edition, this groundbreaking account of the Medieval Revival movement examines the ways in which the style of the medieval period was re-established in post-Enlightenment England – from Walpole and Scott, Pugin, R...

The Ormesby Psalter is perhaps the most magnificent yet enigmatic of the great Gothic psalters produced in East Anglia in the first half of the fourteenth century. Its pages boast a wealth of decoration picked out in rich colours and burnished gold,...

Over the course of the Middle Ages, the economies of Europe, Asia, and northern Africa became more closely integrated, fostering the international and intercontinental journeys of merchants, pilgrims, diplomats, missionaries, and adventurers. During...

Just like we do today, people in medieval times struggled with the concept of human exceptionalism and the significance of other creatures. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the medieval bestiary. Sarah Kay's exploration of French and Latin besti...

The late medieval world was marked by a culture of refinement and sophistication. The period's media of choice – paintings, manuscripts, prints, tapestries, embroideries, ivory sculpture, metalwork, and enamels – speak volumes about the pleasures of...

Duke William of Normandy (1027-1087) is best known for his conquest of England but his eventful and chaotic youth is often forgotten. William inherited the Dukedom at the age of eight when his father, Robert the Magnificent, died in 1035 on his retur...

Frederick Barbarossa, born of two of Germany's most powerful families, swept to the imperial throne in a coup d'etat in 1152. A leading monarch of the Middle Ages, he legalized the dualism between the crown and the princes that endured until the end...

Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are usually treated as autonomous religions, but in fact across the long course of their histories the three religions have developed in interaction with one another. In "Neighboring Faiths", David Nirenberg examines...

For many, the medieval world seems dark and foreign – a miraculous, brutal and irrational time of superstition and strange relics. The pursuit of heretics, the inquisition, the crusades and the domination of the "Holy Land" come to mind. Yet the medi...

To read accounts of late medieval banquets is to enter a fantastic world where live lions guard nude statues, gilded stags burst into song, and musicians play from within pies. Such vivid works of art and performance required collaboration among arti...