This is an extravagantly illustrated and engrossing exploration of the art of medieval fighting. This volume offers an intriguing look into the world of late medieval martial arts, from wrestling to swordsmanship and to the subtle tricks that could b...

Witchcraft. Arson. Going AWOL. Some nuns in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy strayed far from the paradigms of monastic life. Cloistered in convents, subjected to stifling hierarchy, repressed, and occasionally persecuted by their male superi...

In Jennifer Summit's account, libraries are more than inert storehouses of written tradition; they are volatile spaces that actively shape the meanings and uses of books, reading, and the past. Considering the two-hundred-year period between 1431, wh...

This volume presents a penetrating interview and sixteen essays that explore key intersections of medieval religion and philosophy. With characteristic erudition and insight, Remi Brague focuses less on individual Christian, Jewish, and Muslim thinke...

In the Middle Ages, Muslim travelers embarked on a rihla, or world tour, as surveyors, emissaries, and educators. On these journeys, voyagers not only interacted with foreign cultures – touring Greek civilization, exploring the Middle East and North...

Why did capitalism and colonialism arise in Europe and not elsewhere? Why were parliamentarian and democratic forms of government founded there? What factors led to Europe's unique position in shaping the world? Thoroughly researched and persuasively...

In the late medieval era, pain could be a symbol of holiness, disease, sin, or truth. It could be encouragement to lead a moral life, a punishment for wrong doing, or a method of healing. Exploring the varied depictions and descriptions of pain – fro...

William Wey, fifteenth-century Devon priest, Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, and Bursar of Eton College, made three pilgrimages between 1456 and 1462 – to Compostella, Rome and the Holy Land. The complete text of his narrative has never before been...

In the aftermath of sixth-century barbarian invasions, the legal profession that had grown and flourished during the Roman Empire vanished. Nonetheless, professional lawyers suddenly reappeared in Western Europe seven hundred years later during the 1...

In this debut, Heather Webb studies medieval notions of the heart to explore the "lost circulations" of an era when individual lives and bodies were defined by their extensions into the world rather than as self-perpetuating, self-limited entities. D...