Stephen D Church - Böcker

Cumulatively [the volumes] are of increasing value as repositories of scholarship on the multi-dimensional subject of knighthood ... highly informative and useful. ALBIONStudies treating a wide variety of aspects of knighthood. Topics include the way in which the word "knight" has been used, studying the terminology and ritual concerned with "making a knight"; the circumstances and implications ofthe knighting of the social elite of England between 1066 and 1272; the difficulties of distinguishing between knight and clerk, as exemplified by Abelard's multi-faceted image; the debt which Geoffrey de Charny's treatise on chivalry owes to the ideas and ideals of knighthood in Arthurian prose romances; and the linguistic competence of the twelfth-century knightly classes as courtly audience of troubadour song. There are also important contributions onthe warhorse; and on the fortifications of fourteenth-century English towns, arguing that they were more the expression of bourgeois aspirations than a response to serious military threat.Professor STEPHEN CHURCH teaches in the Department of History, University of East Anglia; Dr RUTH HARVEY is lecturer in French, Royal Holloway and Bedford New College. Contributors: RICHARD BARBER, MATTHEW BENNETT, JONATHAN BOULTON, MICHAEL CLANCHY, CHARLES COULSON, RUTH HARVEY, ELSPETH KENNEDY, AD PUTTER

The most recent ideas and arguments from leading historians of John's reign.The reign of King John (1199-1216) is one of the most controversial in English history. When he succeeded to Richard the Lionheart's lands, he could legitimately claim to rule half modern France as well as England and Ireland; butby the time of his death his dominion lay in tatters, and his subjects had banded together to restrict his powers as king under the Magna Carta and to overthrow him in favour of the son of the king of France.Over the centuries his reign has provided politicians and historians with fertile ground for inspiration and argument, and this volume adds to the debate, offering the most recent ideas and arguments from leading historians on the subject, and covering all the major issues involved. It is coherently formulated around explorations of the two major events of his reign: the loss of his continental inheritance, and the ending of his reign in the disaster of civil war. Topicscover all aspects of his life and career, from his reputation, the economy, the Norman aristocracy, the Church, Justice and the Empire, to his mother Eleanor of Aquitaine and his wife Isabella of Angouleme. It will be essential reading for all interested in one of the most significant periods of English history.Contributors: NICK BARRATT, J.L. BOLTON, JIM BRADBURY,SEAN DUFFY, A.A.M. DUNCAN, NATALIE FRYDE, JOHN GILLINGHAM, CHRISTOPHER HARPER-BILL, PAUL LATIMER, JANE MARTINDALE, V.D. MOSS, DANIEL POWER, IFOR W. ROWLANDS, RALPH V. TURNER, NICHOLAS VINCENT.Professor S.D. CHURCH teaches in the Department of History at the University of East Anglia.

A series which is a model of its kind: Edmund KingThe wide-ranging articles collected here represent the cutting edge of recent Anglo-Norman scholarship. There is a particular focus on historical sources for the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and especially on the key texts which are used by historians in understanding the past. There are articles on Eadmer's Historia Novorum, Dudo of Saint-Quentin's Historia Normannorum, the historical profession at Durham, and the use of charters to understand the role of women in the Norman march of Wales. Other contributions examine canon law in late twelfth-century England, and Angevin rule in Normandy in the time of Henry fitz Empress. The Old English world is also represented in the volume: there is a fresh investigation into Harold Godwineson's posthumous reputation, and a new interpretation of the reign of Aethelred the Unready.S.D. CHURCH is Professor of Medieval History at the University of East Anglia.Contributors: Emma Cavell, Catherine Cubitt, John Gillingham, Mark Hagger, Fraser McNair, Charles C. Rozier, Nicholas Ruffini-Ronzani, Danica Summerlin, Ann Williams

One opens each new volume expecting to find the unexpected - new light on old arguments, new material, new angles. MEDIUM AEVUMThe articles brought together here demonstrate the exciting vitality of this field. The volume begins with a keynote chapter on the failure of marriages among Christians and Muslims in crusader diplomacy. Other chapters consider the ceremony of knighting and the coronation ritual of Matilda of Flanders. There are also investigations of hunting landscapes in Cheshire, and Lancashire before Lancashire in the context of the Irish Sea World, while lordship is examined in two contexts, in post-Conquest England and early thirteenth-century Le Mans and Chartres. The sources for our knowledge of the period, as always, receive attention, whether drawn from documentary evidence or material culture, with essays on universal chronicle-writing and the construction of the Galfridian past in the Continuatio Ursicampina; the coinage of Harold II; and the patronage of the Bayeux Tapestry by Odo of Bayeux.

The most recent cutting-edge scholarship on the tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries.The essays collected here demonstrate the rich vitality of scholarship in this area. This volume has a particular focus on the interrelations between the various parts of north-western Europe. After the opening piece on Lotharingia, there are detailed studies of the relationship between Ponthieu and its Norman neighbours, and between the Norman and Angevin duke-kings and the other French nobility, followed by an investigation of the world of demons and possession in Norman Italy, with additional observations on the subject in twelfth-century England. Meanwhile, the York massacre of the Jews in 1190 is set in a wider context, showing the extent to which crusader enthusiasm led to the pogroms that so marred Anglo-Jewish relations, not just in York but elsewhere in England; and there is an exploration of poverty in London, also during the 1190s, viewed through the prism of the life and execution of William fitz Osbert. Another chapter demonstrates the power of comparative history to illuminate the norms of proprietary queenship, so often overlooked by historians of both kingship and queenship. And two essays focusing on landscape bring the physical into close association with the historical: on the equine landscape of eleventh and twelfth-century England, adding substantially to our understanding of the place of the horse in late Anglo-Saxon and early Anglo-Norman societies, and on the Brut narratives of Geoffrey of Monmouth, Wace, and Laȝamon, arguing that they use realistic landscapes in their depiction of the action embedded in their tales, so demonstrating the authors' grasp of the practical realities of contemporary warfare and the role played by landscapes in it.

"A series which is a model of its kind": Edmund KingThis year's volume is made up of articles that were presented at the conference in Bonn, held under the auspices of the University. In this volume, Alheydis Plassmann, the Allen Brown Memorial lecturer, analyses how two contemporary commentators reported the events of their day, the contest between two grandchildren of William the Conqueror as they struggled for supremacy in England and Normandy during the 1140s. The Marjorie Chibnall Essay prize winner, Laura Bailey, examines the geographical spaces occupied by the exile in The Gesta Herewardi and Fouke le Fitz Waryn. Andrea Stieldorf compares the seals and the coins of Germany/Lotharingia in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries with those made in England, exploring the ideas embedded in the iconography of the two connected visual sources. Domesday Book forms the focus of two important new studies, one by Rory Naismith looking at the moneyers to be found in Domesday, adding substantially to the information gained on this important group of artisans, and one by Chelsea Shields-Más on the sheriffs of Edward the Confessor, giving us new insights into the key officials in the royal administration. Elisabeth van Houts examines the life of Empress Matilda before she returned to her father's court in 1125 throwing new light on Matilda's "German" years, while Laura Wangerin looks at how tenth-century Ottonian women used communication to further their political goals. Steven Vanderputten takes the challenge of thinking about religious change at the turn of the Millennium through the lens of the Life of John, Abbot of Gorze Abbey, by John of Saint-Arnoul. Benjamin Pohl looks at the role of the abbot in prompting monk-historians to embark on their historiographical tasks through the work of one individual chronicler, Andreas of Marchiennes, responsible for writing, at his abbot's behest, the Chronicon Marchianense. And Megan Welton explores the implications of honorific titles through an examination of the title dux as it was attached to two tenth-century women rulers. The volume offers a wide range of insightful essays which add considerably to our understanding of the central middle ages.

"A series which is a model of its kind": Edmund King Considers the clerical friends of Ermengarde of Brittany, showing how these men enabled Ermengarde to fulfil both her duty and her desire to live an intensely pious life. Explores the ways in which grief was represented in the Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal. Two thirteenth-century Evesham forgeries demonstrate that early thirteenth-century people, even so-called experts at the papal chancery, seem to have been ignorant of the physical form taken by early papal bulls. Explores the world of the scribes who composed Exon Domesday, demonstrating their working methods as well as giving us further insights into the composition of Great Domesday, completed by 1088. Looks at the involvement of Bernard, abbot of Le Mont Saint-Michel, 1131-49, in the development of the abbey in peril of the sea. Examines how the introduction of musical notation into Normandy around the millennium made it possible for people to understand melodies without aid from a master. Offers insights into the career of Ranulf Flambard, the most "infamous tax collector" of the late eleventh century in England. Investigates the annals of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the years 1062 to 1066, showing that they were written largely in retrospect after the events of 1066 had played out. Looks at the case for the evidence relating to the foundation of Kirkstead Abbey, Lincolnshire. Finally, presents evidence for spying and espionage in the Anglo-Norman World.