Debating Medieval Europe

Debating medieval Europe serves as an entry point for studying and teaching medieval history. Rather than simply presenting foundational knowledge or introducing sources, it provides the reader with frameworks for understanding the distinctive historiography of the period, digging beneath the historical accounts provided by other textbooks to expose the contested foundations of apparently settled narratives. It opens a space for discussion and debate, as well as providing essential context for the sometimes overwhelming abundance of specialist scholarship. Volume I addresses the early Middle Ages, covering the period c. 450–c. 1050. The chapters are organised chronologically, and cover such topics as the Carolingian Order, England and the ‘Atlantic Archipelago’, the Vikings and Ottonian Germany. It features a highly distinguished selection of medieval historians, including Paul Fouracre and Janet L. Nelson.

This collection brings together some of the most original and influential work in the field of medieval history in recent years.

Contesting the Middle Ages is a thorough exploration of recent arguments surrounding nine hotly debated topics: the decline and fall of Rome, the Viking invasions, the Crusades, the persecution of minorities, sexuality in the Middle Ages, women within medieval society, intellectual and environmental history, the Black Death, and, lastly, the waning of the Middle Ages. The historiography of the Middle Ages, a term in itself controversial amongst medieval historians, has been continuously debated and rewritten for centuries. In each chapter, John Aberth sets out key historiographical debates in an engaging and informative way, encouraging students to consider the process of writing about history and prompting them to ask questions even of already thoroughly debated subjects, such as why the Roman Empire fell, or what significance the Black Death had both in the late Middle Ages and beyond. Sparking discussion and inspiring examination of the past and its ongoing significance in modern life, Contesting the Middle Ages is essential reading for students of medieval history and historiography.

These studies illustrate the various high and late medieval transformations of formal and formalized argument, from a broadly interdisciplinary perspective. They challenge today's dominant disciplinary approaches to what was and is still a pervasive mode of thought in the West. Many current treatments of medieval disputational texts have a narrow focus either on the history of scholasticism, rhetoric, and pedagogy, or the genesis and function of such period-specific forms of academic altercation as demonstrative, dialectic, or sophistic disputation, or the later quaestiones, quodlibeta, and sophismata. Moreover, scholarship in literature often ignores the parallel structures of academic argument and narrowly focuses on the narrative and aesthetic functions of debate poem.

This volume brings together interdisciplinary and multi-national archaeologists, historians, and geographers to discuss and debate religious 'space' and 'place' in the Early Medieval World.

In Debating Medieval Natural Law: A Survey, Riccardo Saccenti examines and evaluates the major lines of interpretation of the medieval concepts of natural rights and natural law within the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and explains how the major historiographical interpretations of ius naturale and lex naturalis have changed. His bibliographical survey analyzes not only the chronological evolution of various interpretations of natural law but also how they differ, in an effort to shed light on the historical debate and on the medieval roots of modern human rights theories. Saccenti critically examines the historical analyses of the major historians of medieval political and legal thought while addressing how to further research on the subject. His perspective interlaces different disciplinary points of view: history of philosophy, as well as history of canon and civil law and history of theology. By focusing on a variety of disciplines, Saccenti creates an opportunity to evaluate each interpretation of medieval lex naturalis in terms of the area it enlightens and within specific cultural contexts. His survey is a basis for future studies concerning this topic and will be of interest to scholars of the history of law and, more generally, of the history of ideas in the twentieth century.

Since its first publication in 2007, John H. Arnold’s What is Medieval History? has established itself as the leading introduction to the craft of the medieval historian. What is it that medieval historians do? How – and why – do they do it? Arnold discusses the creation of medieval history as a field, the nature of its sources, the intellectual tools used by medievalists, and some key areas of thematic importance from the fall of the Roman Empire to the Reformation. The fascinating case studies include a magical plot against a medieval pope, a fourteenth-century insurrection, and the importance of a kiss exchanged between two tenth-century noblemen. Throughout the book, readers are shown not only what medieval history is, but the cultural and political contexts in which it has been written. This anticipated second edition includes further exploration of the interdisciplinary techniques that can aid medieval historians, such as dialogue with scientists and archaeologists, and addresses some of the challenges – both medieval and modern – of the idea of a ‘global middle ages’. What is Medieval History? continues to demonstrate why the pursuit of medieval history is important not only to the present, but to the future. It is an invaluable guide for students, teachers, researchers and interested general readers.