The Central Middle Ages

Daniel Power traces the history of Europe in the central Middle Ages (950-1320), an age of far-reaching change for the continent. Seven contributors consider the history of this period from a variety of perspectives, including political, social, economic, religious and intellectual history.

This wide-ranging introduction to medieval Europe has been updated and revised. In his popular survey Brooke explores the variety of human experience in the period. He looks at society, economy, religious life and popular religion, learning, culture, as well as political events; the rise of the Normans and the heyday of the medieval Empire. For the new edition there is increased coverage of the role of women and more attention to central Europe, Bohemia, Hungary and Poland.

Offers a new take on the identities and life histories of medieval people, in their multi-layered and sometimes contradictory dimensions.

This volume aims to provide a variety of points of entry to the history of France between 900 and 1200. It covers key themes such as France's political culture and identity, rural economy and society, the Church and intellectual history.

This volume explores papal communication and its reception in the period c.1100–1300; it presents a range of interdisciplinary approaches and original insights into the construction of papal authority and local perceptions of papal power in the central Middle Ages. Some of the chapters in this book focus on the visual, ritual and spatial communication that visitors encountered when they met the peripatetic papal curia in Rome or elsewhere, and how this informed their experience of papal self-representation. The essays analyse papal clothing as well as the iconography, architecture and use of space in papal palaces and the titular churches of Rome. Other chapters explore communication over long distances and analyse the role of gifts and texts such as letters, sermons and historical writings in relation to papal communication. Importantly, this book emphasises the plurality of responses to papal communication by engaging with the reception of papal messages by different audiences, both secular and ecclesiastical, and in relation to several geographic regions including England, France, Ireland, Italy and Switzerland. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Medieval History.

A groundbreaking comparative history of the formation of Bohemia, Hungary and Poland, from their origins in the eleventh century.

In the period following the collapse of the Carolingian Empire up to the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), the episcopate everywhere in Europe experienced substantial and important change. How did the medieval bishop, unquestionably one of the most powerful figures of the Middle Ages, respond to these and other historical changes? In this volume of interdisciplinary studies drawn from literary scholarship, art history, and history, the editors and contributors propose less a conventional socio-political reading of the episcopate and more of a cultural reading of bishops that, especially, is concerned with issues such as episcopal (self-)representation, conceptualization of office and authority, cultural production (images, texts, material objects, space) and ecclesiology/ideology.