Medieval European History Research Articles

Mothers and Children: Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe (review)

Reviewed by: Mothers and Children: Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe Moshe Rosman Elisheva Baumgarten . Mothers and Children: Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe. Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004. Pp. xvi + 275. Mothers and Children is overflowing with new sources, new information, new interpretations, and new conceptual and methodological approaches to historical questions. Utilizing an impressive array of sources—from Talmud and halakhic literature, practical Kabbalah, responsa, exegetical and ethical literature to doctors' and circumcisers' handbooks, piyutim, guides to customs, Mahzor Vitry, prayer books, Sefer Hasidim, writings of the Church Fathers, papal bulls, Christian theological, exegetical, and legal tracts, and culminating with art—Baumgarten sheds light for the first time on some of the most basic aspects of life in the past. She allows us to observe Jewish domestic life, especially from the women's perspective (yet never forgetting to explore men's roles and opinions): births, celebrations, the marital relationship, child rearing, neighborliness with Christians, and supervision of servants. Even more impressive, however, is how she succeeds in using the myriad details she adduces to weave a complex tapestry that illustrates the structure, the organization, and the tacit ideas and values that typified medieval Jewish Ashkenaz and, by extension, Latin Europe in general. Moreover, Baumgarten sets precedents and makes judgments that have ramifications for the writing of historiography at the present historical moment, and this includes Jewish historiography as well. She touches on many crucial historiographical issues that all historians—especially Jewish historians—must confront, staking out clear positions that deserve serious evaluation. The first of these is the question of the relationship between Jewish historiography and so-called general historiography. The subtitle of this book is "Family Life in Ashkenaz in the Middle Ages." The author could have written a book on "family life in Germany and France in the Middle Ages." She is as completely conversant with the sources and historiography of the Christians in the Middle Ages as she is with those of the Jews and utilizes them, in this instance, to learn more about the Jews. Given [End Page e85] that most of the Jewish sources originated with one group, the male rabbinic elite, enriching the source base with Christian literature, folklore, art, and Church documents, and their concomitant varying perspectives, is essential. In addition, Baumgarten shows that primary phenomena, like the Hollekreisch ceremony (where the infant received a non-Jewish name), the Wachtnacht (the night of watching on the eve of a baby boy's circumcision), and the Sabbath of the Parturient (Shabbat yetsiat ha-yoledet, the first visit of the new mother to the synagogue, approximately a month after the birth), are linked to Christian parallels that simply must be understood if the Jewish phenomena are to be analyzed meaningfully. Similarly, topics such as widowhood, nursing, birth, and parenthood are thoroughly discussed in the existing non-Jewish historiography of the Middle Ages. Anyone seeking to relate to these subjects within a Jewish context must master this huge literature—as Baumgarten has done—or produce a superficial account. New findings and insights derived from analysis of non-Jewish historiography on the Middle Ages advance the interpretation and the argument of this book in numerous places. In contrast to some other books on medieval European history that group the Jews with marginal social groups, like the poor, the sick, and the mad,1 here the Jews appear—for all their difference—as partners in the economy, the culture, and the society. Baumgarten, however, not only establishes that the Jews confirm or illustrate things already known about medieval society. In accord with Elliott Horowitz's long ago call,2 she also utilizes Jewish sources and the differences between the behavior and the attitudes of the Jews and the Christians in order to proffer new views of general issues. For example, close examination of the phenomenon of ba'al brit (sandek, conpere, gevater [compater]) expands our understanding of the social function of co-parents (godparents) in general. Thus while it is conventionally held that the choice of co-parents by the biological parents was part of a strategy for reinforcing ties between the different...

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Breaking Old Habits: Recent Research on Women, Spirituality and the Arts in the Middle Ages

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Breaking Old Habits: Recent Research on Women, Spirituality and the Arts in the Middle Ages

Plagues, Priests, and Demons: Sacred Narratives and the Rise of Christianity in the Old World and the New. By Daniel T. Reff. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. xiii, 290. Illustrations. Maps. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $50.00 cloth; $21.99 paper.

Reviewed by: Plagues, Priests, and Demons: Sacred Narratives and the Rise of Christianity in the Old World and the New Cynthia Radding Plagues, Priests, and Demons: Sacred Narratives and the Rise of Christianity in the Old World and the New. By Daniel T. Reff. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. xiii, 290. Illustrations. Maps. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $50.00 cloth; $21.99 paper. This book offers the reader an engaging synthesis of "the rise of Christianity" in the comparative framework of two widely varying time periods and geographical regions. Daniel Reff provides a thematic point of entry into ancient and early medieval European history in combination with colonial Latin American history on one important theme: the development of Catholic missions directed to indigenous peoples in northern New Spain (Mexico). His central arguments establish the conditions of epidemic disease in the Mediterranean world and European mainland in the first millennium of the Common Era, paralleled by the demographic crises of early conquest Ibero-America that created the scenario for Christian evangelization. Secondly, Reff compares the narratives of early Christian writings and Jesuit missionary accounts to show that sixteenth- and seventeenth-century clerics deliberately emulated ancient Christian texts in order to bolster the legitimacy of their New World missions. This dual approach offers a novel text for discussion, and the varied secondary sources provide students and scholars alike with an informative and challenging bibliography. The brevity of the synthesis, however, does not allow the author to develop as fully as he might have either the narrative exegesis or the historical complexities of his subject. Furthermore, the paucity of citations from recent Mexican scholarship in archaeology and ethno-history for northwestern New Spain reflects missed opportunities to rethink some of the assumptions repeated in this study concerning transculturation, cultural responses to disease, and the power struggles inherent in the religious conquests of early Roman Catholicism and the Spanish-American colonies. Several points stand out for further discussion: Daniel Reff's suggestion that mortality rates among Christians was significantly lower than among pagans during the epidemics of late antiquity; his comparison of the Aztec and Roman empires, and the scant attention paid to the economic life and internal governance of the Jesuit missions of New Spain, in which the Indian cabildo played a major role. Similarly, Reff's history minimizes the violence of early conquest encounters through the prolonged Mixton and Chichimec wars of sixteenth-century northern Mexico as well as the destructive impact of forced labor drafts and the economic imbalances between subsistence and surplus production in the mission communities. The structure of his study, combining substantive historical events with the literary analysis of sacred narratives, raises intriguing questions concerning the methodology for interpreting different belief systems over time and space: how do we combine archaeological, historical and ethnographic evidences in ways that are not anachronistic or simplified? [End Page 494] Reff makes ample use of illustrative passages from the principal texts that inform his study, particularly Andrés Pérez de Ribas, Triunfos de Nuestra Santa Fé, and Antonio Ruiz de Montoya, Conquista espiritual, supplemented by scholarly translations of early Christian writings and archival citations to the Jesuits' annual reports—the latter deposited in the Mexico City, Archivo General de la Nación. He argues, interestingly, that seventeenth-century Jesuit missionaries in New Spain had more in common intellectually and theologically with early Catholic teachings, concerning Satan and the origins of sin, than with the comparatively harsher doctrines of the late Middle Ages and Counter-Reformation. Nevertheless, Jesuits repeatedly condemned native shamans as sorcerers and partners with the devil. Reff's conclusions underscore a basic paradox, namely that if, indeed, disease played a major role in the rise of Christianity in the Old World and the New, it was not explicitly acknowledged in the narratives of either period. This book opens a window to promising pathways in comparative history, leading us back to the sources that informed this study and provoking new questions for research and discussion concerning the intersections of intellectual and social history, agency, and the disjunctions of colonial conquests. Cynthia Radding University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico Copyright © 2007 Academy of American Franciscan History ...

The Twelfth-Century Renaissance (review)

280 Short Notices Parergon 20.1 (2003) benefit of monolingual scholars, although one wonders why such would pick up the book in the first place. Surely a knowledge of both languages is necessary for any scholar interested in this question of interlingual and intercultural influence? An Introduction plus four chapters and an Afterword form the structure of the work. There are copious Notes and an Index, the last being centred on authors and ideas. Generally, foreign language material is quoted correctly, although vulgus profanus (p. 109) should read vulgus profanum. A separate bibliography is not provided. In short, Sturm-Maddox’s book is a valuable revision of what we know about the influence of Petrarch on Ronsard, tracing the varying relationship of the latter poet to the former and re-evaluating the work of previous scholars who have turned their attention to this most interesting question. Max Walkley Department of French Studies University of Sydney Swanson, R. N., The Twelfth-Century Renaissance, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1999; cloth; pp. ix, 240; 8 b/w illustrations; RRP £45.00; ISBN 0719042550. The twelfth century is one of the key periods in the history of medieval Europe, a time of immense cultural vitality and intellectual energy allied to strong economic growth and expansion. Since C. H. Haskins first applied the term ‘renaissance’ to it in 1927, there has been an enormous amount of research and study devoted to all aspects of the political, economic and cultural life of the period. Perhaps because of this – but also because of doubts over the very concept of a renaissance – there have been relatively few attempts to produce a general overview of the period. Swanson’s aim is both modest and ambitious: ‘to provide a fair summary of current approaches and views’ (p. vii). Given the torrent of material which has appeared in recent years, and the apparent reluctance of twelfth-century specialists to undertake this task, it is no mean feat to distill all their research into a single short volume. His work is, by his own admission, basic, generalised and highly selective, and intended only as a introduction. He takes a thematic approach, focussing mainly on intellectual and cultural life: attitudes to the past, philosophy and theology, ideas of law and government, visual arts, vernacular Short Notices 281 Parergon 20.1 (2003) literature, and music. One chapter considers the contribution of women, and the extent to which they were involved in the many changes of the twelfth century. All this is done succinctly, clearly and reliably, and Swanson’s work can be recommended as a good, up-to-date introduction. But he also makes an interesting and useful contribution to the debate over the idea of a ‘twelfthcentury renaissance’, arguing that the phrase, in the sense of ‘intellectual and cultural dynamism’, can be best applied to the development of theology as an academic discipline, supported by philosophical and educational changes. He also postulates other, separate renaissances in the ‘long twelfth century’: one in the area of canon law and political views, and one in the arts, music and vernacular literature. This appears to remove from the idea of a ‘renaissance’ any connection with the classical heritage, but it is a good starting-point for further debate and discussion. Toby Burrows Scholars’Centre The University of Western Australia Symcox, Geoffrey, ed., Italian Reports on America 1493-1522: Letters, Dispatches, and Papal Bulls (Repertorium Columbianum X), Turnhout, Brepols, 2001; cloth; pp. xiii, 161; EUR50.00; ISBN 2503511805. This volume continues the dedicated work, first planned by the late Fredi Chiappelli, of re-editing in a single, up-to-date series, the contemporary sources that relate to Columbus’s four voyages. The documents are transcribed in their original language and then translated into English to make them more easily available to monolingual scholars. Many of the sources have been previously edited, particularly by Guglielmo Berchet (in the Raccolta produced in 1892), and this re-edition is designed not simply to ensure that the new, more readily available series is complete, but also to provide a clearer indication of the chronology of the dissemination of information. This collection, which is largely composed of documents that exist in only...

“Speche of thynges smale”: Micro-College Medievalism at Algoma University College

The phrase “medieval studies” is virtually meaningless at a small school such as Algoma University College. One faculty member out of the entire faculty complement of just over 30 is a specialist in a medieval discipline, Medieval English Literature (especially Chaucer), and though AUC does have a handful of courses on medieval topics on its books (e.g. History of Medieval Europe, Medieval Philosophy), the only ones offered regularly are the upper-year Chaucer courses. Courses in medieval drama and romance are on the books, but only the drama course has been offered, and only as a Directed Studies course. Library holdings are so sparse that even many major texts (literary and critical) are available only through inter-library loan, and most major (and all minor) journals focusing on medieval studies are not in our holdings (we receive exactly three medieval-focused journals here, and Florilegium is not, I regret, among them). Research on medieval topics is therefore and of necessity difficult, requiring long delays as inter-library loan materials trickle in, as well as extensive travel to other sites. Furthermore, few students take courses focusing on medieval topics, and even fewer of them acquire an abiding love for the subject that carries them forward to careers as medievalists. Indeed, in my years at AUC, not a single student (to my knowledge) has pursued graduate studies in any medieval discipline. The preservation, let alone the nurturing and growth, of medieval studies, is extremely difficult under such circumstances. One might imagine that a rewarding, or even an interesting, career as a medievalist would be impossible under such circumstances.

Vitae Episcoporum: Eine Quellengattung zwischen Hagiographie und Historiographie, untersucht an Lebensbeschreibungen von Bischofen des Regnum Teutonicum im Zeitalter der Ottonen und Salier (review)

Vitae Episcoporum: Fine Quellengattung zwischen Hagiographie and Historiographie, untersucht an Lebensbeschreibungen von Bischofen des Regnum Teutonicum im Zeitalter der Ottonen and Salier. By Stephanie Haarlander. [Monographien zur Geschichte des Mittelalters, Volume 47.] (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann. 2000. Pp. xiii, 691. DM 398, -.) Lives of Bishops constitute a category of sources for medieval European history that has been and still is neglected-unjustly, as this impressive book makes abundantly clear. It originated as a dissertation, defended in 1993/94 at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat, Munich, written under the guidance of Professor Friedrich Prinz, but it evidently has been re-written and greatly expanded since then. Haarlander defends the translation of vita as biography, arguing that the differentiation between a life as it is lived and a life as it is described applies to modern authors just as much as it applies to the medieval authors of the lives she examines in her study (p. 1). This basic approach shapes her book. She resolutely rejects the use of episcopal vitae as quarries for snippets of presumably factual information, distinguishing the vitae from the genre gesta or deeds accomplished by bishops (p. 17, pp. 397-398) as well as from other contemporary documents, be they authentic or forged. She freely admits and emphasizes repeatedly that the vitae were composed with hagiographical intent and that they were designed exclusively for liturgical readings and edification-not in order to preserve historiographical details (p. 25). It is worth noting, therefore, how greatly this excellent study adds nonetheless to our positive, factual knowledge and understanding of crucial centuries of medieval history, not to mention the biographies of the bishops themselves. As the author discovered in the course of her work, the majority of the vitae included in the book presented contemporary, detailed sketches of very recognizable individuals, quite apart from the obligatory catalogue of virtues, regularly filled with topoi and even meaningless platitudes. The volume is based on the study of fifty-five vitae, composed by fifty-four authors, celebrating the lives of thirty-six bishops, beginning with Ulrich of Augsburg (923-973) and ending with the biography of Archbishop Albero of Trier (1131/32-1152). All of them were members of the church of the Ottonian/Salian Empire, and all of the vitae are available in print. This vast amount of material-even though Haarlander calculated that only 6.09% of the 591 bishops reigning in the period under consideration were celebrated in still extant biographies (p. 462)-is examined in eleven main chapters. They are arranged thematically. The Introduction (pp. 1-30) is followed in Part 1 (pp. 31-163) by the inquiry into authors and their intentions. Part 2 turns to the biographies themselves, analyzing the bishop in his relationship to monks and clergy (pp. 163-199); the bishop as builder (pp. 200-224); the character of the bishop (pp. 225-263); the origin and career of the bishop (pp. 264-311); the bishop and his relationship to rulers, including a discussion of episcopal obligations-the servitium regis-(pp. 312-378); bishop and nobles (pp. 379-414); the bishop and his colleagues (pp. 415-440); bishops and the pope (pp. 441-460). All sections are carefully subdivided and conclude with a brief summary. The over-all summary of the author's findings (pp. 461-474) is followed by a most welcome appendix, listing the episcopal vitae used in the book both under the name of the bishop to whom they are dedicated and the name of the author if he can be identified (pp. 475-565). The book concludes with indices of abbreviations, sources and literature as well as a tripartite register for persons, places, and general matter (pp. 564-691). All readers, not just this reviewer, will be grateful for the great care expended on these indices, the labor of love. Clever as well as considerate is also the system used in the footnotes to identify the particular biography to which the author happens to be referring at the time. …

Les sources de l'histoire économique et sociale du moyen âge. Les états de la maison de Bourgogne, tome II: Archives centrales de l'État bourguignon (1384–1500), vol. I:1: Archives des principautés du Sud, and vol. I:2: Les principautés du Nord (supplement). Edited by Robert-Henri Bautier and Janine Sornay. Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2001. Pp. xiii, 782.

Those unfamiliar with the earlier volume in this series, on “sources for the economic and social history of the Middle Ages” (of western Europe), all edited by the distinguished French historian Robert-Henri Bautier and the archivist Janine Sornay, will find this title confusing. The first tome , published in three subsidiary volumes (so far) from 1968, provides the archival sources for the economic and social history of the medieval French principalities of Comtet-Venaissin, Dauphine, and the estates of the house of Savoy. The second and current tomes concerns the archival sources for the economic history of the southern and northern domains of the French ducal house of Burgundy; it too is being presented in a series of fascicules. To date, the editors have published just two parts of the first volume, whose overall title is Les archives centrales de l'Etat bourguignon (1384–1500): archives des principautes territoriales . Adding to the confusion, their first publica-tion in this series, presented in 1984, was also vol. I, part 2: Les principautes du Nord . It covered some (not all) of the Burgundian principalities in the Low Countries: the county of Flanders (and its seigneurie of Malines, within Brabant); the county of Artois (along with the “villes de Somme,” now all part of France); the duchy of Brabant; the duchy of Limburg and the adjacent lands known as the “terres d'Outre-Meuse”; the county of Hainaut (now also part of modern France); and the duchy of Luxembourg (with the county of Chiny). That choice therefore had a certain commendable logic, since this region commands a far greater importance in the economic history of medieval Europe than do the southern principalities, even though the latter provided the foundations for the Burgundian realm.

The transformation of kinship and the family in late Anglo‐Saxon England

The development of the family into a small unit in which descent was traced almost exclusively through the male line is regarded as a major turning point in medieval European history. The early stages of the formation of agnatic kinship have usually been connected to strategies designed to preserve and retain control of patrimonies and castles, arising from the breakdown of public order. In this article it is suggested that the emergence of new kinship values was connected to the investment of aristocratic energy and resources in monastic programmes, and to subtle changes in lay involvement with the rituals associated with death and the salvation of souls.

Women's History in the New Millennium: Women, Work, and Family after Two Decades: Introduction

As part of our ongoing consideration of the past, present, and future of women's history, we offer a retrospective on a classic work in the field, Louise A. Tilly and Joan W. Scott's Women, Work, and Family, published in 1978. We thought it would be interesting to consider how the model that Tilly and Scott develop in the book has held up in light of over two decades of subsequent scholarship. To that end, we asked Barbara Hanawalt from the perspective of medieval European history, Thomas Dublin from the vantage point of U.S. history, and Patricia Tsurumi from the angle of Japanese history to take up this task. (We at Ohio State University, I might add, have also asked our graduate students to tackle this question for their Ph.D. examinations!) The retrospective concludes with a comment by Louise Tilly.——Leila J. Rupp

Ghaylan al-Dimashqi: The Isolation of a Heretic in Islamic Historiography

The meaning and significance of accusations of heresy are difficult to ascertain, regardless of the religious setting or historical milieu in which they appear. Scholars studying medieval European religious history have described heresy as opposition to the Christian church's doctrinal authority, emphasizing that heretics were not only religious but also political dissenters. They questioned church doctrine per se, but also, perhaps more significantly, challenged the church's authority to determine doctrine. In early Islamic history, concepts of heresy and orthodoxy are somewhat more difficult to define. After the Rashidun, there was no dominant religious voice in the community. Instead, a variety of opposing parties struggled for the right to define doctrine. In such circumstances, there could be no orthodoxy, since none had sufficient moral authority or coercive power to impose their views to the exclusion of all others. Consequently, there could be no heresy either, because heretics are simply those whom the dominant religious authority deems to be outside the bounds of orthodoxy. Only after proponents of a particular set of views gained sufficient power to impose their views on others could heterodoxy become heresy.

Mini focus on Islam. Islam in the history of early Europe

The history of Europe cannot be written without taking into account both the Islamic presence on the soil of Europe from the Arab invasion of Spain in 711 onwards, and the impact of that contact with Islam on the attitudes of the inhabitants of those countries not invaded by the Muslims. This paper seeks to challenge the view that the history of medieval Europe (and by extension more recent history, in areas under or close to Ottoman rule) can be written solely as the rise of the Christian west: the intermingling of Jews, Christians and Muslims on European soil proved very fertile. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Islam in the history of early Europe

The history of Europe cannot be written without taking into account both the Islamic presence on the soil of Europe from the Arab invasion of Spain in 711 onwards, and the impact of that contact with Islam on the attitudes of the inhabitants of those countries not invaded by the Muslims. This paper seeks to challenge the view that the history of medieval Europe (and by extension more recent history, in areas under or close to Ottoman rule) can be written solely as the rise of the Christian west: the intermingling of Jews, Christians and Muslims on European soil proved very fertile. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Robin Hood: The Many Faces of that Celebrated English Outlaw/Die Vielen Gesichter des edlen Räubers (review)

Short Notices Carpenter, Kevin, ed., Robin Hood: The Many Faces of that Celebrated English Outlaw/Die Vielen Gesichter des edlen Rdubers, Oldenburg, Bibtiotheks und Informationssytem der Universitat Oldenburg, 1995; paper; pp. 303; over 200 illustrations; R.R.P. not known. This book was produced as an accompaniment to an exhibition on the subject of Robin Hood, which toured six European countries between 1995 and 1997. It aims to provide readers of either German or English with a comprehensive survey of the many incarnations of the character and the legend, in a collection of scholarly articles, personal accounts by popular writers, ideas on presenting Robin Hood in the classroom, Robin Hood in film, and more. The second half of the three-hundred page book is a catalogue of the exhibits, a couple of hundred Ulustrations and artefacts of every imaginable kind which are no doubt of interest to viewers of the exhibition, but of limited use otherwise. The book concludes with lists of secondary reading and film material on the subject of Robin Hood. While the book contains some useful and interesting material on the Robin Hood legend and its past and present uses, notably in the articles by writers such as James C. Holt, Stephen Knight and others, i t P A R E R G O N ns 15.1 (July 1997) Short Notices 277 is difficult to escape the feeling that the mix of the material is a real problem. The book interweaves serious and scholarly writing with the tight and personal, but even more strikingly, it juxtaposes material with a very short sheU-tife with articles that serve the more enduring requirements of academic research. This mix creates a disjunction which is intensified by the editor's decision to use both English and German in the first part of the book. M u c h of the material is thus presented twice, and each of the essays is introduced and summarised in the alternate language. One has to question the wisdom of this bilingual approach, especially as it has apparently not been considered necessary in the second part. W h e n combined with variations in type for each of the languages, it is an irritating editorial feature. O n the positive side, the book is generously and interestingly Illustrated with prints, etchings and photographs from all kinds of sources, and in terms of scope and comprehensibitity it should be of value to students of Robin Hood. Philippa Beckerling Department of English University of Western Australia Ganshof, F. L., Feudalism (Medieval Academy Reprints for Teaching 34), Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1996; paper; pp. xviii, 176; R.R.P. US$13.95. 'What is feudalism?' has been the starting-point for m a n y an undergraduate course in medieval European history, and sttil is in many cases today. The two seminal works which always appear on the reading-list for this topic are Marc Bloch's Feudal Society and Francois Ganshof's Feudalism. They are very different books. Bloch offers a marvellously rich and wide-ranging account of feudal institutions and the society in which they were embedded, though his discursive and detailed approach must appear formidable to the n e w undergraduate! Ganshof, in contrast, provides a masterpiece of compression, clearly and succinctly set out, and incorporating extensive evidence with a remarkably light touch. H e is very careful ...

Problems of Comparing Rural Societies in Early Medieval Western Europe

There is surprisingly little early medieval social history being written. In recent years, more specifically economic history has had a remarkable rebirth, thanks to the (largely unconnected) efforts of archaeologists on the one side and Belgian and German historians on the other; but the study of society in general, outside the restricted spheres of the aristocracy and the church, has been neglected. I speak schematically; obviously, there are notable exceptions. But it is significant that noone, in any country, has thought it worthwhile to attempt a synthesis of early medieval European socio-economic history as a whole that could replace those of Alfons Dopsch or, maybe, André Déléage. It would be hard; but people have tried it for the centuries after 900, with interesting (even if inevitably controversial) results. Why not earlier? Richard Sullivan recently lamented the conservatism of most Carolingian scholarship; in the arena of social history, he could easily have extended his complaints back to 500.

A history of medieval Europe from Constantine to St. Louis (review)

Reviews 179 Robin Cormack's Byzantine eye is a valuable collection of studies drawn from relatively obscure sources. These studies also herald a new direction in Byzantine art history. A. D. Grishin Department of Art History Australian National University Davis, R. H. C, A history of medieval Europe from Constantine to St. Louis, 2nd ed., London, Longman, 1988; paperback; pp. xv, 408; 5 plates, 9 maps; R. R. P. AUS$29.95. The covers of this paperback state that it is a 'Second Edition ... the first fullscale revision of the text since its initial appearance in 1957', in which 'Professor Davis has added important new postscripts to all those chapters which he would now tackle differendy were he writing the book from scratch'. In fact two of the postscripts to chapters in the book are virtually unchanged appendices to the 1970 edition. This leavesfivenew postscripts among seventeen chapters. Otherwise the text of the book is Uttle changed, although references and reading tists have been updated. This is a pity, because a second edition offered an opportunity to fiU in gaps. Most notably, one suspects that this is a history of medieval Europe defined as excluding the British Isles, which enter only infrequently in general or comparative contexts. Spain and eastern Europe don't receive much attention either. A worldwide audience for a textbook such as this deserves better. Also, there is not one sentence reflecting new perspectives on w o m e n in history, even though, within the minimalist policy of change governing the edition, the postscript on demography would have provided a suitable context. In the absence of Longman's long-awaited book on the early Middle Ages, this clear and sensible book will have to do. However, Robert S. Lopez's The Birth ofEurope (sadly out of print) is a more interesting and more balanced treatment with a conceptually sounder tide. Lynette Olson Department of History University of Sydney Rossiaud, J., Medieval prostitution, trans. L. G. Cochrane, Oxford, Basil BlackweU, 1988; cloth; pp. ix, 213; R. R. P. £22.50. Rossiaud's Medieval prostitution is an easy book to read and enjoy. It has an easily definable subject matter: the limited activity of prostitution in a clearly defined geographical area, namely the network of towns and cities of south-east France, from Burgundy to Provence, between 1440 and 1490. One might quibble that the later fifteenth century is hardly the Middle Ages but Rossiaud relies on earlier sources for his theoretical discussion of the status of ...

Joan of Arc and Richard III: Sex, Saints, and Government in the Middle Ages.

This book is intended for scholars and students of medieval European (especially English and French) history.

The Oxford Illustrated History of Medieval Europe

This illustrated book tells the story of Europe and the Mediterranean over the thousand years which saw the creation of Western Civilization. Written by scholars and based on the latest research, it offers an account of life in medieval Europe between the fall of the Roman Empire and the dawn of the Renaissance. The story covers a time of turmoil and change, from the empires of Charlemagne and the Byzantines to the newly formed nation states which fought the Hundred Years War. Great monasteries and cathedrals, the ambitions of the Crusades, chivalric knights, the realism of the new arts, economic and social growth, the catastrophe of plague, the growth of towns and cities, the development of commerce and banking: this remarkable period embraced them all. The six chapters of the book are divided between the Mediterranean world and northern Europe, illustrating how the centre of political and cultural life moved gradually northwards as the centuries progressed.

Oxford Illustrated history of Medieval Europe. Edited by George Holmes. New York: Oxford University Press, xiv + 398 pp. $35.00.

Oxford Illustrated history of Medieval Europe. Edited by George Holmes. New York: Oxford University Press, xiv + 398 pp. $35.00.

English Historical Literature in the Fourteenth Century

This book is intended for scholars and students of medieval European history and literature, particularly in England and France in the fourteenth century.

Medieval Iceland: society, sagas, and power

The history of medieval Europe is incomplete if it does not take Iceland into account. Jesse Byock's reassessment of medieval Iceland uses all the available sources--the medieval Icelanders' historical writings, extensive saga literature, and intricate laws--to explore the way Iceland's social order functioned.