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  3. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series

The series Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought was inaugurated by G. G. Coulton in 1921; Professor John H. Arnold now acts as General Editor of the Fourth Series, with Dr Christopher Briggs, Dr Helen Gittos, Professor Adam J. Kosto, and Dr Magnus Ryan as Advisory Editors. The series brings together outstanding work by medieval scholars over a wide range of human endeavour extending from political economy to the history of ideas.

  • General Editors: John H. Arnold, University of Cambridge
  • Advisory Editors: Christopher Briggs, University of Cambridge, Helen Gittos, University of Oxford, Adam J. Kosto, Columbia University, New York, Magnus Ryan, University of Cambridge

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111 results in Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought: Fourth Series

Page 5 of 6

Family Power in Southern Italy
  • The Duchy of Gaeta and its Neighbours, 850–1139
  • Patricia Skinner
  • Published online:
    14 October 2009
    Print publication:
    23 February 1995
  • This 1995 book explores how political power was exerted and family identity expressed in the context of reconstruction of the noble families of the medieval duchies of Gaeta, Amalfi and Naples. Localised forms of power, and the impact of the Norman conquest on southern Italy, are assessed by means of a remarkable collection of charters preserved in the Codex diplomaticus Cajetanus. The duchy of Gaeta, like its neighbours, was ruled as a private family business. An integral part of its ruling family's power was its monopolisation of parts of the duchy's economy, the use of members of the clan to rule local centres. When the family broke up, the duchy fell to outside predators. The three duchies reacted in different ways to the Normans. Gaeta flourished commercially in the twelfth century, and its unique political response to contacts with the cities of northern Italy (especially Genoa) forms the final part of this study.

Peter des Roches
  • An Alien in English Politics, 1205–1238
  • Nicholas Vincent
  • Published online:
    11 October 2009
    Print publication:
    11 April 1996
  • This is the first biography of one of the wealthiest and most influential bishops of medieval Europe, who for a period of over thirty years exercised a degree of power over the Plantagenet court second only to that of the king. The career of Peter des Roches and the activities of his fellow aliens are fundamental to an understanding of the process by which England and France developed as two separate kingdoms. As a politician, des Roches cast a shadow across the reigns of both John and Henry III. His biography encompasses the first detailed narrative yet attempted of English political history in the early 1230s and of the civil war of 1233–4. It sheds new light on such issues as the role of aliens in English politics, the reception of Magna Carta, the loss of Normandy, and the constitutional and administrative developments of the reign of Henry III.

Kings and Lords in Conquest England
  • Robin Fleming
  • Published online:
    09 October 2009
    Print publication:
    05 December 1991
  • This is a study of landholding and alliance in England in the years 950 to 1086, a period in which the fortunes of lay lords and their families rose and fell dramatically. It was also a period of dizzying tenurial change, in which the fluctuations in landed wealth and alliances shed light on the economic and geographic balance between the monarchy and the aristocracy, and on how this balance helped shape Conquest England. A number of key historical issues are investigated: the impact of Cnut's conquest on England, the quality of Edward the Confessor's kingship, the means by which the Norman settlement was carried out, and the effects on England of William's conquest. The book will become the standard work on the often volatile relationship between the king and the great lords in this key transitional period, and is one of the most stimulating and original contributions to Conquest studies.

William of Tyre
  • Historian of the Latin East
  • Peter W. Edbury, John Gordon Rowe
  • Published online:
    09 October 2009
    Print publication:
    19 May 1988
  • William, archbishop of Tyre from 1175 to c.1184, was a churchman, royal servant and scholar who lived in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. Born in Jerusalem around 1130, he studied in western Europe for almost twenty years until 1165, when he returned to the East to begin his career in public life. He left to posterity a monumental history in which he described the events of the First Crusade (1095–9) and recorded the fortunes of the western rulers of the states subsequently founded in Syria and the Holy Land down to his own day. The value of his work as an example of twelfth-century historiography and as a source of information for the events described has long been recognized. In this study the authors consider William as a public figure and historian, and examine the influences which bore upon his writing and the way in which he fashioned his material. They then go on to examine what he had to say about certain topics - the monarchy in Jerusalem, the Church, the papacy, the Byzantine empire and the Crusade - and why he wrote as he did.

John of Wales
  • A Study of the Works and Ideas of a Thirteenth-Century Friar
  • Jenny Swanson
  • Published online:
    23 September 2009
    Print publication:
    18 May 1989
  • This book examines the selected writings of John of Wales, a thirteenth-century Franciscan scholar. Though overshadowed historically by men like Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure, John contributed significantly to the preaching explosion of the later Middle Ages, devoting his scholastic energies to the production of encyclopedic preaching aids for the growing number of the devout and learned emerging from the new universities. Through a detailed analysis of his world view, the author establishes John's strong interest in politics and contemporary social issues and helps to explain why his writings appealed to young preachers and the popular imagination. John's historic popularity and literary influence are also fully explored. His works seem to have been an important source of classical material for European literary texts of the period, and therefore, in addition to historians and theologians, this unprecedented book will appeal to those interested in the survival and transmission of Greek and Latin literature.

Hagiography and the Cult of Saints
  • The Diocese of Orléans, 800–1200
  • Thomas Head
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    23 August 1990
  • This is a study of the place of patron saints in Frankish society during the Carolingian and early Capetian periods. The book focuses on the composition of works in praise of dead holy people - hagiography - and the veneration of their physical remains - the cult of saints. It examines the patrons of a single diocese, Orléans, because a saint's power of patronage was defined in terms of a particular locale. Beyond the documentation of this region's textual and institutional traditions, the book explores the uses made of sanctity and patronage by the Franks. These so-called 'fathers' protected monasteries against interference by ecclesiastical and secular authorities. Moreover, as inhabitants of God's court of heaven, these 'fathers' served monks and laypeople as intercessors with God in matters of sin and disease. Thus they provided, in the Orléanais and elsewhere, an important source of power and authority, as well as an aspect of Christian belief which was shared by clergy and laity.

The Norman Frontier in the Twelfth and Early Thirteenth Centuries
  • Daniel Power
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    16 December 2004
  • The twelfth-century borderlands of the duchy of Normandy formed the cockpit for dynastic rivalries between the kings of England and France. This 2004 book examines how the political divisions between Normandy and its neighbours shaped the communities of the Norman frontier. It traces the region's history from the conquest of Normandy in 1106 by Henry I of England, to the duchy's annexation in 1204 by the king of France, Philip Augustus, and its incorporation into the Capetian kingdom. It explores the impact of the frontier upon princely and ecclesiastical power structures, customary laws, and noble strategies such as marriage, patronage and suretyship. Particular attention is paid to the lesser aristocracy as well as the better known magnates, and an extended appendix reconstructs the genealogies of thirty-three prominent frontier lineages. The book sheds light upon the twelfth-century French aristocracy, and makes a significant contribution to our understanding of medieval political frontiers.

The Making of Gratian's Decretum
  • Anders Winroth
  • Published online:
    11 September 2009
    Print publication:
    23 November 2000
  • This book offers perspectives on the legal and intellectual developments of the twelfth century. Gratian's collection of Church law, the Decretum, was a key text in these developments. Compiled in around 1140, it remained a fundamental work throughout and beyond the Middle Ages. Until now, the many mysteries surrounding the creation of the Decretum have remained unsolved, thereby hampering exploration of the jurisprudential renaissance of the twelfth century. Professor Winroth has now discovered the original version of the Decretum, which has long lain unnoticed among medieval manuscripts, in a version about half as long as the final text. It is also different from the final version in many respects - for example, with regard to the use of of Roman law sources - enabling a reconsideration of the resurgence of law in the twelfth century.

Restoration and Reform, 1153–1165
  • Recovery from Civil War in England
  • Graeme J. White
  • Published online:
    03 September 2009
    Print publication:
    28 March 2000
  • This book examines the processes by which effective royal government was restored in England following the civil war of Stephen's reign. It questions the traditional view that Stephen presided over 'anarchy', arguing instead that the king and his rivals sought to maintain the administrative traditions of Henry I, leaving foundations for a restoration of order once the war was over. The period from 1153 to 1162, spanning the last months of Stephen's reign and the early years of Henry II's, is seen as one primarily of 'restoration' when concerted efforts were made to recover royal lands, rights and revenues lost since 1135. Thereafter 'restoration' gave way to 'reform': although the administrative advances of 1166 have been seen as a watershed in Henry II's reign, the financial and judicial measures of 1163–65 were sufficiently important for this, also, to be regarded as a transitional phase in his government of England.

Parisian Scholars in the Early Fourteenth Century
  • A Social Portrait
  • William J. Courtenay
  • Published online:
    17 August 2009
    Print publication:
    25 March 1999
  • This study of the social, geographical and disciplinary composition of the scholarly community at the University of Paris in the early fourteenth century is based on the reconstruction of a remarkable document: the financial record of tax levied on university members in the academic year 1329–1330. Containing the names, financial level and often addresses of the majority of the masters and most prominent students, it is the single richest source for the social history of a medieval university before the late fourteenth century. After a thorough examination of the financial account, the history of such collections, and the case (a rape by a student) that precipitated legal expenses and the need for a collection, the book explores residential patterns, the relationship of students, masters and tutors, social class and levels of wealth, interaction with the royal court and the geographical background of university scholars.

Legal Practice and the Written Word in the Early Middle Ages
  • Frankish Formulae, c.500–1000
  • Alice Rio
  • Published online:
    14 August 2009
    Print publication:
    07 May 2009
  • Legal formularies are books of model legal documents compiled by early medieval scribes for their own use and that of their pupils. A major source for the history of early medieval Europe, they document social relations beyond the narrow world of the political elite. Formularies offer much information regarding the lives of ordinary people: sales and gifts of land, divorces, adoptions, and disputes over labour as well as theft, rape or murder. Until now, the use of formularies as a historical source has been hampered by severe methodological problems, in particular through the difficulty of establishing a precise chronological or geographical context for them. By examining Frankish legal formularies from the Merovingian and Carolingian periods, this book provides an invaluable, detailed analysis of the problems and possibilities associated with formularies, and will be required reading for scholars of early medieval history.

Dominicans, Muslims and Jews in the Medieval Crown of Aragon
  • Robin Vose
  • Published online:
    13 August 2009
    Print publication:
    07 May 2009
  • With their active apostolate of preaching and teaching, Dominican friars were important promoters of Latin Christianity in the borderlands of medieval Spain and North Africa. Historians have long assumed that their efforts to convert or persecute non-Christian populations played a major role in worsening relations between Christians, Muslims and Jews in the era of crusade and reconquista. This study sheds light on the topic by setting Dominican participation in celebrated but short-lived projects such as Arabic language studia or anti-Jewish theological disputations alongside day-to-day realities of mendicant life in the medieval Crown of Aragon. From old Catalan centers like Barcelona to newly conquered Valencia and Islamic North Africa, the author shows that Dominican friars were on the whole conservative educators and disciplinarians rather than innovative missionaries - ever concerned to protect the spiritual well-being of the faithful by means of preaching, censorship and maintenance of existing barriers to interfaith communications.

Canon Law, Careers and Conquest
  • Episcopal Elections in Normandy and Greater Anjou, c.1140–c.1230
  • Jörg Peltzer
  • Published online:
    09 August 2009
    Print publication:
    29 October 2007
  • This book is a study of the politics of episcopal elections in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Normandy and Greater Anjou. This was a crucial period in the development of canon law and Jörg Peltzer offers the first analysis to bring together legal theory and practice, local custom, and politics. He explores the development of electoral theories and examines each election in context, offering insights into the varying balance of royal, papal and regional baronial power and the various career paths leading to an episcopal see. He shows how different systems of patronage worked, to what extent they were vehicles of social mobility, and how aristocratic families were structured. By comparing electoral practices in Normandy and Greater Anjou before and after the Capetian conquest the book significantly enhances our understanding of the theory and practice of canon law, local politics in Normandy and Anjou, and the high politics at the Capetian and Angevin courts.

Philosophy and Politics in the Thought of John Wyclif
  • Stephen E. Lahey
  • Published online:
    30 July 2009
    Print publication:
    13 March 2003
  • John Wyclif was the fourteenth-century English thinker responsible for the first English Bible, and for the Lollard movement which was persecuted widely for its attempts to reform the Church through empowerment of the laity. Wyclif had also been an Oxford philosopher, and was in the service of John of Gaunt, the powerful duke of Lancaster. In several of Wyclif's formal, Latin works he proposed that the king ought to take control of all Church property and power in the kingdom - a vision close to what Henry VIII was to realize 150 years later. This book argues that Wyclif's political programme was based on a coherent philosophical vision ultimately consistent with his other reformative ideas, identifying a consistency between his realist metaphysics and his political and ecclesiological theory.

The English in Rome, 1362–1420
  • Portrait of an Expatriate Community
  • Margaret Harvey
  • Published online:
    28 July 2009
    Print publication:
    20 January 2000
  • Centred on a study of the early archives of the Venerabile Collegio Inglese in Rome, the predecessor of the English College of today, this book is more than a study of the beginnings of English institutions in Rome. It attempts to place the English community there between 1362, when the first English hospice for poor people and pilgrims was founded, and 1420 in its political, commercial and religious setting. It includes a portrait of a group of English merchants, with their wives and widows, as well as members of the papal curia in Rome (from 1376), including a study of Cardinal Adam Easton, a well-known scholar and opponent of John Wycliffe. The book also uncovers a notable although unsuccessful attempt to forward English participation in commerce with Rome before 1420, revealing important links between the English laity in Rome and the city of London.

History and Geography in Late Antiquity
  • A. H. Merrills
  • Published online:
    24 July 2009
    Print publication:
    11 August 2005
  • The period from the fifth century to the eighth century witnessed massive political, social and religious change in Europe. Geographical and historical thought, long rooted to Roman ideologies, had to adopt the new perspectives of late antiquity. In the light of expanding Christianity and the evolution of successor kingdoms in the West, new historical discourses emerged which were seminal in the development of medieval historiography. Taking their lead from Orosius in the early fifth century, Latin historians turned increasingly to geographical description, as well as historical narrative, to examine the world around them. This book explores the interdependence of geographical and historical modes of expression in four of the most important writers of the period: Orosius, Jordanes, Isidore of Seville and the Venerable Bede. It offers important readings of each by arguing that the long geographical passages with which they were introduced were central to their authors' historical assumptions and arguments.

Ockham and Political Discourse in the Late Middle Ages
  • Takashi Shogimen
  • Published online:
    23 July 2009
    Print publication:
    13 September 2007
  • The English Franciscan William of Ockham (c.1285–1347) was one of the most influential philosophers and theologians in late medieval Europe. Fresh scholarship has shown his profound impact on logic, metaphysics, epistemology and the philosophy of language in the late Middle Ages and beyond. Following a dispute between the papacy and his Order, Ockham abandoned his academic career and devoted himself to anti-papal polemics. Scholars have produced divergent and often contradictory interpretations of Ockham as a political thinker: a destructive critic of the medieval Church, a medieval Catholic traditionalist, the Franciscan ideologue, and a constitutional liberal. This 2007 book offers a fresh reappraisal of Ockham's political thought by approaching his anti-papal writings as a series of polemical responses. His aggressive and persistent attack on the papacy emerges in this study as an attempt to rescue the ethical foundations of the Christian society from the political influences of heretical popes.

The Wandering Heretics of Languedoc
  • Caterina Bruschi
  • Published online:
    21 July 2009
    Print publication:
    14 May 2009
  • How should historians read sources which record inquisitorial trials in the Middle Ages? How can we understand the fears felt by those on trial? By analysing six volumes of depositions in the trial of Cathar and Waldensian heretics in Languedoc between the late twelfth and the fourteenth century, in this book, Caterina Bruschi challenges old methodologies in the study of dissent. She examines the intrinsic narratological problems related to the sources and, using approaches from the social sciences, analyses the different fears felt by deponents and how those fears affected their actions and decisions. In so doing, she sheds light on itinerancy within the ecclesial structure of non-conformist movements and contextualises the problem of itinerancy as a benchmark for the definition of heresy. Focusing on the lives and attitudes of trial witnesses, this innovative account is a major contribution to our understanding of the nature of religious non-conformity in the Middle Ages.

Seeing and Being Seen in the Later Medieval World
  • Optics, Theology and Religious Life
  • Dallas G. Denery II
  • Published online:
    18 July 2009
    Print publication:
    28 April 2005
  • During the later Middle Ages people became increasingly obsessed with vision, visual analogies and the possibility of visual error. In this book Dallas Denery addresses the question of what medieval men and women thought it meant to see themselves and others in relation to the world and to God. Exploring the writings of Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus, Peter Aureol and Nicholas of Autrecourt in light of an assortment of popular religious guides for preachers, confessors and penitents, including Peter of Limoges' Treatise on the Moral Eye, he illustrates how the question preoccupied medieval men and women on both an intellectual and practical level. This book offers a unique interdisciplinary examination of the interplay between religious life, perspectivist optics and theology. Denery presents significant new insights into the medieval psyche and conception of the self, ensuring that this book will appeal to historians of medieval science and those of medieval religious life and theology.

Power and Patronage in Early Medieval Italy
  • Local Society, Italian Politics and the Abbey of Farfa, c.700–900
  • Marios Costambeys
  • Published online:
    17 July 2009
    Print publication:
    13 December 2007
  • Founded around the beginning of the eighth century in the Sabine hills north of Rome, the abbey of Farfa was for centuries a barometer of social and political change in central Italy. Conventionally, the region's history in the early Middle Ages revolves around the rise of the papacy as a secular political power. But Farfa's avoidance of domination by the pope throughout its early medieval history, despite one pope's involvement in its early establishment, reveals that papal aggrandizement had strict limits. Other parties - local elites, as well as Lombard and then Carolingian rulers - were often more important in structuring power in the region. Many were also patrons of Farfa, and this book reveals how a major ecclesiastical institution operated in early medieval politics, as a conduit for others' interests, and a player in its own right.

Page 5 of 6