You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
The Medieval Iberian Treasury in the Context of Cultural Interchange—expanded beyond the special issue of Medieval Encounters from which it was drawn—centers on the magnificent treasury of San Isidoro de León to address wider questions about the meanings of cross-cultural luxury goods in royal-ecclesiastical settings during the central Middle Ages. Now fully open access and with an updated introduction to ongoing research, an additional chapter, composite bibliographies, and indices, this multidisciplinary volume opens fresh ways into the investigation of medieval objects and textiles through historical, art historical, and technical analyses. Carbon-14 dating, iconography, and social history are among the methods applied to material and textual evidence, together shining new light on the display of rulership in medieval Iberia. Contributors are Ana Cabrera Lafuente, María Judith Feliciano, Julie A. Harris, Jitske Jasperse, Therese Martin, Pamela A. Patton, Ana Rodríguez, and Nancy L. Wicker.
Medieval tombs often depict husband and wife lying side-by-side: demonstrating, as in the words of Philip Larkin's poem An Arundel Tomb, their "stone fidelity". This is the first book to address the phenomenon of the "double tomb", drawing the rich history of tomb sculpture into dialogue with discourses of power, marriage, gender and emotion, and placing them in the context of ecclesastical material culture of the time more broadly. It offers new interpretations of some of the most famous medieval monuments, such as those found in Westminster Abbey and Canterbury Cathedral, as well as drawing attention to a host of lesser-known memorials from throughout Europe. In turn, these monuments provide a vantage point from which to reconsider the culture of medieval marriage, from wedding rings and dresses, to the sacramental symbolism of matrimony, and embodied ritual practices. Whilst it is tempting to read these sculptures as straightforward expressions of romantic feeling, the author argues that a closer look reveals the artifice behind the emotion: the artistic, religious, political and legal agenda underlying the rhetoric of married love.
This book argues that the impressive range of belongings that can be connected to Duchess Matilda Plantagenet allows us to perceive elite women's performance of power, even when they are largely absent from the official documentary record.
Name Unknown: The Life of a Rusian Queen offers an example of an eastern European queen as a corrective to the western European focus of medieval queenship studies. Through a chronological approach, this book looks beyond the popular biographies of royal women such as Eleanor of Aquitaine and Berengaria of Castile and gathers material from sources throughout Europe. It engages with modern queenship studies literature to create a collective biography of a Rusian queen through the various cycles of her life from the marriage of eight-year-old Verkhuslava to the death of the ruler of Minsk whose generosity is recorded, but not her name. For medievalists interested in women and queens, Name Unkn...
Women's networks – their relations with other women, men, objects and place – were a source of power in various European and neighbouring regions throughout the Middle Ages. This interdisciplinary volume considers how women's networks, and particularly women's direct and indirect relationships to other women, constituted and shaped power from roughly 300 to 1700 AD. The essays in this collection juxtapose scholarship from the fields of archaeology, art history, literature, history and religious studies, drawing on a wide variety of source types. Their aim is to highlight not only the importance of networks in understanding medieval women's power but also the different ways these networks are represented in medieval sources and can be approached today. This volume reveals how women's networks were widespread and instrumental in shaping political, familial and spiritual legacies.
This first modern study of Henry the Young King, eldest son of Henry II but the least known Plantagenet monarch, explores the brief but eventful life of the only English ruler after the Norman Conquest to be created co-ruler in his father's lifetime. Crowned at fifteen to secure an undisputed succession, Henry played a central role in the politics of Henry II's great empire and was hailed as the embodiment of chivalry. Yet, consistently denied direct rule, the Young King was provoked first into heading a major rebellion against his father, then to waging a bitter war against his brother Richard for control of Aquitaine, dying before reaching the age of thirty having never assumed actual power. In this remarkable history, Matthew Strickland provides a richly colored portrait of an all-but-forgotten royal figure tutored by Thomas Becket, trained in arms by the great knight William Marshal, and incited to rebellion by his mother Eleanor of Aquitaine, while using his career to explore the nature of kingship, succession, dynastic politics, and rebellion in twelfth-century England and France.
This collection forges new ground in the discussion of aristocratic and royal women, their relationships with their objects, and medieval geography. It explores how women’s geographic and familial networks spread well beyond the borders that defined men’s sense of region and how the movement of their belongings can reveal essential information about how women navigated these often-disparate spaces. Beginning in early medieval Scandinavia, ranging from Byzantium to Rus', and multiple lands in Western Europe up to 1500, the essays span a great spatio-temporal range. Moreover, the types of objects extend from traditionally studied works like manuscripts and sculpture to liturgical and secular ceremonial instruments, icons, and articles of personal adornment, such as textiles and jewelry, even including shoes.
This book explores an alternate history of the power and agency of 30 Hungarian queens over 400 years by a rigorous examination of the material culture connected with their lives. By researching the objects, images, and spaces, it demonstrates how these women expressed and displayed their power. Queens used material culture and space not only to demonstrate their own power to a wide, international audience, but also to consolidate their own position when it was weakened by external circumstances. Both the public and private image of the queen factors significantly in understanding in her own role at the strongly centralized Hungarian court, and, moreover, how her position and person strengthened and complemented that of the king.
"How can we understand the past in the absence of written records? Pre-modern histories of cross-cultural exchange pose a particular problem for medieval historians. They are marked by the long-distance mobility of concepts, individuals, and materials, and many of them cannot be reconstructed from the standard source texts on which historians usually depend. They exist without named makers, both outside and beyond official documents and court chronicles. The same is true of artisans responsible for crafting objects whose circulation and reception defined aesthetic, economic, and technological networks that may not have conformed to political or sectarian boundaries. Authored by two leading m...
Rulers and Rulership in the Arc of Medieval Europe challenges the dominant paradigm of what rulership is and who rulers are by decentering the narrative and providing a broad swath of examples from throughout medieval Europe. Within that territory, the prevalent idea of monarchy and kingship is overturned in favor of a broad definition of rulership. This book will demonstrate to the reader that the way in which medieval Europe has been constructed in both the popular and scholarly imaginations is incorrect. Instead of a king we have multiple rulers, male and female, ruling concurrently. Instead of an independent church or a church striving for supremacy under the Gregorian Reform, we have a ...