Medieval History

Llewelyn Morgan explores Ovid's immense influence on later literature and art, spanning from Shakespeare to Bernini. Throughout, Ovid's poetry is revealed as enduringly scintillating, his personal story compelling, and the issues his life and poetry raise of continuing relevance and interest.

This is a book about how medieval weapons were used, according to medieval people who used them. It discusses the use of eight weapons or weapon combinations from the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, selected with an eye toward their iconic status in popular culture, as well as five different combative contexts. The aim of this book is to familiarize the listener with the use of medieval weaponry in a general way. It is not a how-to book on martial arts, but the listener will come away with a fresh appreciation for the sophistication of medieval fencing.

The Alcázar of Seville: The History of Spain’s Most Famous Royal Palace journeys through the eventful timeline of the palatial fortress as well as the stages leading up to its fruition. It also explores some of the fascinating characters who lived there, and the most pivotal events that took place within the centuries-old brick walls.

The Knights Templar has established itself as the most popular military organization of medieval times. Everyone has heard of the order, and everyone is familiar with the image of a medieval Crusader knight with a red cross on their white uniform. But who exactly were the Templars? What was their purpose? And are the rumors about their secretive nature true?

From their very beginnings, England and Scotland fought each other. Emerging as unified nations from the early medieval period, their shared border and related aristocracy created endless causes of conflict. Every century from the 11th to the 16th was colored by such violence, and there were periods when not a decade went by without some act of violence marring the peace. Out of all of this, the most bitterly remembered conflict is Edward I's invasion during the late 13th century.

The Bayeux Tapestry is the world's most famous textile: an exquisite 230-foot-long embroidered panorama depicting the events surrounding the Norman Conquest of 1066. It is also one of history's most mysterious and compelling works of art. This haunting stitched account of the battle that redrew the map of medieval Europe has inspired dreams of theft, waves of nationalism, visions of limitless power, and esthetic rapture.

The Italian Wars refers to a period of prolonged conflict between 1494 and 1559 when the major European powers of the time fought for control over Italy. While it began with a French attempt to gain control over the territory of Naples, it soon expanded to a general struggle between the royal houses of Valois and Habsburg - specifically, Francis I of France and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. The Italian Wars represented a change in warfare tactics from the contract armies common in the Medieval period to full-time standing armies common in the modern era.

Slavery was widespread all over Europe during the early Middle Ages and Scandinavians, as Stefan Brink illustrates in this book, became a major player in the northern slave trade. Using a wide variety of source materials, including archaeology, runes, Icelandic sagas, early law, place names, personal names, and not least etymological and semantic analyses of the terminology of slaves, Thraldom provides the most comprehensive survey of slavery in the Viking Age.

For centuries, the Crusades have been central to the story of the medieval Near East, but these religious wars are only part of the region's complex history. As The Mongol Storm reveals, during the same era the Near East was utterly remade by another series of wars: the Mongol invasions. In a single generation, the Mongols conquered vast swaths of the Near East and upended the region's geopolitics. This is the definitive history of the Mongol assault on the Near East and its enduring global consequences.

After a long period of uneventful sieges and skirmishing, lasting from the death of Edward III in 1377 until the accession of Henry V in 1413, The Hundred Years War is suddenly and dramatically fanned into full fledged war in a third and final phase. Henry V is determined to end the conflict once and for all on the field of battle. After assembling an army, he crosses to Calais in 1415 and marches toward Paris.

Medieval manuscripts can tell us much about power and art, knowledge and beauty. Many have survived because of an author’s status - part of the reason we have so much of Chaucer’s writing, for example, is because he was a London-based government official first and a poet second.

Steven Adler examines the dynamic life and workings of the theatre company responsible for some of the world's most compelling performances and influential productions of the last 40 years, including Marat/Sade, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Les Misérables, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, and Nicholas Nickleby.

'Twas the night before Christmas. Ebenezer Scrooge was alone, when suddenly he heard a ghostly moan. A ghost it was, took him back to the past, then to the present and future days in hope that Scrooge would mend his ways.

In exploring how the Christian religion became such a defining feature of the European landscape, and how a small sect of isolated congregations was transformed into a mass movement centrally directed from Rome, Heather shows how Christendom constantly battled against both so-called 'heresies' and other forms of belief. From the crisis that followed the collapse of the Roman Empire, which left the religion teetering on the edge of extinction, to the astonishing revolution in which the Papacy emerged as the head of a vast international corporation.

The Vikings maintain their grip on our imagination, but their image is too often distorted by medieval and modern myth. It is true that they pillaged, looted, and enslaved. But they also settled peacefully and developed a vast trading network. They traveled far from their homelands in swift and sturdy ships, not only to raid, but also to explore. Despite their fearsome reputation, the Vikings didn’t wear horned helmets, and even the infamous berserkers were far from invincible.

Hungary is more than just vampire stories and cheesy violin-playing waiters named “Laszlo”. It has a rich history that goes back to the first wild Magyar horsemen, who arrived there in the late ninth century. For a time, the Magyars were both mercenaries and raiders, a horse-bound version of the Vikings in France and Britain. They terrorized the populations of Austria, Germany, and even Italy and eastern France. After the Austro-Hungarian defeat in WWI, Hungary became an independent nation.

Two teenagers are catapulted back in time to alter history and save the medieval kingdom of Wales ... David and his man-at-arms, Ieuan, find themselves alone and on the run from a company of English soldiers who've sworn vengeance for the recent death of their king. Meanwhile, Llywelyn lays on his deathbed, wounded by a traitor's arrow. And once again, it is David and Anna, and all that they represent, that holds the key to the survival of Wales.

The ubiquitous picture of the Vikings as horn-helmeted, brutish, hairy giants that mercilessly marauded among the settlements of Northern Europe is based on a smattering of facts combined with an abundance of prejudicial historical writing by those who were on the receiving end of Viking depredations. At the same time, much of the popular picture of the Vikings is a result of the romantic imagination of novelists and artists. However, the Vikings' reputation for ferocious seaborne attacks along the coasts of Northern Europe is no exaggeration.

The bulk of the audiobook will deal with what Vlad’s political career looked like, what wars he waged, and how his life eventually ended. But we’ll go one step beyond and cover some areas that historians don’t typically focus on. In addition to raw facts, we’ll also focus on what Vlad III’s character was, what drove him forward, and what his chief traits might have been.

The first definitive biography of Moses Maimonides, one of the most influential intellects in all of human history, illuminates his life as a philosopher, physician, and lawgiver. Recalling such bestsellers as David McCullough's John Adams and Walter Isaacson's Einstein, Maimonides is a biography on a grand scale, brilliantly explicating one man's life against the background of his time.