Medieval History

In this ground-breaking work, Norman Cantor explains how our current notion of the Middle Ages—with its vivid images of wars, tournaments, plagues, saints and kings, knights and ladies—was born in the 20th century. The medieval world was not simply excavated through systematic research. It had to be conceptually created: it had to be invented, and this is the story of that invention.

It would be hard if not outright impossible to overstate the impact Roman Emperor Constantine I had on the history of Christianity, Ancient Rome, and Europe as a whole. Constantine remains an influential and controversial figure to this day. It was Constantine who first decided that Rome, exposed and vulnerable near the gathering masses of barbarians moving into Germania and Gaul, was a strategically unsafe base for the Empire, and thus expanded the city of New Rome on the Dardanelles straits, creating what eventually became Constantinople.

Witness the birth and twilight of an age where the clatter of the blacksmith's hammer, the clash of sword against shield, and the solemn vows sworn in the chapel echoed through stone halls. This book is not just a tale of castles and knights; it's a vivid recounting of a society pivoting on the axis of war and chivalry. Stone and Sword is more than just a conventional narrative of historical accounts.

Examining trial records and the pharmacopoeia of witches, alchemists, folk healers, and heretics of the 15th century, Thomas Hatsis details how a range of ideas from folk drugs to ecclesiastical fears over medicine women merged to form the classical “witch” stereotype and what history has called the “witches’ ointment”. He shares dozens of psychoactive formulas and recipes gleaned from rare manuscripts from university collections from all over the world as well as the practices and magical incantations necessary for their preparation.

Lada Dracul has no allies. No throne. All she has is what she's always had: herself. After failing to secure the Wallachian throne, Lada is out to punish anyone who dares to cross her blood-strewn path. Filled with a white-hot rage, she storms the countryside with her men, accompanied by her childhood friend Bogdan, terrorizing the land. But brute force isn't getting Lada what she wants. And thinking of Mehmed brings little comfort to her thorny heart.

Walter of Gurnie, bastard son of an English peer, is forced to flee from Oxford for his part in the university riots of 1273. Inspired by Friar Bacon, he determines to travel to China. With his friend Tristam, he fights his way to the heart of the fabulous Mongol Empire and returns famous, to find that he must choose between the first love he thought lost and the exotic flower that he found in the East.

Timothy Venning's series of alternative histories explores the pathways of British events from the Anglo-Saxon Age to the English Civil War. In this volume, he presents an in-depth analysis of the Tudor period. Venning discusses the fateful moments at which history could easily have taken a different turn. In a fascinating series of "what if" scenarios, Venning presents a detailed look at the possible and likely results. While speculative, the scenarios are all plausible and rooted in a firm understanding of actually events and their context.

Great Britain is an ancient land steeped in history and tradition. Its rolling countryside is dotted with prehistoric burial mounds and stone circles. Brooding castles hold tales of bloodshed and honor. Medieval churches have elaborate stained glass windows and gruesome carvings, reflecting a mixture of hope and darkness.

Pindar was one of the greatest lyric poets of ancient Greece. He is best known today for his odes to the victors of athletic contests, including those at famed Olympia. These odes, the only complete surviving pieces by Pindar, are marvels of sustained imagination, packed with dense parallels between the athletic victor, his illustrious aristocratic ancestors, and the myths of Olympian gods and heroes like Jason, Heracles, and Perseus.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes' personal account of the Battle of Agincourt gives a unique view of one of the most significant turning points in English history. Six hundred years after the Battle of Agincourt, Sir Ranulph Fiennes casts new light on this epic event that has resonated throughout British and French history. On 25th October 1415, on a French hillside near the village of Agincourt, four men sheltered from the rain and prepared for battle.

Violent extremist Sunni and Shiite Muslims are at odds about most things. One of the few points that they can agree upon in the midst of their war of mutual annihilation is that the Apocalypse is coming and that they are the soldiers of its harbinger and redeemer: the Mahdi. Across the Islamic world, the figure of the Mahdi has appeared with increasing prevalence in the last few decades.

Captured centaurs and satyrs, incompetent seers, people who suddenly change sex, a woman who remembers too much, a man who cannot laugh—these are just some of the colorful characters who feature in the unforgettable stories that ancient Greeks and Romans told in their daily lives. Together they created an incredibly rich body of popular oral stories that include, but range well beyond, mythology—from heroic legends, fairy tales, and fables to ghost stories, urban legends, and jokes. This unique anthology presents the largest collection of these tales ever assembled.

Perhaps you have heard of the horrible stories of the Spanish, Portuguese, or French inquisition, the Catholic body of persecutors who would arrest the supposed “heathens” and accuse them of witchcraft, heresies, blasphemy, adultery, and a whole list of other sins or crimes. Torture, interrogations, executions, burnings, and other inhumane methods were used to then force, coerce, or kill the victims of this Catholic organization within the church at the time.

Valkyries: the female supernatural beings that choose who dies and who lives on the battlefield. They protect some, but guide spears, arrows, and sword blades into the bodies of others. Viking myths about valkyries attempt to elevate the banality of war - to make the pain and suffering, the lost limbs and deformities, the piles of lifeless bodies of young men, glorious and worthwhile. Rather than their death being futile, it is their destiny and good fortune, determined by divine beings.

The Middle Ages witnessed almost constant warfare in Europe, so mercenaries were a constant on the battlefield, but the 15th century also saw the rise of mercenary usage by the increasingly wealthy aristocracy. One of the finest groups of mercenaries were the Landsknechts from central and northern Europe. The term means “servant of the country”, and they mostly served the Holy Roman Empire, first under Emperor Maximilian I (r. 1508-1519) and then under his successors.

After the long period of cultural decline known as the Dark Ages, Europe experienced a rebirth of scholarship, art, literature, philosophy, and science, and began to develop a vision of Western society that remains at the heart of Western civilization today.

Shortly after Emperor Hadrian came to power in the early second century CE, he decided to seal off Scotland from Roman Britain with an ambitious wall stretching from sea to sea. The sheer scale of Hadrian’s Wall still impresses people today, but as the Western Roman Empire collapsed in the late fifth century, Hadrian’s Wall was abandoned and Roman control of the area broke down. Little is known of this period of British history, but soon the Anglo-Saxons showed up and began to settle the land, creating a patchwork of little kingdoms and starting a new era of British history.

There can be no doubt that military conflict between France and England dominated European history in the 14th and 15th centuries. The Hundred Years War is of considerable interest both because of its duration and the number of theatres in which it was fought. Drawing on the latest research for this new edition, Hundred Years War expert Professor Anne Curry examines how the war can reveal much about the changing nature of warfare: the rise of infantry and the demise of the knight; the impact of increased use of gunpowder and the effect of the war on generations of people.

The Middle Ages in Europe were some of the most precarious centuries in recorded history, bristling with war, excitement, and chaos. The Western Roman Empire had crumbled, territories were rapidly expanding, and heavy ploughs, hourglasses, spectacles, tidal mills, and more pioneering inventions were popping up across the continent. It was also a time of extreme prejudice, when women were treated as second-class citizens. Their only purpose in life was to procreate by the dozen.

Discover all the foul facts about the Measly Middle Ages on audio, narrated by Terry Deary. Find out why chickens had their bottoms shaved, a genuine jester's joke and what ten-year-old treacle was used for.