Medieval History

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.

King Henry V’s victory over the French armies at Agincourt on 25 October 1415 is unquestionably one of the most famous battles in history. From Shakespeare’s ‘band of brothers’ speech to its appearances in numerous films, Agincourt rightfully has a place among a handful of conflicts whose names are immediately recognized around the world. Agincourt provides a new look at this battle. Mike Livingston goes back to the original sources, including the French battle plan that still survives today, to give a new interpretation, one that challenges the traditional site of the battlefield itself.

The Hundred Years War (1337-1453) dominated life in England and France for well over a century. It became the defining feature of existence for generations. This sweeping book is the first to tell the human story of the longest military conflict in history. Historian David Green focuses on the ways the war affected different groups, among them knights, clerics, women, peasants, soldiers, peacemakers, and kings.

The term “Reconquista” is a Spanish word transferred to the English language to represent the nearly 800 years in which the Moors and Christians struggled against one another for control of the Iberian Peninsula. The Reconquista: The History and Legacy of the Conflicts Between the Moors and Christians on the Iberian Peninsula examines the events that shaped the modern history of Spain and Portugal, as well as the ramifications.

Written in 75 AD by the Jewish historian and Roman citizen Titus Flavius Josephus, “The Wars of the Jews”, describes Jewish history from the capture of Jerusalem in 164 BC. to the destruction of the city in 70 AD. Josephus, born in Jerusalem in 37 AD with the name Yosef ben Matityahu, was from a Jewish family with a father of a priestly heritage and a mother who claimed to have royal blood. Josephus fought against the Romans in the First Jewish-Roman War and was eventually taken prisoner by the Romans and made a slave of the Roman leader Vespasian.

The bitter conflict between England and France we call The Hundred Years War, and lasting 116 years between 1337 and 1453, was fought over claims by the English kings to the French throne. By the end of this titanic struggle, it can fairly be said that the Middle Ages had come to an end.

The Secret History, written by the sixth-century Byzantine historian Procopius, is one of the most extraordinary and scandalous documents to have survived from the early Byzantine period. Procopius, the leading official historian of his time, lived during the testing and indulgent time of Emperor Justinian the Great and wrote the official records of the successful wars and the grand building projects of his ruler. These were words of aggrandisement. But covertly, Procopius kept a very different record....

In The Rule of Empires, Timothy Parsons gives a sweeping account of the evolution of empire from its origins in ancient Rome to its most recent twentieth-century embodiment. He explains what constitutes an empire and offers suggestions about what empires of the past can tell us about our own historical moment. Parsons uses imperial examples that stretch from ancient Rome, to Britain's "new" imperialism in Kenya, to the Third Reich to parse the features common to all empires, their evolutions and self-justifying myths, and the reasons for their inevitable decline.

There are very few national relationships quite as complicated and enigmatic as the one that exists between the English and the Irish. For two peoples so interconnected by geography and history, the depth of animosity that is often expressed is difficult at times to understand. At the same time, historic links of family and clan, and common Gaelic roots, have at times fostered a degree of mutual regard, interdependence, and cooperation that is also occasionally hard to fathom. During World War I, for example, Ireland fought for the British Empire as part of that empire.

Agincourt (1415) is an exceptionally famous battle, one that has generated a huge and enduring cultural legacy in the 600 years since it was fought. Everybody thinks they know what the battle was about.

The Book of Margery Kempe is the extraordinary account of a medieval wife, mother, and mystic from Norfolk. Having married in c. 1393, given birth to 14 children, and pursued unsuccessful ventures in brewing and milling, Kempe made a vow of chastity and embarked on a life of prayer, penance, and pilgrimage.

Nowhere else in Britain in the modern era, or indeed in Europe, did civil order break down over such a wide area, or for such a long time, as on the border country between Scotland and England. For more than a century, the hoofbeats of countless raiding parties drummed over the border. From Dumfriesshire to the high wastes of East Cumbria, from Roxburghshire to Redesdale, from the lonely valley of Liddesdale to the fortress city of Carlisle, swords and spears spoke while the law remained silent

For nearly a thousand years following its foundation, there was only one Christian church. Centered in the city of Rome, the church expanded and grew until it became the dominant religion in Europe and beyond. The early growth of the Church had been suppressed by the Romans until the Emperor Constantine became the first to convert the empire to Christianity. From that point forward, the growth of the Church was inextricably linked with the Roman Empire - the most powerful military, economic, and political force in the ancient world.

Le due date hanno segnato la caduta dell'impero romano d'Occidente e la scoperta dell'America, eventi tradizionalmente intesi come l'inizio e la fine del Medioevo. Un'era che già nel nome sconta una sorta di peccato originario: essere una cesura tra la gloria dell'Antichità e lo sfavillio speranzoso del Rinascimento. Non fu così. Questo saggio si concentra sulla penisola italiana, il fulcro di gran parte delle vicende di quel millennio. L'Italia fu infatti la culla del papato, e al contempo zona di conquiste e cadute di grandi condottieri e imperatori.

Late in AD 937, four armies met in a place called Brunanburh. On one side stood the shield-wall of the expanding kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons. On the other side stood a remarkable alliance of rival kings - at least two from across the sea – who’d come together to destroy them once and for all. The stakes were no less than the survival of the dream that would become England. The armies were massive. The violence, when it began, was enough to shock a violent age.

The legends of vampires like Dracula have generated massive interest throughout time. Indeed, the story of a man (in some versions a very handsome, dashing man), who feeds on the blood of virgins in order to survive, and who walks the earth only at night, has been revived throughout the centuries in different forms. However, one famous tale that has been lost among the legends is the story of a female Dracula, an educated woman from a well-known family of 16th century Hungary....

Di tutte le civiltà che esistevano nell'anno Mille, quella dell'Europa occidentale sembrava la peggior candidata per un futuro radioso. Paragonati agli imperi scintillanti di Bisanzio o dell'Islam, i regni frammentati affacciati sull'Atlantico sembravano poveri, impauriti e poco sviluppati. Ma l'anarchia di quegli anni non era il presagio per la fine del mondo, ma la fucina di un ordine radicalmente diverso.

La evolución territorial de la Corona de Castilla. Claves de los procesos políticos, sociales, repobladores, económicos y culturales del período medieval. El germen de la administración territorial e institucional de la España contemporánea. Breve historia de la Corona de Castilla supone una atalaya panorámica del recorrido histórico del reino castellano durante el período medieval, atendiendo no sólo a los aspectos político-institucionales, militares y territoriales, sino abordando las características de todos los grupos sociales....

There is a tendency to view witchcraft as an inherently feminine subject. But it this entirely fair? For centuries, men have plumbed the depths of the occult and the fantastic, searching for new ways in which to employ ancient knowledge. These mystics, occultists, and wizards has sought to expand their knowledge about the universe in ways which were forbidden, untrusted, or simply unknown. These magickal men have a unique way of looking at the world and one which should certainly be celebrated.

Like many historical figures, Harun al-Rashid’s biography has become part reality and part myth. A real individual and the fourth caliph of the Abbasid Caliphate, Harun al-Rashid is best known to many individuals because of his role in famous literature like One Thousand and One Nights, not necessarily because of his policy decisions. This is unusual because Harun al-Rashid was perhaps the most influential of the Abbasid caliphs due to his role in bringing economic prosperity.