Life in a Medieval City
Life in a Medieval City

Author: Frances Gies

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2010-08-03

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 0062016679

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From acclaimed historians Frances and Joseph Gies comes the reissue of their classic book on day-to-day life in medieval cities, which was a source for George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series. Evoking every aspect of city life in the Middle Ages, Life in a Medieval City depicts in detail what it was like to live in a prosperous city of Northwest Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The year is 1250 CE and the city is Troyes, capital of the county of Champagne and site of two of the cycle Champagne Fairs—the “Hot Fair” in August and the “Cold Fair” in December. European civilization has emerged from the Dark Ages and is in the midst of a commercial revolution. Merchants and money men from all over Europe gather at Troyes to buy, sell, borrow, and lend, creating a bustling market center typical of the feudal era. As the Gieses take us through the day-to-day life of burghers, we learn the customs and habits of lords and serfs, how financial transactions were conducted, how medieval cities were governed, and what life was really like for a wide range of people. For serious students of the medieval era and anyone wishing to learn more about this fascinating period, Life in a Medieval City remains a timeless work of popular medieval scholarship.

Medieval Europe
Medieval Europe

Author: Chris Wickham

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2016-10-15

Total Pages: 495

ISBN-13: 0300222211

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A spirited history of the changes that transformed Europe during the 1,000-year span of the Middle Ages: “A dazzling race through a complex millennium.”—Publishers Weekly The millennium between the breakup of the western Roman Empire and the Reformation was a long and hugely transformative period—one not easily chronicled within the scope of a few hundred pages. Yet distinguished historian Chris Wickham has taken up the challenge in this landmark book, and he succeeds in producing the most riveting account of medieval Europe in a generation. Tracking the entire sweep of the Middle Ages across Europe, Wickham focuses on important changes century by century, including such pivotal crises and moments as the fall of the western Roman Empire, Charlemagne’s reforms, the feudal revolution, the challenge of heresy, the destruction of the Byzantine Empire, the rebuilding of late medieval states, and the appalling devastation of the Black Death. He provides illuminating vignettes that underscore how shifting social, economic, and political circumstances affected individual lives and international events—and offers both a new conception of Europe’s medieval period and a provocative revision of exactly how and why the Middle Ages matter. “Far-ranging, fluent, and thoughtful—of considerable interest to students of history writ large, and not just of Europe.”—Kirkus Reviews, (starred review) Includes maps and illustrations

A World Lit Only by Fire
A World Lit Only by Fire

Author: William Manchester

Publisher: Back Bay Books

Published: 2009-09-26

Total Pages: 367

ISBN-13: 0316082791

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A "lively and engaging" history of the Middle Ages (Dallas Morning News) from the acclaimed historian William Manchester, author of The Last Lion. From tales of chivalrous knights to the barbarity of trial by ordeal, no era has been a greater source of awe, horror, and wonder than the Middle Ages. In handsomely crafted prose, and with the grace and authority of his extraordinary gift for narrative history, William Manchester leads us from a civilization tottering on the brink of collapse to the grandeur of its rebirth: the dense explosion of energy that spawned some of history's greatest poets, philosophers, painters, adventurers, and reformers, as well as some of its most spectacular villains. "Manchester provides easy access to a fascinating age when our modern mentality was just being born." --Chicago Tribune

The Criminal Law System of Medieval and Renaissance Florence
The Criminal Law System of Medieval and Renaissance Florence

Author: Laura Ikins Stern

Publisher:

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13:

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Historians of medieval and Renaissance Italy have long held that the Florentine republic fell victim to rule by oligarchy in the early fifteenth century. Now, in the first complete analysis of the criminal law system of Florence during this crucial period, Laura Ikins Stern argues that the vitality of Florentine legal institutions gives evidence of a centralized state bureaucracy strong enough to thwart the early development of a ruling oligarchy. Exploring the changing roles played by judicial officials as well as the evolution of Florentine government, Stern shows how these developments reflected broad-based change in society at large. From such primary documents as legal statutes and actual trial records, she provides a step-by-step explanation of trial procedure to offer a rare glimpse of inquisition methods in the secular world--from public fame initiation, through the weighing of various levels of proof, to the complex process of sentencing. And sheexplores the links between implementation of inquisition procedure, the development of the territorial state, and the struggle between republican institutions and the emerging oligarchy. The Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science.

The Middle Ages in 50 Objects
The Middle Ages in 50 Objects

Author: Elina Gertsman

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-05-31

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 1108340814

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The extraordinary array of images included in this volume reveals the full and rich history of the Middle Ages. Exploring material objects from the European, Byzantine and Islamic worlds, the book casts a new light on the cultures that formed them, each culture illuminated by its treasures. The objects are divided among four topics: The Holy and the Faithful; The Sinful and the Spectral; Daily Life and Its Fictions, and Death and Its Aftermath. Each section is organized chronologically, and every object is accompanied by a penetrating essay that focuses on its visual and cultural significance within the wider context in which the object was made and used. Spot maps add yet another way to visualize and consider the significance of the objects and the history that they reveal. Lavishly illustrated, this is an appealing and original guide to the cultural history of the Middle Ages.

Pen and Parchment
Pen and Parchment

Author: Melanie Holcomb

Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 1588393186

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Discusses the techniques, uses, and aesthetics of medieval drawings; and reproduces work from more than fifty manuscripts produced between the ninth and early fourteenth century.

A Distant Mirror
A Distant Mirror

Author: Barbara W. Tuchman

Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks

Published: 1987-07-12

Total Pages: 738

ISBN-13: 0345349571

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A “marvelous history”* of medieval Europe, from the bubonic plague and the Papal Schism to the Hundred Years’ War, by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Guns of August *Lawrence Wright, author of The End of October, in The Wall Street Journal The fourteenth century reflects two contradictory images: on the one hand, a glittering age of crusades, cathedrals, and chivalry; on the other, a world plunged into chaos and spiritual agony. In this revelatory work, Barbara W. Tuchman examines not only the great rhythms of history but the grain and texture of domestic life: what childhood was like; what marriage meant; how money, taxes, and war dominated the lives of serf, noble, and clergy alike. Granting her subjects their loyalties, treacheries, and guilty passions, Tuchman re-creates the lives of proud cardinals, university scholars, grocers and clerks, saints and mystics, lawyers and mercenaries, and, dominating all, the knight—in all his valor and “furious follies,” a “terrible worm in an iron cocoon.” Praise for A Distant Mirror “Beautifully written, careful and thorough in its scholarship . . . What Ms. Tuchman does superbly is to tell how it was. . . . No one has ever done this better.”—The New York Review of Books “A beautiful, extraordinary book . . . Tuchman at the top of her powers . . . She has done nothing finer.”—The Wall Street Journal “Wise, witty, and wonderful . . . a great book, in a great historical tradition.”—Commentary