Swords of the viking age

This new work fills a gap in the literature in English on the swords made and used in northern Europe during the Viking age, between the mid eighth and the mid eleventh centuries. Ewart Oakeshott outlines the significance and diversity of these ancient heirlooms; co-author ...

Renaissance military memoirs

war, History, and identity, 1450-1600

This is a study of autobiographical writings of Renaissance soldiers. It outlines the ways in which they reflect Renaissance cultural, political and historical consciousness, with a particular focus on conceptions of war, history, selfhood and identity. A vivid picture of Renaissance military life and military ...

Death in Fifteenth-Century castile

ideologies of the elites

Letters, orders and musters of Bertrand du Guesclin, 1357-1380

Bertrand du Guesclin (d. 1380) was the most famous French soldier of his generation. He made his name as a guerrilla leader in the Breton War of Succession (1341-64) and, as Constable from 1370-80, played a major role in the recovery of France under Charles ...

The legend of the Grail

The quest for the Holy Grail is one of the most important elements in the story of King Arthur. Yet even among the many interested in the stories of the Round Table, very few have read at first hand the medieval masterpieces which over a ...

The islamic world

past and present

Since the events of September 11, 2001, students and people everywhere are filled with questions about Islam. What do Muslims believe? Who is Osama bin Laden? What is a jihad? Even though Islam is a major religion with more than one billion followers worldwide and ...

Lordship and learning

studies in memory of Trevor Aston

The medieval crusade

War at sea in the middles ages and the renaissance

The celts

a history

The Celts were one of the most important population groups to spread across the ancient European continent. From 800BC to 1050AD their story is one of expanding power and influence followed by contraction and near extinction. Drawing on all possible sources of evidence, from archaeological ...

Maps of medieval thought

the Hereford paradigm

Filled with information and lore, mappae mundi present an encyclopaedic panorama of the conceptual 'landscape' of the middle ages. Previously objects of study for cartographers and geographers, the value of medieval maps to scholars in other fields is now recognised and this book, written from ...

The tournament in England, 1100-1400

Scholarly study - does much to illuminate an important element of chivalric culture. HISTORY [This] sterling book is clearly written and logically organized. Its scholarship is à outrance, its appeal to the student of the chivalric period à plaisance. AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW Juliet Barker surveys the ...

The flower of Chivalry

Bertrand du Guesclin and the Hundred Years War

The knights hospitaller

An important source for the history of the military orders. ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW We've got here the most sophisticated rule book, which knocks the road traffic act into the shade. TIME TEAM [Channel 4, at Templecombe] The Order of the Knights Templar, whose original ...

Royal regulation of loans and sales in medieval England

monkkish superstition and civil tyranny

Examines laws prohibiting usury, forestalling and regrating and regulating prices in England during the reigns of the first three Edwards and Richard II (1272-1399). It demonstrates royal regulation of subjects' loans and sales was neither entirely "monkish" nor "tyrannical" in intention or effect

The catalan rules of the templars

a critical edition and english translation from Barcelona, Archivo de la Corona de Aragón, Cartas Reales, MS 3344

The Knights Templar, part monastic order, part military force, lived by a firm code, or rule, which exists in differing versions. This Spanish version is a follow-up to J.M. Upton-Ward's highly successful edition of the French Rule. The introduction to this Catalan Rule ...

King John

new interpretations

The reign of King John (1199-1216) is one of the most controversial in English history. When he succeeded to Richard the Lionheart's lands, he could legitimately claim to rule half modern France as well as England and Ireland; but by the time of his ...

The Flower of Chivalry

Bertrand du Guesclin and the Hundred Years War

The rise of Bertrand du Guesclin ranks as one of the most spectacular adventures in a fourteenth century rich in heroic tales. A poor Breton squire, ungainly and unlettered, he came of age at the onset of the Hundred Years War. He spent two decades ...

Nobles and nobility in medieval Europe

Concepts, origins, transformations

A companion to medieval arms and armour