Denmark of the twelfth to thirteenth centuries was a place of transitions, and this volume analyzes that period through the lens of the <i>Gesta Danorum </i>of Saxo Grammaticus and other sources. The <i>Gesta</i> defends not only hierocratic conceptions but the Danish hegemonic project in the Baltic - which was grounded in the crusade movements. Such movements are presented through complex language and imagery about a glorious past brought to bear on the projects in the thirteenth century while internal tensions strengthen the monarchic and ecclesiastical institutions.

This is a somewhat polemical, and very passionate, plea for more work not only about the house that scholasticism built, but those who were excluded from it.This book is the story of how scholastic theology defined this universal subject in terms of the reasonable white man and a catalogue of the exclusions which ensued. The categories of woman, Jew and heretic were core others against which ideal Christian subjectivity was implicitly defined, and this book shows just how constitutive these ‘others’ were for the production of orthodoxy in the Middle Ages.

By placing medieval sealing practices in a global and comparative perspective, the essays gathered in this volume challenge the traditional understanding of seals as tools of closure and validation in use since the dawn of civilization. Far from being a universal technique, sealing is revealed as a flexible idiom, selectively deployed to mediate entangled identities: the introduction of Buddhism in early medieval China; the Islamization of Sasanian and Byzantine cultures; even the advancement of diplomacy from northern Europe to Indonesia.

This study shows the importance of carolling in the celebrations and festivities of medieval Britain and demonstrates its longevity from the eleventh century to the sixteenth. It illustrates the flexibility of the English carole form for adaptation to include content in high and low registers and its suitability for use on all occasions and by different communal peer groups. Although the vast majority of extant texts in carol form from the late medieval period are religious in subject content, secular carolling was far more prevalent than the textual record implies. The dance-song elements of the medieval carole were so strongly woven into the vernacular cultural fabric of the British Isles that their threads can be traced through the folk songs and dances of subsequent centuries. This study contextualizes the written evidence and re-integrates the various components of the activity in order to illuminate our understanding of the universally popular medieval, participatory, pastime of carolling.

This short book offers a series of thought experiments and invites Shakespeareans to rediscover the wonders and pleasures of fandom. It does not argue that comic books and movies can or should replace Shakespeare; the goal is to explore the values in both, to think of comics as allusively Shakespearean, telling similar stories, expressing similar concerns, exploring similar values. Shakespeare and Superheroes seeks to re-democratize criticism by encouraging all readers to engage in and to respond to literary arguments using their own common cultural language.

This book explores shared religious practices among Jews, Christians, and Muslims, focusing primarily on the medieval Mediterranean. It examines the meanings members of each community ascribed to the presence of the religious other at "their" festivals or holy sites during pilgrimage. Communal boundaries were often redefined or dissolved during pilgrimage and religious festivals. Yet, paradoxically, shared practices served to enforce communal boundaries, since many of the religious elite devised polemical interpretations of these phenomena which highlighted the superiority of their own faith. Such interpretations became integral to each group’s theological understanding of self and other to such a degree that in some regions, religious minorities were required to participate in the festivals of the ruling community. In all formulations, “otherness” remained an essential component of both polemic and prayer.

This book combines the history of charitable institutions with the study of power in urban and rural spaces from the late medieval to the early modern era. Focusing on the Ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala in Siena, the book goes beyond examining hospitals in an urban context to also consider the significant impact of charitable institutions in rural spaces. Case studies of Santa Maria della Scala's farms allow an investigation of the relationship between urban institutions and their rural properties, while looking at subject hospitals outside the Sienese state offers a glimpse into the competition for power with non-Sienese entities. As Siena's politics shifted in the sixteenth century, Santa Maria della Scala and its rural spaces became sites where power was negotiated. The book thus demonstrates how geographies of power affected the practice of charity for both urban hospitals and the rural communities they influenced.

Re-situating Andean colonial history from the perspective of the local historians of ayllu Qaqachaka, in highland Bolivia, this book draws on regional oral history combined with local and public written archives. Rejecting the binary models in vogue in colonial and postcolonial studies (indigenous/non-indigenous, Andean/Western, conquered/conquering), it explores the complex intercalation of legal pluralism and local history in the negotiations around Spanish demands, resulting in the so-called “Andean pact.” The Qaqachaka’s point of reference was the preceding Inka occupation, so in fulfilling Spanish demands they sought cultural continuity with this recent past. Spanish colonial administration, with its roots in Roman-Germanic and Islamic law, infiltrated many practices into the newly-conquered territories. Two major cycles of ayllu tales trace local responses to these colonial demands, in the practices for establishing settlements, and the feeding and dressing of the Catholic saints inside the new church, with their forebears in the Inka mummies.

In a world where princesses found themselves enslaved, kidnapped boys became army generals, and biblical Joseph was a role model, this book narrates the formation of the Middle Ages from the point of view of slavery, and outlines a new approach to enhance our understanding of modern forms of enslavement. Offering an analysis of recent scholarship and an array of sources, never before studied together, from distinct societies and cultures of the first millennium, it challenges the traditional dichotomy between ancient and medieval slaveries. Revealing the dynamic, versatile, and adaptable character of slavery it presents an innovative definition of slavery as a historical process.

New research methods allow us to explore how relics of the material culture of the medieval north can confront, corroborate, or disprove the depiction of social norms in the Old Norse-Icelandic literary corpus, which remains the most important source of our present-day knowledge of social development in the Viking Age and medieval Scandinavia. This interdisciplinary volume considers in depth how social values such as reputation, honour, and friendship, were integral to the development of rituals, customs, religion, literature, and language in the medieval North.

In 1521, the young Polish diplomat Nicolaus Hussovianus was watching the bullfights at a papal celebration in Rome. He remarked that the spectacle reminded him of the bison hunts he had witnessed as a young man in the Polish-Lithuanian woods, and his employer then asked Hussovianus to write a poem about the bison hunts, to accompany the gift of a stuffed bison for Pope Leo X, an avid hunter. Song of the Bison is the first complete English translation of Hussovianus’s Latin poem, which is claimed as a national epic by Lithuania, Belarus, and Poland. The exciting poem discusses not only Hussovianus’s own experience in hunting and observing the European bison, but also the political, social, religious, and aesthetic developments of sixteenth-century Europe, and ends with an urgent plea for unity among European states threatened by foreign invasions.

The St. Thomas Way is a new heritage route from Swansea to Hereford which invites visitors to step into history of the medieval March of Wales. This multi-faceted volume offers new insights into the story of St. Thomas of Hereford, medieval and modern-day pilgrimage, professional aspects of heritage, tourism and regional development, and the application of digital methods and tools in heritage contexts. It also reflects on the St. Thomas Way as a spiritual and artistic experience.

Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History is an annual publication of historiographical essays on the pre-modern world. As a venue for sustained investigations, it plays a significant role in the dissemination of interpretative scholarship that falls in the niche between the journal article and the monograph. This is the penultimate volume in series 3 and primarily comprises essays in memory of Paul E. Szarmach, the eminent Old English scholar and former executive director of the Medieval Academy of America and director of the Medieval Institute at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo.

Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History is an annual publication of historiographical essays on the pre-modern world. As a venue for sustained investigations, it plays a significant role in the dissemination of interpretative scholarship that falls in the niche between the journal article and the monograph. This is the final volume in series 3 and primarily comprises essays in memory of Paul E. Szarmach, the eminent Old English scholar and former executive director of the Medieval Academy of America and director of the Medieval Institute at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo.

This book explores the creation of saintly spheres surrounding Sufi masters who functioned as embodiments of Islamic sainthood and imprinted their tangible mark on the land. Situated in the Syrian milieu of the counter-crusader period that was marked by intense religious excitement and re-sanctification of the landscape, the study centres on the role of Sufi saints as revivers of the prophetic legacy and as patrons of fellow believers, and their association with the glorious history of ancient Syrian cities and the expanding sacred landscape. Based upon a variety of literary sources, including hitherto unexplored saintly vitas, the investigation aims to contribute to an understanding of the process through which the religious and charismatic leadership of the venerated shaykhs was sustained and diffused, and their holiness emplaced and commemorated.

The first extended study of supernatural discourse in Old English poetry, Supernatural Speakers in Old English Verse fills a conspicuous gap in the scholarship of early medieval literature. Drawing insights from various disciplines, including critical discourse analysis, social psychology, and oral poetry studies, Supernatural Speakers demonstrates how and why three poets—the poets of Genesis A, Christ C, and Guthlac A—marshalled their distinction as experts of the Old English poetic medium to perform the power of supernatural speech by means of masterful poetics. By offering new analytical paths through these early medieval poems, Supernatural Speakers elucidates the importance of poetics as a critical window on the social and religious functions of verbal art in early medieval England.