Carolingian Catalonia

Download Carolingian Catalonia PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108645755
Total Pages : 339 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (86 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Carolingian Catalonia by : Cullen J. Chandler

Download or read book Carolingian Catalonia written by Cullen J. Chandler and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-10 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on a range of evidence related to royal authority, political events and literate culture, this study traces how kings and emperors involved themselves in the affairs of the Spanish March, and examines how actively people in Catalonia participated in politics centred on the royal court. Rather than setting the political development of the region in terms of Catalonia's future independence as a medieval principality, Cullen J. Chandler addresses it as part of the Carolingian 'experiment'. In doing so, he incorporates an analysis of political events alongside an examination of such cultural issues as the spread of the Rule of Benedict, the Adoptionist controversy, and the educational programme of the Carolingian reforms. This new history of the region offers a robust and absorbing analysis of the nature of the Carolingian legacy in the March, while also revising traditional interpretations of ethnic motivations for political acts and earlier attempts to pinpoint the constitutional birth of Catalonia.

Charles The Bald

Download Charles The Bald PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317899563
Total Pages : 314 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (178 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Charles The Bald by : Janet L. Nelson

Download or read book Charles The Bald written by Janet L. Nelson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-11 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This important and long-awaited study is the first full-scale biography of Charlemagne's grandson, King of the West Franks from 843 to 877, and Emperor from 875. Posterity has not been kind to Charles or his age, seeing him as a fatally weak ruler in decadent times, threatened by Viking invaders and overmighty subjects. Janet Nelson, however, reveals an able and resourceful ruler who, under challenging conditions, maintained and enhanced royal authority, and held together the kingdom that, outlasting the Carolingians themselves, in due course became France.

Negotiating Space

Download Negotiating Space PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501718681
Total Pages : 292 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (17 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Negotiating Space by : Barbara H. Rosenwein

Download or read book Negotiating Space written by Barbara H. Rosenwein and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-10-18 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why did early medieval kings declare certain properties to be immune from the judicial and fiscal encroachments of their own agents? Did weakness compel them to prohibit their agents from entering these properties, as historians have traditionally believed? In a richly detailed book that will be greeted as a landmark addition to the literature on the Middle Ages, Barbara H. Rosenwein argues that immunities were markers of power. By placing restraints on themselves and their agents, kings demonstrated their authority, affirmed their status, and manipulated the boundaries of sacred space.Rosenwein transforms our understanding of an institution central to the political and social dynamics of medieval Europe. She reveals how immunities were used by kings and other leaders to forge alliances with the noble families and monastic centers that were central to their power. Generally viewed as unchanging juridical instruments, immunities as they appear here are as fluid and diverse as the disparate social and political conflicts that they at once embody and seek to defuse. Their legacy reverberates in the modern world, where liberal institutions, with their emphasis on state restraint, clash with others that encourage governmental intrusion. The protections against unreasonable searches and seizures provided by English common law and the U.S. Constitution developed in part out of the medieval experience of immunities and the institutions that were elaborated to breach them.

Why Europe?

Download Why Europe? PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226532380
Total Pages : 432 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (265 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Why Europe? by : Michael Mitterauer

Download or read book Why Europe? written by Michael Mitterauer and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-07-15 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why did capitalism and colonialism arise in Europe and not elsewhere? Why were parliamentarian and democratic forms of government founded there? What factors led to Europe’s unique position in shaping the world? Thoroughly researched and persuasively argued, Why Europe? tackles these classic questions with illuminating results. Michael Mitterauer traces the roots of Europe’s singularity to the medieval era, specifically to developments in agriculture. While most historians have located the beginning of Europe’s special path in the rise of state power in the modern era, Mitterauer establishes its origins in rye and oats. These new crops played a decisive role in remaking the European family, he contends, spurring the rise of individualism and softening the constraints of patriarchy. Mitterauer reaches these conclusions by comparing Europe with other cultures, especially China and the Islamic world, while surveying the most important characteristics of European society as they took shape from the decline of the Roman empire to the invention of the printing press. Along the way, Why Europe? offers up a dazzling series of novel hypotheses to explain the unique evolution of European culture.

Making Money in the Early Middle Ages

Download Making Money in the Early Middle Ages PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691177406
Total Pages : 544 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (911 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Making Money in the Early Middle Ages by : Rory Naismith

Download or read book Making Money in the Early Middle Ages written by Rory Naismith and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2023-07-11 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of coined money and its significance to rulers, aristocrats and peasants in early medieval Europe Between the end of the Roman Empire in the fifth century and the economic transformations of the twelfth, coined money in western Europe was scarce and high in value, difficult for the majority of the population to make use of. And yet, as Rory Naismith shows in this illuminating study, coined money was made and used throughout early medieval Europe. It was, he argues, a powerful tool for articulating people’s place in economic and social structures and an important gauge for levels of economic complexity. Working from the premise that using coined money carried special significance when there was less of it around, Naismith uses detailed case studies from the Mediterranean and northern Europe to propose a new reading of early medieval money as a point of contact between economic, social, and institutional history. Naismith examines structural issues, including the mining and circulation of metal and the use of bullion and other commodities as money, and then offers a chronological account of monetary development, discussing the post-Roman period of gold coinage, the rise of the silver penny in the seventh century and the reconfiguration of elite power in relation to coinage in the tenth and eleventh centuries. In the process, he counters the conventional view of early medieval currency as the domain only of elite gift-givers and intrepid long-distance traders. Even when there were few coins in circulation, Naismith argues, the ways they were used—to give gifts, to pay rents, to spend at markets—have much to tell us.

Origin Legends in Early Medieval Western Europe

Download Origin Legends in Early Medieval Western Europe PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 900452066X
Total Pages : 477 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (45 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Origin Legends in Early Medieval Western Europe by :

Download or read book Origin Legends in Early Medieval Western Europe written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-07-25 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume contains work by scholars actively publishing on origin legends across early medieval western Europe, from the fall of Rome to the high Middle Ages. Its thematic structure creates dialogue between texts and regions traditionally studied in isolation.

Bishops under Threat

Download Bishops under Threat PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 3110778645
Total Pages : 350 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (17 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Bishops under Threat by : Sabine Panzram

Download or read book Bishops under Threat written by Sabine Panzram and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2023-03-20 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The late antique and the early medieval periods witnessed the flourishing of bishops in the West as the main articulators of social life. This influential position exposed them to several threats, both political and religious. Researchers have generally addressed violence, rebellions or conflicts to study the dynamics related to secular powers during these periods. They haven’t paid similar attention, however, to those analogous contexts that had bishops as protagonists. This book proposes an approach to bishops as threatened subjects in the late antique and early medieval West. In particular, the volume pursues three main goals. Firstly, it aims to identify the different types of threats that bishops had to deal with. Then it sets out to frame these situations of adversity in their own contexts. Finally, it will address the episcopal strategies deployed to deal with such contexts of adversity. In sum, we aim to underline the impact that these contexts had as a dynamiting factor of episcopal action. Thus the episcopal threats may become a useful approach to study the bishops’ relationships with other agents of power, the motivations behind their actions and – last but not least – for understanding the episcopal rising power

Networks of bishops, networks of texts

Download Networks of bishops, networks of texts PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Firenze University Press
ISBN 13 : 8855186221
Total Pages : 234 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (551 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Networks of bishops, networks of texts by : Gianmarco de Angelis

Download or read book Networks of bishops, networks of texts written by Gianmarco de Angelis and published by Firenze University Press. This book was released on 2022-11-15 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is the first one in a collection connected to the PRIN project on Ruling in hard times. Patterns of Power and practices of government in the making of Carolingian Italy. Its focus lays on bishops and their networks of relationships in late-8th and 9th-century Italy. The episcopal contribution to the inclusion of the Lombard kingdom in the Carolingian social and political landscape is especially analyzed from the perspective of the cultural exchanges (of ideas, texts, and manuscripts) that bishops created or used to carry out their public and pastoral duties. Each paper focuses on a specific episcopal figure or area, reconstructing the scope and extent of the relationships of which they were the pivot. The aim is to provide as comprehensive a picture as possible of the cultural networks that crossed Carolingian Italy and the ways in which bishops shaped and made use of them.

Coinage and Coin Use in Medieval Italy

Download Coinage and Coin Use in Medieval Italy PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1000947599
Total Pages : 269 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (9 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Coinage and Coin Use in Medieval Italy by : Alessia Rovelli

Download or read book Coinage and Coin Use in Medieval Italy written by Alessia Rovelli and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-05-31 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The volume gathers together seventeen articles dedicated to the monetary history of medieval Italy, most of them newly translated into English. The articles in the first section of the volume trace the development of monetisation in Italy from the Lombard period until the rise of the communes, taking Rome, Lazio, Tuscany, and several cities and regions in north-central Italy as case studies. The articles in the second section analyse different aspects of monetary production and circulation in Byzantine Italy, while the third gathers together studies on various aspects of Carolingian coinage: the transition from the Lombard system and the problem of furnishing an adequate supply of silver; mints and royal administration; and the activity and inactivity of mints operating at the edges of the Regnum Italiae. All of the articles share the author’s characteristic concern with setting the evidence from written sources against the wealth of new data emerging from recent archaeological research.

Journal of Medieval Military History: Volume XXII

Download Journal of Medieval Military History: Volume XXII PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
ISBN 13 : 1837650705
Total Pages : 259 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (376 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Journal of Medieval Military History: Volume XXII by : Kelly Devries

Download or read book Journal of Medieval Military History: Volume XXII written by Kelly Devries and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2024-06-25 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The leading academic vehicle for scholarly publication in the field of medieval warfare." Medieval Warfare The articles in volume 22 of the Journal of Medieval Military History range widely, not only in chronology but also in geography and approach. Sven Ekdahl looks at the big picture of the role of Swedish castles in the north; L. J. Andrew Villalon focuses on the very particular and culturally significant rewards given by the Catholic Kings to two noble families to celebrate minor victories on the borders of Granada in the far south. Subjects include fighting at the tactical level (the unexpectedly substantial tradition of mounted archery in England, the Low Countries and France, revealed by Sanders Goevarts), the operational level (Emperor Louis II's logistics in Italy, treated by Elijah T. Wallace), and the strategic level (King John's employment of naval power, analyzed by Adam M. McNeil). Vladimir Aleksic and Damnjan Prlinčevic consider military, political, geographical, demographic, and economic factors to contextualize the military history of the rich mining town of Novo Brdo in Serbia as it faced the rising tide of Ottoman conquest in the last century of the Middle Ages. Three contributions draw on the rich resources of the English royal archives to illuminate the material and technological tools of medieval warfare: individual weapons (most significantly both longbows and short bows) described with exceptional detail in a murder case of 1315 (Clifford J. Rogers); the horses of Henry V in the Agincourt campaign of 1415 (Gary P. Baker); and the military equipment stored at Dover Castle as described in inventories dating from 1320 to 1437 (Dan Spencer).

Rome, Ravenna, and Venice, 750-1000

Download Rome, Ravenna, and Venice, 750-1000 PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 0198754205
Total Pages : 721 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (987 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Rome, Ravenna, and Venice, 750-1000 by : Veronica West-Harling

Download or read book Rome, Ravenna, and Venice, 750-1000 written by Veronica West-Harling and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 721 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comparative and interdisciplinary study, Rome, Ravenna, and Venice explores how three cities preserved and remoulded their common Byzantine past. It sheds light on how far these societies were the heirs of the Empire and how they imagined a new part-Roman, part-Italian identity in the centuries after their imperial links were severed.

Alfred the Wise

Download Alfred the Wise PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer Ltd
ISBN 13 : 9780859915151
Total Pages : 308 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (151 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Alfred the Wise by : Jane Roberts

Download or read book Alfred the Wise written by Jane Roberts and published by Boydell & Brewer Ltd. This book was released on 1997 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alfred's life, work and influence studied through writings of his age.

Women in Frankish Society

Download Women in Frankish Society PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 1512821330
Total Pages : 372 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (128 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Women in Frankish Society by : Suzanne Fonay Wemple

Download or read book Women in Frankish Society written by Suzanne Fonay Wemple and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2015-12-16 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women in Frankish Society is a careful and thorough study of women and their roles in the Merovingian and Carolingian periods of the Middle Ages. During the 5th through 9th centuries, Frankish society transformed from a relatively primitive tribal structure to a more complex hierarchical organization. Suzanne Fonay Wemple sets out to understand the forces at work in expanding and limiting women's sphere of activity and influence during this time. Her goal is to explain the gap between the ideals and laws on one hand and the social reality on the other. What effect did the administrative structures and social stratification in Merovingian society have on equality between the sexes? Did the emergence of the nuclear family and enforcement of monogamy in the Carolingian era enhance or erode the power and status of women? Wemple examines a wealth of primary sources, such deeds, testaments, formulae, genealogy, ecclesiastical and secular court records, letters, treatises, and poems in order to reveal the enduring German, Roman, and Christian cultural legacies in the Carolingian Empire. She attends to women in secular life and matters of law, economy, marriage, and inheritance, as well as chronicling the changes to women's experiences in religious life, from the waning influence of women in the Frankish church to the rise of female asceticism and monasticism.

Faith, Art, and Politics at Saint-Riquier

Download Faith, Art, and Politics at Saint-Riquier PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 1512806811
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (128 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Faith, Art, and Politics at Saint-Riquier by : Susan A. Rabe

Download or read book Faith, Art, and Politics at Saint-Riquier written by Susan A. Rabe and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2016-11-11 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This treatment of the monastic complex (also known as Centula) founded by Angilbert ca.790 includes chapters on Angilbert, Angilbert's symbolic understanding, theological issues of the 790s, and a proglomena. A fifth chapter addresses the program of Saint-Riquier: the physical arrangement of the monastery that featured three churches, the largest a basilica dedicated to S. Richarius, and the Holy Savior (known for its early westwork). The number three and trinitarian symbolism was ubiquitous throughout the complex, including the building proportions. The work summarizes what is known of the interior arrangement of the basilica and the other churches, their decoration, and liturgical processions and activities.

Women and Aristocratic Culture in the Carolingian World

Download Women and Aristocratic Culture in the Carolingian World PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 0801460174
Total Pages : 333 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (14 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Women and Aristocratic Culture in the Carolingian World by : Valerie L. Garver

Download or read book Women and Aristocratic Culture in the Carolingian World written by Valerie L. Garver and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2012-05-08 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the wealth of scholarship in recent decades on medieval women, we still know much less about the experiences of women in the early Middle Ages than we do about those in later centuries. In Women and Aristocratic Culture in the Carolingian World, Valerie L. Garver offers a fresh appraisal of the cultural and social history of eighth- and ninth-century women. Examining changes in women's lives and in the ways others perceived women during the early Middle Ages, she shows that lay and religious women, despite their legal and social constrictions, played integral roles in Carolingian society. Garver's innovative book employs an especially wide range of sources, both textual and material, which she uses to construct a more complex and nuanced impression of aristocratic women than we've seen before. She looks at the importance of female beauty and adornment; the family and the construction of identities and collective memory; education and moral exemplarity; wealth, hospitality and domestic management; textile work, and the lifecycle of elite Carolingian women. Her interdisciplinary approach makes deft use of canons of church councils, chronicles, charters, polyptychs, capitularies, letters, poetry, exegesis, liturgy, inventories, hagiography, memorial books, artworks, archaeological remains, and textiles. Ultimately, Women and Aristocratic Culture in the Carolingian World underlines the centrality of the Carolingian era to the reshaping of antique ideas and the development of lasting social norms.

Onomastics of the Chanson de Roland

Download Onomastics of the Chanson de Roland PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 3110764466
Total Pages : 1194 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (17 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Onomastics of the Chanson de Roland by : Gustav A. Beckmann

Download or read book Onomastics of the Chanson de Roland written by Gustav A. Beckmann and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2023-03-06 with total page 1194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This ambitious study of all proper names in the Chanson de Roland is based for the first time on a systematic survey of the whole geographical and historical literature from antiquity to after 1100 for the Geographica, and on working through (almost) the entire documentary tradition of France and its neighbouring regions from 778 to the early 12th century for the personal names. The overall result is clear: the surviving song is more tightly and profoundly structured, even in smaller scenes, than generally assumed, it is also richer in depicting reality, and it has a very long prehistory, which can be traced in outline, albeit with decreasing certainty, (almost) back to the Frankish defeat of 778. Here are some individual results: for the first time, a detailed (and ultimately simple!) explanation not only of the 'pagan' catalogue of peoples, but also of the overarching structure of Baligant's empire, the organisation of North Africa, the corpus of the Twelve Anti-Pairs as well as the 'pagan' gods are given, and individual names such as Bramimunde and Jurfaret, toponyms such as Marbrise and Marbrose are explained. From Roland's Spanish conquests (v. 196-200), the course of the elapsed set anz toz pleins is reconstructed. Even the names of the weapons prove to be a small structured group, in that they are very discreetly adapted to their respective 'pagan' or Christian owner. On the Christian side, the small list of relics in Roland's sword is also carefully devised, not least in what is left out: a relic of the Lord; this is reserved for Charlemagne's Joiuse. The author explains for example, why from the archangel triad only Michael and Gabriel descend to the dying Roland, whereas 'the' angel Cherubin descends in Rafael's place. Munjoie requires extensive discussion, because here a (hitherto insufficiently recorded) toponym has been secondarily charged by the poet with traditional theological associations. The term Ter(e) major is attested for the first time in reality, namely in the late 11th century in Norman usage. For the core of France, the fourth cornerstone - along with Besançon, Wissant and Mont-Saint-Michel - is Xanten, and its centre is Aachen. The poet's artful equilibration of Charles's ten eschieles and their leaders is traced. The "Capetian barrier" emerges as a basic fact of epic geography. Approximatively, the last quarter of the study is devoted to the prehistory of the song, going backwards in time: still quite clearly visible is an Angevin Song of Roland from around 1050, in which Marsilĭe, Olivier, Roland, Ganelon, Turpin and Naimes already have roles similar to those in the preserved Song. Behind it, between about 970 and shortly after 1000, is the Girart de Vienne from the Middle Rhône, already recognised by Aebischer, with the newly invented Olivier contra Roland. Finally, in faint outlines, an oldest attainable, also Middle Rhône adaptation of the Roland material from shortly after 870 emerges. For the Chanson de Roland, Gaston Paris and Joseph Bédier were thus each right on the main point that was close to their hearts: the surviving song has both the thoroughly sophisticated structure of great art that Bédier recognised in it, and the imposingly long prehistory that Paris conjectured.

Monte Cassino in the Middle Ages

Download Monte Cassino in the Middle Ages PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780674586550
Total Pages : 1584 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (865 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Monte Cassino in the Middle Ages by : Herbert Bloch

Download or read book Monte Cassino in the Middle Ages written by Herbert Bloch and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1986 with total page 1584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The monastery of Monte Cassino, founded by St. Benedict in the sixth century, was the cradle of Western monasticism. It became one of the vital centers of culture and learning in Europe. At the height of its influence, in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries, two of its abbots (including Desiderius) and one of its monks became popes, and it controlled a vast network of dependencies--churches, monasteries, villages, and farms--especially in central and southern Italy. Herbert Bloch's study, the product of forty years of research, takes as its starting point the twelfth-century bronze doors of the basilica of the abbey, the most significant relic of the medieval structure. The panels of these doors are inscribed with a list of more than 180 of the abbey's possessions. Mr. Bloch has supplemented this roster with lists found in papal and imperial privileges and other documents. The heart of the book is a detailed investigation of the nearly 700 dependencies of Monte Cassino from the sixth to the twelfth century and beyond. No comparable study of this or any other great medieval institution has ever before been undertaken. Ironically, it was the bombing of 1944, which destroyed the monastery, that led to an unexpected revelation: the discovery, on the reverse side of some panels of the doors, of magnificent engraved figures of patriarchs and apostles. These proved to be remnants of the church portal ordered from Constantinople by Desiderius in the eleventh century, which marked the beginning of the grandiose reconstruction of the abbey and its church, the latter to become a model for many other churches. In order to solve the riddle of the doors of Monte Cassino, Bloch has investigated other bronze doors of Byzantine origin in Italy and the doors of the great Italian master Oderisius of Benevento, as well as those of S. Clemente a Casauria and of the cathedral of Benevento. Also included is a study of the political and cultural impact of Byzantium on Monte Cassino and a chapter on Constantinus Africanus, Saracen turned monk, one of the most interesting figures in the history of medieval medicine. The text is sumptuously illustrated with 193 plates; most of the more than 300 illustrations have never before been published. This three-volume work, with its nine detailed indexes, offers a wealth of information for scholars in many different fields.