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Scholars of medieval power structures, feudal relations, monarchy, and ritual performance have long recognized that the early twelfth century was ground zero in the cultural, social, and political transformation of France from a weak and fragmented kingdom to one centralized under the leadership of a purposeful ruler. This book considers the role played by the crusaders in the development of the French monarchy. While the First Crusade was launched in 1095 ,the first French monarch did not join the movement until 1146, when Louis VII led the ill-fated Second Crusade. The failure of the French kings to join the crusading movement created a ‘crisis of crusading’ that the French royal court confronted in a variety of media, including texts, artwork, architecture, and rituals. The book finds that in a short span of time, members of the court fused the emerging crusade ideas with ancient notions of sacral kingship and nobility to fashion new, highly selective and flexible images of French history that exploited the unknown future of crusading to negotiate a space into which the self-fashioning of French kingship could insinuate itself. By the middle of the twelfth century, these negotiated images were being widely disseminated to a popular audience through various channels, thus contributing to the rise of the ‘crusading king’ as an idea ruler-type from the early thirteenth century onwards.

This book examines lay religious culture in Scottish towns between the Black Death and the Protestant Reformation. Part I looks at what the living did to influence the dead and at how the dead were believed to influence the living in turn. It shows that the living and the dead shared a reciprocal relationship of obligation and assistance, and that the bonds between the two groups were especially strong when they involved blood or guild kinship. Part II considers the overlapping communities in Scottish towns where people could personalize religious expression in a meaningful social context. Part III focuses on the period between 1350 and 1560 as one of disruption and development. It assesses weaknesses in the Scottish ecclesiastical structure and instances of religious dissent, and then it considers the Scottish Church’s response to these challenges. Two main arguments run through the book. The first is that most laypeople in Scottish towns continued to participate in orthodox Catholic practices right through to the mid-sixteenth century. The second major argument is that Catholic religious practices in Scottish towns underwent a significant shift between 1350 and 1560. This shift, which is most easily perceived when Scotland is considered within the broader European transition from the medieval to the early modern period, brought with it a kind of pre-Reformation reformation in religious practice.

The book is an account of noblewomen in Wales in the high middle ages, focusing on one particular case-study, Nest of Deheubarth. Object of one of the most notorious and portentous abductions of the middle ages, this ‘Helen of Wales’ was both mistress of Henry I and ancestress of a dynasty which dominated the Anglo-Norman conquests of Ireland. The book fills a significant gap in the historiography - while women’s power has been one of the most vibrant areas of historical scholarship for thirty years, Welsh medieval studies has not yet responded. It develops understandings of the interactions of gender with conquest, imperialism, and with the social and cultural transformations of the middle ages, from a new perspective. Many studies have recently appeared reconsidering these relationships, but few if any have women and gender as a core theme. Gender, Nation and Conquest will therefore be of interest to all researching, teaching and studying the high middle ages in Britain and Ireland, and to a wider audience for which medieval women’s history women is a growing fascination. Hitherto Nest has been seen as the pawn of powerful men. A more general discussion of ideals concerning beauty, love, sex and marriage and an analysis of the interconnecting identities of Nest throws light on her role as wife/concubine/mistress. A unique feature of the book is its examination of the story of Nest in its many forms over succeeding centuries, during which it has formed part of significant narratives of gender and nation.

Medieval hospitals in Italy, originally intended to house pilgrims and comfort the dying, evolved from religious institutions reflecting communal and personal piety to civic facilities intended to provide a comprehensive social welfare and medical service to the urban community. The founding and management of hospitals provided a means for the acquisition of political power and social status for the new urban elites. Brasher’s study provides the first comprehensive examination of the foundation of small independent hospitals throughout the region beginning in the twelfth century and then considers the challenges to establishing and managing these institutions in the face of ecclesiastical and political interference over the succeeding three centuries. The resulting charitable institutions reflected a nexus of lay initiative, religious culture, and civic political life. The independent nature of the individual hospitals has made generalization difficult, yet through a comprehensive examination of evidence from over 175 hospitals, the volume covers a wide geographic and chronological expanse to create a picture of the internal life of the institutions and their place within the urban community. The rise of the central, civic hospital of the fifteenth century, generally seen as a particular phenomenon of the Renaissance, is placed in the context of its earlier origins. The book will be of interest to students and researchers of medieval social, religious, or urban history.

John of Salisbury (c. 1120–80) is a key figure of the twelfth-century renaissance. A student at the cosmopolitan schools of medieval Paris, an associate of Thomas Becket and an acute commentator on society and rulership, his works and letters give unique insights into the political culture of this period. This volume reassesses the influence of classical sources on John’s political writings, investigating how he accessed and used the ideas of his ancient predecessors. By looking at his quotations from and allusions to classical works, O’Daly shows that John not only borrowed the vocabulary of his classical forbears, but explicitly aligned himself with their philosophical positions. She illustrates John’s profound debt to Roman Stoicism, derived from the writings of Seneca and Cicero, and shows how he made Stoic theories on duties, virtuous rulership and moderation relevant to the medieval context. She also examines how John’s classical learning was filtered through patristic sources, arguing that this led to a unique synthesis between his political and theological views. The book places famous elements of John’s political theory - such as his model of the body-politic, his views on tyranny - in the context of the intellectual foment of the classical revival and the dramatic social changes afoot in Europe in the twelfth century. In so doing, it offers students and researchers of this period a novel investigation of how Stoicism comprises a ‘third way’ for medieval political philosophy, interacting with – and at times dominating – neo-Platonism and proto-Aristotelianism.

This book examines the rise and fall of the aristocratic Lacy family in England, Ireland, Wales and Normandy. As one of the first truly transnational studies of individual medieval aristocrats, it provides a fresh look at lordship and the interplay between aristocracy and crown from 1166 to 1241. Hugh de Lacy (†1186), traded on his military usefulness to King Henry II of England in Wales and Normandy to gain a speculative grant of the ancient Irish kingdom of Mide (Meath). Hugh was remarkably successful in Ireland, where he was able to thwart the juvenile ambitions of the future King John to increase his powers there. Hugh was hailed by native commentators as ‘lord of the foreigners of Ireland’ and even ‘king of Ireland’. In this study his near-legendary life is firmly grounded in the realities of Anglo-Irish politics. The political career of Hugh's less famous son and heir, Walter de Lacy (†1241), is in turn illuminated by surviving royal records and his own acta. Walter was one of the major actors in the Irish Sea province under Kings Richard I, John and Henry III, and his relationship with each king provides a unique insight into the nature of their reigns. Over the course of fifty-two years, Walter helped to shape the course of Anglo-Irish history. That history is recast in light of the transnational perspective of its chief participants. This book is a major contribution to current debates over the structure of medieval European society.

Writing the Welsh borderlands in Anglo-Saxon England is the first study of the Anglo-Welsh border region in the period before the Norman arrival in England, from the fifth to the twelfth centuries. Its conclusions significantly alter our current picture of Anglo/Welsh relations before the Norman Conquest by overturning the longstanding critical belief that relations between these two peoples during this period were predominately contentious. Writing the Welsh borderlands in Anglo-Saxon England demonstrates that the region which would later become the March of Wales was not a military frontier in Anglo-Saxon England, but a distinctively mixed Anglo-Welsh cultural zone which was depicted as a singular place in contemporary Welsh and Anglo-Saxon texts. This book studies how the region of the Welsh borderlands before 1066 was depicted in a group of texts from early medieval Britain which have traditionally been interpreted as reflecting a clear and adversarial Anglo/Welsh divide. Chapters focus on some of the most central literary and historical works from Anglo-Saxon England, including Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, Latin and Old English Lives of St. Guthlac, the Old English Exeter Book Riddles, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. These texts depict the Welsh borderlands region differently than the rest of Wales — not as the site of Anglo/Welsh conflict, but as a distinct region with a mixed culture. Writing the Welsh borderlands in Anglo-Saxon England alters our understanding of how the Anglo-Saxons and Welsh interacted with one another in the centuries before the Norman arrival. It demonstrates that the region of the Welsh borderlands was much more culturally coherent, and the impact of the Norman Conquest on it much greater, than has been previously realised.