At the heart of Gothic cathedrals, the threshold between nave and sanctuary was marked by the choir screen, a partitioning structure of special complexity, grandeur, and beauty.
This new narrative history of medieval Christianity, spanning from A.D. 500 to 1500, attempts to combine both what is unfamiliar and what is a familiar to readers. Elements of novelty in the book include a steady focus on the role of women in Christianity; the relationships among Christians, Jews, and Muslims; the experience of ordinary parishioners; the adventure of asceticism, devotion and worship, and instruction through drama, architecture, and art. Madigan expertly integrates these areas of focus with more traditional themes, such as the evolution and decline of papal power, the nature and repression of heresy, sanctity and pilgrimage, the conciliar movement, and the break between the old Western church and its reformers.
This monumental study of medieval law and sexual conduct explores the origin and development of the Christian church's sex law and the systems of belief upon which that law rested. Focusing on the Church's own legal system of canon law,
Take a look at the parts referring to the 11th to 14th centuries.
By the end of the thirteenth century, court procedure in continental Europe in secular and ecclesiastical courts shared many characteristics. As the academic jurists of the Ius commune began to excavate the norms of the procedure from Justinian's great codification of law and then expound them in the classroom and in their writings, they shaped the structure of ecclesiastical courts and secular courts as well.