This book explores the nature of the nobility, focusing on France in the High Middle Ages (11th-13th centuries).
Allegorical Bodies begins with the paradoxical observation that at the same time as the royal administrators of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth-century France excluded women from the royal succession through the codification of Salic law, writers of the period adopted the female form as the allegorical personification of France itself. Considering the role of female allegorical figures in the works of Eustache Deschamps, Christine de Pizan, and Alain Chartier, as well as in the sermons of Jean Gerson, Daisy Delogu reveals how female allegories of the Kingdom of France and the University of Paris were used to conceptualize, construct, and preserve structures of power during the tumultuous reign of the mad king Charles VI (1380–1422). An impressive examination of the intersection between gender, allegory, and political thought, Delogu's book highlights the importance of gender to the functioning of allegory and to the construction of late medieval French identity.
Lust for Liberty challenges long-standing views of popular medieval revolts. Comparing rebellions in northern and southern Europe over two centuries, Samuel Cohn analyzes their causes and forms, their leadership, the role of women, and the suppression or success of these revolts. Popular revolts were remarkably common--not the last resort of desperate people. Leaders were largely workers, artisans, and peasants.
Call no. D117 .H28 1995
Checkout at the JSCC Library. It is organized into five main chapters, each focusing on a key component of medieval society: castles, knights, and lords; town and country; houses of God; monks and monasteries; and warfare.
Call no. D117 .N48 1995 v.6
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This covers the fourteenth century, a period dominated by plague, other natural disasters, and war which brought to an end three centuries of economic growth and cultural expansion in Christian Europe, but one which also saw an important development in government, changes of emphasis, and concern in religious and intellectual life, giving greater weight to the voice of the laity, and new cultural and artistic patterns, not least with the rise of vernacular literature.
Call no. DA185 .D94 2000
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Everyday Life in Medieval England captures the day-to-day experience of people in the middle ages - the houses and settlements in which they lived, the food they ate, their getting and spending - and their social relationships. The picture that emerges is of great variety, of constant change, movement, and of the enterprise. Many people were downtrodden and miserably poor, but they struggled against their circumstances, resisting oppressive authorities, building their own way of life, and improving their material conditions. The ordinary men and women of the middle ages appear throughout.
Call no. D117 .B16 2014
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The popular portrayal of the medieval era as one of endless famine, war, and ignorance is itself ignorant—overlooking brilliant advances in science, art, and literature. This beautifully illustrated collection illuminates the dark ages, telling the story of the period and such key figures as Joan of Arc, Marco Polo, and Saladin. Some 15 facsimile documents include Pope Innocent IV's authorization of the use of torture, issued in 1250; pages from the Gutenberg Bible, medieval maps, and illuminated manuscripts.
Call no. GT3520 .G53 1979
Available for check out at the JSCC Library
Call no. DC39 .N67 2018
Available for checkout at the JSCC Library
Beginning with Julius Caesar’s conquest of Gaul in the first century BC, this study of French history comprises a cast of legendary characters as Norwich chronicles France’s often violent, always fascinating history. From the French Revolution to the storming of the Bastille, from the Vichy regime and the Resistance to the end of the Second World War, A History of France is packed with heroes and villains, battles and rebellion, stories so enthralling that Norwich declared, “I can honestly say that I have never enjoyed writing a book more.”
Call no. GT2400 .H5713 1987 v.2
Available for check out at the JSCC Library
Get a general background on the private life that medievalists lived from a French perspective.
Call no. NA350 .S78 1999
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The Christian basilica -- The Carolingian Renaissance: the basilica transformed -- Symbolic architecture -- Secular architecture in the age of feudalism -- Patron and builder -- Art and engineering -- Architecture and pilgrimage -- Architecture and monasticism -- The language of architecture -- Diversity in the Romanesque Era -- Epilogue: The shadow of Rome.
Gothic art finds its roots in the powerful architecture of the cathedrals of northern France. It is a medieval art movement that evolved throughout Europe over more than 200 years. Leaving curved Roman forms behind, the architects started using flying buttresses and pointed arches to open up cathedrals to daylight. A period of great economic and social change, the Gothic era also saw the development of a new iconography celebrating the Holy Mary – in drastic contrast to the fearful themes of dark Roman times.
In the rapidly changing world of the early Middle Ages, depictions of the cosmos represented a consistent point of reference across the three dominant states-the Frankish, Byzantine, and Islamic Empires. As these empires diverged from their Greco-Roman roots between 700 and 1000 A.D. and established distinctive medieval artistic traditions, cosmic imagery created a web of visual continuity, though local meanings of these images varied greatly.
This interdisciplinary volume sets out to illuminate medieval thought and to consider how the underlying values of the Middle Ages exerted significant influence on medieval society in the West.
Notre-Dame of Amiens is one of the great Gothic cathedrals. Its construction began in 1220, and artistic production in the Gothic mode lasted well into the sixteenth century. In this magisterial chronicle, Stephen Murray invites readers to see the cathedral as more than just a thing of the past: it is a living document of medieval Christian society that endures in our own time. Murray tells the cathedral's story from the overlapping perspectives of the social groups connected to it, exploring the ways that the layfolk who visit the cathedral occasionally, the clergy who use it daily, and the artisans who created it have interacted with the building over the centuries. He considers the cycles of human activity around the cathedral and shows how groups of makers and users have been inextricably intertwined in collaboration and, occasionally, conflict. The book travels around and through the spaces of the cathedral, allowing us to re-create similar passages by our medieval predecessors.
At last available in English, this classic text was originally published in Germany in 1951 and has been continuously in print since then. Gunter Bandmann analyzes the architecture of societies in western Europe up to the twelfth century that aspired to be the heirs to the Roman Empire. He examines the occurrence and recurrence of basic forms not as stylistic evolutions but as meaningful expressions of meta-material content and develops an architectural iconography of symbolic, historical, and aesthetic elements.
Call no. N6843 .S7
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The twenty-four studies in this volume propose a new approach to framing the debate around the history of medieval art and architecture to highlight the multiple roles played by women, moving beyond today's standard division of artist from the patron.
