Growing Old in the Middle Ages draws a comprehensive picture of medieval old age, describing how it was perceived by different groups in society; what help was given to the ageing; the desire to increase longevity; the consolation offered to the elderly; and the growing concern with physiology. With the increased interest in old age as a subject for historical study, this timely overview is an invaluable contribution to the social history of the whole of medieval Europe.
The Middle Ages are remembered as an age of faith; but they were also an age of reason. This book concentrates on the 250 years between the late 11th and early 14th centuries and studies two key facets of the rationalistic tradition: mathematics, and the broader current represented by a literary education. The final section considers ascetic monasticism, a notably non-rationalistic tradition.
Love, Marriage and Family Ties in the Late Middle Ages
This volume addresses the current fashion for research on the family and domesticity in the past. It draws together work from various disciplines - historical, art-historical and literary - with their very different source materials and from a broad geographical area, including some countries - such as Croatia and Poland - which are not usually considered in standard text books on the medieval family.
The Fourth Estate: A History of Women in the Middle Ages
Did women really constitute a 'fourth estate' in medieval society and, if so, in what sense? In this wide-ranging study Shulamith Shahar considers this and the whole question of the varying attitudes to women and their status in western Europe between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries.
Through close readings of both familiar and obscure medieval texts, the contributors to this volume attempt to read England as a singularly powerful entity within a vast geopolitical network. This capacious world can be glimpsed in the cultural flows connecting the Normans of Sicily with the rulers of England, or Chaucer with legends arriving from Bohemia. It can also be seen in surprising places in literature, as when green children are discovered in twelfth-century Yorkshire or when Welsh animals begin to speak of the long history of their land’s colonization.
