Alongside annals, chronicles were the main genre of historical writing in the Middle Ages. Their significance as sources for the study of medieval history and culture is today widely recognised not only by historians, but also by students of medieval literature and linguistics and by art historians. The series The Medieval Chronicle aims to provide a representative survey of the on-going research in the field of chronicle studies, illustrated by examples from specific chronicles from a wide variety of countries, periods and cultural backgrounds. There are several reasons why the chronicle is particularly suited as the topic of a yearbook. In the first place there is its ubiquity: all over Europe and throughout the Middle Ages chronicles were written, both in Latin and in the vernacular, and not only in Europe but also in the countries neighbouring on it, like those of the Arabic world. Secondly, all chronicles raise such questions as by whom, for whom, or for what purpose were they written, how do they reconstruct the past, what determined the choice of verse or prose, or what kind of literary influences are discernable in them. Finally, many chronicles have been beautifully illuminated, and the relation between text and image leads to a wholly different set of questions. The Medieval Chronicle is published in cooperation with the Medieval Chronicle Society (medievalchronicle.org).

Throughout Christian history, apocalyptic visions of the approaching end of time have provided a persistent and enigmatic theme for history and prophecy. Apocalyptic literature played a particularly important role in the medieval world, where legends of the Antichrist, Gog and Magog, and the Last Roman Emperor were widely circulated. Although scholars have long recognized that a body of Byzantine prophetic literature served as the source for these ideas, the Byzantine textual tradition, its sources, and the way in which it was transmitted to the West have neve been thoroughly understood. For more than fifteen years prior to his death in 1977, Paul J. Alexander devoted his energies to the clarification of the Byzantine apocalyptic tradition. These studies, left uncompleted at his death, trace the development of a textual tradition that passed from Syriac through Greek to Slavonic and Latin literature. Using a combination of philological and historical detection, the author establishes the time, place, and circumstances of composition for each of the major surviving texts, identifying lost works known only through descriptions. In showing how Byzantine prophecy served as a bridge between ancient eschatological works and the medieval West, Alexander demonstrates that apocalyptic literature represents a creative source for the expression of political and religious thought in the medieval world. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1985.

Historians typically single out the hundred-year period from about 1050 to 1150 as the pivotal moment in the history of the Latin Church, for it was then that the Gregorian Reform movement established the ecclesiastical structure that would ensure Rome’s dominance throughout the Middle Ages and beyond. In Before the Gregorian Reform John Howe challenges this familiar narrative by examining earlier, "pre-Gregorian" reform efforts within the Church. He finds that they were more extensive and widespread than previously thought and that they actually established a foundation for the subsequent Gregorian Reform movement. The low point in the history of Christendom came in the late ninth and early tenth centuries—a period when much of Europe was overwhelmed by barbarian raids and widespread civil disorder, which left the Church in a state of disarray. As Howe shows, however, the destruction gave rise to creativity. Aristocrats and churchmen rebuilt churches and constructed new ones, competing against each other so that church building, like castle building, acquired its own momentum. Patrons strove to improve ecclesiastical furnishings, liturgy, and spirituality. Schools were constructed to staff the new churches. Moreover, Howe shows that these reform efforts paralleled broader economic, social, and cultural trends in Western Europe including the revival of long-distance trade, the rise of technology, and the emergence of feudal lordship. The result was that by the mid-eleventh century a wealthy, unified, better-organized, better-educated, more spiritually sensitive Latin Church was assuming a leading place in the broader Christian world. Before the Gregorian Reform challenges us to rethink the history of the Church and its place in the broader narrative of European history. Compellingly written and generously illustrated, it is a book for all medievalists as well as general readers interested in the Middle Ages and Church history.

Historians of Medieval Europe have long employed the family as a window through which to explore broader social, political, and economic issues. Drawing primarily on the abundant charter sources in the archive of S.S. Trinità at Cava dei Tirreni, Joanna H. Drell has reconstructed the history of family relationships in the Principality of Salerno from its conquest by the Normans in 1077 to the death of the last Norman king in 1194. In Kinship and Conquest, Drell challenges historians to modify their views on the nature of medieval family structure. Complicated ties of blood and marital kinship enabled the Norman kings to solidify their central authority in the Kingdom of Southern Italy and Sicily. The author finds that in the principality a broad range of kin participated in the management of family property, and that kinship networks remained highly flexible. Drell mines the Cava archive to illuminate not only the composition of the noble families and the nature of kinship networks, but also the extent of genealogical memory, the depth of Norman cultural influence, and the strategies the families used to transfer patrimonial holdings and, hence, political power. One of the first books to integrate the Italian South into the larger history of Medieval Europe, Kinship and Conquest is a novel contribution to the rich historiography on kinship and political power in western Europe.

This book examines the grammatical changes that took place in the transition from Latin to the Romance languages. The emerging languages underwent changes in three fundamental areas involving the noun phrase, verb phrase, and the sentence. The impact of the changes can be seen in the reduction of the Latin case system; the appearance of auxiliary verb structures to mark such categories tense, mood, and voice; and a shift towards greater rigidification of word order. The author considers how far these changes are interrelated and compares their various manifestations and pace of change across the different standard and non-standard varieties of Romance. He describes the historical background to the emergence of the Romance varieties and their Latin ancestry, considering in detail the richly documented diachronic variation exhibited by the Romance family. Adam Ledgeway reviews the accounts and explanations that have been proposed within competing theoretical frameworks, and considers how far traditional ideas should be reinterpreted in light of recent theoretical developments. His wide-ranging account shows that the transition from Latin to Romance is not only of great intrinsic interest, but both provides a means of challenging linguistic orthodoxies and presents opportunities to shape new persepctives on language change, structure, and variation.

The Chronicle of the Priest of Duklja is a mysterious narrative source covering the Slavic presence on the Adriatic coast and its hinterland. This study offers a new interpretation of the text, based on the recognition of the figures of model rulers.

Winner of the John Gilmary Shea Prize of the American Catholic Historical Association