This collection of essays in two volumes explores patterns of medieval society and culture, spanning from the close of the late antique period to the beginnings of the Renaissance. In the first volume, the articles unravel the complexities of authority and community, and then turn to the multiple rubrics of behavior which bound and defined medieval societies. Volume 1 thus ends with a discussion of morality, from models of civic virtue (and vice) to Christian prescriptions and prohibitions.

The articles in this volume, by scholars all pursuing careers in the United States, concern the theoretical approaches and methods of early medieval studies. Most of the issues examined span the period from roughly 400 to 1000 CE and regions stretching from westernmost Eurasia to the Black Sea and the Baltic. This is the first volume of essays explicitly to reassess the heuristic structures and methodologies of research on "early medieval Europe." Because of its geographic, chronological, thematic, and methodological diversity and scope, the collection also showcases the breadth of early medieval studies currently practiced in the United States.

This collection of symposium papers deals with patterns of medieval thought and their applications in several disciplines, including algebra, music, aesthetics, and philosophy.

This collection of essays in two volumes explores patterns of medieval society and culture, spanning from the close of the late antique period to the beginnings of the Renaissance. Volume 2 analyzes of forms of devotion, both popular movements and those practices and ceremonies limited to elite groups. The exploration of medieval paradigms comes to a close with a group of essays which follow the medieval patterns well past the Middle Ages, even into the present.

Mappa mundi texts and images present a panorama of the medieval world-view, c.1300; the Hereford map studied in close detail. Filled with information and lore, mappae mundi present an encyclopaedic panorama of the conceptual "landscape" of the middle ages. Previously objects of study for cartographers and geographers, the value of medieval maps to scholars in other fields is now recognised and this book, written from an art historical perspective, illuminates the medieval view of the world represented in a group of maps of c.1300. Naomi Kline's detailed examination of the literary, visual, oral and textual evidence of the Hereford mappa mundi and others like it, such as the Psalter Maps, the '"Sawley Map", and the Ebstorf Map, places them within the larger context of medieval art and intellectual history. The mappa mundi in Hereford cathedral is at the heart of this study: it has more than one thousand texts and images of geographical subjects, monuments, animals, plants, peoples, biblical sites and incidents, legendary material, historical information and much more; distinctions between "real" and "fantastic" are fluid; time and space are telescoped, presenting past, present, and future. Naomi Kline provides, for the first time, a full and detailed analysis of the images and texts of the Hereford map which, thus deciphered, allow comparison with related mappae mundi as well as with other texts and images. NAOMI REED KLINE is Professor of Art History at Plymouth State College.