Each page contains pieces which children can cut-out and glue to create a medieval village complete with an inn, medieval houses and a village fair, as well as the inhabitants including the Lord of the Manor, innkeeper and pedlars.

Detailed account of the common people's daily life in the time of Charlemagne and how politics and military struggle affected them.

Older research on the premodern world limited its focus on the Church, the court, and, more recently, on urban space. The present volume invites readers to consider the meaning of rural space, both in light of ecocritical readings and social-historical approaches. While previous scholars examined the figure of the peasant in the premodern world, the current volume combines a large number of specialized studies that investigate how the natural environment and the appearance of members of the rural population interacted with the world of the court and of the city. The experience in rural space was important already for writers and artists in the premodern era, as the large variety of scholarly approaches indicates. The present volume signals how much the surprisingly close interaction between members of the aristocratic and of the peasant class determined many literary and art-historical works. In a surprisingly large number of cases we can even discover elements of utopia hidden in rural space. We also observe how much the rural world was a significant element already in early-medieval mentality. Moreover, as many authors point out, the impact of natural forces on premodern society was tremendous, if not catastrophic.

This authoritative survey of Britain in the later Middle Ages comprises 28 chapters written by leading figures in the field. Covers social, economic, political, religious, and cultural history in England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales Provides a guide to the historical debates over the later Middle Ages Addresses questions at the leading edge of historical scholarship Each chapter includes suggestions for further reading

Originally published in 1986, The High Middle Ages begins in the late twelfth century and ends, not with the arrival of the Tudor monarchs in 1485, but with the destruction of the wealth and power of the Church in the 1530s. The book looks at how the passing of the monasteries marked the transition from an economic and social system based on a balance – however shifting and uneasy – between the church and state, to a supreme reign of the church. The book discusses how the later middle ages were a period not of decay but of rapid change. It examines how social and economic convulsion emerged in a society marked by restless energy and creativity. The three centuries covered in the book mark a key period of extensive change to the landscape and environment of England between 1200 to 1550.

The medieval era has been described as 'the Age of Chivalry' and 'the Age of Faith' but also as 'the Dark Ages'. Medieval women have often been viewed as subject to a punishing misogyny which limited their legal rights and economic activities, but some scholars have claimed they enjoyed a 'rough and ready equality' with men. The contrasting figures of Eve and the Virgin Mary loom over historians' interpretations of the period 1000-1500. Yet a wealth of recent historiography goes behind these conventional motifs, showing how medieval women's lives were shaped by status, age, life-stage, geography and religion as well as by gender. A Cultural History of Women in the Middle Ages presents essays on medieval women's life cycle, bodies and sexuality, religion and popular beliefs, medicine and disease, public and private realms, education and work, power, and artistic representation to illustrate the diversity of medieval women's lives and constructions of femininity.