En la Edad Media se viaja por motivos políticos, por trabajo, para rezar o para estudiar: por los caminos se encuentran reyes y mercaderes, peregrinos y delincuentes, clérigos y juglares, marginados y caballeros andantes. Se navega por ríos, por lagos, por canales, por mares o por el océano. Este libro nos presenta a esta variada humanidad en camino mientras atraviesa países y continentes; reconstruye sus trayectos, sus penalidades, sus miedos, sus emociones. ¿Qué significaba ponerse en camino dejando atrás el propio hogar?, ¿cuáles eran los modos concretos de viajar?, ¿qué conocimientos nacían del saber geográfico y cuáles eran solo fantasías?, ¿cuáles eran los países por entonces conocidos?, ¿qué relaciones se establecían con los extranjeros? Curiosidad, inquietud, fe, deseo de aventura, ansias de conocer, necesidades materiales o exigencias del trabajo animan sin cesar este trasiego de gentes. Ningún libro de viajes, por muy fiel que sea, podrá describir la intensidad y la dimensión que caracterizaban el ir y venir de personas normales y corrientes por los caminos medievales.

First published in 2003, Medieval Iberia: An Encyclopedia, is the first comprehensive reference to the vital world of medieval Spain. This unique volume focuses on the Iberian kingdoms from the fall of the Roman Empire to the aftermath of the Reconquista and encompass topics of key relevance to medieval Iberia, including people, events, works, and institutions, as well as interdisciplinary coverage of literature, language, history, arts, folklore, religion, and science. It also provides in-depth discussions of the rich contributions of Muslim and Jewish cultures, and offers useful insights into their interactions with Catholic Spain. With nearly 1,000 signed A-Z entries and written by renowned specialists in the field, this comprehensive work is an invaluable tool for students, scholars, and general readers alike.

Travelling is one of the most fascinating phenomena that has inspired writers and scholars from Antiquity to our postmodern age. The father of history, Herodotus, was also a traveller, whose Histories can easily be considered a travel account. The first volume of this book is dedicated to the period starting from Herodotus himself until the end of the Middle Ages with focus on the Balkans, the Byzantine Empire, the Islamic world, and South-Eastern Europe. Research on travellers who connected civilizations; manuscript and literary traditions; musicology; geography; flora and fauna as reflected in travel accounts, are all part of this thought-provoking collected volume dedicated to detailed aspects of voyages and travel accounts up to the end of the sixteenth century. The second volume of this book is dedicated to the period between Early Modernity and today, including modern receptions of travelling in historiography and literature. South-Eastern Europe and Serbia; the Chinese, Ottoman, and British perception of travelling; pilgrimages to the Holy land and other sacred sites; Serbian, Arabic, and English literature; legal history and travelling, and other engaging topics are all part of the second volume dedicated to aspects of voyages and travel accounts up to the contemporary era.

In recent years, the 'medieval frontier' has been the subject of extensive research. But the term has been understood in many different ways: political boundaries; fuzzy lines across which trade, religions and ideas cross; attitudes to other peoples and their customs. This book draws attention to the differences between the medieval and modern understanding of frontiers, questioning the traditional use of the concepts of 'frontier' and 'frontier society'. It contributes to the understanding of physical boundaries as well as metaphorical and ideological frontiers, thus providing a background to present-day issues of political and cultural delimitation. In a major introduction, David Abulafia analyses these various ambiguous meanings of the term 'frontier', in political, cultural and religious settings. The articles that follow span Europe from the Baltic to Iberia, from the Canary Islands to central Europe, Byzantium and the Crusader states. The authors ask what was perceived as a frontier during the Middle Ages? What was not seen as a frontier, despite the usage in modern scholarship? The articles focus on a number of themes to elucidate these two main questions. One is medieval ideology. This includes the analysis of medieval formulations of what frontiers should be and how rulers had a duty to defend and/or extend the frontiers; how frontiers were defined (often in a different way in rhetorical-ideological formulations than in practice); and how in certain areas frontier ideologies were created. The other main topic is the emergence of frontiers, how medieval people created frontiers to delimit areas, how they understood and described frontiers. The third theme is that of encounters, and a questioning of medieval attitudes to such encounters. To what extent did medieval observers see a frontier between themselves and other groups, and how does real interaction compare with ideological or narrative formulations of such interaction?