This is a fascinating study of religious culture in England from 1050 to 1250. Drawing on the wealth of material about religious belief and practice that survives in the chronicles, Carl Watkins explores the accounts of signs, prophecies, astrology, magic, beliefs about death, and the miraculous and demonic. He challenges some of the prevailing assumptions about religious belief, questioning in particular the attachment of many historians to terms such as 'clerical' and 'lay', 'popular' and 'elite', 'Christian' and 'pagan' as explanatory categories. The evidence of the chronicles is also set in its broader context through explorations of miracle collections, penitential manuals, exempla and sermons. The book traces shifts in the way the supernatural was conceptualized by learned writers and the ways in which broader patterns of belief evolved during this period. This original account sheds important light on belief during a period in which the religious landscape was transformed.

This book, first published in 2000, is a pioneering study of politics and society in the early Middle Ages. Whereas it is widely believed that the source materials for early medieval Europe are too sparse to allow sustained study of the workings of social and political relationships on the ground, this book focuses on a uniquely well-documented area to investigate the basis of power. Topics covered include the foundation of monasteries, their relationship with the laity, and their role as social centres; the significance of urbanism; the control of land, the development of property rights and the organization of states; community, kinship and lordship; justice and dispute settlement; the uses of the written word; violence and the feud; and the development of political structures from the Roman empire to the high Middle Ages.

A SUNDAY TIMES HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR 'A triumph' Guardian 'Glorious ... makes the past at once familiar, exotic and thrilling.' Dominic Sandbrook 'A brilliant book' Mail on Sunday Just like us, medieval men and women worried about growing old, got blisters and indigestion, fell in love and had children. And yet their lives were full of miraculous and richly metaphorical experiences radically different to our own, unfolding in a world where deadly wounds might be healed overnight by divine intervention, or the heart of a king, plucked from his corpse, could be held aloft as a powerful symbol of political rule. In this richly-illustrated and unusual history, Jack Hartnell uncovers the fascinating ways in which people thought about, explored and experienced their physical selves in the Middle Ages, from Constantinople to Cairo and Canterbury. Unfolding like a medieval pageant, and filled with saints, soldiers, caliphs, queens, monks and monstrous beasts, it throws light on the medieval body from head to toe - revealing the surprisingly sophisticated medical knowledge of the time in the process. Bringing together medicine, art, music, politics, philosophy and social history, there is no better guide to what life was really like for the men and women who lived and died in the Middle Ages. Medieval Bodies is published in association with Wellcome Collection.

A new narrative history of medieval Christianity, spanning from A.D. 500 to 1500, focuses on the role of women in Christianity; the relationships among Christians, Jews and Muslims; the experience of ordinary parishioners; the adventure of asceticism, devotion and worship; and instruction through drama, architecture and art.

Silence and Sign Language in Medieval Monasticism explores the rationales for religious silence in early medieval abbeys and the use of nonverbal forms of communication among monks when rules of silence forbade them from speaking. After examining the spiritual benefits of personal silence as a form of protection against the perils of sinful discourse in early monastic thought, this work shows how the monks of the Abbey of Cluny (founded in 910 in Burgundy) were the first to employ a silent language of meaning-specific hand signs that allowed them to convey precise information without recourse to spoken words. Scott Bruce discusses the linguistic character of the Cluniac sign language, its central role in the training of novices, the precautions taken to prevent its abuse, and the widespread adoption of this custom in other abbeys throughout Europe, which resulted in the creation of regionally specific idioms of this silent language.

Irish inhabitants of the 'four obedient shires' - a term commonly used to describe the region at the heart of the English colony in the later Middle Ages - were significantly anglicised, taking on English names, dress, and even legal status. However, the processes of cultural exchange went both ways. This study examines the nature of interactions between English and Irish neighbours in the four shires, taking into account the complex tensions between assimilation and the preservation of distinct ethnic identities and exploring how the common colonial rhetoric of the Irish as an 'enemy' coexisted with the daily reality of alliance, intermarriage, and accommodation. Placing Ireland in a broad context, Sparky Booker addresses the strategies the colonial community used to deal with the difficulties posed by extensive assimilation, and the lasting changes this made to understandings of what it meant to be 'English' or 'Irish' in the face of such challenges.