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The Latin-English bilingual volume presents the text of The Chronicle of the Czechs by Cosmas of Prague. Cosmas was born around 1045, educated in Liège, upon his return to Bohemia, he got married as well as became a priest. In 1086 he was appointed prebendary, a senior member of clergy in Prague. He completed the first book of the Chronicle in 1119, starting with the creation of the world and the earliest deeds of the Czechs up to Saint Adalbert. In the second and third books Cosmas presents the preceding century in the history of Bohemia, and succeeds in reporting about events up to 1125, the year when he died. The English translation was done by Petra Mutlova and Martyn Rady with the cooperation of Libor Švanda. The introduction and the explanatory notes were written by Jan Hasil with the cooperation of Irene van Rensvoude.T

Describes the earliest people to arrive in Bohemia, the first rulers and the origins of the Premyslid dynasty, the founding of Prague, and the early phases of Christianization. This title covers the period from 1037 to 1092, the age of Duke Bretislav I and his five contentious sons. It provides the oldest history of a Slavic people

This is the first comprehensive study in English of Czech society and politics in the High Middle Ages. It paints a vivid portrait of a flourishing Christian community in the decades between 1050 and 1200. Bohemia's social and political landscape remained remarkably cohesive, centered on a throne in Prague, the Premyslid duke who occupied it, a society of property-owning freemen, and the ascendant Catholic church. In decades fraught with political violence, these provided a focal point for Czech identity and political order. In this, the Czechs' heavenly patron, Saint Vaclav, and the German emperor beyond their borders too had a role to play. An impressive, systematic dissection of a medieval polity, Hastening Toward Prague is based on a close rereading of written and material artifacts from the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Arguing against a view that puts state or nation formation at heart, Wolverton examines interactions among dukes, emperors, freemen, and the church on their own terms, asking what powers the dukes of Bohemia possessed and how they were exercised within a broader political community. Evaluating not only the foundations and practice of ducal lordship but also the form and progress of resistance to it, she argues in particular that violence was not a sign of political instability but should be interpreted as reflecting a dynamic economy of checks and balances in a fluid, mature political system. This also reveals the values and strategies that sustained the Czech Lands as a community. The study honors the complexity and dynamism of the medieval exercise of power.

Prague is at the core of everything both wonderful and terrible in Western history, but few people truly understand this city's unique culture. In Prague in Black and Gold, Peter Demetz strips away sentimentalities and distortions and shows how Czechs, Germans, Italians, and Jews have lived and worked together for over a thousand years.

Written in the early 1890s, before Czech independence and in an age of patriotic upsurge and romanticism, these thirty-four tales quite naturally reflect a glorification of the Czech past. While the details of the legends are necessarily archaic, peopled by kings and noblemen, ghosts and magic, the themes are universal. Now at the dawn of a new era of Czech independence, they provide a fascinating new perspective to the contemporary situation.

This volume of the Haskins Society Journal furthers the Society's commitment to historical and interdisciplinary research on the early and central Middle Ages, especially in the Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, and Angevin worlds but also on the continent. The topics of the essays it contains range from the curious place of Francia in the historiography of medieval Europe to strategies of royal land distribution in tenth-century Anglo-Saxon England to the representation of men and masculinity in the works of Anglo-Norman historians. Essays on the place of polemical literature in Frutolf of Michelsberg's Chronicle, exploration of the relationship between chivalry and crusading in Baudry of Bourgeuil's History, and Cosmas of Prague's manipulation of historical memory in the service of ecclesiastical privilege and priority each extend the volume's engagement with medieval historiography, employing rich continental examples to do so. Investigations of comital personnel in Anjou and Henry II's management of royal forests and his foresters shed new light on the evolving nature of secular governance in the twelfth centuries and challenge and refine important aspects of our view of medieval rule in this period. The volume ends with a wide-ranging reflection on the continuing importance of the art object itself in medieval history and visual studies. Contributors: H.F. Doherty, Kathryn Dutton, Kirsten Fenton, Paul Fouracre, Herbert Kessler, Ryan Lavelle, Thomas J.H. McCarthy, Lisa Wolverton, Simon Yarrow.