A stunning overview of the medieval landscape of ScotlandThis is a history of the forging of the Scottish kingdom during the first three centuries of the second millennium. In AD 1000 the Scottish kings had embarked on the annexation of English-speaking Lothian and of Cumbric-speaking Clydesdale, Ayrshire and Dumfriesshire. The countrys enlargement continued under a line of remarkably able kings with the inclusion first of the highlands and then, after the defeat of the Norwegians in 1263, of the islands of the Inner and Outer Hebrides. How Scotlands landscape influenced its people and conditioned its outlook on the world is a theme running throughout the book.Geoffrey Barrow describes the evolution of Scottish kingship and government during the period, in the process examining the character of Scottish feudalism and the manner of its imposition. He discusses the social, economic and political changes of the period, with separate chapters on the expansion of towns and trade, the role of the church, and advances in education and learning. A sense of national identity had, he argues, become sufficiently strong by the end of the thirteenth century for the country to survive humiliation by Edward I and to reunite under Robert Bruce. With Bruces coronation as Robert I in 1306 this richly detailed and readable account of Scotlands formative period comes to an end.Since first publication in 1981, this reissued edition for The Edinburgh Classic Editions series, as indicated in the preface by the series editor Jenny Wormald, can now rightly take its place amongst the classics of Scottish history.Key features:Long seen as a key text for students of medieval ScotlandWritten by a respected and renowned historianReadable, cinematic in scope, colourful and scholarly at the same time

Each of us has a destiny designed by God to fulfill. I believe God is calling His Church to unity. It is time that we prepare the ground for the Holy Spirit to fulfill Christ’s prayer before He went to the cross: “Father may they be one, just as You and I are One” (John 17:20-23). Jesus gave us a commandment, that we love one another as He does. Isn’t it time we obeyed this command so that the walls of separation could fall? The world needs to see us love as Jesus does so it can trust what we say. Could we be the generation known by our love? This book suggests ways in which God is asking us to prepare the ground for Jesus’ prayer to be fulfilled. UNITY. It will come through love, for God is love and He is one.

This book examines the Lukan themes of unity and disunity against ancient Greco-Roman and Jewish social and political discourses on concord and discord to better understand the context in which Luke highlights the themes of unity and disunity. The themes of unity and disunity are particularly prominent in ancient discussions of the reigns of rulers, evaluations of laws/constitutions/forms of government, and descriptions of the contrasting effects of unity and disunity in the destruction and preservation of peoples and cities. These themes are grouped under the broad categories of kingship and law, and the preservation and destruction of cities. The book contends that, in the context of its literary setting, the theme of the unity of the church under one Lord in Acts contributes to Lukan Christological claims that Christ is the true king, and Lukan ecclesiological claims that the Christian community is the true people of God.

Why has monarchy been such a prevalent institution throughout history and in such a diverse range of societies? Kingship is at the heart of both ritual and politics and has major implications for the theory of social and cultural anthropology. Yet, despite the contemporary fascination with royalty, anthropologists have sorely neglected the subject in recent decades. This book combines a strong theoretical argument with a wealth of ethnography from kingships in Africa, Asia and the Pacific. Quigley gives a timely and much-needed overview of the anthropology of kingship and a crucial reassessment of the contributions of Frazer and Hocart to debates about the nature and function of royal ritual. From diverse fieldwork sites, a number of eminent anthropologists demonstrate how ritual and power intertwine to produce a series of variations around myth, tragedy and historical realities. However, underneath this diversity, two common themes invariably emerge: the attempt to portray kingship as timeless and perfect, and the dual nature of the king as sacred being and scapegoat.