Synopses & Reviews
Covering a thousand years of history, this volume tells the story of the creation of Western civilization in Europe and the Mediterranean. Now available in a compact, more convenient format, it offers the same text and many of the illustrations which first appeared in the widely acclaimed Oxford Illustrated History of Medieval Europe. Written by expert scholars and based on the latest research, the book explores a period of profound diversity and change, focusing on all aspects of medieval history from the empires and kingdoms of Charlemagne and the Byzantines to the new nations which fought the Hundred Years War. The Oxford History of the Medieval World also examines such intriguing cultural subjects as the chivalric code of knights, popular festivals, and the proliferation of new art forms, and the catastrophic social effect of the Black Death. Authoritative and eminently readable, this book will entertain as much as it will educate.
Synopsis
Covering a thousand years of history, this volume tells the story of the creation of Western civilization in Europe and the Mediterranean. Now available in a compact, more convenient format, it offers the same text and many of the illustrations which first appeared in the widely acclaimed
Oxford Illustrated History of Medieval Europe. Written by expert scholars and based on the latest research, the book explores a period of profound diversity and change, focusing on all aspects of medieval history from the empires and kingdoms of Charlemagne and the Byzantines to the new nations
which fought the Hundred Years War. The Oxford History of the Medieval World also examines such intriguing cultural subjects as the chivalric code of knights, popular festivals, and the proliferation of new art forms, and the catastrophic social effect of the Black Death. Authoritative and
eminently readable, this book will entertain as much as it will educate.
Synopsis
This is the most authoritative account of life in Medieval Europe between the fall of the Roman Empire and the coming of the Renaissance.
Full coverage is given to all aspects of life in a thousand-year period which saw the creation of western civilization: from the empires and kingdoms of Charlemagne, the Byzantines, and the Hundred Years War, to the ideals of the crusades, the building of great cathedrals and the social catastrophe of the Black Death; the cultural worlds of chivalric knights, popular festivals, and new art forms. The chapters show the movement of the centre of gravity in European life from the Mediterranean to the north; and the authors explore the contrast between Byzantine and Renaissance cultures in the south and the new, complex political and social structures of north-west Europe, which by 1300 had the most advanced civilization the world had ever seen.
About the Author
George Holmes is Chichele Professor of Medieval History at the University of Oxford. He has also been a History Delegate to Oxford University Press.
Table of Contents
1. The Transformation of the Roman Mediterranean, 400-900,
Thomas Brown2. The Northern World in the Dark Ages, 400-900, Edward James
3. The Society of Nothern Europe in the High Middle Ages, 900-1200, David Whitton
4. Northern Europe invades the Mediterranean, 900-1200, Rosemary Morris
5. The Mediterranean in the Age of the Renaissance, 1200-1500, Peter Denley
6. The Civbization of Courts and Cities in the North, 1200-1500, Malcolm Vale
Editor's Postscript
Further Reading
Chronology