Five new books about the Middle Ages, telling us about magicians, mistresses and more.
Everyday Magicians: Legal Records and Magic Manuscripts from Tudor England
By Sharon Hubbs Wright and Frank Klassen
The Pennsylvania State University Press
ISBN: 9780271093932
Excerpt: The subject of this book is everyday Tudor magicians, both professional and occasional, their activities, and their encounters with authority. The term “everyday” has several senses: performing magic that a significant number of people also performed or that appears frequently in the written records, being a magician of unexceptional or ordinary quality, being a magician that responded to common concerns, and finally, being perceived by the authorities as a common magician and/or prosecuted in lower courts. All of these qualities have informed the choice of materials presented here. Forms of magic surrounding theft and sickness were very common in Tudor England; they are also very common in manuscripts. Magic focussed on love and sex, protection from misfortune, influencing social superiors, winning in games of chance, and getting more money is less frequent in court records but quite frequent in magic manuscripts.
Click here to visit the publisher’s website
Buy this book on Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk
The Art of Discovery: Digging into the Past in Renaissance Europe
By Maren Elisabeth Schwab and Anthony Grafton
Princeton University Press
ISBN: 978-0-691-23714-5
Excerpt: This book examines a series of enterprises, all of which began with exploration of sites, involved excavation, and yielded discoveries: case studies in secular and sacred antiquarianism, mostly as practiced in the decades just before and after 1500. Our special interest lies in excavations, and the subsequent attempts to analyze and authenticate the objects that emerged from underground. We Begin our story in a great monastery in Padua, early in the fifteenth century, where antiquarians discovered and disinterred the bones that the Roman historian Livy.
Click here to visit the publisher’s website
Buy this book on Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk
Jerusalem Falls: Seven Centuries of War and Peace
By John D. Hosler
Yale University Press
ISBN: 978-0-300-25514-0
Excerpt: The peoples and events of the seven hundred years covered in this book are as numerous as Abraham’s grains of sand, and the stories are complex. The study of them has produced millions of pages of scholarship on the history of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Persia, Byzantium, Arabia, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Medieval Europe, the Levant, and modern geopolitical and religious controversies. This book makes no pretense of being any sort of complete study, or even a robust survey, of the lengthy period in question. Instead, it threads its way through seven centuries with the singular purpose of examining how military change ushered in religious continuity or change in one specific place – a most consequential place – and what modern readers can learn from that story today.
Click here to visit the publisher’s website
Buy this book on Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk
Medieval Royal Mistresses: Mischievous Women who Slept with Kings and Princes
By Julia A. Hickey
Pen and Sword Books
ISBN: 978 1 39908 194 8
Excerpt: The relationship between lings and the women they slept with had changed across five hundred years. It is remarkable that we know about any of them. Ultimately, mistresses and paramours had no choice, not much of a voice and were cast by the Church in the role of sinners. With the exception of Katherine Mortimer, and possibly Maud Fitzwalter, they were survivors.
Click here to visit the publisher’s website
Buy this book on Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk
Art and Architecture of the Middle Ages: Exploring a Connected World
By Jill Caskey, Adam S. Cohen and Linda Safran
Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9781501702822
Excerpt: Medieval art history is vibrant and intellectually challenging, but the dynamism of the field has not been readily apparent in survey texts. The primary aim of this book is to provide students and other readers with a broad overview of European, Byzantine, and Islamicate art and architecture during the Middle Ages and to do so in a way that conveys the discipline’s diverse and compelling approaches to research and historical problems.
Click here to visit the publisher’s website
Buy this book on Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk
Also check out the accompanying website to the book – artofthemiddleages.com
Five new books about the Middle Ages, telling us about magicians, mistresses and more.
Everyday Magicians: Legal Records and Magic Manuscripts from Tudor England
By Sharon Hubbs Wright and Frank Klassen
The Pennsylvania State University Press
ISBN: 9780271093932
Excerpt: The subject of this book is everyday Tudor magicians, both professional and occasional, their activities, and their encounters with authority. The term “everyday” has several senses: performing magic that a significant number of people also performed or that appears frequently in the written records, being a magician of unexceptional or ordinary quality, being a magician that responded to common concerns, and finally, being perceived by the authorities as a common magician and/or prosecuted in lower courts. All of these qualities have informed the choice of materials presented here. Forms of magic surrounding theft and sickness were very common in Tudor England; they are also very common in manuscripts. Magic focussed on love and sex, protection from misfortune, influencing social superiors, winning in games of chance, and getting more money is less frequent in court records but quite frequent in magic manuscripts.
Click here to visit the publisher’s website
Buy this book on Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk
The Art of Discovery: Digging into the Past in Renaissance Europe
By Maren Elisabeth Schwab and Anthony Grafton
Princeton University Press
ISBN: 978-0-691-23714-5
Excerpt: This book examines a series of enterprises, all of which began with exploration of sites, involved excavation, and yielded discoveries: case studies in secular and sacred antiquarianism, mostly as practiced in the decades just before and after 1500. Our special interest lies in excavations, and the subsequent attempts to analyze and authenticate the objects that emerged from underground. We Begin our story in a great monastery in Padua, early in the fifteenth century, where antiquarians discovered and disinterred the bones that the Roman historian Livy.
Click here to visit the publisher’s website
Buy this book on Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk
Jerusalem Falls: Seven Centuries of War and Peace
By John D. Hosler
Yale University Press
ISBN: 978-0-300-25514-0
Excerpt: The peoples and events of the seven hundred years covered in this book are as numerous as Abraham’s grains of sand, and the stories are complex. The study of them has produced millions of pages of scholarship on the history of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Persia, Byzantium, Arabia, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Medieval Europe, the Levant, and modern geopolitical and religious controversies. This book makes no pretense of being any sort of complete study, or even a robust survey, of the lengthy period in question. Instead, it threads its way through seven centuries with the singular purpose of examining how military change ushered in religious continuity or change in one specific place – a most consequential place – and what modern readers can learn from that story today.
Click here to visit the publisher’s website
Buy this book on Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk
Medieval Royal Mistresses: Mischievous Women who Slept with Kings and Princes
By Julia A. Hickey
Pen and Sword Books
ISBN: 978 1 39908 194 8
Excerpt: The relationship between lings and the women they slept with had changed across five hundred years. It is remarkable that we know about any of them. Ultimately, mistresses and paramours had no choice, not much of a voice and were cast by the Church in the role of sinners. With the exception of Katherine Mortimer, and possibly Maud Fitzwalter, they were survivors.
Click here to visit the publisher’s website
Buy this book on Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk
Art and Architecture of the Middle Ages: Exploring a Connected World
By Jill Caskey, Adam S. Cohen and Linda Safran
Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9781501702822
Excerpt: Medieval art history is vibrant and intellectually challenging, but the dynamism of the field has not been readily apparent in survey texts. The primary aim of this book is to provide students and other readers with a broad overview of European, Byzantine, and Islamicate art and architecture during the Middle Ages and to do so in a way that conveys the discipline’s diverse and compelling approaches to research and historical problems.
Click here to visit the publisher’s website
Buy this book on Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk
Also check out the accompanying website to the book – artofthemiddleages.com
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