This volume provides a fresh look at the Capetian century (1214-1314), a period that changed the cultural and political fabric and laid the foundation for the modernisation of the medieval West. The period from the birth of Louis IX to the death of Philip the Fair is remarkable for a series of developments and accomplishments associated with the Capetian kings of France. Innovations in architecture, manuscript illumination, and music all helped shape the cultural fabric of French and European life. Administrative historians emphasize the development of political institutions that have been said to lay foundations of the modern State. 'Moral reform', partly in support of the crusading movement, led to various changes in policies toward Jews, prostitutes, heretics, and many other social groups. This volume brings together essays presented at the Capetian Century Conference held at Princeton University, commemorating two seminal anniversaries bracketing the 'Capetian Century' - the Battle of Bouvines (1214), and the death of Philip the Fair (1314).

Refining adult-focused perspectives on medieval rulership, Emily Joan Ward exposes the problematic nature of working from the assumption that kingship equated to adult power. Children's participation and political assent could be important facets of the day-to-day activities of rule, as this study shows through an examination of royal charters, oaths to young boys, cross-kingdom diplomacy and coronation. The first comparative and thematic study of child rulership in this period, Ward analyses eight case studies across northwestern Europe from c.1050 to c.1250. The book stresses innovations and adaptations in royal government, questions the exaggeration of political disorder under a boy king, and suggests a ruler's childhood posed far less of a challenge than their adolescence and youth. Uniting social, cultural and political historical methodologies, Ward unveils how wider societal changes between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries altered children's lived experiences of royal rule and modified how people thought about child kingship.

Essays illuminate a wide range of topics from the Middle Ages, from the seals of an empress to priests' wives and the undead.This volume of the Haskins Society Journal demonstrates the Society's continued engagement with historical and interdisciplinary research from the early to the central Middle Ages on a broad range of topics including militarism, piety, the miraculous and the monstrous. Chapters explore material culture through a mythic eleventh-century papal banner and the seals and coins of the Empress Matilda; offer new insights into Carolingian hagiography and into the undead in the Historia rerum Anglicarum. Further chapters feature new evidence on the role of priests' wives, the tensions of multiple lordships, shifting identities in the Irish Sea world, and the didactic use of royal anger. A fresh examination of Aelred of Rievaulx's Relatio de Standaro and a re-assessment of Flemish documentary practice continue the Haskins Society's commitment to primary source analysis. Two essays on the thirteenth century, including links between Crusade spirituality and lay penitential strategies and an investigation into the economic costs of waging war, round out the volume.Contributors: DAN ARMSTRONG, DAVID S. BACHRACH, DANIEL M. BACHRACH, JILLIAN M. BJERKE, HANNAH BOSTON, MARIAH COOPER, FIONA J. GRIFFITHS, JESSE M. HARRINGTON, JEAN-FRANÇOIS NIEUS, ALICE RIO, CHARITY URBANSKI, PATRICK WADDEN, MEGHAN WOOLLEY, LU ZUOth century, including links between Crusade spirituality and lay penitential strategies and an investigation into the economic costs of waging war, round out the volume.Contributors: DAN ARMSTRONG, DAVID S. BACHRACH, DANIEL M. BACHRACH, JILLIAN M. BJERKE, HANNAH BOSTON, MARIAH COOPER, FIONA J. GRIFFITHS, JESSE M. HARRINGTON, JEAN-FRANÇOIS NIEUS, ALICE RIO, CHARITY URBANSKI, PATRICK WADDEN, MEGHAN WOOLLEY, LU ZUOth century, including links between Crusade spirituality and lay penitential strategies and an investigation into the economic costs of waging war, round out the volume.Contributors: DAN ARMSTRONG, DAVID S. BACHRACH, DANIEL M. BACHRACH, JILLIAN M. BJERKE, HANNAH BOSTON, MARIAH COOPER, FIONA J. GRIFFITHS, JESSE M. HARRINGTON, JEAN-FRANÇOIS NIEUS, ALICE RIO, CHARITY URBANSKI, PATRICK WADDEN, MEGHAN WOOLLEY, LU ZUOth century, including links between Crusade spirituality and lay penitential strategies and an investigation into the economic costs of waging war, round out the volume.Contributors: DAN ARMSTRONG, DAVID S. BACHRACH, DANIEL M. BACHRACH, JILLIAN M. BJERKE, HANNAH BOSTON, MARIAH COOPER, FIONA J. GRIFFITHS, JESSE M. HARRINGTON, JEAN-FRANÇOIS NIEUS, ALICE RIO, CHARITY URBANSKI, PATRICK WADDEN, MEGHAN WOOLLEY, LU ZUO

The rise of the Capetian dynasty across the long thirteenth century, which rested in part on the family's perceived sanctity, is a story most often told through the actions of male figures, from Louis IX's metamorphosis into "Saint Louis" to Philip IV's attacks on Pope Boniface VIII. In Courting Sanctity, Sean L. Field argues that, in fact, holy women were central to the Capetian's self-presentation as being uniquely favored by God. Tracing the shifting relationship between holy women and the French royal court, he shows that the roles and influence of these women were questioned and reshaped under Philip III and increasingly assumed to pose physical, spiritual, and political threats by the time of Philip IV's death. Field's narrative highlights six holy women. The saintly reputations of Isabelle of France and Douceline of Digne helped to crystalize the Capetians' claims of divine favor by 1260. In the 1270s, the French court faced a crisis that centered on the testimony of Elizabeth of Spalbeek, a visionary holy woman from the Low Countries. After 1300, the arrests and interrogations of Paupertas of Metz, Margueronne of Bellevillette, and Marguerite Porete served to bolster Philip IV's crusades against the dangers supposedly threatening the kingdom of France. Courting Sanctity thus reassesses key turning points in the ascent of the "most Christian" Capetian court through examinations of the lives and images of the holy women that the court sanctified or defamed.

In The Medieval Economy of Salvation, Adam J. Davis shows how the burgeoning commercial economy of western Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, alongside an emerging culture of Christian charity, led to the establishment of hundreds of hospitals and leper houses. Focusing on the county of Champagne, he looks at the ways in which charitable organizations and individuals—townspeople, merchants, aristocrats, and ecclesiastics—saw in these new institutions a means of infusing charitable giving and service with new social significance and heightened expectations of spiritual rewards. In tracing the rise of the medieval hospital during a period of intense urbanization and the transition from a gift economy to a commercial one, Davis makes clear how embedded this charitable institution was in the wider social, cultural, religious, and economic fabric of medieval life.

(The open access version of this book has been published with the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation.) The book proposes a reassessment of royal portraiture and its function in the Middle Ages via a comparative analysis of works from different areas of the Mediterranean world, where images are seen as only one outcome of wider and multifarious strategies for the public mise-en-scène of the rulers’ bodies. Its emphasis is on the ways in which medieval monarchs in different areas of the Mediterranean constructed their outward appearance and communicated it by means of a variety of rituals, object-types, and media. Contributors are Michele Bacci, Nicolas Bock, Gerardo Boto Varela, Branislav Cvetković, Sofia Fernández Pozzo, Gohar Grigoryan Savary, Elodie Leschot, Vinni Lucherini, Ioanna Rapti, Juan Carlos Ruiz Souza, Marta Serrano-Coll, Lucinia Speciale, Manuela Studer-Karlen, Mirko Vagnoni, and Edda Vardanyan.

How were the Crusades, and the crusaders, narrated, described, and romanticised by the various communities that experienced or remembered them? This Companion provides a critical overview of the diverse and multilingual literary output connected with crusading over the last millennium, from the first writings which sought to understand and report on what was happening, to contemporary medievalism, in which crusading is a potent image of holy war and jihad. The chapters show the enduring legacy of the crusaders' imagery, from the chansons de geste to Walter Scott, from Charlemagne to Orlando Bloom. Whilst the crusaders' hold on Jerusalem was relatively short-lived, the desire for Jerusalem has had a long afterlife in many cultural contexts and media.

The Handbook takes as its subject the complex phenomenon of Christian monasticism. It addresses, for the first time in one volume, the multiple strands of Christian monastic practice. Forty-four essays consider historical and thematic aspects of the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Protestant, and Anglican traditions, as well as contemporary 'new monasticism'. The essays in the book span a period of nearly two thousand years—from late ancient times, through the medieval and early modern eras, on to the present day. Taken together, they offer, not a narrative survey, but rather a map of the vast terrain. The intention of the Handbook is to provide a balance of some essential historical coverage with a representative sample of current thinking on monasticism. It presents the work of both academic and monastic authors, and the essays are best understood as a series of loosely-linked episodes, forming a long chain of enquiry, and allowing for various points of view. The authors are a diverse and international group, who bring a wide range of critical perspectives to bear on pertinent themes and issues. They indicate developing trends in their areas of specialisation. The individual contributions, and the volume as a whole, set out an agenda for the future direction of monastic studies. In today's world, where there is increasing interest in all world monasticisms, where scholars are adopting more capacious, global approaches to their investigations, and where monks and nuns are casting a fresh eye on their ancient traditions, this publication is especially timely.

Between 1150 and 1350, Paris grew from a mid-sized episcopal see in Europe to the largest metropolis on the continent. The population rose during these two centuries from approximately 30,000 to over 250,000 inhabitants. The causes and consequences of this demographic explosion are thoroughly examined for the first time in this book by Jörg Oberste.

The Merovingian centuries were a foundational period in the historical consciousness of western Europe. The memory of the first dynasty of Frankish kings, their origin myths, accomplishments, and failures were used by generations of chroniclers, propagandists, and historians to justify a wide range of social and political agendas. The process of curating and editing the source material gave rise to a recognisable 'Merovingian narrative' with three distinct phases: meteoric ascent, stasis, and decline. Already in the seventh-century Chronicle of Fredegar, this tripartite model was invoked by a Merovingian queen to prophesy the fate of her descendants. This expert commentary sets out to understand how the story of the Merovingians was shaped through a process of continuous historiographical adaptation. It examines authors from across a millennium of historical writing and analyses their influences and objectives, charting the often-unexpected ways in which their narratives were received and developed.