Tracing the political evolution of the Iberian peninsula from late Roman imperial provinces to monarchies of the mid-fifteenth century, essays on the significant periods of medieval Spain sketch the major political, economic, social and intellectual features of their times.

Medieval Spain is brilliantly recreated, in all its variety and richness, in this comprehensive survey. Likely to become the standard work in English, the book treats the entire Iberian Peninsula and all the people who inhabited it, from the coming of the Visigoths in the fifth century to the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. Integrating a wealth of information about the diverse peoples, institutions, religions, and customs that flourished in the states that are now Spain and Portugal, Joseph F. O'Callaghan focuses on the continuing attempts to impose political unity on the peninsula. O'Callaghan divides his story into five compact historical periods and discusses political, social, economic, and cultural developments in each period. By treating states together, he is able to put into proper perspective the relationships among them, their similarities and differences, and the continuity of development from one period to the next. He gives proper attention to Spain's contacts with the rest of the medieval world, but his main concern is with the events and institutions on the peninsula itself. Illustrations, genealogical charts, maps, and an extensive bibliography round out a book that will be welcomed by scholars and student of Spanish and Portuguese history and literature, as well as by medievalists, as the fullest account to date of Spanish history in the Middle Ages.

This volume is a collection of essays on medieval Spain, written by leading scholars on three continents, that celebrates the career of Thomas F. Glick. Using a wide array of innovative methodological approaches, these essays offer insights on areas of medieval Iberian history that have been of particular interest to Glick: irrigation, the history of science, and cross-cultural interactions between Jews, Christians, and Muslims. By bringing together original research on topics ranging from water management and timekeeping to poetry and women’s history, this volume crosses disciplinary boundaries and reflects the wide-ranging, gap-bridging work of Glick himself, a pivotal figure in the historiography of medieval Spain.

In analyzing the early medieval architecture of Christian and Islamic Spain, Jerrilynn Dodds explores the principles of artistic response to social and cultural tension, offering an account of that unique artistic experience that set Spain apart from the rest of Europe and established a visual identity born of the confrontation of cultures that perceived one another as alien. Architecture and Ideology in Early Medieval Spain covers the Spanish medieval experience from the Visigothic oligarchy to the year 1000, addressing a variety of cases of cultural interchange. It examines the embattled reactive stance of Hispano-Romans to their Visigothic rulers and the Asturian search for a new language of forms to support a political position dissociated from the struggles of a peninsula caught in the grip of a foreign and infidel rule. Dodds then examines the symbolic meaning of the Mozarabic churches of the tenth century and their reflection of the Mozarabs' threatened cultural identity. The final chapter focuses on two cases of artistic interchange between Islamic and Christian builders with a view toward understanding the dynamics of such interchange between conflicting cultures. Dodds concludes with a short account of the beginning of Romanesque architecture in Spain and an analysis of some of the ways in which artistic expression can reveal the subconscious of a culture.

Negative and positive.

Chronicle / John of Biclaro -- History of the Kings of the Goths / Isidore of Seville -- The Chronicle of 754 -- The Chronicle of Alfonso III.

A study of medieval Spain and its historians, from the chroniclers of the Middle Ages to the revisionists of the post-Franco era. This book reveals history in the making during the 800 years between the Roman period and what is now described as the birth of the modern state.