The most comprehensive medieval account of the Three Kings was John of Hildesheim's Historia Trium Regum (1364-75), a widely diffused text which was translated into several vernaculars. The most popular English version has for some time been accessible in a number of abridged redactions. In contrast, the present edition prints an independent and hitherto unpublished translation, preserved principally in Lambeth Palace MS 491 together with an extract in Huntington Library MS 114: the two manuscripts are in the same hand, that of a scribe whose involvement in the copying of popular Middle English works is already well known. The parallel Latin Text that accompanies the edition will be of interest to students of Middle English prose translations, as the exemplar used by the translator can be reconstructed with considerable confidence. Moreover the Latin author used a number of known and unknown sources relating to the Orient, with the result that the text contains much of relevance to the study of medieval Western interest in the East.

Foul play is suspected when the corpse of a young woman is unearthed after twenty years in this “well-crafted” Roger the Chapman novel (Publishers Weekly). England, 1481. As land is being cleared for a new chapel to be dedicated to the three kings of Cologne, the remains of Isabella Linkinhorne are discovered. Known to have had three secret lovers, Isabella had disappeared twenty years earlier. Alderman John Foster, the mayor of Bristol, commissions Roger the Chapman to determine if one of her three suitors did her in. Faced with the task of tracking down three people about whom he knows next to nothing, Roger nicknames them Caspar, Balthazar, and Melchior, after the three kings. Will the perceptive peddler be able to solve this twenty-year-old mystery? The Three Kings of Cologne is the sixteenth book in the Roger the Chapman series. “Sedley effortlessly incorporates the details of daily life for a range of socioeconomic groups as Roger goes in search of answers. Roger’s droll sense of humor enlivens a narrative full of unexpected plot twists.” —Publishers Weekly “Sedley knows how to create authentic period ambience, build strong characters, and deliver plenty of adventure. Add a healthy serving of dry wit, and you have a fine series that just keeps getting better.” —Booklist