Product Description: Charlemagne's Early Campaigns is the first book-length study of Charlemagne at war and its focus on the period 768-777 makes clear that the topic, for his forty-six year reign, is immense. The neglect of Charlemagne's campaigns and the diplomacy that undergirded them has truncated our understanding of the creation of the Carolingian empire and the great success enjoyed by its leader, who ranks with Frederick the Great and Napoleon among Europe's best...read more

This is the first translation into English of "Ralph of Caen's Gesta Tancredi". This text provides an exceptionally important narrative of the First Crusade and its immediate aftermath, covering the period 1096 - 1105, but is often neglected, due in no small part to the difficulties of its Latin. A native of the Norman city of Caen where he was a student of Arnulf, the future patriarch of Jerusalem, in 1107 Ralph joined Bohemond of Taranto's army as a military chaplain. After arriving in the East, Ralph took service with Bohemond's nephew Tancred, who ruled the principally of Antioch from 1108 to 1112. Although dedicated to Arnulf, "The Gesta Tancredi" focuses on the careers of Bohemond and, especially, of Tancred. It is one of the most important sources - indeed the most important Latin source - for the Norman campaigns in Cilicia (1097 - 1108), and for the early Norman rule of Antioch. The work as a whole has a striking Norman point of view and contains details found in no other source, providing a corrective to the strong northern focus of most of the other narrative sources for the First Crusade.

Product Description: A fascinating collaboration between a medieval historian and a professor of psychiatry, this enthralling book applies modern biological and psychological research findings to the lives of medieval mystics and ascetics. Drawing upon a database of over 1,400 medieval holy persons and in-depth studies of individual saints, this illuminating study examines the relationship between medieval mystical experiences, the religious practices of mortification; laceration of the flesh, sleep deprivation and extreme starvation, and how these actions  produced altered states of consciousness and brain function in the heroic ascetics...read more

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Product Description: The 12 articles reprinted here represent key studies in the process by which the "stirpes Tortulfi" created a great dynasty and built a successful state in Francia Occidentalis. The early history of the Agenvin dynasty building is lightly sketched, while showing how a family passes first into the aristocracy and then into the nobility...read more

Product Description: In the late 6th century Gundovald, a Frank of royal blood, returned from a lengthy exile in Italy and Constantinople to establish a "regnum" in the south western part of Gaul. His half-brother, Guntram, who ruled the neighbouring Burgundian region, vigorously opposed this intrusion...read more