Here are ten books published in 2024 that medievalists will enjoy and are free to download and read.
Luxembourg Court Cultures in the Long Fourteenth Century: Performing Empire, Celebrating Kingship
Edited by Karl Kügle, Ingrid Ciulisová and Václav Žůrek
The first collection of essays in the English language dedicated to the cultural achievements and politics of one of the most important ruling houses of late medieval Europe. The house of Luxembourg between 1308 and 1437 is best known today for its principal royal and imperial representatives, Henry VII, John the Blind, Charles IV, and Charles’s two sons, Wenceslas and Sigismund – a group of rulers who, for better or worse, shaped the political destiny of much of Europe during the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries.
Click here to download and read it
The Search for Wellbeing and Health between the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period
Edited by Javier López Rider
This book compiles a series of works on cosmetics and health care, covering different geographical areas of Europe. The studies also focus on different cultures, with some chapters dedicated to the Hebrew sphere, others to the Muslim world, and a larger percentage dealing with Christian society.
Click here to download and read it
Carolingian Medical Knowledge and Practice, c.775-900: New Approaches to Recipe Literature
Series
By Claire Burridge
This book explores the practicality and applicability of the medical recipes recorded in early medieval manuscripts. It takes an original, dual approach to these overlooked and understudied texts by not only analysing their practical usability, but by also re-evaluating these writings in the light of osteological evidence. Could those individuals with access to the manuscripts have used them in the context of therapy? And would they have wanted to do so? In asking these questions, this book unpacks longstanding assumptions about the intended purposes of medical texts, offering a new perspective on the relationship between medical knowledge and practice.
Click here to download and read it
Literatures of the Hundred Years War
Edited by Daniel Davies and R. D. Perry
From England and France to the Low Countries, Wales, Scotland, and Italy, the Hundred Years War (1337-1453) fundamentally shaped late-medieval literature. This volume adopts an expansive focus to reveal the transnational literary consequences of over a century of international conflict. While traditionally seen as an Anglo-French conflict, the Hundred Years War was a multilateral conflict with connections across the continent through alliances and proxy battles. Writers, whether as witnesses, diplomats, or provocateurs, played key roles in shaping the conflict, and the conflict equally impacted the course of literary history. The volume shows how a wide variety of genres and works are deeply engaged with responses to the war, from women’s visionary writing by figures like Catherine of Siena to anonymous lyric poetry, from Christine de Pizan’s Book of the City of Ladies to Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
Click here to download and read it
The Demise of Norse Religion: Dismantling and Defending the Old Order in Viking Age Scandinavia
By Olof Sundqvist
When describing the transition from Old Norse religion to Christianity in recent studies, the concept of “Christianization” is often applied. To a large extent this historiography focuses on the outcome of the encounter, namely the description of early Medieval Christianity and the new Christian society. The purpose of the present study is to concentrate more exclusively on the Old Norse religion during this period of change and to analyze the processes behind its disappearance on an official level of the society. More specifically this study concentrates on the role of Viking kings and indigenous agency in the winding up of the old religion. An actor-oriented perspective will thus be established, which focuses on the actions, methods and strategies applied by the early Christian Viking kings when dismantling the religious tradition that had previously formed their lives. In addition, the resistance that some pagan chieftains offered against these Christian kings is discussed as well as the question why they defended the old religious tradition
Click here to download and read it
The Women Who Ruled China: Buddhism, Multiculturalism, and Governance in the Sixth Century
By Stephanie Balkwill
In the late fifth century, a girl whose name has been forgotten by history was born at the edge of the Chinese empire. By the time of her death, she had transformed herself into Empress Dowager Ling, one of the most powerful politicians of her age and one of the first of many Buddhist women to wield incredible influence in dynastic East Asia. In this book, Stephanie Balkwill documents the Empress Dowager’s rise to power and life on the throne against the broader world of imperial China under the rule of the Northern Wei dynasty, a foreign people from Inner Asia who built their capital deep in the Chinese heartland.
Click here to download and read it
Islamic Sensory History, Volume 2: 600–1500
Edited by Christian Lange and Adam Bursi
This book presents a selection of texts translated into English from Arabic and Persian. These selected texts all offer illustrative engagements with issues related to the sensorium in different times, places, and social milieus throughout the early and medieval history of Islamic societies. Each chapter is prefaced by an introductory essay by the translator, with specific attention to the role of the senses in the translated text’s language, genre, and social context.
Click here to download and read it
Diplomatics: the Science of Reading Medieval Documents: A Handbook
By Federico Gallo
Diplomatics is the science of studying documents, especially medieval documents. “Diplomatics” has nothing to do with diplomacy: the word comes from “diploma”, meaning a certified, juridical written text. The objects of study for the discipline are: public and private documents, their external and internal characteristics, language, chronology, production, transmission, registration, modern editions. This handbook fills a significant gap in Diplomatic studies because it finally provides the English-speaking public with an opportunity to learn about the fascinating world of medieval documentation.
Click here to download and read it
English Birth Girdles: Devotions for Women in “Travell of Childe”
By Mary Morse
In medieval England, women in labor wrapped birth girdles around their abdomens to protect themselves and their unborn children. These parchment or paper rolls replicated the “girdle relics” of the Virgin Mary and other saints loaned to queens and noblewomen, extending childbirth protection to women of all classes. This book examines the texts and images of nine English birth girdles produced between the reigns of Richard II and Henry VIII. Cultural artifacts of lay devotion within the birthing chamber, the birth girdles offered the solace and promise of faith to the parturient woman and her attendants amid religious dissent, political upheaval, recurring epidemics, and the onset of print.
Click here to download and read it
Crusade: The Uses of a Word from the Middle Ages to the Present
Edited by Benjamin Weber
This book offers the first comprehensive view of the historical construction of the meaning of the word ‘crusade’ through comparative perspectives from the Middle Ages to the 21st century. Its 11 articles, introduction and conclusion examine different uses of the word, in a single language or within a specific context, and analyse each of them as a different conceptualisation of the crusading phenomenon. The book explains the progressive widening of the meaning of the term, from a military expedition to Jerusalem to the most metaphorical uses. It demonstrates the differences between the connotations of the word in various languages and cultures and, thus, the variety of its possible uses. It insists on the reluctance and reticence that ‘crusade’ has always provoked since the Middle Ages, precisely because the conceptualisation it implied was not shared by all.
Click here to download and read it
There are many more books about the Middle Ages that are open access. One of the best places to find them is the Directory of Open Access Books.
Here are ten books published in 2024 that medievalists will enjoy and are free to download and read.
Luxembourg Court Cultures in the Long Fourteenth Century: Performing Empire, Celebrating Kingship
Edited by Karl Kügle, Ingrid Ciulisová and Václav Žůrek
The first collection of essays in the English language dedicated to the cultural achievements and politics of one of the most important ruling houses of late medieval Europe. The house of Luxembourg between 1308 and 1437 is best known today for its principal royal and imperial representatives, Henry VII, John the Blind, Charles IV, and Charles’s two sons, Wenceslas and Sigismund – a group of rulers who, for better or worse, shaped the political destiny of much of Europe during the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries.
Click here to download and read it
The Search for Wellbeing and Health between the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period
Edited by Javier López Rider
This book compiles a series of works on cosmetics and health care, covering different geographical areas of Europe. The studies also focus on different cultures, with some chapters dedicated to the Hebrew sphere, others to the Muslim world, and a larger percentage dealing with Christian society.
Click here to download and read it
Carolingian Medical Knowledge and Practice, c.775-900: New Approaches to Recipe Literature
Series
By Claire Burridge
This book explores the practicality and applicability of the medical recipes recorded in early medieval manuscripts. It takes an original, dual approach to these overlooked and understudied texts by not only analysing their practical usability, but by also re-evaluating these writings in the light of osteological evidence. Could those individuals with access to the manuscripts have used them in the context of therapy? And would they have wanted to do so? In asking these questions, this book unpacks longstanding assumptions about the intended purposes of medical texts, offering a new perspective on the relationship between medical knowledge and practice.
Click here to download and read it
Literatures of the Hundred Years War
Edited by Daniel Davies and R. D. Perry
From England and France to the Low Countries, Wales, Scotland, and Italy, the Hundred Years War (1337-1453) fundamentally shaped late-medieval literature. This volume adopts an expansive focus to reveal the transnational literary consequences of over a century of international conflict. While traditionally seen as an Anglo-French conflict, the Hundred Years War was a multilateral conflict with connections across the continent through alliances and proxy battles. Writers, whether as witnesses, diplomats, or provocateurs, played key roles in shaping the conflict, and the conflict equally impacted the course of literary history. The volume shows how a wide variety of genres and works are deeply engaged with responses to the war, from women’s visionary writing by figures like Catherine of Siena to anonymous lyric poetry, from Christine de Pizan’s Book of the City of Ladies to Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
Click here to download and read it
The Demise of Norse Religion: Dismantling and Defending the Old Order in Viking Age Scandinavia
By Olof Sundqvist
When describing the transition from Old Norse religion to Christianity in recent studies, the concept of “Christianization” is often applied. To a large extent this historiography focuses on the outcome of the encounter, namely the description of early Medieval Christianity and the new Christian society. The purpose of the present study is to concentrate more exclusively on the Old Norse religion during this period of change and to analyze the processes behind its disappearance on an official level of the society. More specifically this study concentrates on the role of Viking kings and indigenous agency in the winding up of the old religion. An actor-oriented perspective will thus be established, which focuses on the actions, methods and strategies applied by the early Christian Viking kings when dismantling the religious tradition that had previously formed their lives. In addition, the resistance that some pagan chieftains offered against these Christian kings is discussed as well as the question why they defended the old religious tradition
Click here to download and read it
The Women Who Ruled China: Buddhism, Multiculturalism, and Governance in the Sixth Century
By Stephanie Balkwill
In the late fifth century, a girl whose name has been forgotten by history was born at the edge of the Chinese empire. By the time of her death, she had transformed herself into Empress Dowager Ling, one of the most powerful politicians of her age and one of the first of many Buddhist women to wield incredible influence in dynastic East Asia. In this book, Stephanie Balkwill documents the Empress Dowager’s rise to power and life on the throne against the broader world of imperial China under the rule of the Northern Wei dynasty, a foreign people from Inner Asia who built their capital deep in the Chinese heartland.
Click here to download and read it
Islamic Sensory History, Volume 2: 600–1500
Edited by Christian Lange and Adam Bursi
This book presents a selection of texts translated into English from Arabic and Persian. These selected texts all offer illustrative engagements with issues related to the sensorium in different times, places, and social milieus throughout the early and medieval history of Islamic societies. Each chapter is prefaced by an introductory essay by the translator, with specific attention to the role of the senses in the translated text’s language, genre, and social context.
Click here to download and read it
Diplomatics: the Science of Reading Medieval Documents: A Handbook
By Federico Gallo
Diplomatics is the science of studying documents, especially medieval documents. “Diplomatics” has nothing to do with diplomacy: the word comes from “diploma”, meaning a certified, juridical written text. The objects of study for the discipline are: public and private documents, their external and internal characteristics, language, chronology, production, transmission, registration, modern editions. This handbook fills a significant gap in Diplomatic studies because it finally provides the English-speaking public with an opportunity to learn about the fascinating world of medieval documentation.
Click here to download and read it
English Birth Girdles: Devotions for Women in “Travell of Childe”
By Mary Morse
In medieval England, women in labor wrapped birth girdles around their abdomens to protect themselves and their unborn children. These parchment or paper rolls replicated the “girdle relics” of the Virgin Mary and other saints loaned to queens and noblewomen, extending childbirth protection to women of all classes. This book examines the texts and images of nine English birth girdles produced between the reigns of Richard II and Henry VIII. Cultural artifacts of lay devotion within the birthing chamber, the birth girdles offered the solace and promise of faith to the parturient woman and her attendants amid religious dissent, political upheaval, recurring epidemics, and the onset of print.
Click here to download and read it
Crusade: The Uses of a Word from the Middle Ages to the Present
Edited by Benjamin Weber
This book offers the first comprehensive view of the historical construction of the meaning of the word ‘crusade’ through comparative perspectives from the Middle Ages to the 21st century. Its 11 articles, introduction and conclusion examine different uses of the word, in a single language or within a specific context, and analyse each of them as a different conceptualisation of the crusading phenomenon. The book explains the progressive widening of the meaning of the term, from a military expedition to Jerusalem to the most metaphorical uses. It demonstrates the differences between the connotations of the word in various languages and cultures and, thus, the variety of its possible uses. It insists on the reluctance and reticence that ‘crusade’ has always provoked since the Middle Ages, precisely because the conceptualisation it implied was not shared by all.
Click here to download and read it
There are many more books about the Middle Ages that are open access. One of the best places to find them is the Directory of Open Access Books.
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