In 1213, Pope Innocent III issued his letter Vineam Domini, thundering against the enemies of Christendom--the "beasts of many kinds that are attempting to destroy the vineyard of the Lord of Sabaoth"--and announcing a General Council of the Latin Church as redress. The Fourth Lateran Council, which convened in 1215, was unprecedented in its scope and impact, and it called for the Fifth Crusade as what its participants hoped would be the final defense of Christendom. For the first time, a collection of extensively annotated and translated documents illustrates the transformation of the crusade movement. Crusade and Christendom explores the way in which the crusade was used to define and extend the intellectual, religious, and political boundaries of Latin Christendom. It also illustrates how the very concept of the crusade was shaped by the urge to define and reform communities of practice and belief within Latin Christendom and by Latin Christendom's relationship with other communities, including dissenting political powers and heretical groups, the Moors in Spain, the Mongols, and eastern Christians. The relationship of the crusade to reform and missionary movements is also explored, as is its impact on individual lives and devotion. The selection of documents and bibliography incorporates and brings to life recent developments in crusade scholarship concerning military logistics and travel in the medieval period, popular and elite participation, the role of women, liturgy and preaching, and the impact of the crusade on western society and its relationship with other cultures and religions. Intended for the undergraduate yet also invaluable for teachers and scholars, this book illustrates how the crusades became crucial for defining and promoting the very concept and boundaries of Latin Christendom. It provides translations of and commentaries on key original sources and up-to-date bibliographic materials.

Two leading academic scholars offer the first comprehensive source reader on the Eastern Orthodox church for the English-speaking world. Designed specifically for students and accessible to readers with little or no previous knowledge of theology or religious history, this essential, one-of-a-kind work frames, explores, and interprets Eastern Orthodoxy through the use of primary sources and documents. Lively introductions and short narratives that touch on anthropology, art, law, literature, music, politics, women's studies, and a host of other areas are woven together to provide a coherent and fascinating history of the Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition.

Despite their centrality to the history of Christianity in the East, Syriac Christians have generally been excluded from modern accounts of the faith. Originating from Mesopotamia, Syriac Christians quickly spread across Eurasia, from Turkey to China, developing a distinctive and influential form of Christianity that connected empires. These early Christians wrote in the language of Syriac, the lingua franca of the late ancient Middle East, and a dialect of Aramaic, the language of Jesus. Collecting key foundational Syriac texts from the second to the fourteenth centuries, this anthology provides unique access to one of the most intriguing, but least known, branches of the Christian tradition.  

First published in 1938, Jacob Rader Marcus's The Jews in The Medieval World has remained an indispensable resource for its comprehensive view of Jewish historical experience from late antiquity through the early modern period, viewed through primary source documents in English translation. In this new work based on Marcus's classic source book, Marc Saperstein has recast the volume's focus, now fully centered on Christian Europe, updated the work's organizational format, and added seventy-two new annotated sources. In his compelling introduction, Saperstein supplies a modern and thought-provoking discussion of the changing values that influence our understanding of history, analyzing issues surrounding periodization, organization, and inclusion. Through a vast range of documents written by Jews and Christians, including historical narratives, legal opinions, martyrologies, memoirs, polemics, epitaphs, advertisements, folktales, ethical and pedagogical writings, book prefaces and colophons, commentaries, and communal statutes, The Jews in Christian Europe allows the actors and witnesses of events to speak for themselves.

This collection takes the Hebrew book as a focal point for exploring the production, circulation, transmission, and consumption of Hebrew texts in the cultural context of the late medieval western Mediterranean. The authors elaborate in particular on questions concerning private vs. public book production and collection; the religious and cultural components of manuscript patronage; collaboration between Christian and Jewish scribes, artists, and printers; and the impact of printing on Iberian Jewish communities. Unlike other approaches that take context into consideration merely to explain certain variations in the history of the Hebrew book from antiquity to the present, the premise of these essays is that context constitutes the basis for understanding practices and processes in late medieval Jewish book culture.

Complete with introductions, full commentary, glossary, and a guide to further reading, Medieval Worlds is a comprehensive sourcebook for the study of Western Europe from the fifth to the fifteenth century. Drawing on a wide range of documents, from chronicles, legal, state, and church documents, to biographies, poems, and letters from all over Europe, the authors expertly illustrate to the reader the unity - and complexity - of the medieval world. Amongst many more, central issues discussed include: the diverse world of monasteries the Papacy the Crusades women the roles of the town and countryside. Medieval Worlds presents the reader with a view of the medieval era as it was: one of immense diversity with openness to new ideas, and outreach in areas from technology to natural philosophy.

Reading Medieval Latin is an introduction to medieval Latin in its cultural and historical context and is designed to serve the needs of students who have completed the learning of basic classical Latin morphology and syntax. (Users of Reading Latin will find that it follows on after the end of section 5 of that course.) It is an anthology, organised chronologically and thematically in four parts. Each part is divided into chapters with introductory material, texts, and commentaries which give help with syntax, sentence-structure, and background. There are brief sections on medieval orthography and grammar, together with a vocabulary which includes words (or meanings) not found in standard classical dictionaries. The texts chosen cover areas of interest to students of medieval history, philosophy, theology, and literature.

The third edition of Reading the Middle Agesretains the strengths of previous editions--thematic and geographical diversity, clear and informative introductions, and close integration with A Short History of the Middle Ages--and adds significant new materials, especially on the Byzantine and Islamic worlds and the Mediterranean region. The stunning "Reading through Looking" color insert, which showcases medieval artifacts and introduces how historians study medieval material culture, has been expanded to include essays on weapons and warfare by medievalist Riccardo Cristiani. New maps, timelines, and genealogies aid readers in following knotty but revealing sources. On the History Matters website (www.utphistorymatters.com), students have access to hundreds of Questions for Reflection.

The first Christians to meet Muslims were not Latin-speaking Christians from the western Mediterranean or Greek-speaking Christians from Constantinople but rather Christians from northern Mesopotamia who spoke the Aramaic dialect of Syriac. Living under Muslim rule from the seventh century to the present, Syriac Christians wrote the first and most extensive accounts of Islam, describing a complicated set of religious and cultural exchanges not reducible to the solely antagonistic. Through its critical introductions and new translations of this invaluable historical material, When Christians First Met Muslims allows scholars, students, and the general public to explore the earliest interactions between what eventually became the world's two largest religions, shedding new light on Islamic history and Christian-Muslim relations.