Medieval Lives
Series · 9 books · 2021-2025
Books in series
#4
Marco Polo and His World
2024
Aged seventeen, Marco Polo left his home in Venice on a continent-spanning adventure that lasted for nearly a quarter of a century. Imprisoned in Genoa five years later, he collaborated with Arthurian romance writer Rustichello of Pisa on a work they called The Description of the World. Their book recounted ‘all the greatest marvels and great diversities of Greater Armenia, Persia, the Tartars, India, and many other provinces’. In Marco Polo and His World Sharon Kinoshita brings these marvels to life, describing the rich commodities, plants, people and animals that Marco encountered and recorded. Copiously illustrated, and ranging from Venice, Genoa and Pisa to Khanbaliq, Quinsai and Zaytun, this is a vivid account of Marco Polo’s astounding adventures.
#9
Bede and the Theory of Everything
2023
An accessible biography of the venerable Bede, regarded as the father of English history.
This book investigates the life and world of Bede (c. 673–735), the foremost scholar of the early Middle Ages and the “father of English history.” It examines his notable feats, including calculating the first tide tables, creating the Ceolfrith Bibles and the Lindisfarne Gospels, writing the earliest extant Old English poetry, and composing his famous Ecclesiastical History of the English People . In addition to providing an accessible overview of Bede’s life and work, Michelle P. Brown describes new discoveries regarding Bede’s handwriting, his historical research, and his previously lost Old English translation of St John’s Gospel, dictated on his deathbed.
#12
Andrey Rublev
The Artist and His World
2023
A critical biography of the most celebrated religious icon painter in medieval Russia.
A monk from Moscow, Andrey Rublev (c.1360–c.1430) is heralded as the greatest painter of religious icons and frescos in medieval Russia. Nevertheless, his life remains largely mysterious to historians and devotees alike. In this book, Robin Milner-Gulland provides the first English-language account of the artist’s life as a window into the world of medieval Moscow. Beautifully illustrated with previously unpublished images, Andrey Rublev offers an accessible introduction to the artist’s medieval world and his continuing significance today.
#13
Alle Thyng Hath Tyme
Time and Medieval Life
2023
An insightful account of how medieval people experienced time.
Alle Thyng Hath Tyme recreates medieval people’s experience of time as continuous, discontinuous, linear, and cyclical—from creation through judgment and into eternity. Medieval people measured time by natural phenomena such as sunrise and sunset, the motion of the stars, or the progress of the seasons, even as the late-medieval invention of the mechanical clock made time-reckoning more precise. Negotiating these mixed and competing systems, Gillian Adler and Paul Strohm show how medieval people gained a nuanced and expansive sense of time that rewards attention today.
#14
Albertus Magnus and the World of Nature
2022
The first comprehensive English-language biography of Albert the Great in a century.
As well as being an important medieval theologian, Albertus Magnus (Albert the Great) also made significant contributions to the study of astronomy, geography, and natural philosophy, and his studies of the natural world led Pope Pius XII to declare Albert the patron saint of the natural sciences. Dante Alighieri acknowledged a substantial debt to Albert’s work, and in the Divine Comedy placed him equal with his celebrated student and brother Dominican, Thomas Aquinas.
In this book, the first full, scholarly biography in English for nearly a century, Irven M. Resnick and Kenneth F. Kitchell Jr. narrate Albert’s key contributions to natural philosophy and the history of science, while also revealing the insights into medieval life and customs that his writings provide.
#15
Christine de Pizan
Life, Work, Legacy
2021
The first popular biography of a pioneering feminist thinker and writer of medieval Paris.
The daughter of a court intellectual, Christine de Pizan dwelled within the cultural heart of late-medieval Paris. In the face of personal tragedy, she learned the tools of the book trade, writing more than forty works that included poetry, historical and political treatises, and defenses of women. In this new biography—the first written for a general audience—Charlotte Cooper-Davis discusses the life and work of this pioneering female thinker and writer. She shows how Christine de Pizan’s inspiration came from the world around her, situates her as an entrepreneur within the context of her times and place, and finally examines her influence on the most avant-garde of feminist artists, through whom she is slowly making a return into mainstream popular culture.
#16
Margery Kempe
A Mixed Life
2021
A fresh account of the medieval mystic, traveling pilgrim, and pioneering memoirist Margery Kempe.
This is a new account of the medieval mystic and pilgrim Margery Kempe. Kempe, who had fourteen children, traveled all over Europe and recorded a series of unusual events and religious visions in her work The Book of Margery Kempe, which is often called the first autobiography in the English language. Anthony Bale charts Kempe’s life and tells her story through the places, relationships, objects, and experiences that influenced her. Extensive quotations from Kempe’s Book accompany generous illustrations, giving a fascinating insight into the life of a medieval woman. Margery Kempe is situated within the religious controversies of her time, and her religious visions and later years put in context. And lastly, Bale tells the extraordinary story of the rediscovery, in the 1930s, of the unique manuscript of her autobiography.
#17
Richard the Lionheart
In Life and in Legend
2025
A deep dive into the myth and history surrounding England’s crusader king.
How did Richard the Lionheart, who once said he would sell London if he found a buyer, become celebrated as the ideal of English chivalry? This book examines the life of Richard I (1157–1199) through the captivating stories told about him, from the Middle Ages to today.
Tales of Richard’s exploits were as colorful as they were varied, ranging from tales of wielding King Arthur’s sword to his descent from the devil (or just a cannibal). Instead of separating fact from fiction, this book explores how tales about Richard I shaped his legacy in his time and ours.
Valuable to general readers and scholars alike, and combining medieval and modern literature, this book is the only account to study Richard I from the perspective of history and literature.
#18
Eleanor of Aquitaine
Woman, Queen and Legend
2025
An approachable biography of medieval Europe’s most powerful (and enigmatic) queen.
Eleanor of Aquitaine (1124–1204), the legendary queen of France and later England, has captivated historians for centuries. Heiress to the Duchy of Aquitaine, wife to King Henry II, and mother to Richard the Lionheart and King John, Eleanor lived a life marked by power, influence, and myth. This concise, accessible history sheds new light on Eleanor, cutting through the hearsay and slander with a close reading of primary sources. In it, Lindy Grant highlights the family bonds that shaped Eleanor’s power and identity and demonstrates that Eleanor’s story is one of resilience.
Authors
Sharon Kinoshita
Author · 2 books
Sharon Kinoshita is Professor of Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). Her work is primarily focused in Medieval Mediterranean Studies. She is co-Director of the UCSC Center for Mediterranean Studies as well as the University of California Multicampus Research Project Initiative in Mediterranean Studies (http://mediterraneanseminar.org). Research areas: Old French Literature The Medieval Culture of Empire Vernacular French representations Medieval Mediterranean Literature Chretien de Troyes Marie de France Marco Polo
Michelle P. Brown
Author · 11 books
Michelle P. Brown is Professor Emerita of Medieval Manuscript Studies at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. She was previously (1986–2004) Curator of Illuminated Manuscripts at the British Library. She has been a historical consultant and on-screen expert on several radio and television programmes. She has published books on the Lindisfarne Gospels, the Luttrell Psalter and the Holkham Bible.
Anthony Bale
Author · 2 books
Professor Anthony Bale, MA (Oxford), MA (York), DPhil (Oxford), is Professor of Medieval Studies at Birkbeck College, University of London, England. Anthony Bale teaches on the BA English, MA Medieval Literature and Culture and supervises doctoral students working on medieval topics. Bale has published widely on medieval literature, culture, and religion. In particular, his work has explored relations between Christians and Jews in medieval England. He has also edited and translated several medieval texts, and has recently published a new translation and edition of The Book of Margery Kempe with Oxford University Press. His current work explores travel and pilgrimage between England and the Holy Land in the later Middle Ages. He has received fellowships from the Arts & Humanities Research Council, the Australian Research Councils, the British Academy, the Huntington Library, the Leverhulme Trust, the University of Michigan Frankel Institute, and the National Humanities Center.
Lindy Grant
Author · 2 books
A specialist in Capetian France, Lindy M. Grant is professor of medieval history at the University of Reading.
