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Medieval society, according to a well-known description current at the time, was divided between those who prayed, those who fought, and those who worked.(1) While modern scholarship would add nuance [...]

By PETER SPUFFORD (London: Thames and Hudson, 2002; pp. 432. 24.95 £). PETER Spufford is well known to medievalists as the author of an excellent book on Money and its [...]

English historiography has been far less marked by the impact of Norbert Elias's The Civilizing Process (first published in 1939) than has the German, the French and the Italian. Even [...]

Towns in Decline, AD 100-1600, ed. T. R. Slater (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000; pp. 325. 49.95 £). The fall of cities is one of the great historical themes, from Babylon and [...]

Medieval British Towns, by Heather Swanson (London: Macmillan, 1999; pp. 161. Pb. 13.99 £). The fall of cities is one of the great historical themes, from Babylon and Troy to [...]

Historical Perspectives on Memory, ed. Anne Ollila (Helsinki: SHS, 1999; pp. 222. N.p.). Perhaps it is too early to say that reports of the death of history have been exaggerated. [...]

While the dominant quality of Peter Godman's book is its density of cultural texture, Christine Raffini, in Marsilio Ficino, Pietro Bembo, Baldassare Castiglione. Philosophical, Aesthetic, and Political Approaches in Renaissance [...]

The vitality and the perceived relevance of classical learning in the context of late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Florence is vividly conveyed by Peter Godman in From Poliziano to Machiavelli. [...]

A question for our times: Is it possible that a major civic university could be extinguished, vanishing so completely that subsequent generations would deny that it had ever existed? Yes, [...]

Dante and the City, by Catherine Keen (Stroud: Tempus, 2003; pp. 288. Pb. 19.99 £). During his long years of political exile, Dante repeatedly recalled, in his letters and in [...]

by Ira Rosario (Woodbridge: Boydell P., 2000; pp. xvii + 155. 45 £). The Emperor Charles IV was one of the most remarkable of all medieval rulers; we also happen [...]

City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe, ed. Barbara A. Hanawalt and Kathryn L. Reyerson (Minneapolis/London: U. of Minnesota P., 1994; pp. xx + 331. Pb. $19.95) presents a mixed bag [...]

The history of childhood remains largely unwritten; and what has been published has not always advanced understanding. The strange notions, endorsed by certain scholars, that the very conception of childhood [...]