Product Description: In this innovative new study, Patrick Geary rejects traditional notions of European history to present the Merovingian period (ca. 400-750) as an integral part of Late Antiquity. Drawing on current scholarship in archaeology, cultural history, historical ethnography, and other fields, the author formulates an original interpretation not only of Merovingian history but of the Romano-barbarian world from which it arose...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: To obtain sacred relics, medieval monks plundered tombs, avaricious merchants raided churches, and relic-mongers scoured the Roman catacombs. In a revised edition of Furta Sacra, Patrick Geary considers the social and cultural context for these acts, asking how the relics were perceived and why the thefts met with the approval of medieval Christians...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: "Fichtenau delivers a fascinating view of tenth-century Europe on the eve of the second millenium. He writes this hoping we, on the eve of the third millennium, will take time also to look at who we are and at our world. . . . This engaging book lucidly carries the reader through an amazing amount of material...read more

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Product Description: In Phantoms of Remembrance, Patrick Geary makes important new inroads into the widely discussed topic of historical memory, vividly evoking the everyday lives of eleventh-century people and both their written and nonwritten ways of preserving the past...read more

Product Description: This volume continues the "Authors of the Middle Ages" series. It discusses the life, writings and influence of Peter Abelard, and the career as well as works of Honorius Augustodunensis.

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Product Description: Volume II: The Later Middle Ages begins in the late eleventh century. For this new edition, Patrick J. Geary has incorporated more bibliographical information into the introductions to the readings. St. Thomas Aquinas' "On the Proof of God's Existence," selections from the Saxon Mirror (Sachsenspiegel), and sources from Poland have been added...read more

Product Description: Volume I: The Early Middle Ages includes documents written up to the eleventh century. For this new edition, Patrick J. Geary has incorporated more bibliographical information into the introductions to the readings. Dhuoda's Handbook for her Son (Liber Manualis) is now included...read more

Product Description: Modern-day Europeans by the millions proudly trace back their national identities to the Celts, Franks, Gauls, Goths, Huns, or Serbs--or some combination of the various peoples who inhabited, traversed, or pillaged their continent more than a thousand years ago...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: In recent decades, historians attempting to understand the transition from the world of late antiquity with its unitary imperial system to the medieval Europe of separate kingdoms have become increasingly concerned with the role of early medieval gentes, or peoples, in the end of the former and the constitution of the latter...read more

In these four artfully crafted essays, Patrick Geary explores the way ancient and medieval authors wrote about women. Geary describes the often marginal role women played in origin legends from antiquity until the twelfth century. Not confining himself to one religious tradition or region, he probes the tensions between women in biblical, classical, and medieval myths (such as Eve, Mary, Amazons, princesses, and countesses), and actual women in ancient and medieval societies. Using these legends as a lens through which to study patriarchal societies, Geary chooses moments and texts that illustrate how ancient authors (all of whom were male) confronted the place of women in their society. Unlike other books on the subject, Women at the Beginning attempts to understand not only the place of women in these legends, but also the ideologies of the men who wrote about them. The book concludes that the authors of these stories were themselves struggling with ambivalence about women in their own worlds and that this struggle manifested itself in their writings.

Product Description: Medieval Concepts of the Past shows how the history of the Middle Ages is being reshaped by leading medieval historians in Germany and the United States in light of cultural and social-scientific investigations into ritual, language, and memory...read more

Product Description: This is the third edition of Patrick J. Geary's highly acclaimed collection of source materials on the medieval period. (A single-volume format of the complete text is also available.) As before, four principles guide the selection of materials...read more