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The tenth anniversary of the 'Journal' includes pieces by some of the most distinguished scholars of military history, including an analysis of tenth-century Ottonian warfare on the eastern frontier of the Empire by David and Bernard Bachrach. As ever, the contributions cover a wide span both chronologically (from an analysis of the careers of Justinian's generals in the sixth century, to a study of intelligence-gathering in the Guelders War at the start of the sixteenth) and geographically (from Michael Prestwich's transcription of excerpts from the Hagnaby chronicle describing Edward I's wars in Wales, to a detailed treatment of the Ottoman-Hungarian campaigns of 1442). Other papers address the battle of Rio Salado (1340); the nature of chivalric warfare as presented in the contemporary biography of "le bon duc" Louis de Bourbon (1337-1410); and the military content of the 'Lay of the Cid'. Contributors: David Alan Parnell, Bernard S. Bachrach, David Bachrach, Francisco García Fitz, Nicolás Agrait, Steven Muhlberger, John J. Jefferson, James P. Ward, Michael Prestwich

Mental (Dis)order in the Late Middle Ages sketches the boundaries between mental, social and physical order and various states of disorder - unexpected mood swings, fury, melancholy, stress, insomnia, and demonic influence - and focuses on the interaction between lay and elite cultures.

Introduction : peacemaking and the restraint of violence in high medieval Europe / Simon Lebouteiller and Louisa Taylor -- The submission of rebellious cities in the Roman-German Empire / Hermann Kamp -- Peace or punishment in medieval England : from 1215 to 1322 / Stephen D. White -- 'Be at peace with God and me' : violence, war, and royal responses to insurrection in medieval Scotland, c. 1100-1286 / Iain MacIness -- Conflicts and the use of exile as a means of restraining violence in eleventh- and twelfth-century / Castile-León -- The 'old peace' as a peacemaking institution in thirteenth-century German-Russian trade treaties / Tobias Boestad -- Encounters at the water's edge : peace meetings on rivers, bridges, and islands in medieval Scandinavia / Simon Lebouteiller -- God's peace and the king's peace in high medieval Norway / David Brégaint -- Food, peacemaking, and maintenance in twelfth- and thirteenth-century England / Lars Kjær -- Food and clothing in rituals of peacemaking in medieval Europe and the Latin East / Yvonne Friedman -- Cloth, clothing, and peacemaking in Byzantium : from the second part of the eleventh century to the middle of the thirteenth century / Nicolas Drocourt.

"Beginning in the 12th century, taxation increasingly became an essential component of medieval society in most part of Europe. The state building process, relations between princes and their subject cities or between citizens and their rulers, were deeply shaped by fiscal practices. Although medieval taxation has produced many publications over the past decades there remains no synthesis of this important subject. This volume provides a comprehensive overview on a European scale and suggests new paths of inquiry. It examines the fiscal systems and practices of medieval Europe, including essential themes such as medieval fiscal theory and the power to tax; royal, seigneurial and urban taxation; and Church taxation. It goes on to survey the entire European continent, as well as including comparative chapters on the non-European medieval world, exploring questions on how taxation developed and functioned; what kinds of problems authorities encountered assessing their fiscal power; and the circulation of fiscal cultures and practices across cities and kingdoms. The book also provides a glossary of the most important types of medieval taxes, giving an essential definition of key terms cited in the chapters. The Routledge Handbook of Taxation in Medieval Europe will appeal to a large audience, from seasoned scholars who need a comprehensive synthesis, to students and younger scholars in search of an overview of this critical subject"--

On various occasions civilized man has found himself marching side by side with men at lower (or different) levels of social and cultural development. The great civilizations were accustomed to compare themselves quite favorably with these barbarian neighbors, whom they viewed with varying degrees of condescension, suspicion, scorn, and dread. Civilized man, with his urban institutions, his agrarian way of life, his technological and economic sophistication, and his conspicuous literary and plastic artistry, conceived of himself as superior to these other folk with whom he sometimes competed for domination of the richer parts of the world. Long before the ancient Greeks invented the word 'barbarian' to describe the Scythians and other peoples who differed from them in not subscribing to the ideals of Greek culture, other civilized men had expressed similar sentiments toward alien peoples with whom they came into contact. This was the point that the old Akkadian author was trying to make when he spoke of neighboring tribes as people 'who knew not grain' and who 'had never known a city'.* Subsequently, both in Asia and Europe the spokesmen of a civilized style of life expressed their dislike or distrust of the barbarian by means of a stereotyped image of him which was couched in terms favorable to civilization. A Chinese chronicler, for example, remarked of the fierce Hsiung-Nu, who troubled the peace of the Middle Kingdom, that 'their only concern is self-advantage, and they know nothing of propriety and righteousness'.