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Das Buch präsentiert die Beiträge einer interdisziplinären Tagung, die 2006 vom Historischen Institut der Universität Bern und der Abegg-Stiftung organisiert wurde. Drei Themenkreise stehen im Mittelpunkt: einzelne Gewandelemente wie Kopfbedeckungen oder Schuhe, soziale Schichtung und ständische Differenzierung, wie etwa fürstliche, städtische oder klösterliche Kleidung, sowie symbolische Aspekte von Kleidung und Mode. Gemeinschaftliche Publikation der Abegg-Stiftung und des Schwabe Verlags, Basel

The complex relationship between women and arms in Europe, from Roman times to about 1200, is reexamined in light of literary traditions, historical records, and the modern preoccupation with women warriors that inevitably inflects historical judgments. Overall, the issue has suffered from a scarcity of hard evidence and an abundant politics of interpretation. Some historical examples indicate an acceptance of female hereditary governance in Europe during the early middle ages, including the command of troops. Yet many historians have greeted the idea of a woman wielding a sword in battle with skepticism. Figures such as Boudicca who led a revolt against the Romans in Britain, the Anglo-Saxon queen Aethelflaed, and the later women who fought in the crusades, or defended their own property, have been politicized. Narratives like that of the Old Testament Judith and the Nibelungenlied became ideological tools to raise the alarm about phallic women. By the thirteenth century, Saxon law declared that a widow must immediately surrender her husband's sword to the male heir. Female fighters were increasingly vilified, culminating in the accusation of heresy against Joan of Arc, and her execution.

Rethinking the boundaries of Europe is an earnest exercise that calls for critical reconsideration of our existing spatio-temporal constructions. First of all, it should be established that this kind of an exercise does not only necessitate a re-mapping of the cartographical space within which "Europe" is placed, but more so a re-thinking of the intellectual space within which history is situated.

"Of all the illustrations depicting a section of the earth's surface, the first to resemble the actual circumstances closely are Medieval sea charts known as Portolan charts. These depictions appeared quite suddenly in the thirteenth century and exhibit a conspicuous chordal network, a linear system based on the point of the wind. Mathematical investigations of the coastlines shown on these sea charts have revealed an astonishing degree of precision in comparison to modern charts. It is not known what methods were used to determine the geodetic foundations for the Portolan works. The question of authorship leads back to Roman and Hellenistic antiquity, and it is not impossible to imagine a set of circumstances that could have allowed these mysterious documents to survive ancient times and be handed down through the generations to the Medieval period." (author's abstract)