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Relying on internal sources, Wilfried Loth analyses the birth and subsequent development of the European Union, from the launch of the Council of Europe and the Schuman Declaration until the Euro crisis and the contested European presidential election of Jean-Claude Juncker. This book shines a light on the crises of the European integration, such as the failure of the European Defence Community, De Gaulle`s empty chair policy, or the rejection of the European Constitution in France and the Netherlands, but also highlights the indubitable successes that are the Franco-German reconciliation, the establishment of the European common market, and the establishment of an expanding common currency. What this study accomplishes, for the first time, is to illuminate the driving forces behind the European integration process and how it changed European politics and society.

During the medieval and Early Modern period, the Free cities ofCentral and Northern Europe fielded militias which collectively played animportant role in European warfare. The specific military role of the burgher isnot well known outside of the realm of academic specialists in the Englishspeaking world. In order to highlight this to my fellow layperson, I have chosena selection of significant historical events with a special focus on Lombardy,Flanders, Silesia, Bohemia and Poland, in which urban militias played animportant role. The intention is to allow us to review the effectiveness, tacticsand strategic impact of urban militias and their possible relationship to themartial arts of pre-industrial Europe.

Invited experts who study and teach economic history in American, Romanian, Swedish, and Ukrainian universities answer questions about the recent trends and perspectives in the economic history of Eastern Europe. They demonstrate how the relationship between history and other disciplines developed in Eastern European scholarship. They explain the reasons for the relatively underdeveloped scholarly community of the field in the region. Finally, they talk about the applicable theories and concepts which could challenge Gerschenkron's theoretical framework when discussing the history of economy and business in Eastern Europe. Authors mostly accept the suggested statement that the economic history of Eastern Europe is institutionally underdeveloped if compared with Western scholarship. At the same time, they see the situation as a good opportunity for the development of new research projects. The authors emphasize the necessity to "learn the language of other disciplines" as well as to develop skills in data analysis. They also point out that to explain the global economic transformations in history, working with archival sources and understanding the context are as important as the application of economic theories and quantitative analysis.

This volume asks whether there was a common structure, ideology, and image of the household in the medieval Christian West. In the period under examination, noble households often exercised great power in their own right, while even quite humble households were defined as agents of government in the administration of local communities

Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- List of Illustrations -- List of Contributors -- Introduction -- Thea Tomaini -- Part 1 -- Discourses and Intercessions -- Chapter 1 -- The Talking Dead: Exhortations of the Dead to the Living in Anglo-Saxon Writing -- Hilary Fox -- Chapter 2 -- Sudden Death in Early Medieval England and the Anglo-Saxon Fortunes of Men -- Jill Hamilton Clements -- Chapter 3 -- Monumental Memory: The Performance and Enduring Spectacle of Burial in Early Anglo-Saxon England -- Melissa Herman -- Chapter 4 -- Dealing with the Undead in the Later Middle Ages -- Stephen Gordon -- Chapter 5 -- "Look at my Hands:" Physical Presence and the Saintly Intercessor at Wilton -- Kathryn Maude -- Chapter 6 -- The Corpse of Public Opinion: Thomas of Norwich, Anti-Semitism, and Christian Identity -- Mary E. Leech -- Part 2 -- Law and Civic Life -- Chapter 7 -- Outlaws and the Undead: Defining Sacred and Communal Space in Medieval Iceland -- Justin T. Noetzel -- Chapter 8 -- A Funeral Procession from Venice to Milan: Death Rituals for a Late-Medieval Wealthy Merchant* -- Martina Saltamacchia -- Chapter 9 -- Live by the Sea, Die by the Sea: Confronting Death and the Dead in Medieval Liguria, 1140-1240 CE -- Nikki Malain -- Chapter 10 -- The Medieval Cemetery as Ecclesiastical Community: Regulation, Conflict, and Expulsion 1000-1215 -- Anthony Perron -- Chapter 11 -- The Corpse as Testimony: Judgment, Verdict, and the Elizabethan Stage* -- Thea Tomaini -- Part 3 -- Funerary Art and Mementi Mori -- Chapter 12 -- Reappropiated Antiquity in the Funerary Art of the Kingdom of León and Castile in the High Middle Ages* -- Sonsoles García González -- Chapter 13 -- Exploring Late-Medieval English Memento Mori Carved Cadaver Sculptures -- Christina Welch -- Chapter 14 -- Holbein's Mementi Mori -- Libby Karlinger Escobedo -- Afterword.

This volume brings together papers by a group of scholars, distinguished in their own right, in honour of James Brundage. The essays are organised into four sections, each corresponding to an important focus of Brundage's scholarly work. The first section explores the connection between the development of medieval legal and constitutional thought. Thomas Izbicki, Kenneth Pennington, and Charles Reid, Jr. explore various aspects of the jurisprudence of the Ius commune, while James Powell, Michael Gervers and Nicole Hamonic, Olivia Robinson, and Elizabeth Makowski examine how that jurisprudence was applied to various medieval institutions. Brian Tierney and James Muldoon conclude this section by demonstrating two important points: modern ideas of consent in the political sphere and fundamental principles of international law attributed to sixteenth century jurists like Hugo Grotius have deep roots in medieval jurisprudential thought. Patrick Zutshi, R. H. Helmholz, Peter Landau, Marjorie Chibnall, and Edward Peters have written essays that augment Brundage's work on the growth of the legal profession and how traces of a legal education began to emerge in many diverse arenas. The influence of legal thinking on marriage and sexuality was another aspect of Brundage's broad interests. In the third section Richard Kay, Charles Donahue, Jr., and Glenn Olsen explore the intersection of law and marriage and the interplay of legal thought on a central institution of Christian society. The contributions of Jonathan Riley-Smith and Robert Somerville in the fourth section round-out the volume and are devoted to Brundage's path-breaking work on medieval law and the crusading movement. The volume also includes a comprehensive bibliography of Brundage's work. ; https://scholarship.law.edu/fac_books/1093/thumbnail.jpg

A major gap in our understanding of the medieval economy concerns interest rates, especially relating to commercial credit. Although direct evidence about interest rates is scattered and anecdotal, there is much more surviving information about exchange rates. Since both contemporaries and historians have suggested that exchange and rechange transactions could be used to disguise the charging of interest in order to circumvent the usury prohibition, it should be possible to back out implied interest rates from exchange rates. The analysis presented in this article is based on a new dataset of medieval exchange rates collected from commercial correspondence in the archive of Francesco di Marco Datini of Prato, c. 1383–1411. It demonstrates that the time value of money was consistently incorporated into market exchange rates. Moreover, these implicit interest rates are broadly comparable to those received from other types of commercial loan and investment. Although on average profitable, the return on any individual exchange and rechange transaction did involve a degree of uncertainty that may have justified their non‐usurious nature. However, there were also practical reasons why medieval merchants may have used foreign exchange transactions as a means of extending credit.

This collection of essays makes an important contribution to our knowledge of feudalism and finance in France and Spain. Divided into four sections, it covers the use rulers made of courts, parlements, and assemblies for ceremonial, political and fiscal purposes; the institutional formation of Catalonia; comparative studies of France, Catalonia and Aragon in the twelfth century; and monetary and fiscal policies of contemporary rulers