General

The following recommendations are primarily intended to help English-speaking students to delve more deeply into the topics discussed in the chapters above: works written in other languages are therefore cited in translations into English wherever possible. The following abbreviations are used below:

MW  Peter Linehan and Janet L. Nelson (eds.), The Medieval

World (London, 2001)

NCMH iii The New Cambridge Medieval History, iii. c. goo-c.1024, ed. T. Reuter (Cambridge, 1999)

NCMH v The New Cambridge Medieval History, v. c. iig8-c. i300, ed. D. Abulafia (Cambridge, 1999)

RR  R. L. Benson, G. Constable, and C. D. Lanham (eds.),

Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century (Oxford, 1982)

The New Cambridge Medieval History volumes are multi-authored collections of articles that offer excellent, detailed treatment of most themes in this work, with very extensive bibliographies. Readers are also referred to The New Cambridge Medieval History, iv. c.1024-c.1198, ed. D. Luscombe and J. Riley-Smith (2 vols., Cambridge, 2004), which appeared too late for specific chapters to be recommended here; and, for the early fourteenth century, to The New Cambridge Medieval History, vi. c. i300-c. i4i5, ed. M. Jones (Cambridge, 2000). The Medieval World is more selective in its topics but still breathtaking in its scope (see below for specific articles).

Three important recent interpretative essays concerning the central Middle Ages are Robert Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonisation and Cultural Change, 950-1350 (Harmondsworth, 1993); William Chester Jordan, Europe in the High Middle Ages (Harmondsworth, 2001); and, concerning a shorter period, R. I. Moore, The First European Revolution c.970-1215 (Oxford and Malden, MA, 2000). Malcolm Barber, The Two Cities: Medieval Europe 1050-1320 (2nd edn., London, 2004), is a very useful reference work. A rather different approach in the French Annaliste tradition, emphasizing ‘mentalities’ and the influence of the environment upon human development, is provided by J. Le Goff, Medieval Civilization, trans. J. Barrow (Oxford and Cambridge, MA, 1988). Also still of interest is R. W. Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages (London, 1953), a venerable and idiosyncratic introduction to the period. M. Bentley (ed.), The Companion to Historiography (London, 1997), part II, contains useful introductions to medievalists’ approaches to their period. Atlases include A. MacKay and D. Ditchburn (eds.), Atlas of Medieval Europe (London, 1997); Paul Robert Magocsi (ed.), Historical Atlas of East Central Europe (Seattle and London, 1993); and J. Riley-Smith (ed.), Atlas of the Crusades (London, 1991).