1st Edition
Portraits of Medieval Europe, 800–1400
This volume provides a collection of ‘imagined lives’ – individuals who, no matter their position on the social hierarchy, were crucial to the development of medieval Europe and the modern period that followed.
Based on primary source materials and the latest historical research, these literary accounts of otherwise unsourced or under-sourced individuals are written by leading scholars in the field. The book’s approach transcends the limitations of both historical narrative and literary fiction, offering a research-informed presentation of real people that is enriched by informed speculation and creative storytelling. This enriched presentation of the lives of these individuals offers the quickest route to understanding medieval culture, society, and intellectual thought. Crucially, the book treats the whole of Europe, broadly defined: both conventional areas of study such as England and France, and also lesser studied but no less important areas such as eastern Europe, Iberia, and the Balkans. The reader of Portraits of Medieval Europe encounters the diversity present in the European past: the resulting portraits – unique, personal, and engaging – offer not only a wide geographical scope but also perspective on the formation of European society in its fullest form.
This book is accessible and engaging for students new to medieval history as well as those wishing to expand their knowledge of medieval society.
1. Introduction
Lucy K. Pick
2. ‘My name is Euphemios….Euphemios of Amastris’: memories of a eunuch at His Emperor(s)’ service in the Byzantine insular and coastal koine (ca. 680-ca. 740)
Luca Zavagno
3. Gisela, Abbess of Chelles, in Conversation with Charlemagne and Alcuin of York
Rutger Kramer and Ingrid Rembold
4. Theutberga: Reflections on the Divorce of King Lothar II
Erin Thomas Dailey
5. For She Is Not to Work: A Noble’s Experience of Human Trafficking in the Viking Age
Christopher Paolella
6. Ruin and Misery: The troubles of Erchempert of Montecassino
Christopher Heath
7. On the Caliph’s Secret Service: Ibrāhīm ibn Ya’qūb on Slavic Europe
Andrii Danylenko
8. Brian Bórumha, High King of Ireland
Benjamin Hudson
9. Otloh of St Emmeram: A Life of Temptations
Juanita Feros Ruys
10. Unknown: A Concubine of Many Names
Stacey E. Murrell
11. Basil the Bogomil: Seen Through Contemporary Eyes
Hisatsugu Kusabu
12. My Father’s Noble Life – Boris, son of King Koloman; by Konstantinos Kalamanos
Christian Raffensperger
13. Heloise: Philosopher of Love and Friendship
Donald Ostrowski
14. Between the Lines: The Life of Havoise of Brittany, c. 1096-1165
Amy Livingstone
15. The Gifts of Teresa Fernández
Miriam Shadis
16. ‘A Princess Wooed by Many’: Agnes of France, Empress of Constantinople
Erin Jordan
17. I am Thibaut I of Navarre, the poet who would be king
Xabier Irujo
18. Notarius Ricardus de Omnibene, OFM, from Genoa
Felicitas Schmieder
19. On the Edges: Medieval Swansea, Visited by Ralph Baldock, Bishop of London
Catherine A.M. Clarke
20. Queen Helen of Serbia. Catholic Noblewoman – Orthodox Queen
Jelena Erdeljan
21. The Missini Siblings
Rena Lauer
22. A Pilgrim’s Deliberation: Johaneta Aymara’s Pilgrimage to Le Puy-en-Velay, en route to the Camino de Santiago de Compostela
Susan McDonough
23. Abbot Heinrich Kresse and St Barbara
Emilia Jamroziak
Biography
Christian Raffensperger is the Kenneth E. Wray Chair in the Humanities at Wittenberg University, where he is also a professor and Chair of the History Department. His overarching aim in his work is to integrate eastern Europe into the rest of medieval Europe. This began with his first book, Reimagining Europe: Kievan Rus’ and the Medieval World (2012), and has continued through his most recent projects such as Rulers and Rulership in the Arc of Medieval Europe, 1000–1200 (2023).
Erin Thomas Dailey is an Associate Professor of Late Antique and Early Medieval History at the University of Leicester. He is currently the Principal Investigator for an ERC-Consolidator Grant (DoSSE Project 101001429). He is also the author of two monographs, Queens, Consorts, Concubines: Gregory of Tours and Women of the Merovingian Elite (2015), and Radegund: The Trials and Triumphs of a Merovingian Queen (2023).
