New Books in Medieval History New Books Network

In 1290, Jews were expelled from England and subsequently largely expunged from English historical memory. Yet for two centuries they occupied important roles in mediaeval English society. England’s Jews revisits this neglected chapter of English history—one whose remembrance is more important than ever today, as antisemitism and other forms of racism are on the rise.
In England's Jews: Finance, Violence, and the Crown in the Thirteenth Century (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023), Dr. John Tolan tells the story of the thousands of Jews who lived in mediaeval England. Protected by the Crown and granted the exclusive right to loan money with interest, Jews financed building projects, provided loans to students, and bought and rented out housing. Historical texts show that they shared meals and beer, celebrated at weddings, and sometimes even ended up in bed with Christians.
Yet Church authorities feared the consequences of Jewish contact with Christians and tried to limit it, though to little avail. Royal protection also proved to be a double-edged sword: when revolts broke out against the unpopular king Henry III, some of the rebels, in debt to Jewish creditors, killed Jews and destroyed loan records. Vicious rumours circulated that Jews secretly plotted against Christians and crucified Christian children. All of these factors led Edward I to expel the Jews from England in 1290. Paradoxically, Dr. Tolan shows, thirteenth-century England was both the theatre of fruitful interreligious exchange and a crucible of European antisemitism.
 This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.
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In War and Conflict in the Middle Ages (Polity, 2022), Dr. Stephen Morillo offers the first global history of armed conflict between 540 and 1500 or as late as 1800 CE, an age shaped by climate change and pandemics at both ends. Examining armed conflict at all levels, and ranging across China and the central Asian steppes to southwest Asia, western Europe, and beyond, Morillo explores the technological, social, cultural, and environmental determinants of warfare and the tools and tactics used by warriors on land and at sea.
Part I explains the geographical, political, and technological rules that shaped patterns of military activity everywhere. Part II explores how these rules played out in various historical contexts. Armed conflict played a central role in the making of the medieval world, and medieval people used war and conflict to create, expand, and defend their communities and identities. But the devastating effects of climate change and epidemic disease continually reshaped these communities and the nature of their conflicts.
Broad in its scope and rich in detail, War and Conflict in the Middle Ages will be the go-to guide for students and aficionados of military history, medieval history, and global history.
 This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.
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St. Brigid is the earliest and best-known of the female saints of Ireland. In the generation after St. Patrick, she established a monastery for men and women at Kildare which became one of the most powerful and influential centres of the Church in early Ireland. 
The stories of Brigid's life and deeds survive in several early sources, but the most important are two Latin lives written a century or more after her death. The first was composed by a churchman named Cogitosus and tells of her many miracles of healing and helping the poor. The second source, known as the Vita Prima, continues the tradition with more tales of marvellous deeds and journeys throughout the island. Both Latin sources are a treasure house of information not just about the legends of Brigid but also daily life, the role of women, and the spread of Christianity in Ireland. 
Philip Freeman's Two Lives of Saint Brigid (Four Courts Press, 2024) for the first time presents together an English translation of both the Life of Brigid by Cogitosus and the Vita Prima, along with the Latin text of both carefully edited from the best medieval manuscripts. Also included are an introduction, notes, and commentary to help general readers, students, and scholars in reading these fascinating stories of St. Brigid.
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Between 1348 and 1350, Jews throughout Europe were accused of having caused the spread of the Black Death by poisoning the wells from which the entire population drank. Hundreds if not thousands were executed from Aragon and southern France into the eastern regions of the German-speaking lands. But if the well-poisoning accusations against the Jews during these plague years are the most frequently cited of such cases, they were not unique. The first major wave of accusations came in France and Aragon in 1321, and it was lepers, not Jews, who were the initial targets. Local authorities, and especially municipal councils, promoted these charges so as to be able to seize the property of the leprosaria, Tzafrir Barzilay contends. The allegations eventually expanded to describe an international conspiracy organized by Muslims, and only then, after months of persecution of the lepers, did some nobles of central France implicate the Jews, convincing the king to expel them from the realm.
In Poisoned Wells: Accusations, Persecution, and Minorities in Medieval Europe, 1321-1422 (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022), Barzilay explores the origins of these charges of well poisoning, asks how the fear took root and moved across Europe, which groups it targeted, why it held in certain areas and not others, and why it waned in the fifteenth century. He argues that many of the social, political, and environmental factors that fed the rise of the mass poisoning accusations had already appeared during the thirteenth century, a period of increased urbanization, of criminal poisoning charges, and of the proliferation of medical texts on toxins. In studying the narratives that were presented to convince officials that certain groups committed well poisoning and the legal and bureaucratic mechanisms that moved rumors into officially accepted and prosecutable crimes, Barzilay has written a crucial chapter in the long history of the persecution of European minorities.
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Although we often think of friendship today as an indisputable value of human social life, for thinkers and writers across late mediaeval Christian society friendship raised a number of social and ethical dilemmas that needed to be carefully negotiated. On Amistà: Negotiating Friendship in Dante’s Italy (University of Toronto Press, 2023) analyses these dilemmas and looks at how Dante’s strategic articulations of friendship evolved across the phases of his literary career as he manoeuvred between different social groups and settings.
Dr. Elizabeth Coggeshall reveals that friendship was not an unequivocal moral good for the writers of late mediaeval Italy. Instead, it was an ambiguous term to be deployed strategically, describing a wide range of social relationships such as allies, collaborators, servants, patrons, rivals, and enemies. Drawing on the use of the language of friendship in the letters, correspondence poems, dedications, narratives, and treatises composed by Dante and his interlocutors, Dr. Coggeshall examines the way they skillfully negotiated around the dilemmas that friendship raised in the spheres of mediaeval Italian literary society. The book addresses instances of inclusivity and exclusivity, collaboration and self-interest, hierarchy and equality, and alterity and identity. Employing literary, historical, and sociological analysis, On Amistà presents a genealogy for the innovative and tactical use of the terms of friendship among the works of late mediaeval Italian authors.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.
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In recent decades, the study of the Eastern Roman Empire, also known as Byzantium, has been revolutionized by new approaches and more sophisticated models for how its society and state operated. No longer looked upon as a pale facsimile of classical Rome, Byzantium is now considered a vigorous state of its own, inheritor of many of Rome's features, and a vital node in the first truly globalized world.
The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium (Oxford UP, 2024) is the first full, single-author history of the eastern Roman empire to appear in over a generation. Covering political and military history as well as all the major changes in religion, society, demography, and economy, Anthony Kaldellis's volume is divided into ten chronological sections which begin with the foundation of Constantinople in 324 AD and end with the fall of the empire to the Ottoman Turks in the fifteenth century. The book incorporates new findings, explains recent interpretive models, and presents well-known historical characters and events in a new light.
Dr. Anthony Kaldellis is Professor of Classics at the University of Chicago. His previous books include A Cabinet of Byzantine Curiosities; Streams of gold, Rivers of Blood; Romanland, and, as translator and editor, Prokopios’ The Secret History. In 2019, he began hosting the podcast “Byzantium & Friends.”
Evan Zarkadas (MA) is an independent scholar of European and Medieval history and an educator. He received his master’s in history from the University of Maine focusing on Medieval Europe, the Eastern Mediterranean, medieval identity, and ethnicity during the late Middle Ages.
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