Description:
Medievalists explore geographical regions and themes to expose the best current thinking about what was and what was not distinctive about the twelfth century.
Brief description:
John Van Engen is Andrew V. Tackes Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame, editor of The Past and Future of Medieval Studies (Notre Dame Press, 1994), and author of Devotio Moderna: Basic Writings.
Review Quotes:
"The long twelfth century whose many transformations are explored in this energetic volume is no longer exclusively that of the lettered and devotional elites that dominate and define most previous accounts of the period. Its subject is a geographically larger and vastly more diversified Europe, a Europe that developed a far greater number of distinctive institutional features and forms of communication than earlier surveys have usually allowed for. Learning, letters, and devotion are certainly here, but they are situated in a dense world of princely courts and cities, competing social orders and interests, men and (at last!) women, and a sharper and harsher recognition of the non-Christian, in which the past and custom confront a sharp and legal-minded present, not always in conflict. The twelfth century, both short and long, has merited and occasioned great scholarship. This audacious volume easily takes pride of place within it." --Edward Peters, University of Pennsylvania