The passage from Antiquity to the Middle Ages has been largely studied in the light of the thesis of a gradual transformation, which is in contradiction of the previous assumption of an abrupt break due to war and general calamity. Perceiving War and the Military reassesses this historical period of transition by an investigation of the contemporary world of thought that examines the impact and significance of a permanently increasing contact with warfare and armed violence. Her studies confirm the assumption of a gradual shift, but they most of all show that the irrevocable end of the Roman Peace was a crucial factor in the late Roman world becoming gradually “medieval”.

In Perceiving War and the Military, Laury Sarti highlights the significance of a permanently increasing contact with armed violence for the gradual transition from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, analysing contemporary ideas and concepts of war and the military.

The journal welcomes papers on historical, literary, archaeological, cultural, and artistic themes, particularly interdisciplinary papers and those that make an innovative and significant contribution to the understanding of the early medieval world and stimulate further discussion. For submission details please see the association website: www.aema.net.au. Submissions then may be sent to journal@aema.net.au.

The Roman army represented an important social and organizational reference model for the Romano-Barbarian societies, which progressively replaced the Western Empire in the transition from Late Antiquity to Early Middle Ages. The great flexibility of the decision-making and organizational solutions used by the Roman army allowed the ‘new lords’ to readapt them and thus maintain power in early medieval Europe for a long time. From a perspective ranging from political, social and economic history to law, anthropology, and linguistic, this book demonstrates how interesting and fruitful the investigation of this specific cultural imprint can be in order to gain a better understanding of the origins of the civilization that arouse after the fall of the Roman world. Contributors are Francesco Borri, Fabio Botta, Francesco Castagnino, Stefan Esders, Carla Falluomin, Stefano Gasparri, Wolfgang Haubrichs, Soazick Kerneis, Luca Loschiavo, Valerio Marotta, Esperanza Osaba, Walter Pohl, Jean-Pierre Poly, Pierfrancesco Porena, Iolanda Ruggiero, Andrea Trisciuoglio, Andrea A. Verardi, and Ian Wood.

Religious Horror and Holy War in Viking Age Francia explores how authorities in western Francia used horror rhetoric to cast Christian soldiers, who robbed the poor and the church, as monsters that devoured human flesh and drank human blood. Adapting modern literary horror approaches to medieval sources, this study reveals how such rhetoric served as a form of spiritual weaponry in the clergy's attempts to correct and condemn wayward military men. This investigation, therefore, unearths long-forgotten Carolingian thought about the dreadful spiritual reality of internal enemies during a time of political division and the Northmens depredations. Yet such horror also informed a new understanding of Christian heroism that developed in relation to the wars fought against the invaders. This vision of heroic soldiers, which included military martyrs, culminated in ideas about holy war against the pagans. Thus Carolingian religious horror and holy war together belonged to a body of ideas about the spiritual, unseen side of the church's cosmic conflict against evil that foreshadowed later medieval Crusading thought.

Hagiography and the History of Latin Christendom, 500–1500 shows the historical value of texts celebrating saints—both the most abundant medieval source material and among the most difficult to use. Hagiographical sources present many challenges: they are usually anonymous, often hard to date, full of topoi, and unstable. Moreover, they are generally not what we would consider factually accurate. The volume’s twenty-one contributions draw on a range of disciplines and employ a variety of innovative methods to address these challenges and reach new discoveries about the medieval world that extend well beyond the study of sanctity. They show the rich potential of hagiography to enhance our knowledge of that world, and some of the ways to unlock it. Contributors are Ellen Arnold, Helen Birkett, Edina Bozoky, Emma Campbell, Adrian Cornell du Houx, David Defries, Albrecht Diem, Cynthia Hahn, Samantha Kahn Herrick, J.K. Kitchen, Jamie Kreiner, Klaus Krönert, Mathew Kuefler, Katherine J. Lewis, Giovanni Paolo Maggioni, Charles Mériaux, Paul Oldfield, Sara Ritchey, Catherine Saucier, Laura Ackerman Smoller, and Ineke van ‘t Spijker. See inside the book.

This interdisciplinary volume re-evaluates the interconnectedness of the Merovingian world with its Mediterranean surroundings.

The Merovingian era is one of the best studied yet least well known periods of European history. From the fifth to the eighth centuries, the inhabitants of Gaul (what now comprises France, southern Belgium, Luxembourg, Rhineland Germany, and part of modern Switzerland), a mix of Gallo-Roman inhabitants and Germanic arrivals under the political control of the Merovingian dynasty, sought to preserve, use, and reimagine the political, cultural, and religious power of ancient Rome while simultaneously forging the beginnings of what would become medieval European culture. The forty-six essays included in this volume highlight why the Merovingian era is at the heart of historical debates about what happened to Western Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. The essays demonstrate that the inhabitants of the Merovingian kingdoms in these centuries created a culture that was the product of these traditions and achieved a balance between the world they inherited and the imaginative solutions they bequeathed to Europe. The Handbook highlights new perspectives and scientific approaches that shape our changing view of this extraordinary era by showing that Merovingian Gaul was situated at the crossroads of Europe, connecting the Mediterranean and the British Isles with the Byzantine empire, and it benefited from the global reach of the late Roman Empire. It tells the story of the Merovingian world through archaeology, bio-archaeology, architecture, hagiographic literature, history, liturgy, visionary literature and eschatology, patristics, numismatics, and material culture.

This is Volume Two of a two-volume collection that brings together contributions from cultural and military history to offer an examination of religious rites employed in connection with warfare as well as their transformative and power- and identity-building potential across political communities of medieval Northern, Central, and Eastern Europe. Covering the period ca. 900 and 1500, the work takes theoretical, textual and practical approaches to the research on religious warfare, and investigates the connections between, and significance and function of crucial war rituals such as pre-, intra- and postbellum rites, as well as various activities surrounding the military life of individuals, polities, and corporates. Contributors are Robert Antonín, Robert Bubczyk, Dariusz Dąbrowski, Jesse Harrington, Carsten Selch Jensen, Sini Kangas, Radosław Kotecki, Gregory Leighton, Kyle C. Lincoln, Jacek Maciejewski, Yulia Mikhailova, Max Naderer, László Veszprémy, and Dušan Zupka.

The instant Sunday Times bestseller A Times, New Statesman and Spectator Book of the Year 'Simply the best popular history of the Middle Ages there is' Sunday Times 'A great achievement, pulling together many strands with aplomb' Peter Frankopan, Spectator, Books of the Year 'It's so delightful to encounter a skilled historian of such enormous energy who's never afraid of being entertaining' The Times, Books of the Year 'An amazing masterly gripping panorama' Simon Sebag Montefiore 'A badass history writer... to put it mildly' Duff McKagan 'A triumph' Charles Spencer Dan Jones's epic new history tells nothing less than the story of how the world we know today came to be built. It is a thousand-year adventure that moves from the ruins of the once-mighty city of Rome, sacked by barbarians in AD 410, to the first contacts between the old and new worlds in the sixteenth century. It shows how, from a state of crisis and collapse, the West was rebuilt and came to dominate the entire globe. The book identifies three key themes that underpinned the success of the West: commerce, conquest and Christianity. Across 16 chapters, blending Dan Jones's trademark gripping narrative style with authoritative analysis, Powers and Thrones shows how, at each stage in this story, successive western powers thrived by attracting – or stealing – the most valuable resources, ideas and people from the rest of the world. It casts new light on iconic locations – Rome, Paris, Venice, Constantinople – and it features some of history's most famous and notorious men and women. This is a book written about – and for – an age of profound change, and it asks the biggest questions about the West both then and now. Where did we come from? What made us? Where do we go from here? Also available in audio, read by the author.