Church and Chronicle in the Middle Ages is a collection of essays presented to John Taylor, former Life Fellow and medieval scholar at the University of Leeds. The essays in the volume have two clear foci, also those of John Taylor's own work: the study of history-writing in the middle ages and the late medieval church. With contributions key scholars on topics such as the hagiography of Saint-Wandrille, Swein Forkbeard and the historians, personal seals in 13th-century England, women in the Plumpton Correspondence and medievalism in counter-reformation Sicily, this volume is a rich and varied collection of medieval scholarship and a fitting tribute to Taylor's work from his friends and colleagues.

From the time of Aristotle until the late eighteenth century, meteorology meant the study of "meteors"—spectacular objects in the skies beneath the moon, which included everything from shooting stars to hailstorms. In Reading the Skies, Vladimir Jankovic traces the history of this meteorological tradition in Enlightenment Britain, examining its scientific and cultural significance. Jankovic interweaves classical traditions, folk/popular beliefs and practices, and the increasingly quantitative approaches of urban university men to understanding the wonders of the skies. He places special emphasis on the role that detailed meteorological observations played in natural history and chorography, or local geography; in religious and political debates; and in agriculture. Drawing on a number of archival sources, including correspondence and weather diaries, as well as contemporary pamphlets, tracts, and other printed sources reporting prodigious phenomena in the skies, this book will interest historians of science, Britain, and the environment.