Fruits of the most recent research into the "long" thirteenth century. The idea of uncertainty forms a major theme throughout the essays collected here; they tackle aspects of religious, intellectual, political and social history, highlighting how uncertainty, in many and varied forms, was conceptualized, negotiated and exploited in the particular conditions of the long thirteenth century. A number of the contributions explore understandings of the cosmos and personal salvation, probing the search for certainties on the partof ecclesiastical reformers, practitioners of scriptural exegesis and writers of confessional handbooks; there is also an investigation of the exploitation of ambiguities around the fate of excommunicates. Other pieces turn to politics and society, examining strategies of political legitimation and resistance, the unstable politics of identity, gendered experience and means used to regulate social order. As a whole, the collection thus opens up diverse perspectives on, and approaches to, the experience of uncertainty during a period of rapid and often disorienting change. Andrew M. Spencer is an Affiliated Lecturer in Medieval History at Cambridge University and a Fellowof Murray Edwards College; Carl Watkins is University Senior Lecturer in Central Medieval History at Cambridge University. Contributors: Emily Corran, Kenneth Duggan, Lucy Hennings, Felicity Hill, Adrian Jobson, Frederique Lachaud, Amanda Power, Jessica Nelson, Andrew Spencer, Alice Taylor,

About the Author
Andrew M. Spencer is an Affiliated Lecturer in Medieval History at Cambridge University and Fellow and Senior Tutor of Gonville and Caius College. He is a historian of politics and the constitution of England in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and has written extensively on the constitutional, political, military and social role of the nobility in particular. Carl Watkins is Professor in British History at Cambridge University. He is a historian of medieval religious, cultural and political history, concentrating especially on the British Isles in the central and later middle ages, who has also written about death and the supernatural in English culture over a longer chronological span (extending over the middle ages and early modernity). Andrew M. Spencer is an Affiliated Lecturer in Medieval History at Cambridge University and Fellow and Senior Tutor of Gonville and Caius College. He is a historian of politics and the constitution of England in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and has written extensively on the constitutional, political, military and social role of the nobility in particular. Carl Watkins is Professor in British History at Cambridge University. He is a historian of medieval religious, cultural and political history, concentrating especially on the British Isles in the central and later middle ages, who has also written about death and the supernatural in English culture over a longer chronological span (extending over the middle ages and early modernity).


Book Information
ISBN 9781783272655
Author Andrew Spencer
Format Hardback
Page Count 220
Imprint The Boydell Press
Publisher Boydell & Brewer Ltd
Weight(grams) 1g