The New Cambridge Medieval History: Volume 4, c.1024–c.1198, Part 2 (The New Cambridge Medieval History, Series Number 4) - Softcover

'... one is ... left impressed by the scope and ambition of the volume, especially when it is viewed as one element in a larger and hugely impressive enterprise ... the essays ... serve their purpose in being informative and authoritative.' The Times Higher Education Supplement

The fourth volume of The New Cambridge Medieval History covers the eleventh and twelfth centuries, which comprised perhaps the most dynamic period in the European middle ages. This is a history of Europe, but the continent is interpreted widely to include the Near East and North Africa. The volume is divided into two parts of which this, the second, deals with the course of events - ecclesiastical and secular - and major developments in an age marked by the transformation of the position of the papacy in a process fuelled by a radical reformation of the church, the decline of the western and eastern empires, the rise of western kingdoms and Italian elites, and the development of governmental structures, the beginnings of the recovery of Spain from the Moors and the establishment of western settlements in the eastern Mediterranean region in the wake of the crusades.