A Short History of the Middle Ages Fourth Edition

easily traceable because there are few sources from the time. It is clear, however, that at the beginning of the eleventh centur ...

built on his achievements. (See Genealogy 4.2: The Ottonians.) Granted power by the magnates, they gave back in turn: they distr ...

Genealogy 4.2: The Ottonians Bishops and archbishops constituted the backbone of Ottonian rule. Once he had chosen the bishop (u ...

and state in the German realm. An ally of the king (as were almost all the bishops), he was also Otto I’s brother. Right after h ...

the Islamic world—winnowed out the least authoritative canons and systematized the contradictory ones. The men at the cathedral ...

Plate 4.2: The Raising of Lazarus, Egbert Codex (985–990). This miniature is one of 51 illustrations in a Pericopes, a book of r ...

for Abbess Hitda of Meschede. It draws on Byzantine and Carolingian models as well as the palette of the Egbert Codex to produce ...

Plate 4.3: Christ Asleep, Hitda Gospels (c.1000–c.1020). The moral of the story (which is told in Matt. 8:23–26) is right in the ...

Among the most active patrons of the arts were the Ottonian kings themselves. In a Gospel book made for Otto III—a work fit for ...

Plate 4.4: Saint Luke, Gospel Book of Otto III (998–1001) ...

Seeing the Middle Ages This is a complicated picture. How can we tease out its meaning? We know that the main subject is the eva ...

mankind. Thus Luke not only “draws water for the lambs” from the Fathers, but he prefigures the Second Coming of Christ himself, ...

Otto III Enthroned, Aachen Gospels, (c.996) Further Reading ...

Mayr-Hartung, Henry. Ottonian Book Illumination: An Historical Study. 2nd rev. ed. London: Harvey Miller, 1999. Nees, Lawrence. ...

great families of the Empire—the looming power to the west. Bohemia and Poland both were largely Slavic-speaking; linguistically ...

initially specializing in herding but soon busy cultivating vineyards, orchards, and grains. Above them was a warrior class, and ...

Chapter Four Key Events c.790–c.950 Invasions into Europe by Vikings, Muslims, and Hungarians 869–883 Zanj revolt in Iraq 871–89 ...

Notes 1 Quoted in Henry Maguire, “Images of the Court,” in The Glory of Byzantium: Art and Culture of the Middle Byzantine Era, ...

17 King Stephen, Laws, in Reading the Middle Ages, p. 206. Return to text. ...

Further Reading Bachrach, David S. Warfare in Tenth-Century Germany. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2012. Bagge, Sverre, Michael H. Geltin ...