Central Europe in the High Middle Ages

Nora Berend is Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of History at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of St Catharine's College, Cambridge. Her previous publications include At the Gate of Christendom: Jews, Muslims and 'Pagans' in Medieval Hungary, c.1000–c.1300 (Cambridge University Press, 2001) for which she received the Royal Historical Society's Gladstone Prize in 2002, and Christianization and the Rise of Christian Monarchy: Central Europe, Scandinavia and Rus', c.950–c.1200 (as editor, Cambridge University Press, 2007). Przemysław Urbańczyk is Professor at the Cardinal Wyszyński University in Warsaw and in the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences. He specializes in the medieval archaeology and history of Poland, East Central Europe, Scandinavia and the North Atlantic islands. His previous publications include Zdobywcy północnego Atlantyku (Conquerors of the North Atlantic) (2004) and Trudne początki Polski (Difficult Origins of Poland) (2008) which won the Klio prize for best history book of the year. Przemysław Wiszewski is Professor at the University of Wrocław, Department of Historical and Pedagogical Sciences. He specialises in comparative regional history, with a special emphasis on borderlands, from the tenth to the twentieth centuries. His previous publications include Domus Bolezlai: Values and Social Identity in Dynastic Traditions of Medieval Poland, c.966–1138) (2010), the Polish edition of which was honoured with the Prize of the Ministry of Science.

• 1. Introduction; 2. The history of the region and the question of origins; 3. The formation of polities and Christianization; 4. Political life and government c.1050–c.1200; 5. Society and the economy, eleventh-twelfth centuries; 6. Ecclesiastical history, eleventh-thirteenth centuries; 7. New developments of the thirteenth century; Select bibliography.

'This welcome synthesis provides an up to-date history of the High Middle Ages in a region that is too little-known and understood in the Anglophone world. … This volume, enhanced by three maps, is sure to become the standard in English. Summing up: essential. All levels/libraries.' P. W. Knoll, Choice