This comprehensive, well-balanced historical survey of medieval Europe—from Roman imperial provinces to the Renaissance—covers all aspects of the history (political, literary, religious, intellectual, etc.) with a focus on social and political themes. It presents a complete picture of the complex process by which an ecumenical civilization that once ringed the basin of the Mediterranean Sea, evolved into three other distinctive civilizations—Latin Europe, Greek Eastern Europe and Asia Minor, and...

Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Book, 2001 "Revisions have made this anthology stronger and even more essential."--Choice Praise for the first edition: "Comprehensive, original, scholarly, philosophically searching and meticulously prepared...The volume, copiously illustrated, reveals the shocking impact of the belief in witches on Europe's Middle Ages, and examines the struggles of thinkers...to confront the phenomenon on rational terms. This is a major work...

This impressive volume is actually three histories in one: of the legal procedures, personnel, and institutions that shaped the inquisitorial tribunals from Rome to early modern Europe; of the myth of The Inquisition, from its origins with the anti-Hispanists and religious reformers of the sixteenth century to its embodiment in literary and artistic masterpieces of the nineteenth century; and of how the myth itself became the foundation for a "history" of the inquisitions.