The Medieval World

The Medieval World by Peter Linehan and Janet Nelson (eds)

Routledge 745pp. £120 ISBN 0 415 26162 7

Peter Linehan and Janet Nelson, the editors of this hefty tome, end their introduction by musing how their Cambridge mentor Walter Ullmann might have disapproved of a book called ‘the medieval world’ that devoted more space to gender than to Gregory VII. Certainly, the priorities of professional historians have changed much over the last fifty years. But, if this volume is any measure, such a shift need not necessarily induce nostalgia for the scholarship of Ullmann’s day. And, truth be told, even those interested in ‘old-fashioned’ topics such as the medieval papacy will be far from disappointed by this volume.