This book is the first extensive study of the oral culture in the early medieval West. Access to this culture is inevitably through the written sources and inde

After the Roman empire fell, medieval Europe continued to be fascinated by Rome itself, the 'chief of cities'. Once the hub of empire, in the early medieval per

Far from the oral society it was once assumed to have been, early medieval Europe was fundamentally shaped by the written word. This book offers a pioneering co

This tenth anniversary revised edition of the authoritative text on Christianity's first thousand years of history features a new preface, additional color imag