Miri Rubin

Medieval Christianity in Practice contains more than 40 medieval primary sources in modern English translation, each with an accompanying commentary by various scholars. Despite the title, it focuses just on Western Europe (so no coverage of Orthodox or Eastern Churches), from about 600 to 1500. It's a little bit of a grab bag, uneven in its coverage, and the comprehensiveness and length of the accompanying commentaries varies. However, it makes available for classroom use many kinds of sources that are often not available in translation—saint's lives like that of Stephen of Obazine (chapter 38) are more readily sourced than charms against infectious disease in sheep (chapter 9), although the latter kind of prayer probably played a more prominent role in the life of the average medieval peasant. Useful to pull selections from when teaching, but I wouldn't build a course around it as a main textbook.… (mais)

Cities of Strangers is a short (about half of the 200 pages are endnotes) study of strangers, interconnections, and belonging in urban spaces in later medieval Europe. Miri Rubin synthesises a broad array of readings on western, central, and eastern European towns and cities to provide a very readable introduction to the history of urbanisation and the complex nature of lived environments in the Middle Ages. I’m not sure I was entirely convinced by Rubin’s inclusion of “women” under the rubric of “strangers”, and there are a couple of weird errors (e.g. the Nuremberg Chronicle doesn’t have 2000 woodcuts of medieval cities; it doesn’t have 2000 woodcuts in total), but those reservations aside, this is a brisk, accessible introduction to the topic.… (mais)

My expectations and the book's content did not align. My interest was more in a chronological overview of the period with political divisions, important peoples, and information on the lives of everyday persons. While the book began to address some of the latter toward the book's conclusion, the text mainly looked at broad themes from the period rather than providing the information I wanted to acquaint myself before moving to other books dealing with specific aspects. Others may enjoy it more than I did, but I was disappointed.… (mais)

This is a hefty, wide-ranging overview of interpretations of Mary, mother of Jesus, from the origins of Christianity until the end of the sixteenth century, with a brief overview of later interpretations of Mary in a concluding chapter. As an overview of primary sources about Mary, this will be invaluable to students working on the topic. So too will be the discussion of views of Mary in medieval Islam (after all, Mary/Maryam figures more in the Qur'an than she does in the New Testament), and of the long-standing association between Mary and anti-Semitism. However, this really is an encyclopaedic text rather than a narrative one, and there is no overarching thesis. There are points where the array of materials cited—Miri Rubin makes use of literary texts, documentary evidence, art historical materials, and more—becomes somewhat dizzying. I'm not sure how truly accessible, or at least readable, this book therefore is for the general reader, but it will remain invaluable for the specialist.… (mais)