Frontiers in the Middle Ages

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The first uses of the term frontiere in thirteenth century French were military, referring to the first line of troops in a battle. In architecture it meant the front of a building, and at the end of the fourteenth century it was first used as a geographical term, in Spain specifically about the divide between the Christians and the Muslims. More than obstacles, medieval frontiers - whether geographical, political, military, intellectual or artistic - seem to have been bridges and points of contact. Frontiers was the subject of the 3rd European Congress of Medieval Studies in 2003, and this volume contains 44 papers from that conference. They are by their very nature interdisciplinary, addressing problems ranging from Byzantine administration to Icelandic veracular scribal culture.