Central European Medieval Studies
About the Book Series
The series explores Central Europe as a dynamic region in the Middle Ages, emphasising its multiple meanings and historically shifting boundaries. Rather than treating the area as a periphery of the medieval ‘West’ or as a frontier between civilization and barbarity, it seeks to reframe Central Europe as a vibrant cultural and social space shaped by diversity, interaction, and exchange. The series highlights the region as a place of convergence, where different ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups met and created shared frameworks of identity and practice. It interrogates notions of “Otherness” by presenting Central Europe as both a meeting ground and an intermediary bridge between the Roman Catholic and Latin traditions of Western Christendom and the Byzantine, Slavic, Eastern Christian and Islamic worlds.
At the same time, the series foregrounds the importance of mobility, hybridity, and cross-cultural dynamics, situating Central Europe within wider transregional and global contexts. By tracing the region’s connections across the Mediterranean, the Eurasian steppe, Byzantium, and beyond, it contributes to an integrated vision of the Global Middle Ages.
Along these lines, the series embraces an extended chronology, open to scholarship that ranges from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern period, broadly from 300 to 1700. This wider temporal frame allows for explorations of long-term continuities, transformations, and reconfigurations that shaped the region across a millennium and more. Through this lens, Central European Medieval Studies encourages scholarship that foregrounds entanglement, diversity, and exchange, thus challenging simplistic core-periphery models in order to illuminate the region’s vital role within the interconnected medieval world. The series welcomes contributions from young and emerging scholars, providing a platform for fresh perspectives and innovative approaches to the study of medieval and early modern Central Europe and its connections.
Please contact Dorothea Schaefter, Publisher at Routledge ([email protected]) to submit a proposal or to find out more about the series.
Creating Memories in Late 8th-century Byzantium: The Short History of Nikephoros of Constantinople
1st Edition
By Dragoljub Marjanovic
December 01, 2025
The Short History of Nikephoros of Constantinople is one of the key sources for our understanding of Byzantine history in the eighth century. This book offers a close look at that volume and its manner of representing the historical role of Byzantine emperors and ecclesiology, with particular ...
Maniera Greca in Europe's Catholic East: On Identities of Images in Lithuania and Poland (1380s–1720s)
1st Edition
By Giedre Mickunaite
December 01, 2025
How and why does vernacular art become foreign? What does ‘Greek manner’ mean in regions far beyond the Mediterranean? What stories do images need? How do narratives shape pictures? The study addresses these questions in Byzantine paintings from the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania, contextualized ...
Premodern Rulership and Contemporary Political Power: The King's Body Never Dies
1st Edition
Edited
By Karolina Anna Mroziewicz, Aleksander Sroczynski
December 01, 2025
In the medieval period, the monarch was seen as the embodiment of the community of his kingdom, the body politic. And while we've long since shed that view, it nonetheless continues to influence our understanding of contemporary politics. This book offers thirteen case studies from premodern and ...
Secular Power and Sacral Authority in Medieval East-Central Europe
1st Edition
Edited
By Kosana Jovanovic, Suzana Miljan
December 01, 2025
This book brings together a team of scholars representing a broad range of interests and new approaches in medieval studies to explore the interactions of secular power and sacral authority in central and southeastern Europe in the period. Contributors present new research on the region's political...
Structure and Features of Anna Komnene’s Alexiad: Emergence of a Personal History
1st Edition
By Larisa Vilimonovic
December 01, 2025
The Alexiad, written in the twelfth century by a Byzantine princess, Anna Komnene, tells the story of the Byzantine Empire during the reign of her father, offering accounts of its political and military history, including its involvement with the First Crusade. Structure and Features of Anna ...
The Velislav Bible, Finest Picture-Bible of the Late Middle Ages: Biblia depicta as Devotional, Mnemonic and Study Tool
1st Edition
Edited
By Lenka Panusková
December 01, 2025
The Velislav Bible is one of the most beautiful medieval Bohemian manuscripts. It is a heavily illustrated manuscript that contains only short selections of the text, that instruct the reader about the story depicted. The last picture in the manuscript shows a man kneeling before St. Catherine, ...
Protagonists of Urban Order from the Middle Ages to the Present: Actions, Ideas, Concepts
1st Edition
Edited
By Irena Benyovsky Latin, Martina Stercken, Tonija Andric
April 02, 2025
European cities and towns are considered places with a particular order established by their inhabitants. This volume centres on the authorities, groups, and individuals who formed the rules for common life in urban communities. It considers the protagonists of urban order between the Middle Ages ...