The book examines the lived experience of worship in early medieval England and Ireland, ranging from public experience of church and stone sculptures, to monastic life, to personal contemplation of, and meditation on, manuscript illuminations and other devotional objects.

Simultaneously pervasive and evasive, rebellious and oppressive, transgressive and socially specific, humour is a vast and interdisciplinary field of research. Seeking to rethink this quintessentially human expression, this volume is bringing together established and emerging directions of medieval humour research. Each contribution explores different artistic expressions, receptions and functions of humour and identifies a series of problems in researching humour historically. Medieval Humour: Expressions, Receptions and Functions dissects humour in art and thought, literature and drama, society and culture, contributing to a deeper understanding of our cultural past.

The essays here take us from the twelfth century, with an exploration of an inventory of Mediterranean textiles from an Ifriqiyan Church, into an examination and reconstruction of an extant thirteenth-century sleeve in France which provides a rare and early example of medieval quilted armour, and finally on to late medieval Sweden and the reconstruction of gilt-leather intarsia coverlets. A study of construction techniques and the evolution of form of gable and French hoods in the late medieval and the early modern periods follows; and the volume alos includes a study of how underwear for depicted in Renaissance paintings and manuscript illuminations serves as a marker of class.

An examination of the fabrics, garments and cloth of the Iberian Middle Ages, bringing out in particular the international context.

Scope: theology, philosophy, ethics of various religions and ethical systems and relevant portions of anthropology, mythology, folklore, biology, psychology, economics and sociology.

In Perspectives on Early Islamic Art in Jerusalem, Lawrence Nees analyzes early Islamic monuments on the Haram al-Sharif, or the Temple Mount: the Dome of the Chain, and the capitals with figures of eagles in the Dome of the Rock.