The sixth volume of The New Cambridge Medieval History covers the fourteenth century, a period dominated by plague, other natural disasters and war which brought to an end three centuries of economic growth and cultural expansion in Christian Europe, but one which also saw important developments in government, religious and intellectual life, and new cultural and artistic patterns. Part I sets the scene by discussion of general themes in the theory and practice of government, religion, social and economic history, and culture. Part II deals with the individual histories of the states of western Europe; Part III with that of the Church at the time of the Avignon papacy and the Great Schism; and Part IV with eastern and northern Europe, Byzantium and the early Ottomans, giving particular attention to the social and economic relations with westerners and those of other civilisations in the Mediterranean.

‘What is the volume’s strength? It is in the meticulous work of mediation that it performs, between a vast literature in European languages to which most readers, and most historians, no longer have access … for those of us who teach European history … the service is enormous.’

Miri Rubin Source: The Times Higher Education Supplement

‘Michael Jones and his colleagues deserve congratulation on a triumphant conclusion to their long labours in making fourteenth-century Europe seem even more absorbing than it always and already was.’

Source: The Journal of Ecclesiastical History

'… the Press deserves congratulations for allowing such a profusion of references. In all, this is a most welcome book: hugely informative and thought-provoking, it captures many aspects of a remarkable century.'

Source: Medium Aevum