Connecting the classical world and the Renaissance, the Middle Ages stand alone as a remarkable period for religion, politics, science and art. This biographical dictionary provides insight into the men and women great and small who distinguished this era of both beauty and barbarism, and who provided its advances and its peculiar and sometimes violent sidetracks.

Entries are alphabetical; the scope is from the fifth century to the fifteenth. Each entry, giving an array of names and alternate names for the person, includes both personal and historical details. References are included with each entry, and a detailed bibliography accompanies the whole. Appendices cover the colleges and universities that educated many of the people, and the period’s noteworthy events, major monasteries, abbeys and convents and their founders and dates, individuals listed by occupation or contribution, and popes, emperors and monarchs. Fully indexed.