The documents in this chapter describe the Viking settlement and their transformation from Vikings to Normans. From the late tenth century, part of the region that was roughly equivalent to the archdiocese of Rouen became known as Normandy. This was as a result of the settlement of Scandinavian people and the grant of authority by the Carolingian king to the viking leader Rollo. The Norman historians Dudo of Saint-Quentin and William of Jumieges say that the pagan viking Rollo came from Dacia and thus they imply a Danish origin.

The chapter provides an annotated translation of the anonymous Latin work known to historians of Spain as the Historia Roderici or 'History of Rodrigo' (HR). It has a claim to be regarded as one of the earliest biographies of a layman who was not a king to have been composed in medieval Christendom. The Rodrigo Díaz whom it commemorates was an eleventh-century Castilian nobleman who enjoyed a strikingly successful career as a military adventurer. He is better known to posterity as El Cid. Rodrigo's truly remarkable career was made possible by the distinctive circumstances of his age: the instability of the Taifa principalities; the acceptability of tribute-taking as the primary mode of Christian-Islamic relationship in Spain; and the availability of mercenary knights. Skilful exploitation by diplomacy and force of the fractious Taifa principalities enabled him to become a tribute-taker on a princely scale.

This chapter presents an annotated translation of The Life of Pope Gregory VII written by Paul of Bernried.

This documents in this section focus on the buildings and their decoration, and urban 'social services'. In the period 1280 to 1340 a number of descriptions of Italian cities, Milan, Florence, Pavia, Padua, Genoa, were written which describe those cities at the height of their medieval development, before the crises of the mid-late fourteenth century. All of the aspects of city life were closely supervised, guided and controlled by city governments. Cities gave attention to all physical aspects. Italian cities were also full of images. Images of saints, especially the Virgin Mary, were dotted around the city 'like fountains' on the gates, at street corners, on the facades of churches. In late-medieval Italy 'a revolution was taking place in the way in which education was organised: state intervention was increasingly extended into this area'. Whether provision was public or private, education in Italy produced the most literate and numerate society in Medieval Europe.

This chapter presents an annotated translation of anonymous The Life of Pope Leo IX, the most extensive of the eleventh-century biographies of Pope Leo IX (1048–54). Written in Lotharingia, perhaps in the abbey of St-Evre in the diocese of Toul, before 1061.

The documents in this chapter describe the Normans' involvement in the Mediterranean, in Italy, and to a lesser extent in Byzantium, Spain and the Holy Land. The settlement of Normans in southern Italy was a very gradual process of military support for local princes and a slow emancipation of soldiers who grew from subordinates to become local lords themselves. The crusading movement offered a reason why people from north-western Europe went to the Mediterranean and spent some time in Italy.

The documents in this section examine the great variety of political regimes in late-medieval Italy: from consolidated communes such as Florence or Venice, to stable or unstable 'tyrannies' in Pisa, Ferrara or Verona. The Italian communes of the thirteenth century have been celebrated for their recreation of the institutions and methods of ancient democracy. From the middle decades of the thirteenth century, political life in northern Italy began to be dominated by a new breed of political and military leaders, generally known as tyrants or signori. If the major political developments of the thirteenth century were the appearance of city-lordships and the consolidation of communes, the major political development of the fourteenth was the construction of regional states, in which one dominant city came to control several formerly independent city-states.

The documents in this section explore production and commerce: the effects of monetary affluence, the guilds and markets, government interventions to stimulate production, to regulate exchange, and to control the city's population. Population growth was so strong that before 1300 several cities had to limit immigration from the countryside. Alongside production there developed the techniques and skills of international trade and finance, particularly in Tuscany, and where these were combined with production, there was strong economic growth and enrichment. In Italy 'between 1050 and 1300, population, wealth and resources concentrated in cities and commercial activity to a degree without precedent in the ancient or medieval world'.

This introduction presents an overview of the history of the Normans in Europe and a background to the sources themselves. The book aims to give readers a selection of the abundant source material generated by the Normans and the people they conquered. The Normans themselves in the eleventh and twelfth centuries drew attention to their actions all over Europe. The book covers the process of assimilation and malgamation between Scandinavians and Franks and the emergence of Normandy. It illustrates the internal organisation of the principality with a variety of source material from chronicles, miracle stories and charters. The book presents material from the main chronicle sources for the history of the Norman invasion and settlement, supplemented with some poetry. It also includes the Normans' involvement in the Mediterranean, in Italy, and to a lesser extent in Byzantium, Spain and the Holy Land.

The documents in this section deal with social groups and social tensions in Italy: popolo against magnates, noble clans against each another, men against women, young men against city elders, Christians against Jews, freemen against slaves, food riots and tax revolts, acts of resistance and indecency . The chapter focuses on knighthood, towers and vendetta. Although worker unrest is evident in Italian towns from the late thirteenth century, the second half of the fourteenth century saw a rash of working-class revolts, the most famous being that of the Ciompi in Florence has become the 'archetype' of worker insurrections.