This book is a wide-ranging collection of essays about different aspects of the society of southern Italy and Sicily from the eleventh through to the thirteenth centuries. Of the eleven contributors, seven are from Continental Europe, most of whom have never before published in English. The volume devotes particular attention to the evolution of the social structure, to regional differences, the Church, and to the position of Greek and Arabic Christians and Muslims within the Norman Kingdom of Sicily. The authors, all acknowledged experts in this field, draw upon an unrivalled knowledge of the contemporary sources, both published and unpublished. This volume will therefore be a most important resource for both scholars and students of this fascinating area of medieval history, on which relatively little has hitherto been written in English.

Graham A. Loud, Ph.D. (1978), Oxford, is Reader in Medieval Italian History at the University of Leeds. He has written extensively on the history of southern Italy from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries. His most recent books are The Age of Robert Guiscard. Southern Italy and the Norman Conquest (Longman, 2000) and Montecassino and Benevento in the Middle Ages. Essays in South Italian Church History (Variorum Collected Studies, 2000).
Alex Metcalfe, Ph.D. (2000), Leeds, is a British Academy post-doctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Leeds. His first book is: Muslims and Christians in 'Norman' Sicily: Arabic Speakers and the End of Islam (Curzon Press).