The complete history of the Middle Ages. Based on reliable and accurate scholarship, this comprehensive yet accessible encyclopedia provides a detailed look at this significant thousand-year period. Approximately 2,000 entries offer exhaustive coverage on everything from significant personalities, archaeology, arts and architecture, institutions, literature, philosophy, and religion to economy, law, science, technology, politics, and warfare. Reflecting the changes in scholarly interest that have occurred over the last two decades, this encyclopedia is interdisciplinary and comparative with attentive detail to cultural and geographic subject matter. The topics that have been treated only marginally in previous publications on the Middle Ages - such as women, ecology, ethnicity, nationalism, and labor - are treated more comprehensively here, making this an authoritative resource that readers with an interest in the Middle Ages will want to consult.