This book provides a radical reassessment of Europe from the late tenth to the early thirteenth centuries.

R. I. Moore has been Professor of Medieval History at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne since 1993. He previously taught at Sheffield University, and as a Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago. His previous books include The Birth of Popular Heresy (1975), The Origins of European Dissent (1977) and The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950-1250 (1987). He is also General Editor of the Blackwell History of the World series.