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Broadly defined, urban planning today is a process one might describe as half design and half social engineering. It considers not only the aesthetic and visual product, but also the economic, political, and social implications, as well as the environmental impact. This collection of essays explores the question of whether this sort of multifaceted planning took place in the Middle Ages, and how it manifested itself outside of the monastic realm. Bringing together the monastic historian and archaeologist, with scholars of art and architecture, this volume expands our comprehension of how those in roles of authority saw the planning process and implemented their plans to structure a particular outcome. The examination of architectural complexes, literary sources, commercial legers, and political records highlights the multiple avenues for viewing the growing awareness of the social potential of an urban environment.

Open Access: The Archivolted Portals of Northern Spain and Western France within the Theology and Politics of Entry explores the history, development, and accrued connotations of a distinctive entry configuration comprised of a set of concentrically stepped archivolts surrounding a deliberate tympanum-free portal opening. These “archivolted” portals adorned many of the small, rural ecclesiastical structures dotting the countryside of western France and northern Spain in the twelfth century..

Broadly defined, urban planning today is a process one might describe as half design and half social engineering. It considers not only the aesthetic and visual product, but also the economic, political, and social implications, as well as the environmental impact. This collection of essays explores the question of whether this sort of multifaceted planning took place in the Middle Ages, and how it manifested itself outside of the monastic realm. Bringing together the monastic historian and archaeologist, with scholars of art and architecture, this volume expands our comprehension of how those in roles of authority saw the planning process and implemented their plans to structure a particular outcome.

An engaged capital thought to have come from Saint-Hilaire-le-Grand in Poitiers has generally been interpreted in relation to a text. The three sculpted sides of the capital have been read as a narrative that refers to an allegorical commentary on the Apocalypse or, alternatively, as a representation of the Old Testament story of Jacob and Esau. These texts, like the capital's depiction of hand-to-hand wrestling and beard pulling, are based on the idea of personal conflict or dispute. A fuller picture of the social context—the political atmosphere, the spiritual tone, the ritual color—facilitates the incorporation of audience into an understanding of the capital's sculptures and amplifies our sense of the circumstances within which contemporaries might have apprehended its iconography. Like other sculptures incorporated into portal compositions, facade ensembles, and nave articulations in western France of the late eleventh century, this capital can be shown to reflect the socioreligious context of the Peace of God movement.