This text presents a portrayal of a western world that was sharply divided between its northern and southern aspects. By integrating the histories of the Islamic and Byzantine worlds into the main narrative, the author offers a look at the continuum of interaction, social, cultural, intellectual, and commercial, that existed among all three societies. Filled with relevant primary documents, this balances the conventional focus on political affairs, especially those of northern Europe, with equally detailed attention to medieval society as it developed in the Mediterranean. In addition, the author describes the ways in which the medieval Latin West attempted to understand the unified and rational structure of the human cosmos, which they believed existed beneath the observable diversity and disorder of the world. This effort to re-create a human ordering of "unity through diversity" provides an essential key to understanding medieval Europe and the ways in which it regarded and reacted to the worlds around it. Thoroughly updated and redesigned, the second edition features new illustrations. Moreover, it offers an analysis of gender, along with an examination of the tumultuous relationship between the Mediterranean and Islam.