Some might judge foolhardy the very notion of approaching medieval European history as if nature mattered. Yet the historiographic space between J. Donald Hughes’s Pan’s Travail: Environmental Problems of the Ancient Greeks and Romans (1994), and John Richards’s The Unending Frontier: an Environmental History of the Early Modern World (2003) calls for at least a temporary span cobbled together by one familiar with the hazards of practising and teaching medieval and environmental history alike. The construction grew from original research and writing in these fields, but equally from trying to assimilate books, articles, conference papers, and conversations of colleagues in many disciplines into topics for discussion in graduate and senior seminars and eventually into lectures for undergraduates in History at York University, Toronto. Performances of able students at all levels showed what more could be made of these materials and the struggles of others indicated where approaches had to be rethought. Thus reconsidered and revised, the lectures became the core of this textbook, the substance of which was completed in September 2012.

The book is perhaps wishfully directed at two audiences, students of the Middle Ages and students of environmental history from both historical and palaeoscientific backgrounds. It therefore surely says some things one set of readers may find too elementary and another set still too alien, only to incite reversed opinions elsewhere. Patience can be a difficult virtue for readers and author alike, but an interdisciplinary enterprise must bring diverse expertise into a shared space where all can contribute. The book explores topics that are defined by general medieval history – the decline of Rome, the role of religious doctrine, the problem of the fourteenth century – by economic and social research with clear ecological implications – agricultural clearances and agrarian economics, tenurial rights, technology, urbanization – and by environmental studies – social metabolism, climate change, sustainability, the ‘tragedy of the commons’, biodiversity, the roots of today’s environmental crisis. Evidence and findings rest on administrative, legal, religious, and literary texts; on artistic, practical, and discarded material objects; and on biological, geological, pedological, atmospheric, genetic, and chemical data sets. Coverage aspires to be inclusive, summoning up examples from various lands of western Christendom and, where appropriate, observing differences as closely as commonalities.