The second part of the volume is about the course of events--ecclesiastical and secular--with regard to the papacy, the western empire (mainly Germany), Italy, France, Spain, the British Isles, Scandinavia, Hungary, Poland, the Byzantine empire and the settlements in Palestine and Syria established by the crusades and their Muslim neighbors. "It is unquestionably magisterial ... produced with truly extraordinary accuracy." The Catholic Historical Review "This time Cambridge has come as close as possible to realizing the ambitious and unachieved standards of the orignal series. Ten years in the making, and subject to all the disappointments, delays, contributor drop-outs, their replacements, and intimations and demonstrations of mortality that necessarily plague such projects, these volumes stand up well to the high demands of both contemporary scholarship and readership." - The International History Review Edward Peters, University of Pennsylvania The second 'political' part of the fourth volume of The New Cambridge Medieval History. David Luscombe is Research Professor of Medieval History, University of Sheffield. Jonathan Riley-Smith is Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History, University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Emmanuel College.