Dictionary of World Biography. Volume 2. The Middle Ages

First published 1998 by Salem Press. "The Dictionary of World Biography, Volume II: The Middle Ages" is the second installment in a projected ten volume series covering the lives of important personages from the ancient world through the twentieth century. This new series is a revision and reordering of Salem Press's thirty-volume "Great Lives from History" series. The contents of the various "Great Lives from History" sets have been integrated and then rearranged from a geographical perspective into a chronological one, combining biographies of important people from all over the world into individual titles each covering an era. The existing essays are enhanced by the addition of new entries, updated bibliographies, a new page design, and illustrations. "The Middle Ages", volume 2 of the dictionary, gathers 259 essays from the "Great Lives from History" series and adds 19 new biographies, creating a total of 278 essays. The date of A.D. 450 was selected by the editors as the cutoff between the ancient world and the middle ages; the year 1400 was chosen as the dividing line between the middle ages and the Renaissance. Biographies spanning two eras were moved into the period that best encompassed the subject's life's work or major accomplishments.