This month, Yale University Press publishes The Mortgage of the Past: Reshaping the Ancient Political Inheritance (1o50–1300), by Francis Oakley, President Emeritus of Williams College.  The volume is part of a three part series on the emergence of a secular from a religious socio-political worldview during the Middle Ages.   In this book, Oakley explores the confluence of secular and religious forces in the Middle Ages that shaped the transformation from a political conception of (1) a divine procession from king to heir to (2) a more secular understanding of the procession from ruler to ruler.

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