City and Cosmos: The Medieval World in Urban Form [Hardcover]

'Keith Lilley's excellent new book takes as its theme the idea of the city as it was played out, performed and remediated in medieval culture . . . The book, like the urban forms it describes, is impressively far-reaching, beautifully designed and richly illustrated.' --- Urban History

'The virtue of Lilley's book is that it makes us seriously
consider the relationship between the city where medieval
people lived and the city of God that they imagined . . . this book would make an excellent reference textbook for graduate students as well as scholars unfamiliar with the field.' --- Imago Mundi

'an important look at how the "urban city" of the Middle Ages is connected to God's hierarchical arrangement of the universe and the city's place within this ordering . . . Lilley has achieved his goal of providing a new perspective on understanding the city's cultural and material construct . . . This book would make an excellent foundation on which to form a course on the cities of the Middle Ages, due to the fact that it contains so many diverse aspects that can be studied in an interdisciplinary fashion and its relatively inexpensive price. The book is well illustrated throughout, giving Lilley the ability to enhance his readers' understanding by providing visual references and he does a good job of using illustrations as evidence for his points.' --- The Medieval Review

'Reference to detailed mapping of a number of medieval cities has enabled Keith Lilley to challenge traditional functional views of the city and to suggest that equally important to its inhabitants was its cosmological symbolism . . . Due to the interdisciplinary nature of this book, its arguments making use of scientific, artistic, religious and dramatic material, it is likely to be of use to students of all these areas, as well as to historians and cartographers, offering as it does a new perspective on medieval urbanism.' --- Society of Cartographers Bulletin

'City and Cosmos provides an exciting bird's-eye view of urban life in the Middle Ages, when the urban body was connected with the body of Christ, and city, cosmos and man were seen to be linked through sacred geometry and harmonic proportion. Keith Lilley's compelling account is a reminder that for many medieval Christians, the city was a reflection of God's beauty and presence in the world, a physical manifestation of the beauty of the body of the universe created by God, and a model of the world to come.' --- Alessandro Scafi, The Warburg Institute, University of London

Keith D. Lilley is Senior Lecturer in Human Geography, Queen's University, Belfast. He is the author of many books and articles, including Urban Life in the Middle Ages, 1000-1450 (2002).