Light in the Dark Ages: the Rise and Fall of San Vincenzo al Volturno

First edition, first impression.  xx, 232pp, with maps and black and white illustrations in text.  Black cloth-covered boards with gilt lettering on the spine.  Previous owner’s name elegantly inked on the front free endpaper else volume is neat, clean, bright and tight throughout.  In its original illustrated dust wrapper, very slightly bumped on extreme edges and very slightly shelf worn.

The Benedictine monastery of San Vincenzo al Volturno, set in the foothills of the spectacular mountains of Abruzzi was one of the great centres of Dark Age Europe.  Its history is largely known from a 12th century illuminated manuscript – from its rise under the patronage of Charlemagne to its cataclysmic sacking by Arab marauders at the end of the 9th century.  Hodges, drawing on the excavations of the site that he led in the 1980s, draws together than history with a new light revealed by recent archaeology.