Using medieval art, much of it unseen or ignored by museums and art historians, this book paints a picture of life as imagined by the great mass of ordinary people between 1200 and 1500. The picture that emerges is of a civilization that is both unlike and like our own. Unlike most studies of the medieval world, this book does not concern itself with religious or aristocratic art, but with the products of popular and folk art. Love, hatred, crime and punishments, proverbs, heaven on earth, husband-beating all feature in the jewellery, tableware, illustrations, carvings and textiles of the period. This book aims to offer a major reassessment of the high medieval period.