The Aristocracy In The County Of Champagne 1100 1300

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The Aristocracy in the County of Champagne, 1100-1300

Author : Theodore Evergates
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812201884
Total Pages : 424 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (122 download)

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Book Synopsis The Aristocracy in the County of Champagne, 1100-1300 by : Theodore Evergates

Download or read book The Aristocracy in the County of Champagne, 1100-1300 written by Theodore Evergates and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2013-10-09 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Theodore Evergates provides the first systematic analysis of the aristocracy in the county of Champagne under the independent counts. He argues that three factors—the rise of the comital state, fiefholding, and the conjugal family—were critical to shaping a loose assortment of baronial and knightly families into an aristocracy with shared customs, institutions, and identity. Evergates mines the rich, varied, and in some respects unique collection of source materials from Champagne to provide a dynamic picture of a medieval aristocracy and its evolving symbiotic relationship with the counts. Count Henry the Liberal (1152-81) began the process of transforming a quasi-independent baronage accustomed to collegial governance into an elite of landholding families subordinate to the count and his officials. By the time Countess Jeanne married the future King Philip IV of France in 1284, the fiefholding families of Champagne had become a distinct provincial nobility. Throughout, it was the conjugal community, rather than primogeniture or patrilineage, that remained the core familial institution determining the customs regarding community property, dowry, dower, and partible inheritance. Those customs guaranteed that every lineage would survive, but frequently through a younger son or daughter. The life courses of women and men, influenced not only by social norms but also by individual choice and circumstance, were equally unpredictable. Evergates concludes that imposed models of "the aristocratic family" fail to capture the diversity of individual lives and lineages within one of the more vibrant principalities of medieval France.

Marie of France

Author : Theodore Evergates
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 081225077X
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (122 download)

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Book Synopsis Marie of France by : Theodore Evergates

Download or read book Marie of France written by Theodore Evergates and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2018-12-11 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Countess Marie of Champagne is primarily known today as the daughter of Louis VII of France and Eleanor of Aquitaine and as a literary patron of Chrétien de Troyes. In this engaging biography, Theodore Evergates offers a more rounded view of Marie as a successful ruler of one of the wealthiest and most vibrant principalities in medieval France. From the age of thirty-four until her death, Marie ruled almost continuously, initially for her husband, Henry the Liberal, during his journey to Jerusalem, then for her underage son, Henry II, and after his majority, during his absence on the Third Crusade and extended residence in the Levant. Presiding at the High Court of Champagne and attending to the many practical duties of governance, Marie acted with the advice of her court officers but without limitation by either the king or a regency council. If Henry the Liberal created the county of Champagne as a dynamic and prosperous state, it was Marie who expertly preserved and sustained it. Evergates mines Marie's letters patent and the literary and religious texts associated with her to glean a fuller picture of her life and work. He situates Marie within the regional institutions and external events that influenced her life as well as within her extended families of royal half-siblings—including King Philip II of France and her Plantagenet brothers—and her many in-laws, including the queen mother Adele and Archbishop William of Reims. Those who knew Marie best describe her as determined, gracious, and pious, as well as an effective ruler in the face of several external threats.

Henry the Liberal

Author : Theodore Evergates
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812247906
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (122 download)

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Book Synopsis Henry the Liberal by : Theodore Evergates

Download or read book Henry the Liberal written by Theodore Evergates and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2016-02-04 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the course of the twelfth century, the county of Champagne grew into one of the wealthiest and most important of French principalities, home to a large and established aristocracy, the site of international trade fairs, and a center for artistic, literary, and intellectual production. It had not always been this way, notes Theodore Evergates, who charts the ascent of Champagne under the rule of Count Henry the Liberal. Tutored in the liberal arts and mentored in the practice of lordship from an early age, Henry commanded the barons and knights of Champagne on the Second Crusade at twenty and succeeded as count of Champagne at twenty-five. Over the next three decades Henry immersed himself in the details of governance, most often in his newly built capital in Troyes, where he resolved disputes, confirmed nonlitigious transactions, and monitored the disposition of his fiefs. He was a powerful presence beyond the county as well, serving in King Louis VII's military ventures and on diplomatic missions to the papacy and the monarchs of England and Germany. Evergates presents a chronicle of the transformation of the lands east of Paris as well as a biography of one of the most engaging princes of twelfth-century France. Count Henry was celebrated for balancing the arts of governance with learning and for his generosity and inquisitive mind, but his enduring achievement, Evergates makes clear, was to transform the county of Champagne into a dynamic principality within the emerging French state.

Married Life in the Middle Ages, 900-1300

Author : Elisabeth van Houts
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0192519743
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (925 download)

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Book Synopsis Married Life in the Middle Ages, 900-1300 by : Elisabeth van Houts

Download or read book Married Life in the Middle Ages, 900-1300 written by Elisabeth van Houts and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-31 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Married Life in the Middle Ages, 900-1300 contains an analysis of the experience of married life by men and women in Christian medieval Europe, c. 900-1300. The study focusses on the social and emotional life of the married couple rather than on the institutional history of marriage, breaking it into three parts: Getting Married - the process of getting married and wedding celebrations; Married Life - the married life of lay couples and clergy, their sexuality, and any remarriage; and Alternative Living - which explores concubinage and polygyny, as well as the single life in contrast to monogamous sexual unions. In this volume, van Houts deals with four central themes. First, the tension between patriarchal family strategies and the individual family member's freedom of choice to marry and, if so, to what partner; second, the role played by the married priesthood in their quest to have individual agency and self-determination accepted in their own lives in the face of the growing imposition of clerical celibacy; third, the role played by women in helping society accept some degree of gender equality and self-determination to marry and in shaping the norms for married life incorporating these principles; fourth, the role played by emotion in the establishment of marriage and in married life at a time when sexual and spiritual love feature prominently in medieval literature.

John of Brienne

Author : Guy Perry
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1107043107
Total Pages : 237 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (7 download)

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Book Synopsis John of Brienne by : Guy Perry

Download or read book John of Brienne written by Guy Perry and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-17 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores John of Brienne's remarkable thirteenth-century career from mid-ranking knight to king of Jerusalem and Latin emperor of Constantinople.

Cities, Texts and Social Networks, 400–1500

Author : Caroline Goodson
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317165934
Total Pages : 367 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (171 download)

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Book Synopsis Cities, Texts and Social Networks, 400–1500 by : Caroline Goodson

Download or read book Cities, Texts and Social Networks, 400–1500 written by Caroline Goodson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-05-15 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cities, Texts and Social Networks examines the experiences of urban life from late antiquity through the close of the fifteenth century, in regions ranging from late Imperial Rome to Muslim Syria, Iraq and al-Andalus, England, the territories of medieval Francia, Flanders, the Low Countries, Italy and Germany. Together, the volume's contributors move beyond attempts to define 'the city' in purely legal, economic or religious terms. Instead, they focus on modes of organisation, representation and identity formation that shaped the ways urban spaces were called into being, used and perceived. Their interdisciplinary analyses place narrative and archival sources in communication with topography, the built environment and evidence of sensory stimuli in order to capture sights, sounds, physical proximities and power structures. Paying close attention to the delineation of public and private spaces, and secular and sacred precincts, each chapter explores the workings of power and urban discourse and their effects on the making of meaning. The volume as a whole engages theoretical discussions of urban space - its production, consumption, memory and meaning - which too frequently misrepresent the evidence of the Middle Ages. It argues that the construction and use of medieval urban spaces could foster the emergence of medieval 'public spheres' that were fundamental components and by-products of pre-modern urban life. The resulting collection contributes to longstanding debates among historians while tackling fundamental questions regarding medieval society and the ways it is understood today. Many of these questions will resonate with scholars of postcolonial or 'non-Western' cultures whose sources and cities have been similarly marginalized in discussions of urban space and experience. And because these essays reflect a considerable geographical, temporal and methodological scope, they model approaches to the study of urban history that will interest a wide range of readers.

Princely Power in Late Medieval France

Author : Erika Graham-Goering
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108489095
Total Pages : 303 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (84 download)

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Book Synopsis Princely Power in Late Medieval France by : Erika Graham-Goering

Download or read book Princely Power in Late Medieval France written by Erika Graham-Goering and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-16 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An in-depth study of coexisting social norms of princely power cutting across categories of hierarchy, gender, and collaborative rulership.

Creating Cistercian Nuns

Author : Anne E. Lester
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 0801462967
Total Pages : 287 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (14 download)

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Book Synopsis Creating Cistercian Nuns by : Anne E. Lester

Download or read book Creating Cistercian Nuns written by Anne E. Lester and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2011-11-22 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Creating Cistercian Nuns, Anne E. Lester addresses a central issue in the history of the medieval church: the role of women in the rise of the religious reform movement of the thirteenth century. Focusing on the county of Champagne in France, Lester reconstructs the history of the women’s religious movement and its institutionalization within the Cistercian order. The common picture of the early Cistercian order is that it was unreceptive to religious women. Male Cistercian leaders often avoided institutional oversight of communities of nuns, preferring instead to cultivate informal relationships of spiritual advice and guidance with religious women. As a result, scholars believed that women who wished to live a life of service and poverty were more likely to join one of the other reforming orders rather than the Cistercians. As Lester shows, however, this picture is deeply flawed. Between 1220 and 1240 the Cistercian order incorporated small independent communities of religious women in unprecedented numbers. Moreover, the order not only accommodated women but also responded to their interpretations of apostolic piety, even as it defined and determined what constituted Cistercian nuns in terms of dress, privileges, and liturgical practice. Lester reconstructs the lived experiences of these women, integrating their ideals and practices into the broader religious and social developments of the thirteenth century—including the crusade movement, penitential piety, the care of lepers, and the reform agenda of the Fourth Lateran Council. The book closes by addressing the reasons for the subsequent decline of Cistercian convents in the fourteenth century. Based on extensive analysis of unpublished archives, Creating Cistercian Nuns will force scholars to revise their understanding of the women’s religious movement as it unfolded during the thirteenth century.

Templar Families

Author : Jochen Schenk
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1107378001
Total Pages : 357 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (73 download)

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Book Synopsis Templar Families by : Jochen Schenk

Download or read book Templar Families written by Jochen Schenk and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-03-29 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Founded in c.1120, in the aftermath of the First Crusade in Jerusalem, the Order of the Temple was a Christian brotherhood dedicated to the military protection of pilgrims and the Holy Land, attracting followers and supporters throughout Christian Europe. This detailed study explores the close relationship between the Order of the Temple and the landowning families it relied upon for support. Focussing on the regions of Burgundy, Champagne and Languedoc, Jochen Schenk investigates the religious expectations that guided noble and knightly families to found and support Templar communities in the European provinces, and examines the social dynamics and mechanisms that tied these families to each other. The book illustrates the close connection between the presence of Cistercians and the incidence of crusading within Templar family networks, and offers new insights into how collective identities and memory were shaped through ritual and tradition among medieval French-speaking social elites.

CHAMPAGNE AND THE BEST HOUSES

Author : Eric Tirabassi
Publisher : BestChampagne
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 819 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis CHAMPAGNE AND THE BEST HOUSES by : Eric Tirabassi

Download or read book CHAMPAGNE AND THE BEST HOUSES written by Eric Tirabassi and published by BestChampagne. This book was released on 2021-04-22 with total page 819 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Best in the World French Wine Book in 2021" The Gourmand Award "A perfectly documented guide" Michel Drappier "A great book on champagne!" Olivier Bonville Extensive coverage of history, terroir, production process, and 33 of the finest houses. This book provides all the tools necessary to understand champagne, from its history started by clerics and nobles and developed by innovative and audacious entrepreneurs, to its unique terroir, and sophisticated production process. It explains the different categories of champagne, how they are made, and their distinctive organoleptic properties. It identifies and describes the very best houses that produce the most acclaimed champagnes. And it includes exclusive interviews with their President and Cellar Masters (aka Chief Winemakers). And for the ultimate champagne pleasure, it explains how to pair champagne with contemporary food and cuisine. After reading this book, you will choose champagne confidently and be able to discuss it with other champagne connoisseurs because you will be a connoisseur too. For this, the book also includes an extensive glossary with the terms that are used in the champagne world.

The Military Orders Volume V

Author : Peter Edbury
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351542508
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (515 download)

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Book Synopsis The Military Orders Volume V by : Peter Edbury

Download or read book The Military Orders Volume V written by Peter Edbury and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholarly interest and popular interest in the military orders show no sign of abating. Their history stretches from the early twelfth century to the present. They were among the richest and most powerful religious corporations in pre-Reformation Europe, and they founded their own states on Rhodes and Malta and also on the Baltic coast. Historians of the Church, of art and architecture, of agriculture and banking, of medicine and warfare and of European expansion can all benefit from investigating the orders and their archives. The conferences on their history that have been organized in London every four years have attracted scholars from all over the world. The present volume records the proceedings of the Fifth Conference in 2009 (held in Cardiff as the London venue was in the process of refurbishment), and, like the earlier volumes in the series, will prove essential for anyone interested in the current state of research into these powerful institutions. The thirty-eight papers published here represent a selection of those delivered at the conference. Three papers deal with the recent archaeological investigations at the Hospitaller castle at al-Marqab (Syria); others examine aspects of the history of the military orders in the Latin East and the Mediterranean lands, in Spain and Portugal, in the British Isles and in northern and eastern Europe. The final two papers address the question of present-day perceptions of the Templars as moulded by the sort of popular literature that most of the other contributors would normally keep at arm's length.

Geoffroy of Villehardouin, Marshal of Champagne

Author : Theodore Evergates
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 150177350X
Total Pages : 276 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis Geoffroy of Villehardouin, Marshal of Champagne by : Theodore Evergates

Download or read book Geoffroy of Villehardouin, Marshal of Champagne written by Theodore Evergates and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2024-01-15 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Geoffroy of Villehardouin, Marshal of Champagne by Theodore Evergates traces the remarkable life of Geoffroy of Villehardouin (c. 1148–c. 1217) from his earliest years in Champagne through his last years in Greece after the crusade. The fourth son of a knight, Geoffroy became marshal of Champagne, principal negotiator in organizing the Fourth Crusade, chief of staff of the expedition to and conquest of Constantinople, garrison commander of Constantinople and, in his late fifties, field commander defending the Latin settlement in the Byzantine empire against invading Bulgarian armies and revolting Greek cities. Known for his diplomatic skills and rectitude, he served as the chief military advisor to Count Thibaut III of Champagne and later to Emperor Henry of Constantinople. Geoffroy is remarkable as well for dictating the earliest war memoir in medieval Europe, which is also the earliest prose narrative in Old French. Addressed to a home audience in Champagne, he described what he did, what he saw, and what he heard during his eight years on crusade and especially during the fraught period after the conquest of Constantinople. His memoir, The Book of the Conquest of Constantinople, furnishes a commander's retrospective account of the main events and inner workings of the crusade—the innumerable meetings and speeches, the conduct (not always commendable) of the barons, and the persistent discontent within the army—as well as a celebration of his own deeds as a diplomat and a military commander.

The Templars and their Sources

Author : Karl Borchardt
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1315475278
Total Pages : 435 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (154 download)

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Book Synopsis The Templars and their Sources by : Karl Borchardt

Download or read book The Templars and their Sources written by Karl Borchardt and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-01-20 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Even 700 years after the suppression of the Order of the Temple and the execution of the last grandmaster, Jacques de Molay, there is no shortage of publications on this influential military order. Yet unlike other medieval institutions the Templars are subject to speculative fiction and popular myth which threaten to swamp the fruits of scholarly endeavour. Fortunately, recent years have produced a thriving academic scholarship which is challenging these myths. More and more sources are currently being edited, particularly those for the trial of the Templars (1307–1312). Others are still awaiting indepth study, among them, surprisingly, the greater part of the charters that cover more than 150 years of the Order’s history. The papers in this volume step into this gap and critically evaluate new directions in Templar studies on the basis of as-yet unedited source material. Open issues and desiderata regarding the sources are discussed and from a range of inspiring results a new status quaestionis is proposed that will not only provide a better understanding of the Order’s archaeological, economical, religious, administrative and military history, but also set new points of departure for the editing of charters and administrative documents. The papers here are grouped into six sections, focusing on the headquarters of the Order, its charters, manpower and finance, religious life and finally the suppression and the Order’s afterlife.

Elite Participation in the Third Crusade

Author : Stephen Bennett
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
ISBN 13 : 1783275782
Total Pages : 465 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (832 download)

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Book Synopsis Elite Participation in the Third Crusade by : Stephen Bennett

Download or read book Elite Participation in the Third Crusade written by Stephen Bennett and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2021 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The motivations behind those who went on the Third Crusade examined through close investigation of their social networks.

Out of Love for My Kin

Author : Amy Livingstone
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 0801457726
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (14 download)

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Book Synopsis Out of Love for My Kin by : Amy Livingstone

Download or read book Out of Love for My Kin written by Amy Livingstone and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2011-02-23 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Out of Love for My Kin, Amy Livingstone examines the personal dimensions of the lives of aristocrats in the Loire region of France during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. She argues for a new conceptualization of aristocratic family life based on an ethos of inclusion. Inclusivity is evident in the care that medieval aristocrats showed toward their families by putting in place strategies, practices, and behaviors aimed at providing for a wide range of relatives. Indeed, this care—and in some cases outright affection—for family members is recorded in the documents themselves, as many a nobleman and woman made pious benefactions "out of love for my kin." In a book made rich by evidence from charters—which provide details about life events including birth, death, marriage, and legal disputes over property—Livingstone reveals an aristocratic family dynamic that is quite different from the fictional or prescriptive views offered by literary depictions or ecclesiastical sources, or from later historiography. For example, she finds that there was no single monolithic mode of inheritance that privileged the few and that these families employed a variety of inheritance practices. Similarly, aristocratic women, long imagined to have been excluded from power, exerted a strong influence on family life, as Livingstone makes clear in her gender-conscious analysis of dowries, the age of men and women at marriage, lordship responsibilities of women, and contestations over property. The web of relations that bound aristocratic families in this period of French history, she finds, was a model of family based on affection, inclusion, and support, not domination and exclusion.

Medievalism

Author : Elizabeth Nicole Emery
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
ISBN 13 : 1843843854
Total Pages : 297 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (438 download)

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Book Synopsis Medievalism by : Elizabeth Nicole Emery

Download or read book Medievalism written by Elizabeth Nicole Emery and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2014 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The discipline of medievalism has produced a great deal of scholarship acknowledging the "makers" of the Middle Ages: those who re-discovered the period from 500 to 1500 by engaging with its cultural works, seeking inspiration from them, or fantasizing about them. Yet such approaches - organized by time period, geography, or theme - often lack an overarching critical framework. This volume aims to provide such a framework, by calling into question the problematic yet commonly accepted vocabulary used in Medievalism Studies. The contributions, by leading scholars in the field, define and exemplify in a lively and accessible style the essential terms used when speaking of the later reception of medieval culture. The terms: Archive, Authenticity, Authority, Christianity, Co-disciplinarity, Continuity, Feast, Genealogy, Gesture, Gothic, Heresy, Humor, Lingua, Love, Memory, Middle, Modernity, Monument, Myth, Play, Presentism, Primitive, Purity, Reenactment, Resonance, Simulacrum, Spectacle, Transfer, Trauma, Troubadour Elizabeth Emery is Professor of French and Graduate Coordinator at Montclair State University (Montclair, NJ, USA); Richard Utz is Chair and Professor of Medievalism Studies in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Tech (Atlanta, GA, USA). Contributors: Nadia Altschul, Martin Arnold, Kathleen Biddick, William C. Calin, Martha Carlin, Pam Clements, Michael Cramer, Louise D'Arcens, Elizabeth Emery, Elizabeth Fay, Vincent Ferré, Matthew Fisher, Karl Fugelso, Jonathan Hsy, Amy S. Kaufman, Nadia Margolis, David Matthews, Lauryn S. Mayer, Brent Moberly, Kevin Moberly, Gwendolyn Morgan, Laura Morowitz, Kevin D. Murphy, Nils Holger Petersen, Lisa Reilly, Edward Risden, Carol L. Robinson, Juanita Feros Ruys, Tom Shippey, Clare A. Simmons, Zrinka Stahuljak, M. Jane Toswell, Richard Utz, Angela Jane Weisl.

Political Culture in the Latin West, Byzantium and the Islamic World, c.700–c.1500

Author : Catherine Holmes
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1009021907
Total Pages : 706 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (9 download)

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Book Synopsis Political Culture in the Latin West, Byzantium and the Islamic World, c.700–c.1500 by : Catherine Holmes

Download or read book Political Culture in the Latin West, Byzantium and the Islamic World, c.700–c.1500 written by Catherine Holmes and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-26 with total page 706 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comparative study explores three key cultural and political spheres – the Latin west, Byzantium and the Islamic world from Central Asia to the Atlantic – roughly from the emergence of Islam to the fall of Constantinople. These spheres drew on a shared pool of late antique Mediterranean culture, philosophy and science, and they had monotheism and historical antecedents in common. Yet where exactly political and spiritual power lay, and how it was exercised, differed. This book focuses on power dynamics and resource-allocation among ruling elites; the legitimisation of power and property with the aid of religion; and on rulers' interactions with local elites and societies. Offering the reader route-maps towards navigating each sphere and grasping the fundamentals of its political culture, this set of parallel studies offers a timely and much needed framework for comparing the societies surrounding the medieval Mediterranean.