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Famed historian's definitive history of the origins of diplomacy, tracing the diplomat's role as it emerged in the Italian city-states and spread northward in the 16th and 17th centuries.
This collection of essays provides new insight based on archival research into the medieval formation of human institutions of government, hospitals and warfare in Spain and England.
The civilisation of medieval Muslim Spain is perhaps the most brilliant and prosperous of its age and has been essential to the direction which civilisation in medieval Europe took. This volume is the first ever in any language to deal in a really comprehensive manner with all major aspects of Islamic civilisation in medieval Spain.
The epic battle for control of the Strait of Gibraltar waged by Castile, Morocco, and Granada in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries is a major, but often overlooked, chapter in the history of the Christian reconquest of Spain. After the Castilian conquest of Seville in 1248 and the submission of the Muslim kingdom of Granada as a vassal state, the Moors no longer loomed as a threat and the reconquest seemed to be over. Still, in the following century, the Castilian kings, prompted by ideology and strategy, attempted to dominate the Strait. As self-proclaimed heirs of the Visigoths, they aspired not only to reconstitute the Visigothic kingdom by expelling the Muslims from Spai...
This book is the first modern overview of the history of historiography in Spain. It covers sources from Juan de Mariana's History of Spain, written at the end of the sixteenth century, up to current historical writings and their context. The main objective of the book is to shed light on the continuities and breaks in the ways that Spanish historians represented ideas of Spain. The concept of historiography used is wide enough to span not only academic works and institutions but also public uses of history, including the history taught in schools. The methodology employed by the author combines the tradition of studies of national identity with those of historiography. One of the key themes in the book is the role of the historical profession in Spain and its influence on national discourse from the nineteenth century onwards.
First published in 1966. This volume holds a selection of published materials on Hispanic American life, covering general works, works on individual countries and regions, religious accounts and voyages and travels, that range from the sixteenth to the twentieth century.
Private and public relationships - frequently labelled as friendships - have always played a crucial role in human societies. Yet, over the centuries ideas and meanings of friendship transformed, adapting to the political and social climates of different periods. Changing concepts and practices of friendship characterized the intellectual, social, political and cultural panorama of medieval Europe, including that of thiteenth-century Iberia. Subject of conquests and 'Reconquest', land of convivencia, but also of political instability, as well as of secular and religious international power-struggles: the articulation of friendship within its borders is a particularly fraught subject to study...
A Plural Peninsula embodies and upholds Professor Simon Barton’s influential scholarly legacy, eschewing rigid disciplinary boundaries. Focusing on textual, archaeological, visual and material culture, the sixteen studies in this volume offer new and important insights into the historical, socio-political and cultural dynamics characterising different, yet interconnected areas within Iberia and the Mediterranean. The structural themes of this volume --the creation and manipulation of historical, historiographical and emotional narratives; changes and continuity in patterns of exchange, cross-fertilisation and the recovery of tradition; and the management of conflict, crisis, power and authority-- are also particularly relevant for the postmedieval period, within and beyond Iberia. Contributors are Janna Bianchini, Jerrilynn D. Dodds, Simon R. Doubleday, Ana Echevarría Arsuaga, Maribel Fierro, Antonella Liuzzo Scorpo, Fernando Luis Corral, Therese Martin, Iñaki Martín Viso, Amy G. Remensnyder, Maya Soifer Irish, -Teresa Tinsley, Sonia Vital Fernández, Alun Williams, Teresa Witcombe, and Jamie Wood. See inside the book
Alfonso X (1221-84) ruled over the Crown of Castile from 1252 until his death. Known as "the Wise," he oversaw the production of a wealth of literature in his scriptorium. One of the most impressive of these literary outputs is the collection of songs known as the Cantigas de Santa Maria, which by most counts comprises 429 songs preserved in four manuscripts. The miracle songs (or cantigas de miragre) form the focus of this book. While the Cantigas have been the subject of much scholarly attention, only a handful of studies have looked at the repertory through an interdisciplinary lens. Fewer still have probed how the Cantigas use the power of song as a communicative medium, one that functio...
Conquerors, Brides, and Concubines investigates the political and cultural significance of marriages and other sexual encounters between Christians and Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula, from the Islamic conquest in the early eighth century to the end of Muslim rule in 1492. Interfaith liaisons carried powerful resonances, as such unions could function as a tool of diplomacy, the catalyst for conversion, or potent psychological propaganda. Examining a wide range of source material including legal documents, historical narratives, polemical and hagiographic works, poetry, music, and visual art, Simon Barton presents a nuanced reading of the ways interfaith couplings were perceived, tolerated, ...