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tumultuous events surrounding the First Crusade and the ensuing centuries of struggle for the conquest of the Holy Land has reverberated throughout the centuries and affected our collective psyche to this date. The Sword and the Green Cross offers a minutely researched analysis of the creation of one of the monastic and military Orders of the period: the Knights of Saint Lazarus. Devoid of the chequered popularity of their contemporary Knights Templar or the Knights of Saint John, the Knights of Saint Lazarus, with their green cross and invariable care of lepers and other afflicted pilgrims, nobles, knights and peasantry, offer the reader a fascinating history of diplomacy, military exploits...
In October 1994, fifty-three members of the Order of the Solar Temple in Switzerland and Québec were murdered or committed suicide. This incident and two later group suicides in subsequent years played a pivotal role in inflaming the cult controversy in Europe, influencing the public to support harsher actions against non-traditional religions. Despite the importance of the Order of the Solar Temple, there are relatively few studies published in English. This book brings together the best scholarship on the Solar Temple including newly commissioned pieces from leading scholars, a selection of Solar Temple documents, and important previously published articles newly edited for inclusion within this book. This is the first book-length study of the Order of the Solar Temple to be published in English.
Depuis plus de deux cents ans, la Villa Médicis est le siège de l’Académie de France à Rome créée par Louis XIV et jouit d’un prestige unique au monde. Dans un lieu d’une beauté inouïe, elle accueille des artistes, des écrivains, des réalisateurs, des historiens de l’art. Succédant à des directeurs illustres, dont le peintre Balthus, Pierre-Jean Rémy l’a dirigée de 1994 à 1997. Des créateurs du monde entier, des mécènes s’y sont rencontrés. Ce livre raconte avec passion et humour la vie intense de la Villa Médicis. Querelles picrocholines, fantasmes ministériels mais aussi grands moments de création. Amusé et grinçant, poétique et rêveur, ce journal constitue un tableau unique de la « vie d’artiste », mais aussi du bonheur d’être à Rome. Pierre-Jean Rémy, de l’Académie française, a été directeur de la Villa Médicis à Rome et président de la Bibliothèque nationale de France.
The experience, and failure, of Louis XVI's short-lived constitutional monarchy of 1789–92 deeply influenced the politics and course of the French Revolution. The dramatic breakdown of the political settlement of 1789 steered the French state into the decidedly stormy waters of political terror and warfare on an almost global scale. This book explores how the symbolic and political practices which underpinned traditional Bourbon kingship ultimately succumbed to the radical challenge posed by the Revolution's new 'proto-republican' culture. While most previous studies have focused on Louis XVI's real and imagined foreign counterrevolutionary plots, Ambrogio A. Caiani examines the king's hitherto neglected domestic activities in Paris. Drawing on previously unexplored archival source material, Caiani provides an alternative reading of Louis XVI in this period, arguing that the monarch's symbolic behaviour and the organisation of his daily activities and personal household were essential factors in the people's increasing alienation from the newly established constitutional monarchy.
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"[W]ithout a doubt one of the most important studies so far completed on literature in French grounded in the experiences of migrants of sub-Saharan African origin." -- Alec Hargreaves, Florida State University France has always hosted a rich and vibrant black presence within its borders. But recent violent events have raised questions about France's treatment of ethnic minorities. Challenging the identity politics that have set immigrants against the mainstream, Black France explores how black expressive culture has been reformulated as global culture in the multicultural and multinational spaces of France. Thomas brings forward questions such as -- Why is France a privileged site of civilization? Who is French? Who is an immigrant? Who controls the networks of production? Black France poses an urgently needed reassessment of the French colonial legacy.
This book examines a wide array of phenomena that arguably constitute the most noxious, extreme, terrifying, murderous, secretive, authoritarian, and/or anti-democratic aspects of national and international politics. Scholars should not ignore these "dark sides" of politics, however unpleasant they may be, since they influence the world in a multitude of harmful ways. The second volume in this two-volume collection focuses primarily on assorted religious extremists, including apocalyptic millenarian cults, Islamists, and jihadist terrorist networks, as well as CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear) terrorism and the supposedly new "nexus" between organized criminal and extremist groups employing terrorist operational techniques. A range of global case studies are included, most of which focus on the lesser known activities of certain religious extremist milieus. This collection should prove to be essential reading for students and researchers interested in understanding seemingly arcane but nonetheless important dimensions of recent historical and contemporary politics.