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This collection of eighteen essays focuses on various phases of warfare around the medieval Mediterranean. Topics of these essays range from crusading activity to the increasing use of mercenaries to the spread of gunpowder weaponry.
First published to wide critical acclaim in 1992, The Two Cities has become an essential text for students of medieval history. For the second edition, the author has thoroughly revised each chapter, bringing the material up to date and taking the historiography of the past decade into account. The Two Cities covers a colourful period from the schism between the eastern and western churches to the death of Dante. It encompasses key topics such as: the Crusades the expansionist force of the Normans major developments in the way kings, emperors and Popes exercised their powers a great flourishing of art and architecture the foundation of the very first universities. Running through it all is t...
This volume consists of the work of eighteen established and younger scholars and focuses on the Mediterranean as a military arena during the Middle Ages. The essays center on several pillars of Mediterranean warfare: the crusading movement including the Spanish reconquista, the development of gunpowder weaponry, the widespread use of mercenaries, and warfare as understood by the lawcodes and intellectuals of the period. A number of articles in this collection present new answers to old historiographical questions.
In September, 1219, as the armies of the Fifth Crusade besieged the Egyptian city of Damietta, Francis of Assisi went to Egypt to preach to Sultan al-Malik al-Kâmil. Although we in fact know very little about this event, this has not prevented artists and writers from the thirteenth century to the twentieth, unencumbered by mere facts, from portraying Francis alternatively as a new apostle preaching to the infidels, a scholastic theologian proving the truth of Christianity, a champion of the crusading ideal, a naive and quixotic wanderer, a crazed religious fanatic, or a medieval Gandhi preaching peace, love, and understanding. Al-Kâmil, on the other hand, is variously presented as an enli...
This volume deals with efforts by the German episcopacy to implement the reform decrees issued by Pope Innocent III at the Fourth Lateran Council in November 1215 within the six ecclesiastical provinces of Bremen, Cologne, Magdeburg, Mains, Salzburg and Trier over three decades: its primary focus is upon the use of provincial and diocesan synods, episcopal visitations, and general chapters for the regular clergy to the end that “...evils may be uprooted, virtues implanted, mistakes corrected, morals reformed, heresies extirpated, the faith strengthened,...and salutary decrees enacted for the higher and lower clergy.” It examines the methods and the personalities involved, the relationships between the ecclesiastical leadership of Germany and the Roman Curia, and it assesses the impact of these efforts at a most opportune and critical point in the history of the medieval Church.
When it was first published by D.C. Heath in 1963 as part of their ""Problems in European Civilization"" series, this small volume offered readers a broad representation of the scholarly discussion on Pope Innocent III in an accessible format. Now revised and updated, this new edition presents recent scholarship on the role of Innocent III in the development of the medieval papacy, while enlarging the treatment of the Crusades, Innocent III's importance in theology, his political life and his pastoral and reform activities. Eight new selections have been added, along with a revised and expanded introduction. At the time of the first edition, its title aptly summed up the main lines of discus...
Introduction: Crusade and Christendom, 1187-1291 -- The Pope, Crusades, and Communities, 1198-1213 -- Crusade and Council, 1213-1215 -- The Fifth Crusade, 1213-1221 -- The Emperor's Crusade, 1227-1229 -- The Baron's Crusade, 1234-1245 -- The Mongol Crusades, 1241-1262 -- The Saint's Crusades, 1248-1270 -- The Italian Crusades, 1241-1268 -- Living and Dying on Crusade -- The Road to Acre, 1265-1291.
This volume presents translations of a selection of the letters sent by crusaders and pilgrims from Asia Minor, Syria and Palestine. There are accounts of all the great events from the triumph of the capture of Jerusalem in 1099 to the disasters of Hattin in 1187 and the loss of Acre in 1291. They convey the immediacy of circumstances which were frequently dramatic and often life-threatening, and show us the feelings of those who lived in and visited the crusader states. Some of the letters translated here are famous, others hardly known, but all offer unique insight into the minds of those who took part in the crusading movement.
Crusading in the twelfth century was less a series of discrete events than a manifestation of an endemic phenomenon that touched almost every aspect of life at that time. The defense of Christendom and the recovery of the Holy Land were widely-shared objectives. Thousands of men, and not a few women, participated in the crusades, including not only those who took the cross but many others who shared the costs and losses, as well as the triumphs of the crusaders. This volume contains not a narrative account of the crusades in the twelfth century, but a group of studies illustrating many aspects of crusading that are often passed over in narrative histories, including the courses and historiog...