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The Old Testament in Byzantium contains papers from a Dumbarton Oaks symposium based on an exhibition of early Bible manuscripts titled "In the Beginning: Bibles before the Year 1000." Topics include manifestations of the holy books in Byzantine manuscript illustration, architecture, and government, as well as in Jewish Bible translations.
The French president Charles de Gaulle spoke of a Europe “from the Atlantic to the Urals”. Europe was spatially formed with these topographic parameters from the late 10th century onwards, with the massive Christianization of its inhabitants. At that time, however, all three monotheistic religions already had a steady presence there. Could such a macro-space be thought-and-narrated from a macro-perspective, in view of its medieval past? This has already been done through common ʻdenominatorsʻ such as the Migration Period, wars, trade, spread of Christianity. Could it also be seen through a common religious-philosophical and spiritual phenomenon – the Anticipation of the End of the world among Christians, Muslims, and Jews? This book gives a positive answer to the last question.
The law is a cultural phenomenon that impacts on the whole normative system of a civilisation and finally its core values. It is part of and simultaneously protector of these values. As such the law is in close relation with identity and with one of its main transmitters - the language. Every civilisation has a law code that should be common to all its parts and members and should be based on a common lexis. This book presents a case study in the legal terminology of mediaeval Bulgaria displayed against the broader background of the Byzantine civilisation to which the country belonged. It is accompanied by a glossary of the juridical lexis that is not only an example but forms the very basis of the researc project.
The overall character of the Black Sea region has been defined over time in various ways. For specialists in economy and trade, it has represented a region at the crossroads of the trade routes between Europe and Asia; for political scientists and historians, it has been a space of confrontation between the great terrestrial and naval powers; for the scholars attentive to its cultural dimensions, it has been a contact zone, a space of interaction between different peoples, religions and cultures. These attempts at a definition all revolve around an essential (and ambivalent) feature of the Black Sea as a factor of connection, a bridge, and at the same time a border, a dividing line between E...
This volume looks at 'visions of community' in a comparative perspective, from Late Antiquity to the dawning of the age of crusades. It addresses the question of why and how distinctive new political cultures developed after the disintegration of the Roman World, and to what degree their differences had already emerged in the first post-Roman centuries. The Latin West, Orthodox Byzantium and its Slavic periphery, and the Islamic world each retained different parts of the Graeco-Roman heritage, while introducing new elements. For instance, ethnicity became a legitimizing element of rulership in the West, remained a structural element of the imperial periphery in Byzantium, and contributed to ...
Margaret, saint and 11th-century Queen of the Scots, remains an often-cited yet little-understood historical figure. Keene's analysis of sources in terms of both time and place – including her Life of Saint Margaret , translated for the first time – allows for an informed understanding of the forces that shaped this captivating woman.
The life (in fact the lives) of Vlad III the Impaller or Dracula is a Rorschach test. Everybody sees what they want to see in the “documentary stains”. And these “stains” are expanding. Based on research in the archives and libraries of Budapest, Dubrovnik, Genoa, Mantua, Milan, Modena, Munich, Rome, Venice and Vienna, the book focuses on the conflictive medieval, and modern images created by the clash between the classical pictures of Vlad and the still preserved coeval sources.
Paul of Aleppo, an archdeacon of the Church of Antioch, journeyed with his father Patriarch Makarios III ibn al-Za'im to Constantinople, Moldavia, Wallachia and the Cossack's lands in 1652-1654, before heading for Moscow. This book presents his travel notes, preceded by his record of the patriarchs of the Church of Antioch and the story of his father's office as a bishop and election to the patriarchal seat. The author gives detailed information on the contemporary events in Ottoman Syria and provides rich and diverse information on the history, culture, and religious life of all the lands he travelled across.
Drawing upon previously unpublished commercial ledgers and correspondence, this study offers a collective social biography of three generations of Balkan merchants. Personal accounts humanize multiethnic networks that navigated multiple social systems – supporting and opposing various aspects of nationalist ideologies.
This volume is the result of an international conference held at Sapienza University of Rome in June 2014, which brought together scholars from different countries to re-analyse and re-interpret the events of the First World War, one hundred years after a young Bosnian Serb student from the “Mlada Bosna,” Gavrilo Princip, “lit the fuse” and ignited the conflict which was to forever change the world. The Great War – initially on a European and then on a world scale – demonstrated the fragility of the international system of the European balance of powers, and determined the dissolution of the great multinational empires and the need to redraw the map of Europe according to the pri...