This book provides a broad history of the Seljuq Turks from their origins and early conquests in the 10th century, through the rise of empire, until its dissolution at the end of the 12th. Where the history of the Seljuqs is usually studied in the context of medieval Persian, Arabic or Islamic history, this book considers the topic from the perspective of Turkish history. Examining the corpus of academic work on the period and how Turkish historiography has interpreted and understood the Seljuqs, the author demonstrates how the Great Seljuq Empire can be considered not only in a historical context, but as the instigator of Turko-Islamic civilization. Rejecting traditional Turkish scholarship, which places Iranian culture and Islam as the civilising elements in the Great Seljuq Empire, the author shows how the nature of nomadic pastoral empires have come under fresh scrutiny, reassessing Seljuq history and the framework within which it has been treated. This book provides a unique insight into the adoption to an urban environment of Turkic expectations that were forged on the Eurasian steppes, showing how the outcome put its stamp on the second millennium throughout the Middle East and Balkans. It will be an important addition to the literature on Medieval Islamic, Turkish and Middle Eastern history.

Poetry and Identity in Quattrocento Naples approaches poems as acts of cultural identity by examining how a group of authors used poetry to develop a poetic style, while also displaying their position toward the culture of others. Starting from an analysis of Giovanni Pontano's Parthenopeus and De Amore Coniugali, followed by a discussion of Jacopo Sannazaro's Arcadia, Matteo Soranzo links the genesis and themes of these texts to the social, political and intellectual vicissitudes of Naples under the domination of Kings Alfonso and Ferrante. Delving further into Pontano's literary and astrological production, Soranzo illustrates the consolidation and eventual dispersion of this author's legacy by looking at the symbolic value attached to his masterpiece Urania, and at the genesis of Sannazaro's De Partu Virginis. The strategies of poets writing in neo-Latin and the vernacular during the Aragonese domination, in this way, are used not only as historical evidence, but also to open a dialogue with New Historicism and the social sciences.

Debates in Medieval Philosophy: Essential Readings and Contemporary Responses aims to de-mystify medieval works by offering an illuminating, engaging introduction to the problems that medieval philosophers from Augustine through Ockham wrestled with. Each of the volume's 11 units presents a debate that will enable students to return to the primary texts prepared to think critically and imaginatively about them. Debates include: Does Anselm have a hierarchical or a flat conception of free will? Is Abelard's ethics conceptually impoverished? Does Avicenna teach that we acquire concepts through abstraction or emanation? What is Aquinas's purpose in writing the Summa contra gentiles? How sound are Ockham's criticisms of Scotus's theory of universals and individuation? The 10 essays newly commissioned for this volume will advance scholarship in medieval metaphysics, ethics, epistemology, logic, and philosophical theology, and in particular they will showcase what is philosophically distinctive and original in medieval philosophy. Students without experience in the history of philosophy will benefit from each unit's clear, sharply written introductions that supply the necessary background to approach the debates intelligently. In addition, the volume's general introduction elucidates the value of studying the history of philosophy through debate, in particular the history of medieval philosophy. Students will find in these debates models that will train them to formulate their own critical evaluations of a wide range of philosophical texts by thinkers with diverse philosophical commitments.

Though they have long been portrayed as arch rivals, Alan Perreiah here argues that humanists and scholastics were in fact working in complementary ways toward some of the same goals. After locating the two traditions within the early modern search for the perfect language, this study re-defines the lines of disagreement between them. For humanists the perfect language was a revived Classical Latin. For scholastics it was a practical logic adapted to the needs of education. Succeeding chapters examine the concepts of linguistic meaning and truth in Lorenzo Valla's Dialectical Disputations and Juan Luis Vives' De disciplinis. The third chapter offers a new interpretation of Vives' Adversus pseudodialecticos as itself an exercise in scholastic sophistry. Against this humanistic background, the study takes up the concepts of meaning and truth in Paul of Venice's Logica parva, a popular scholastic textbook in the Quattrocento. To advance recent research on language pedagogy in the Renaissance, it clarifies the connections between truth and translation and shows how scholastic logic performed an essential task in the early modern university: it was a translational language that enabled students who spoke mainly their regional vernaculars to learn the language of university discourse. A conclusion reviews some major themes of the study-e.g., linguistic determinism and relativity, vernacularity and translation, semantical vs. epistemic truth-and evaluates the achievements of humanism and scholasticism according to appropriate criteria for a perfect language.

This excellent short survey looks at the workings of parliament under the first four Tudor monarchs. After an introductory first section which looks at parliament's medieval origins, the author then considers all aspects of early parliamentary history - including the historiography of the early Tudor parliaments, membership and attendance, the legislative roles of the Lords and Commons and the specific parliaments themselves.

Bringing together international scholars from across a range of linked disciplines to examine the concept of the person in the Greek Christian East, Personhood in the Byzantine Christian Tradition stretches in its scope from the New Testament to contemporary debates surrounding personhood in Eastern Orthodoxy. Attention is paid to a number of pertinent areas that have not hitherto received the scholarly attention they deserve, such as Byzantine hymnography and iconology, the work of early miaphysite thinkers, as well as the relevance of late Byzantine figures to the discussion. Similarly, certain long-standing debates surrounding the question are revisited or reframed, whether regarding the concept of the person in Maximus the Confessor, or with contributions that bring patristic and modern Orthodox theology into dialogue with a variety of contemporary currents in philosophy, moral psychology, and political science. In opening up new avenues of inquiry, or revisiting old avenues in new ways, this volume brings forward an important and on-going discussion regarding concepts of personhood in the Byzantine Christian tradition and beyond, and provides a key stimulus for further work in this field.

This second collection of papers by Peter Edbury focuses primarily on the literature either composed in the Latin East or closely associated with it. The legal treatises from the kingdom of Jerusalem and from Cyprus and Antioch have long been recognized as providing insights into the juridical and social history of these places in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and some of the papers re-issued here reflect the author's work in re-editing two of the most famous of these treaties, those by John of Ibelin-Jaffa and Philip of Novara. The studies on historical literature are chiefly concerned with vernacular texts, most notably the Old French translation of William of Tyre and its Continuations, again much a result of his current work on a new edition of the Continuations and the associated text known as La Chronique d'Ernoul. Other papers concerned with aspects of the narrative traditions that furnish a significant part of our knowledge of Lusignan Cyprus in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and with which in one way or another Peter Edbury has been engaged since the early 1970s.

This book is a study of Islamic architecture in Anatolia following the Mongol conquest in 1243. Complex shifts in rule, movements of population, and cultural transformations took place that affected architecture on multiple levels. Beginning with the Mongol conquest of Anatolia, and ending with the demise of the Ilkhanid Empire, centered in Iran, in the 1330s, this book considers how the integration of Anatolia into the Mongol world system transformed architecture and patronage in the region. Traditionally, this period has been studied within the larger narrative of a progression from Seljuk to Ottoman rule and architecture, in a historiography that privileges Turkish national identity. Once Anatolia is studied within the framework of the Mongol Empire, however, the region no longer appears as an isolated case; rather it is integrated into a broader context beyond the modern borders of Turkey, Iran, and the Caucasus republics. The monuments built during this period served a number of purposes: mosques were places of prayer and congregation, madrasas were used to teach Islamic law and theology, and caravanserais secured trade routes for merchants and travelers. This study analyzes architecture on multiple, overlapping levels, based on a detailed observation of the monuments. The layers of information extracted from the monuments themselves, from written sources in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, and from historical photographs, shape an image of Islamic architecture in medieval Anatolia that reflects the complexities of this frontier region. New patrons emerged, craftsmen migrated between neighboring regions, and the use of locally available materials fostered the transformation of designs in ways that are closely tied to specific places. Starting from these sources, this book untangles the intertwined narratives of architecture, history, and religion to provide a broader understanding of frontier culture in the medieval Middle East, with its complex interaction of local, regional, and trans-regional identities.

These studies explore the history of the Jewish minority of Ashkenaz (northern France and the German Empire) during the High Middle Ages. Although the Jews in medieval Europe are usually thought to have been isolated from the Christian majority, they actually were part of a 'Jewish-Christian symbiosis.' A number of studies in the collection focus on Jewish-Christian cultural and social interactions, the foundations of the community ascribed to Charlemagne, and especially on the fashioning of a martyrological collective identity in 1096. Even when Jews resisted Christian pressures they often did so by internalizing Christian motifs and turning them on their heads to argue for the truth of Judaism alone. This may be seen especially in the formation of Jews as martyrs, a trope that places Jews as collective Christ figures whose suffering brings about vicarious atonement. The remainder of the studies delve into the lives and writings of a group of Jewish ascetic pietists, Hasidei Ashkenaz, which shaped the religious culture of most European Jews before modernity. In Sefer Hasidim (Book of the Pietists), attributed to Rabbi Judah the Pietist of Regensburg (d. 1217), one finds a mirror of everyday Jewish-Christian interactions even while the author advances a radical view of Jewish religious pietism.

The work known as Pseudo-Kodinos, the fourteenth-century text which is one of two surviving ceremonial books from the Byzantine empire, is presented here for the first time in English translation. With facing page Greek text and the first in-depth analysis in the form of commentary and individual studies on the hierarchy, the ceremonies, court attire, the Blachernai palace, lighting, music, gestures and postures, this volume makes an important new contribution to the study of the Byzantine court, and to the history and culture of Byzantium more broadly. The unique traits of this ceremony book include the combination of hierarchical lists of court officials with protocols of ceremonies; a detailed description of the clothing used at court, in particular, hats and staffs; an account of the functions of the court title holders, a description of the ceremonies of the year which take place both inside the palace and outside; the service of the megas domestikos in the army, protocols for the coronation of the emperor, the promotions of despot, sebastokrator and caesar, of the patriarch; a description of the mourning attire of the emperor; protocol for the reception of a foreign bride in Constantinople all these are analysed here. Developments in ceremonial since the tenth-century Book of Ceremonies are discussed, as is the space in which ceremonial was performed, along with a new interpretation of the 'other palace', the Blachernai. The text reveals the anonymous authors' interest in the past, in the origins of practices and items of clothing, but it is argued that Pseudo-Kodinos presents descriptions of actual practice at the Byzantine court, rather than prescriptions.

Christian theology and religious belief were crucially important to Anglo-Saxon society, and are manifest in the surviving textual, visual and material evidence. This is the first full-length study investigating how Christian theology and religious beliefs permeated society and underpinned social values in early medieval England. The influence of the early medieval Church as an institution is widely acknowledged, but Christian theology itself is generally considered to have been accessible only to a small educated elite. This book shows that theology had a much greater and more significant impact than has been recognised. An examination of theology in its social context, and how it was bound up with local authorities and powers, reveals a much more subtle interpretation of secular processes, and shows how theological debate affected the ways that religious and lay individuals lived and died. This was not a one-way flow, however: this book also examines how social and cultural practices and interests affected the development of theology in Anglo-Saxon England, and how 'popular' belief interacted with literary and academic traditions. Through case-studies, this book explores how theological debate and discussion affected the personal perspectives of Christian Anglo-Saxons, including where possible those who could not read. In all of these, it is clear that theology was not detached from society or from the experiences of lay people, but formed an essential constituent part.

The conquest of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade shattered irreversibly the political and cultural unity of the Byzantine world in the Greek peninsula, the Aegean and western Asia Minor. Between the disintegration of the Byzantine Empire after 1204 and the consolidation of Ottoman power in the fifteenth century, the area was a complex political, ethnic and religious mosaic, made up of Frankish lordships, Italian colonies, Turkish beyliks, as well as a number of states that professed to be the continuators of the Byzantine imperial tradition. This volume brings together western medievalists, Byzantinists and Ottomanists, combining recent research in the relevant fields in order to provide a holistic interpretation of this world of extreme fragmentation. Eight stimulating papers explore various factors that defined contact and conflict between Orthodox Greeks, Catholic Latins and Muslim Turks, highlighting common themes that run through this period and evaluating the changes that occurred over time. Particular emphasis is given on the crusades and the way they affected interaction in the area. Although the impact of the crusades on Byzantine history leading up to 1204 has been extensively examined in the past, there has been little research on the way crusading was implemented in Greece and the Aegean after that point. Far from being limited to crusading per se, however, the papers put it into its wider context and examine other aspects of contact, such as trade, interfaith relations, and geographical exploration.

Courts and the complex phenomenon of the courtly society have received intensified interest in academic research over recent decades, however, the field of Islamic court culture has so far been overlooked. This book provides a comparative perspective on the history of courtly culture in Muslim societies from the earliest times to the nineteenth century, and presents an extensive collection of images of courtly life and architecture within the Muslim realm. The thematic methodology employed by the contributors underlines their interdisciplinary and comprehensive approach to issues of politics and patronage from across the Islamic world stretching from Cordoba to India. Themes range from the religious legitimacy of Muslim rulers, terminologies for court culture in Oriental languages, Muslim concepts of space for royal representation, accessibility of rulers, the role of royal patronage for Muslim scholars and artists to the growing influence of European courts as role models from the eighteenth century onwards. Discussing specific terminologies for courts in Oriental languages and explaining them to the non specialist, chapters describe the specific features of Muslim courts and point towards future research areas. As such, it fills this important gap in the existing literature in the areas of Islamic history, religion, and Islam in particular.

Originally published between 1920-70, The History of Civilization was a landmark in early twentieth-century publishing. It was published at a formative time within the social sciences, and during a period of decisive historical discovery. The aim of the general editor, C.K. Ogden, was to summarize the most up to date findings and theories of historians, anthropologists, archaeologists and sociologists. This reprinted material is available as a set or in the following groupings: * Prehistory and Historical Ethnography Set of 12: 0-415-15611-4: GBP800.00 * Greek Civilization Set of 7: 0-415-15612-2: GBP450.00 * Roman Civilization Set of 6: 0-415-15613-0: GBP400.00 * Eastern Civilizations Set of 10: 0-415-15614-9: GBP650.00 * Judaeo-Christian Civilization Set of 4: 0-415-15615-7: GBP250.00 * European Civilization Set of 11: 0-415-15616-5: GBP700.00

The twelfth century was a period of rapid change in Europe. The intellectual landscape was being transformed by new access to classical works through non-Christian sources. The Christian church was consequently trying to strengthen its control over the priesthood and laity and within the church a dramatic spiritual renewal was taking place. Christians and Jews in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance reveals the consequences for the only remaining non-Christian minority in the heartland of Europe: the Jews. Anna Abulafia probes the anti-Jewish polemics of scholars who used the new ideas to redefine the position of the Jews within Christian society. They argued that the Jews had a different capacity for reason since they had not reached the 'right' conclusion - Christianity. They formulated a universal construct of humanity which coincided with universal Christendom, from which the Jews were excluded. Dr Abulafia shows how the Jews' exclusion from this view of society contributed to their growing marginalization from the twelfth century onwards. Christians and Jews in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance is important reading for all students and teachers of medieval history and theology, and for all those with an interest in Jewish history.

Originally published between 1920-70,The History of Civilization was a landmark in early twentieth century publishing. It was published at a formative time within the social sciences, and during a period of decisive historical discovery. The aim of the general editor, C.K. Ogden, was to summarize the most up-to-date findings and theories of historians, anthropologists, archaeologists and sociologists. This reprinted material is available as a set or in the following groupings, or as individual volumes: * Prehistory and Historical Ethnography Set of 12: 0-415-15611-4: GBP800.00 * Greek Civilization Set of 7: 0-415-15612-2: GBP450.00 * Roman Civilization Set of 6: 0-415-15613-0: GBP400.00 * Eastern Civilizations Set of 10: 0-415-15614-9: GBP650.00 * Judaeo-Christian Civilization Set of 4: 0-415-15615-7: GBP250.00 * European Civilization Set of 11: 0-415-15616-5: GBP700.00

The story of one of the most remarkable women of the medieval world, as you have never read it before A French peasant girl who heard voices from God, Joan convinced the royal court of her divine calling and became a teenage warrior, leading an army to victory against the English. Eventually captured and put on trial, she was denounced as a heretic and burned at the stake at the age of just nineteen. Five hundred years later, she was recognised as a saint. Here, Joan and her world are brought vividly to life by acclaimed historian Helen Castor, taking us to the heart of a tumultuous and bloody moment in the fifteenth century and the short by astonishing life of an extraordinary woman.

From late antiquity through to the early middle ages, people across north-western Europe were inscribing runes on a range of different objects. Once identified and interpreted by experts, runes provide us with invaluable evidence for the early Germanic languages including English, Dutch, German and the Scandinavian languages and reveal a wealth of information about our early civilisations. Runes employ many techniques from informal scratchings to sophisticated inlaid designs on weapons, or the exquisite relief carvings of the Franks Casket. The task of reading and understanding them involves a good deal of detective-work, calling on expertise from a number of academic disciplines: archaeology, art history, linguistics, and even forensic science. This book tells the story of runes from their mysterious origins, their development as a script, to their use and meaning in the modern world. Illustrated with a range of beautiful objects from jewellery to tools and weapons, Runes will reveal memorials for the dead, business messages, charms and curses, insults and prayers, giving us a glimpse into the languages and cultures of Europeans over a thousand years ago.

Using a comparative and broad perspective, Religion, Politics and Society in Britain 800-1066 draws on archaeology, art history, material culture, texts from charms to chronicles, from royal law-codes to sermons to poems, and other evidence to demonstrate the centrality of Christianity and the Church in Britain 800-1066. It delineates their contributions to the changes in politics, economy, society and culture that occurred between 800 and 1066, from nation-building to practicalities of government to landscape. The period 800-1066 saw the beginnings of a fundamental restructuring of politics, society and economy throughout Christian Europe in which religion played a central role. In Britain too the interaction of religion with politics and society was profound and pervasive. There was no part of life which Christianity and the Church did not touch: they affected belief, thought and behaviour at all levels of society. This book points out interconnections within society and between archaeological, art historical and literary evidence and similarities between aspects of culture not only within Britain but also in comparison with Armenian Christendom. A. E. Redgate explores the importance of religious ideas, institutions, personnel and practices in the creation and expression of identities and communities, the structure and functioning of society and the life of the individual. This book will be essential reading for students of early medieval Britain and religious and social history.

The belief that God eternally and unalterably decrees the election of one part of humankind and the reprobation of the rest has not aged well, but in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the doctrine of predestination was publicised and popularised to an extent unparalleled in the history of Christianity. Why was this? How successfully was the doctrine able to mix with other ideas, and to what effect? And did belief in predestination encourage confidence or despair? Practical Predestinarians is a study of the ways in which the doctrine of predestination was understood and communicated by churchmen in late Tudor and early Stuart England. It connects with debates about the 'popularity' of Protestantism during England's 'long reformation', as well as with the question of whether predestination tended toward inclusive or divisive, and conformist or subversive, applications. Intersecting with recent debates about the popular reception of Protestant preaching, this book focusses upon the pastoral message itself - it is therefore an investigation into the public face of English Calvinism.

This book investigates how minorities contributed to medieval society, comparing these contributions to majority society's perceptions of the minority. In this volume the contributors define 'minority' status as based on a group's relative position in power relations, that is, a group with less power than the dominant group(s). The chapters cover both what modern historians call 'religious' and 'ethnic' minorities (including, for example, Muslims in Latin Europe, German-speakers in Central Europe, Dutch in England, Jews and Christians in Egypt), but also address contemporary medieval definitions; medieval writers distinguished between 'believers' and 'infidels', between groups speaking different languages and between those with different legal statuses. The contributors reflect on patterns of influence in terms of what majority societies borrowed from minorities, the ways in which minorities contributed to society, the mechanisms in majority society that triggered positive or negative perceptions, and the function of such perceptions in the dynamics of power. The book highlights structural and situational similarities as well as historical contingency in the shaping of minority influence and majority perceptions. The chapters in this book were originally published as special issue of the Journal of Medieval History.

This volume depicts the life and times of the Mughal emperor Jahangir in the light of his memoirs, Jahangirnama, popularly known as Tuzuk-i Jahangiri. With its fresh treatment of source material and a vivid account of historical events, the book tells the history of Jahangir's India through his intimate and confessional memoirs incorporated in the genre of Mughal manuscript painting. The work is noteworthy for its historical portraits as well as Jahangir's visual realism, his remarkable knowledge of natural history, and the perceptive and detailed descriptions of the world around him. Moving away from conventional historical writing, the book is a psychological study of an individual, his innate qualities, behavioural moves and instinctive affinities. Jahangir's memoirs reveal deeper facets of him as a person as well as a poet, aesthete, connoisseur of painting and a keen observer of nature, both human and that of the natural world. The author also includes other contemporary literature of the period that narrate Jahangir's life, such as Akbarnama, Ma'asir-i Jahangiri, Iqbalnama-i Jahangiri, Intikhab-i Jahangiri, Tatimma-i Waqi'at-i Jahangiri and Zakhirat-ul Khwanin, as well as Jesuits accounts and travelogues. He further analyses the influence of European Renaissance art on the history of Mughal paintings. A first of its kind, this book will greatly interest scholars and researchers of medieval history, Indian history, Mughal history, art history, popular culture and South Asian studies, as well as the general reader.

George Gemistos Plethon (c. 1360-1454) was a remarkable and influential thinker, active at the time of transition between the Byzantine Middle Ages and the Italian Renaissance. His works cover literary, historical, scientific, but most notably philosophical issues. Plethon is arguably the most important of the Byzantine Platonists and the earliest representative of Platonism in the Renaissance, the movement which generally exercised a huge influence on the development of early modern thought. Thus his treatise on the differences between Plato and Aristotle triggered the Plato-Aristotle controversy of the 15th century, and his ideas impacted on Italian Renaissance thinkers such as Ficino. This book provides a new study of Gemistos' philosophy. The first part is dedicated to the discussion of his 'public philosophy'. As an important public figure, Gemistos wrote several public speeches concerning the political situation in the Peloponnese as well as funeral orations on deceased members of the ruling Palaiologos family. They contain remarkable Platonic ideas, adjusted to the contemporary late Byzantine situation. In the second, most extensive, part of the book the Platonism of Plethon is presented in a systematic way. It is identical with the so-called philosophia perennis, that is, the rational view of the world common to various places and ages. Throughout Plethon's writings, it is remarkably coherent in its framework, possesses quite original features, and displays the influence of ancient Middle and Neo-Platonic discussions. Plethon thus turns out to be not just a commentator on an ancient tradition, but an original Platonic thinker in his own right. In the third part the notorious question of the paganism of Gemistos is reconsidered. He is usually taken for a Platonizing polytheist who gathered around himself a kind of heterodox circle. The whole issue is examined in depth again and all the major evidence discussed, with the result that Gemistos seems rat

August 2019 saw numerous commemorations of the year 1619, when what was said to be the first arrival of enslaved Africans occurred in North America. Yet in the 1520s, the Spanish, from their imperial perch in Santo Domingo, had already brought enslaved Africans to what was to become South Carolina. The enslaved people quickly defected to local Indigenous populations, and compelled their captors to flee. Deploying such illuminating research, The Dawning of the Apocalypse is a riveting revision of the "creation myth" of settler colonialism and how the United States was formed. Here, Gerald Horne argues forcefully that, in order to understand the arrival of colonists from the British Isles in the early seventeenth century, one must first understand the "long sixteenth century"-from 1492 until the arrival of settlers in Virginia in 1607. During this prolonged century, Horne contends, "whiteness" morphed into "white supremacy," and allowed England to co-opt not only religious minorities but also various nationalities throughout Europe, thus forging a muscular bloc that was needed to confront rambunctious Indigenes and Africans. In retelling the bloodthirsty story of the invasion of the Americas, Horne recounts how the fierce resistance by Africans and their Indigenous allies weakened Spain and enabled London to dispatch settlers to Virginia in 1607. These settlers laid the groundwork for the British Empire and what became the United States of America.