Purity Lost investigates the porous nature of social, political,
and religious boundaries prevalent in the eastern Mediterranean --
from the Black Sea to Egypt -- during the Middle Ages. In this
intriguing study, Steven A. Epstein finds that people consistently
defied, overlooked, or transcended restrictions designed to
preserve racial and cultural purity in order to establish
relationships with those different from themselves.
These mixed relationships -- among people who did not share
language, creed, or skin color -- undermined the pervasive claims
of purity. They forced people to reflect on their own identities
and the bonds -- whether social, political, religious, or racial --
that defined their lives. Drawing on examples from daily life and
interstate politics, Epstein takes a close look at the renegades
and rule-breakers of this era. He explores race, master/slave
relationships, diplomatic relations between Christian Italians and
Muslim Turks, religious conversions from Christian to Muslim and
vice versa, and religious boundaries of the human and the
angelic.
Epstein reveals the modern view of cultural, ethnic, and
religious purity in the early modern Mediterranean as a mirage, and
he offers new insights into how present-day conceptions about
creed, color, ethnicity, and language originated.
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