The Medieval Mediterranean

In The Concept of the Elect Nation in Byzantium, Shay Eshel shows how the Old Testament model of the ancient Israelites was a prominent factor in the evolution of Roman-Byzantine national awareness between the 7th and 13th centuries. The Byzantines' interpretation of the 7th century epic events as manifestations of God's wrath enabled them to incorporate the events into a paradigm which they now embraced: the Old Testament paradigm of the Israelite Elect Nation's complex relationship with God, a cyclic relation of sin, wrath, punishment, repentance and salvation. The Elect Nation concept enabled the Byzantines to express the shift in their collective identity toward a shrunken, yet more clearly defined, national awareness.

In Conflict, Commerce, and an Aesthetic of Appropriation in the Italian Maritime Cities, 1000-1150, Karen Rose Mathews analyzes the relationship between war, trade, and the use of spolia (appropriated objects from past and foreign cultures) as architectural decoration in the public monuments of the Italian maritime republics in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. This comparative study addressing five urban centers argues that the multivalence of spolia and their openness to new interpretations made them the ideal visual form to define a distinct Mediterranean identity for the inhabitants of these cities, celebrating the wealth and prestige that resulted from the paired endeavors of war and commerce while referencing the cultures across the sea that inspired the greatest hostility, fear, or admiration.

Venice and Its Neighbors from the 8th to 11th Century offers an account of the formation and character of early Venice, drawing on archaeological evidence from Venice and related sites, and written sources. The volume covers topics including: Venice’s role within the Byzantine exarchate of Ravenna during the 7th century; its independence in the mid-8th century; and its position as a dominant European and Mediterranean power. The work also discusses the birth of neighbouring communities of the northern Adriatic zone relevant to the rise of Venice.
Contributors are Francesco Borri, Silvia Cadamuro, Alessandra Cianciosi, Elisa Corrò, Stefano Gasparri, Sauro Gelichi, Cecilia Moine, Annamaria Pazienza, Sandra Primon, and Chiara Provesi.

Caring for the Living Soul identifies the fundamental role emotions played in the development of learned medicine and in the formation of the social role of the "physicians of the body" in the western Mediterranean between 1200 and 1500. The book explores theoretical debates and practical advice concerning the treatment of the "accidentia anime" in diverse medical sources. Contextualizing this literature within the developments in natural philosophy and pastoral theology during the period, and alongside local and social contexts of medical practice, emotions are revealed to have been a malleable topic through which change and innovation in the field of medicine transpired. Bringing together a wide range of untapped sources and creating connections between emotions, religious authorities, and medical practitioners, this study sheds light on the centrality of the discourses of emotions to the formation of the social fabric.

In The Benefits of Peace: Private Peacemaking in Late Medieval Italy Glenn Kumhera offers the first comprehensive account of private peacemaking, weaving together its legal, religious, political and social meanings across several cities (13th-15th centuries). The ability of peacemaking to hinder criminal prosecution has often been considered the result of government powerlessness. Kumhera, however, examines the benefits of private peacemaking, detailing how its flexibility was crucial in creating a viable criminal justice system that emphasized violence prevention and recognition of jurisdiction while allowing space for friends, neighbors and clergy to intervene. Additionally, he explores the roles of women and clergy in peacemaking, how peace operated in a vendetta culture and how the medieval understanding of reconciliation affected the practice of peacemaking.

Winner of the 2017 Verbruggen prize

Montfort Castle, located in the western Galilee, was the principal fortress of the Teutonic Order, one of the three great military orders of the Crusader period. It was built in the early thirteenth century and occupied and dismantled by the Mamluk army in 1271. It is among the finest examples of Crusader spur castles. This present volume includes discussions by 23 scholars, experts in their fields, in 28 chapters covering every aspect of past and recent scholarship on the history of the Teutonic Order and the castle, travellers’ descriptions, the architecture, the geographical setting, the material culture of the garrison, and detailed descriptions of the 1926 archaeological expedition to Montfort and the ongoing work of the Montfort Castle Project.

Winner of the 2017 Verbruggen prize, awarded annually by the De Re Militari society for the best book on medieval military history. The awarding committee stated that the volume offers ‘a through exploration of all the sources, archaeological and literary, relating to an important site. A model for future work.’

Contributors are Laura Aiello, Zohar Amar, Tamar Backner, Adrian J. Boas, Nativ Dudai, Rafael Frankel, Jonathan J. Gottlieb, Lydia Perelis Grossowicz, Timothy B. Husband, Nurith Kenaan-Kedar, Rabei G. Khamisy, Robert Kool, Dorit Korngreen, Rafael Lewis, Nili Liphschitz, Cecilia Luschi, Lisa Pilosi, Mary B. Shepard, Vardit Shotten-Hallel, Kristjan Toomaspoeg, Andrea Wähning, David Whitehouse, and Mark Wypyski.

Winner of the 2018 Dr Sona Aronian book prize for Excellence in Armenian Studies

In Mattʿēos Uṙhayecʿi and His Chronicle Tara L. Andrews presents the first ever in-depth study of the history written by this Armenian priest, who lived in Edessa (modern-day Urfa in Turkey) around the turn of the twelfth century and was an eyewitness to the First Crusade and the establishment of the Latin East.
Although the Chronicle is known as an extremely valuable source of information for the eleventh- and early twelfth-century Near East, neither its guiding structure nor Uṙhayecʿi's motivation in writing it have ever been clear to modern historians. This study elucidates the prophetic framework within which the text was written, and demonstrates how that framework has influenced Uṙhayecʿi's understanding of the time in which he lived.

From Constantinople to the Frontier: The City and the Cities provides twenty-five articles addressing the concept of centres and peripheries in the late antique and Byzantine worlds, focusing specifically on urban aspects of this paradigm. Spanning from the fourth to thirteenth centuries, and ranging from the later Roman empires to the early Caliphate and medieval New Rome, the chapters reveal the range of factors involved in the dialectic between City, cities, and frontier.
Including contributions on political, social, literary, and artistic history, and covering geographical areas throughout the central and eastern Mediterranean, this volume provides a kaleidoscopic view of how human actions and relationships worked with, within, and between urban spaces and the periphery, and how these spaces and relationships were themselves ideologically constructed and understood.
Contributors are Walter F. Beers, Lorenzo M. Bondioli, Christopher Bonura, Lynton Boshoff, Averil Cameron, Jeremiah Coogan, Robson Della Torre, Pavla Drapelova, Nicholas Evans, David Gyllenhaal, Franka Horvat, Theofili Kampianaki, Maximilian Lau, Valeria Flavia Lovato, Byron MacDougall, Nicholas S.M. Matheou, Daniel Neary, Jonas Nilsson, Cecilia Palombo, Maria Alessia Rossi, Roman Shliakhtin, Sarah C. Simmons, Andrew M. Small, Jakub Sypiański, Vincent Tremblay and Philipp Winterhager.

In The Byzantine Turks, 1204–1461 Rustam Shukurov offers an account of the Turkic minority in Late Byzantium including the Nicaean, Palaiologan, and Grand Komnenian empires. The demography of the Byzantine Turks and the legal and cultural aspects of their entrance into Greek society are discussed in detail. Greek and Turkish bilingualism of Byzantine Turks and Tourkophonia among Greeks were distinctive features of Byzantine society of the time. Basing his arguments upon linguistic, social, and cultural evidence found in a wide range of Greek, Latin, and Oriental sources, Rustam Shukurov convincingly demonstrates how Oriental influences on Byzantine life led to crucial transformations in Byzantine mentality, culture, and political life. The study is supplemented with an etymological lexicon of Oriental names and words in Byzantine Greek.

The growth of princely states in early Renaissance Italy brought a thorough renewal to the old seats of power. One of the most conspicuous outcomes of this process was the building or rebuilding of new court palaces, erected as prestigious residences in accord with the new ‘classical’ principles of Renaissance architecture. The novelties, however, went far beyond architectural forms: they involved the reorganisation of courtly interiors and their functions, new uses for the buildings, and the relationship between the palaces and their surroundings. The whole urban setting was affected by these processes, and therefore the social, residential and political customs of its inhabitants. This is the focus of A Renaissance Architecture of Power, which aims to analyse from a comparative perspective the evolution of Italian court palaces in the Renaissance in their entirety.
Contributors are Silvia Beltramo, Flavia Cantatore, Bianca de Divitiis, Emanuela Ferretti, Marco Folin, Giulio Girondi, Andrea Longhi, Marco Rosario Nobile, Aurora Scotti, Elena Svalduz, and Stefano Zaggia.

William of Tyre's history of the Kingdom of Jerusalem has long been viewed as one of the most useful sources for the Crusades and the Latin East from the beginnings of the First Crusade to William's death shortly before Saladin's conquest of Jerusalem. However, this text was most popular during the medieval period in an Old French translation.
In The Old French of William of Tyre Philip Handyside identifies the differences between the Latin and French texts and analyses the translator motives for producing the translation and highlights significant changes that may provide a better understanding of the period in question. Handyside also argues for a complex manuscript tradition that developed across the medieval Mediterranean.

This book examines the social, institutional and cultural setting of medical practices in the medieval town of Montpellier which boasted one of the first universities of the middle ages and a famous school of medicine. Some of its most celebrated masters and their medical works have been thoroughly studied but few of them try to put these in context with a thriving urban community of merchants and craftsmen that were at the core of the city council. Their concurrent efforts will endow Montpellier of a rich health care system featuring not only the university masters but also the city’s barber-surgeons and apothecaries. Their collective fate is revealed here in an integrated picture of health and society in the middle ages.

Diverging Paths? investigates an important question, to which the answers must be very complex: “why did certain sorts of institutionalisation and institutional continuity characterise government and society in Christendom by the later Middle Ages, but not the Islamic world, whereas the reverse end-point might have been predicted from the early medieval situation?” This core question lies within classic historiographical debates, to which the essays in the volume, written by leading medievalists, make significant contributions. The papers, drawing on a wide range of evidence and methodologies, span the middle ages, chronologically and geographically. At the same time, the core question relates to matters of strong contemporary interest, notably the perceived characteristics of power exercised within Islamic Middle Eastern regimes.
Contributors are Stuart Airlie, Gadi Algazi, Sandro Carocci, Simone Collavini, Emanuele Conte, Nadia El Cheikh, Maribel Fierro, John Hudson, Caroline Humfress, Michel Kaplan, Hugh Kennedy, Simon MacLean, Eduardo Manzano, Susana Naroztky, Annliese Nef, Vivien Prigent, Ana Rodríguez, Magnus Ryan and Bernard Stolte.

In The Gattilusio Lordships and the Aegean World 1355-1462, Christopher Wright offers a window into the culturally and politically diverse late medieval Aegean. The overlapping influences of the contrasting networks of power at work in the region are explored through the history of one of many small and distinctive political units that flourished in this fragmented environment, the lordships of the Gattilusio family, centred on Lesbos. Though Genoese in origin, they owed their position to Byzantine authority. Though active in crusading, they cultivated congenial relations with the Ottomans. Though Catholic, they afforded exceptional freedom to the Orthodox Church. Their regime is shown to represent both a unique fusion of influences and a revealing microcosm of its times.

In The Anxieties of a Citizen Class: The Miracles of the True Cross of San Giovanni Evangelista, Venice 1370-1480 Kiril Petkov identifies the socio-psychological preoccupations accompanying the formation of the leading commoner group of early Renaissance Venice, the cittadini originarii, as revealed in a cycle of miracles performed by a fragment of the True Cross owned by the brotherhood of San Giovanni Evangelista. The study’s principal contention is that the miracles trace the evolution of the citizen elite from members of a large, fluid group of men of affairs to community managers to state servants. Each miracle highlights a stage of that process and the social anxieties engendered in the acquisition of a specific social identity.

Publicly performed rituals and ceremonies form an essential part of medieval political practice and court culture. This applies not only to western feudal societies, but also to the linguistically and culturally highly diversified environment of Byzantium and the Mediterranean basin. The continuity of Roman traditions and cross-fertilization between various influences originating from Constantinople, Armenia, the Arab-Muslim World, and western kingdoms and naval powers provide the framework for a distinct sphere of ritual expression and ceremonial performance. This collective volume, placing Byzantium into a comparative perspective between East and West, examines transformative processes from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages, succession procedures in different political contexts, phenomena of cross-cultural appropriation and exchange, and the representation of rituals in art and literature.
Contributors are Maria Kantirea, Martin Hinterberger, Walter Pohl, Andrew Marsham, Björn Weiler, Eric J. Hanne, Antonia Giannouli, Jo Van Steenbergen, Stefan Burkhardt, Ioanna Rapti, Jonathan Shepard, Panagiotis Agapitos, Henry Maguire, Christine Angelidi and Margaret Mullett.

This book addresses a question that has been somewhat neglected in the many studies of the mercantile operations of the ‘merchant of Prato’, Francesco di Marco Datini, in the years around 1400: the operations of his firm in the Maghrib, a region in which he and his colleagues had to operate through agents, rather than by means of branches or sister companies based in the region. Thanks to the voluminous material of the Datini archive in Prato, it offers a reconstruction of commercial strategies through the study of networks, of economic actors, their identity and their practices, and of the link between trade and the State, especially the Florentine one.

In Honorius III et l'Orient (1216-1227), Pierre-Vincent Claverie offers a large-scale study of the oriental policy developed by Pope Honorius III at the time of the Fifth Crusade. His book is enriched by 150 unpublished bulls presenting Honorius III as a worthy successor of Innocent III and a constant defender of the Holy Land. Its scope embraces also the relations of the Holy See with the Latin clergy in the East, the different oriental christian faiths and the military orders.

Much of the past twenty years of scholarship on late-antique and medieval landscapes and settlement has introduced theoretical patterns reflecting meta-narratives of evolution and transition. This book draws on 5 years of archaeological and topographical fieldwork in order to attempt a rereading of Byzantine texts in accordance with recent perceptions of the historicity of space. The result is a fresh interpretation of settlement in Western Greece (Southern Epirus and Aetoloacarnania) from 600 to 1200 AD, springing from a postmodern theoretical background. While representing real progress in the treatment of the Middle Byzantine regions, the book makes an ecological contribution to historical and social studies through a new evaluation of the transformation of medieval settlement as a result of interaction between physical/social space and human agency.

Analysing different conflicts in Late Medieval Alexandria, this book offers new insights into the micro-mechanics of Venetian life and trade in Egypt and recalibrates the narrative of the strictly regulated and often violent contacts between East and West. This thorough microanalysis, based on the private archive of a Venetian merchant and consul in Alexandria read in conjunction with other Venetian and Mamluk sources, provides a differentiated image of conflict patterns cutting across the cultural divide. It transforms our image of Alexandria as a city at the intersection of Orient and Occident into that of a microcosm in its own right where disputes did not always fall neatly along cultural divides and conflicts were traded as much as trade created conflicts.

The first full-length study of mainland southern Italy's domestic market in the late Middle Ages, this book discusses the interaction between population, the market, and the region's institutional framework, in the context of the impact of the late medieval 'crisis' on the European economy. Based on new or little-used documentary evidence, it adopts an interdisciplinary approach and combines economic history with elements of economic theory to reassess common knowledge on demographic and urbanization trends, the organization of the domestic market, the role of the state, and on actual patterns of agricultural production, industrial activity and commercial itineraries. The result is a fresh look at the late medieval economy of the kingdom of Naples, which, it seems now, is worth studying for its own merit.

Alice-Mary Talbot has profoundly influenced Byzantine Studies in America and Europe, focusing her scholarship upon the social context of Byzantine religious practices. As Director of Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks and as editor of Dumbarton Oaks Papers, she touched the professional lives of senior and junior Byzantinists alike. This collection of twenty-five articles from scholars associated with her at various stages in her career compasses such varied disciplines as art history, social history, literature, epigraphy, numismatics and sigillography; contributions are grouped in three related sections: “Women,” “Icons and Images,” and finally “Texts, Practices, Spaces.” Illustrated with both b/w and color images, the volume is at once a varied and a coherent tribute to this extraordinary scholar.
Contributors are Alexander Alexakis, Simon Bendall, Annemarie Weyl Carr, John Duffy, Stephanos Efthymiadis, Elizabeth A. Fisher, Jaroslav Folda, Sharon E. J. Gerstel, Michael Grünbart, Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Angela Constantinides Hero, Michel Kaplan, Paul Magdalino, Henry Maguire, Maria Mavroudi, Stamatina McGrath, Cécile Morrisson, John Nesbitt, Arietta Papaconstantinou, Stratis Papaioannou, Manolis Patedakis, Brigitte Pitarakis, Claudia Rapp, Nancy Patterson Ševčenko, Brooke Shilling, Paul Stephenson and Denis Sullivan.

Philippe de Mézières (1327-1405) was the quintessential man of all seasons of the fourteenth-century Mediterranean. A scholar, a soldier, a mystic, a man of affairs, a royal adviser and an incessant traveler around the Mediterranean, a prolific writer and an associate of religious orders, a champion of the crusade and no less an ardent advocate of peace in the West, a Frenchman, a Cypriot, and a Venetian citizen, he captures the spirit of his age like no other man. This volume, the first to address Philippe and his legacy comprehensively since 1896, gathers twenty-two contributions of original research shedding new light on Philippe’s literary, political, and mystical writings, and places him in the context of his age and his contemporaries.
Contributors are Michel Balard, Adrian Bell, Joël Blanchard, Kevin Brownlee, Evelien Chayes, Philippe Contamine, Anne Curry, Daisy Delogu, Peter Edbury, John France, Catherine Gaullier-Bougassas, Henri Gourinard, Michael Hanly, David Jacoby, Sharon Kinoshita, Anna Loba, Angel Nicolaou-Konnari, Sylvain Piron, Andrea Tarnowski, Stefan Vander Elst, Lori Walters, and David Wrisley.

In 1204 the army of the Fourth Crusade sacked the great city of Constantinople. In earlier historiography the view prevailed that these Western barons and knights temporarily destroyed the Byzantine state and replaced it with a series of feudal states of their own making. Through a comprehensive rereading of better and lesser-known sources this book offers an alternative perspective arguing that the Latin rulers did not abolish, but very consciously wanted to continue the Eastern Empire. In this, the new imperial dynasty coming from Flanders-Hainaut played a pivotal role. Despite religious and other differences many Byzantines sided with the new regime and administrative practices at the different governmental levels were to a larger or lesser degree maintained.

Narrating the history of Naples from its foundation in early antiquity to the year 1343, the Cronaca di Partenope was the first chronologically comprehensive history of the city and one of the earliest works of any genre composed in the Neapolitan vernacular. Drawing on earlier-medieval texts and a healthy dose of legend, it is a prime witness to Neapolitan identity and memory in the later Middle Ages and an important example of southern Italian civic historiography. This volume offers the first critical edition of the text, accompanied by an extensive introduction that establishes its author, date, historical context, source materials, and later fortunes, including its significant influence on the subsequent development of local historiography

The “Letter of Love and Concord” is a unique source, which allows us a glimpse into the political and religious aspirations of the Armenian Cilician elite at the end of the twelfth century, alluding to its hopes and expectations from the Crusades and the Church of Rome, as well as its uneasy relationship with the Byzantine Empire. The “Letter” is especially valuable for the wealth of information it contains on the royal ideology nurtured within the highest circles of the ruling Rubenid dynasty. The study provides an analysis of the sources used by its anonymous author, placing them within a historical context. Moreover, this marks the first time that a text based on the study of surviving sixty nine manuscripts along with its English translation has been made available for scholars.

The medieval Mediterranean world has inspired a rich variety of archaeological studies aimed at trying to piece together its past. This volume presents seven case studies that reveal the complexities of and possible solutions for exploring various areas of the Mediterranean basin. Individually, they offer models of interdisciplinary study that move beyond the disciplinary boundaries of archaeology to integrate evidence from other fields ranging from history to town planning. As a whole, they provide the only collection of studies of their kind for the medieval Mediterraean. They thus provide readers with a view of a field that is vibrant, nuanced, and utilizes a methodological approach that is capable of greatly increasing our knowledge of the medieval Mediterranean world.
Contributors are Tasha Vorderstrasse, Jon van Leuven, Cédric Devais, Michelle Hobart, Giulia Annalinda Neglia, Johnny De Meulemeester, and Sauro Gelichi.

The question of the independence of Byzantine iconography continues to draw attention. Following extensive research on the persistence of Classical motifs in Byzantine art, interest has recently turned to the originality of the latter and its reliability as a historical source. This study examines whether military equipment (armour, weapons, insignia and costume) shown in images of the warrior saints reflects items actually used in the mid-Byzantine Army or merely repeats Classical forms. Such representations are compared with documentary evidence gathered chiefly from Byzantine military manuals. The author demonstrates that military equipment, being a vital branch of material culture subject to constant evolution, provides a good indicator of iconographic innovation in the art of Byzantium.

The second half of the fourteenth century was a period of rapid change in the Eastern Mediterranean, principally due to the expansion into Europe of the Ottoman Turks. Demetrius Kydones was one of the key Byzantine political and intellectual figures of the time, and his writings are regarded as one of the most important sources for study of the period. Kydones’ career spanned at least four decades, from the 1340s to the 1380s. A Latin scholar, influenced in particular by the writings of Thomas Aquinas (some of which he translated into Greek), Kydones was a leading advocate of improvement of relations between Byzantium and the Latin West as crucial to Byzantine survival. This book examines Kydones’ career and writings, investigating how they can contribute to developing a nuanced understanding of Byzantine political and cultural developments in these years of crisis.

Whereas a great deal of research has been carried out on Crusader castles, churches and major buildings in the Latin East, almost no attention has been paid to domestic architecture and the domestic settings in which most of the population of the Crusader states spent most of their time. The present work attempts to address this deficiency by taking an in-depth look at the various domestic buildings that served the urban and rural population and the domestic apartments in castles and mosasteries. The basis for this survey is the wealth of published and unpublished archaeological data that has been uncovered over the past century and the various documentary materials available, much of which has been overlooked in the past.

Bologna is well known for its powerful university and notariate of the thirteenth century, but the fourteenth-century city is less studied. This work redresses the imbalance in scholarship by examining social and economic life at mid-fourteenth century, particularly during the epidemic of plague, the Black Death of 1348. Arguing against medieval chroniclers' accounts of massive social, political, and religious breakdown, this examination of the immediate experience of the epidemic, based on notarial records--including over a thousand testaments--demonstrates resilience during the crisis. The notarial record reveals the activities and decisions of large numbers of individuals and families in the city and provides a reconstruction of the behavior of clergy, medical practitioners, government and neighborhood officials, and notaries during the epidemic.

The icon known as the Image of Edessa (and later the Mandylion) is attributed to the times of Christ, although its existence before the sixth century is a matter for debate. It was taken from Edessa to Constantinople in the mid-tenth century and all traces of the icon are lost after the sack of Constaninople in 1204. The Image has never had its own biography containing all the known texts and information about this fascinating object. This book provides critical editions with previously unpublished versions of all related texts, translations of all texts into English and a detailed analysis of the origins, known history, possible fate and exact nature of the Image of Edessa.

The nineteen essays assembled in this Festschrift represent the multiplicity of interests evident in Elisabeth (Elisheva) Revel-Neher’s work. They cover a variety of subjects dealing with pictorial messages encrypted in various artistic media, and address a broad array of topics: Jewish identity in the late antique period; patronage in late antique Jewish and Christian religious architecture; Jewish-Christian polemics and the representation of the “Other”; the question of Jewish or Christian illuminators of Hebrew books; the cultural background of illustrations in Hebrew manuscripts; Christian cosmology and dogma; the imagery of the Temple; and Jewish and Christian perceptions of women.
Contributors are Rivka Ben-Sasson, Walter Cahn, Evelyn Cohen, Andreina Contessa, Eva Frojmovic, Lihi Habas, Dalia-Ruth Halperin, Colum Hourihane, Emma Maayan-Fanar, Herbert L. Kessler, Katrin Kogman-Appel, Shulamit Laderman, Mati Meyer, Bezalel Narkiss, Kurt Schubert, Sarit Shalev-Eyni, Margo Stroumsa-Uzan, Rina Talgam.

The convoys of public galleys, the typical form of Venetian medieval sea-faring, had disappeared gradually by the time of the battle of Lepanto. This disappearance was not the sign of a general economic crisis, but was nevertheless the corollary of important political, economic and social changes which marked the history of sixteenth-century Venice. Through the study of economic actors, their identity, their practices and their functions, this book analyses public and private commercial navigation in relation to the evolution of forms and functions of the State, within a general context of the redefinition of the relationship between public good and private interests.

This volume presents English translations, with introductions and notes, of Latin sources for the Fourth Crusade (1202-1204).
The sources consist of forty-one letters from the registers of Pope Innocent III; the three extant versions of the letter of 1203 that Count Hugh of Saint Pol dispatched to the West; The Devastation of Constantinople (DC); the account of the Anonymous of Soissons; passages from the Deeds of the Bishops of Halberstadt; and the chronicle accounts of Ralph of Coggeshall and Alberic of the Trois Fontaines. Now with critical editions of the DC and the Anonymous of Soissons in appendices.
By virtue of the different perspectives through which they viewed the crusade, these sources combine to deepen our understanding of this complex and controversial moment in Western-Byzantine relations.

This book presents a study of humanism, theology, and politics in Florence during the last decades of the fifteenth century. It considers the relations between humanists and theologians and between humanism and religion. Modern scholarship on humanism has not taken sufficient account of the deep interest shown by Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) in theology and religion. This book presents a detailed and innovative account of Ficino’s De Christiana religione (1474) and of Pico’s Apologia (1487), in the context of explaining the evolution of a humanist theology. The book ends with a consideration of the stormy events of the 1490s, when Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498) became a leading spiritual and political figure in Florentine public life.

The First Crusade (1096 – 1099) was an extraordinary undertaking. Because the repercussions of that expedition have rippled on down the centuries, there has been an enormous literature on the subject. Yet, unlike so many other areas of medieval history, until now the First Crusade has failed to attract the attention of historians interested in social dynamics. This book is the first to examine the sociology of the sources in order to provide a detailed analysis of the various social classes which participated in the expedition and the tensions between them. In doing so, it offers a fresh approach to the many debates surrounding the subject of the First Crusade.

Such important issues of the modern thought as freedom, will, and action have their roots not only in classical philosophy, but also in early Christian theology. The book aims to fill a gap in our knowledge about the theological roots of the issues mentioned. The author explores Christological contests of the 7th century on the issues of will and actions (energy) in Christ. The main source for the research are the acts of the western and eastern Church councils and writings of the most prominent theologians of the time. The author also thoroughly examines the preceding theological traditions associated with the names of Apollinarius of Laodicea, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Cyril of Alexandria and Severus of Antioch.

John Geometres (10th century) is a key figure in the history of Byzantine poetry. His poems were first published in 1841 by J.A. Cramer, whose edition is based on a single manuscript and contains a large number of inaccuracies. Nonetheless, all the subsequent editors of John Geometres' poems have used this edition without consulting the manuscript(s) themselves. This book presents a new edition of his poems in hexameters and elegiacs, with critical apparatus, commentary and translation. It is a reference book not only for scholars of Byzantine literature, but also for historians and art historians of the Middle Byzantine period, enabling them to arrive at a better formed judgement of the poet and the cultural history of his time.

à la mémoire de mon père, Scato,
et à ma mère, Marijke

In the politically and militarily complex world of the medieval Eastern Mediterranean people and entities of different ethnic, religious and linguistic backgrounds came into close contact at many different levels, from everyday dealings in the marketplace to high diplomacy between competing states, thus providing scope for fertile cross-cultural interaction and permeation. This collective volume examines aspects of intercultural communication as reflected in Byzantine, Latin and Arabic documentary sources originating from or relating to the Eastern Mediterranean and ranging from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries. Twenty essays examine a variety of archival sources for the Latin East, explore chancery traditions in the culturally diverse society of Frankish Cyprus, and trace modes of communication and exchange between Byzantium, Islam and the West.
Contributors are: Jean Richard, David Jacoby, Benjamin Z. Kedar, Michel Balard, Peter Schreiner, Michel Balivet, Catherine Otten-Froux, Svetlana V. Bliznyuk, Brenda Bolton, Karl Borchardt, Nicholas Coureas, William O. Duba, Charalambos Gasparis, Hubert Houben, Angel Nicolaou-Konnari, Johannes Pahlitzsch, and Kostis Smyrlis.

This volume is intended as a commemoration of the career of Richard Fletcher and his remarkable contribution to our understanding of the medieval world. The seventeen papers included here, written by some of the leading scholars of this period, reflect the three main areas of Fletcher’s scholarly endeavours: Church and society in medieval Spain; Christian-Muslim relations, both in the Iberian peninsula and further afield; and the history of the post-Roman world, with particular reference to the conversion of Europe.
Contributors are James Campbell, Roger Collins, Judith McClure, Edward James, Roger Wright, Ann Christys, Bernard F. Reilly, Christopher Tyerman, Simon Barton, John Williams, James D'Emilio, Emma Falque, Peter Linehan, Peter Biller, Ian Michael, Esther Pascua, John Edwards, and Ian Wood.

This book provides the first reconstruction of the Templar presence in North-west Italy. Based on extensive archival searches, it gives general insights into the development and organization of the Order in this area, also examining the links between the Templar houses and the Latin East and their involvement in the struggle between Papacy and Empire. Recruitment, relations with lay and ecclesiastical institutions and the activities of the Templar settlements are highlighted as significant factors in shaping the particular development of the Order in the region. The trial records also confirm the special nature of the Temple’s establishment in North-west Italy where the vicissitudes of the Templars on trial were intertwined with local factionalism, and positive relations with lay and ecclesiastical authorities continued and in some places even defeated the charges leveled against the Order.

The following study analyses the factors behind the spread of sugar cane from the East to the West, the geography of its establishment in the Mediterranean era and reconstitutes the processes of sugar production and the organisation of work in the plantations and medieval sugar factories. It questions the quality of sugar produced and the evolution of prices of this commodity. It establishes the conditions of its transport and trade. Finally, it studies the different uses of sugar, including in medicins and diets. Sugar was triumphant as a food stuff and became an indispensable ingredient in the confectionery and pastry, which decorated the tables of the royal courts. It remained a luxury product reserved for the high society.

Reflecting the diverse interests of Jean-Michel Spieser, his colleagues, students and friends contribute papers focused on topics ranging from the changing role of the apse and the layout of late antique basilicas to holy relics said to have been brought from Constantinople. Many of the articles address the nature and impact of specific media - goldsmiths' work, ivory and ceramics - while a group of highly original, broader studies is devoted to such larger issues as ritual display in the tenth century, the metaphorical significance of pottery and an interrogation of the supposed influence of Byzantine icons on Western medieval art. Throughout, the achievement of the authors is to move from concrete observations of particular objects to the larger meaning they held for those who commissioned and made use of them.

In 1496-7, King Manuel I of Portugal forced the Jews of his kingdom to convert to Christianity and expelled all his Muslim subjects. Portugal was the first kingdom of the Iberian Peninsula to end definitively Christian-Jewish-Muslim coexistence, creating an exclusively Christian realm. Drawing upon narrative and documentary sources in Portuguese, Spanish and Hebrew, this book pieces together the developments that led to the events of 1496-7 and presents a detailed reconstruction of the persecution. It challenges widely held views concerning the impact of the arrival in Portugal of the Jews expelled from Castile in 1492, the diplomatic wrangling that led to the forced conversion of the Portuguese Jews in 1497 and the causes behind the expulsion of the Muslim minority.

This book examines the significance of the cotton trade in the Mediterranean traffic in the Later Middle Ages and evaluates its effects on the economy of the Occident. It covers all aspects of the production of, commerce and trade in cotton. The merchants of Venice, Genoa, Barcelona and Florence played the most important role in the cotton trade in the Mediterranean. The massing of supplies of raw material by the merchants of the four maritime cities led to the mass fabrication of cotton products. In this way Western society saw a remarkable growth in the consumption of cotton products in the Later Middle Ages.

Angelus Pacis explores the largely overlooked legation of Cardinal Giovanni Gaetano Orsini, who served as Pope John XXII’s legatus a latere to central Italy from 1326 to 1334. Orsini's appointment constituted a break from the Avignon papacy's traditional reliance on Gallic agents in Italy — a fact which contributed significantly to both the successes and the failures of his legation. The book examines Avignonese papal policy in Italy and the peculiar circumstances that necessitated Orsini's legation; Orsini's powerful Roman family; the nature of the legatine power he wielded; his campaigns in Tuscany and the Papal States; his provocative signoria in Rome; his reform initiatives; and the reasons underlying the ultimate failure of his mission.

This volume traces the development of Carmelite foundations in Medieval Catalonia and shows how they reflected the dichotomy between the Order's eremitical origins and the active mendicant apostolate in which it was engaged.
In discussing Carmelite life in an urban setting, mention is made of secular involvement with its positive and negative effects, popular piety and miraculous sightings and outstanding intellectual achievement. The conclusion raises the question that Carmelite friars might have migrated to Europe at an earlier date than traditionally suggested; similarly, that the inaccurate foundation document for Peralada dated 1206 was a fourteenth-century falsification.
The appendices provide supplementary material: archival documents, names of priors, royal chaplains, students and graduates and finally an alphabetical list of known medieval Catalan Carmelites. A bibliography and index complete the volume.

The study of the Visigoths continues to be one of the most actively researched topics in Late Antique Studies. As might be expected the vast majority of the work has been carried out in Europe and especially by scholars from the Iberian Peninsula. There has always been a need, however, to make much of this research accessible to English language specialists and the wider academic community in Late Antiquity Studies. Too often Late Antiquity Studies tend to ignore or marginalize the Iberian Peninsula and this may be due in part to the lack of access to this scholarship in the English language.
This volume of essays has as one of its goals to ameliorate such a deficiency. The scholars who participated in this volume are both from Europe and North America. They also represent scholars who are well known and those who are establishing distinguished scholarly reputations. Although thematically the essays do not exhaust the broad nature of Visigothic studies, they do nevertheless offer an impressive array of topics. Coverage includes research on Visigothic identity in Gaul, regional studies on Galicia and Lusitania, anti-Semitism in Visigothic law, the political grammar of Ildephonsus of Toledo, monasticism and liturgy, numismatics, Roman-Visigothic pottery in Baetica, urban and rural archaeology, and Gothic consciousness among Mozarab communities.

The rise of Saladin to power in Egypt is a chapter of both Mediterranean and Islamic history. In the period covered by this study, the second half of the twelfth century, profound changes took place in the Eastern Mediterranean affecting the history of the region.
The book is divided into two parts. The first deals with the rise of Saladin to power in Egypt (1169-1174) and offers a new interpretation for the demise of the Fatimid state. The second part deals with topics such as the formation of Saladin's army in Egypt, the creation of the navy and the role of the navy in the battle for Acre. The author also addresses topics such as the religious policies of Saladin in Egypt and his attitudes toward the non-Muslim communities.

This major study includes a translation of all testimony heard during the Templar trial in Cyprus in 1310 or 1311. The trial is of immense importance to the study of the history of the order because of the large number of Templar witnesses, seventy-six, many of high rank, and the ancillary testimony of fifty-six noblemen, burghers, and members, of the regular and secular clergy. What makes the trial especially significant is that torture appears not to have been used, allowing witnesses to give their opinion of the order free of the usual constraint.
A large amount of testimony omitted from the Latin edition appears here for the first time. Witnesses are cross-referenced to other Templar trials, or to Cypriot notarial documents. The work is completed by photographs, maps, an exhaustive index, lists of witnesses, and bibliography.

A collection of essays celebrating the career of Joseph F. O'Callaghan, a noted historian of Spanish history. Written by his students and colleagues, they explore the relationship between human society and the institutions it produces.
The first part of the book, The Influence of Law on Society, contains essays exploring the laws and customs regarding such social institutions as marriage, the care of the sick, and Jews. The second part, The Relationship between Government and War, focuses on the institutional and technological innovations that the crown and parliament in Spain and England developed to wage war.

In the Cantigas de Santa Maria, a collection of more than four hundred poems written in the language of medieval Galicia in praise of the Virgin Mary, Alfonso X, el Sabio, king of Castile-Leon, has left us a kind of poetic biography. Declaring himself Mary's troubadour, he appeals to her as his advocate and consoler as he recounts specific events in his life and that of his kingdom. As he tells us about his family, his war against the Muslims of Granada and Morocco, the treachery of the nobility, his frequent illnesses, and his fear of hellfire and damnation, he reveals much about his personality and his spirituality.
This volume explicates the historical circumstances surrounding the events described in the cantigas. The Cantigas de Santa Maria is a royal biography unique in thirteenth-century Europe.

This volume deals with the evolution of urban and rural communities in Provence and Languedoc in the high and late Middle Ages. Contributions by thirteen French, American, and Canadian scholars address recent insights in historical research and suggest directions for future investigation. The urban and rural worlds are treated separately in studies of the growth of communities in their political, topographical, social, and economic dimensions. Then the intersection of these worlds is explored through the intricate interrelations of town and country in these regions. Notarial registers are particularly rich sources of evidence for these scholars who are mindful of the southern French tradition of Roman and written law which underpinned both urban and rural institutions as they emerged in the course of the medieval period.

The focus of this book is the Byzantine emperor Leo VI (886-912) and his reign. He has been characterised as a careless and ineffectual emperor, but this work presents a more considered account of Leo and the politics of his age.
Initial chapters on sources and the broader historical context are provided before particular aspects of Leo's life and reign are presented in eight chapters, arranged so as to give a rough chronological framework. Subjects discussed include relations with family and officials, imperial ideology, and ecclesiastical and military affairs.
By drawing on a broad spectrum of primary evidence the book illustrates that Leo forged a distinctive imperial style as a literate city-based non-campaigning emperor, and argues that he was actively concerned about the problems that faced his empire.

This highly original study provides an extensive and careful analysis of the Homilies of the Byzantine emperor Leo VI (A.D. 886-912) in order to place them in their historical and cultural contexts. This neglected corpus of forty-two texts comprises both panegyrics on ecclesiastical feasts and discourses on special occasions.
The first part deals with the Homilies in the framework of Leo VI's career by examining topics such as the circumstances of the delivery of the Homilies and their political significance. The second part places the Homilies within the Byzantine homiletic tradition of the fourth to tenth centuries.
The book, the first monograph on this collection, establishes Leo VI as a prominent literary figure of his time, and sheds new light on both the emperor's fascinating personality and the development of Byzantine homiletics. It will be of great benefit to all those who are interested both in Byzantine literature and the Eastern Church.

Brill's seriesThe Medieval Mediterranean has established itself as the main forum for studies exploring all aspects of the Mediterranean world during a period of 1000 years.

In the medieval period, the Mediterranean experienced a multiplicity of developments in social, political and economic structures, and in populations, religions and cultures. The centuries between the Late Roman world of the fourth and fifth century and the early modern, "Braudelian", Mediterranean of the sixteenth century were characterised by sweeping changes, including the establishment of post-Roman kingdoms in the west, the emergence of Slav societies in the Balkans, the struggle between Christians and Muslims in Spain and the movement of crusaders.

Founded in 1993,The Medieval Mediterranean series reflects the complexity of this period with a wide variety of high-quality scholarly works: from broad surveys to diachronic studies of particular areas or cities; investigations of individual themes or issues; conference proceedings, text editions and fully annotated translations.

Top specialists in a range of fields have contributed to the series and the volumes which have appeared so far have been warmly welcomed by reviewers. This series is indispensable for readers with interests in the history of later antiquity, the Middle Ages, Byzantium, Islam, the Balkans and the Black Sea area.

Publication schedule
At present 3 volumes of around 350 pages each are published in the series each year. The vast majority of the books in the series are in the English language, although works of outstanding quality in French or German may also be included. Volumes contain illustrations and maps where appropriate.

This volume contains a general introduction, English translation of and philological-historical commentary on an anonymous 7th- century A.D. hagiographical text entitled: An Account of the Miracles of the Holy and Glorious Megalomartyr and Wonder-worker Artemios. Also included is a photographic reproduction of the Greek text edited by A. Papadopoulos-Kerameus originally published by the Russian Academy as well as a supplementary essay by John Haldon. The general introduction discusses the historical persona of St. Artemios whose healing activities are predominantly centered on the Church of St. John Prodromos in Constantinople and who "specializes" in healing hernias and diseases affecting the genitals of mostly male patients.
This book will interest students of Greek (especially Byzantine) philology, history, hagiography and medicine. As it contains a translation of the original Byzantine Greek text, it should also appeal to those seeking to improve their knowledge of Byzantine Greek.

Le système de l'Incanto des galées du marché à Venise offers the first complete analysis of the medieval Venetian system of auctioning (Incanto) the state-owned galleys for commercial use. The Incanti (auction records) reveal a pattern of progressive intervention by the state in sea-trading and the evolution of a corpus of statutes governing private navigation. The work traces the growth and interdependency of the 8 state shipping lines. By establishing the infrastructure necessary for international commerce, the state (or rather the patriciate) enabled the involvement in trade — in roles ranging from sponsor to captain to arquebusier — of a large number of nobles with only modest capitals. This study also examines the structures of such participation (patrician family associations) and shows how these defined the career patterns of nobles and guided the emergence of a noble merchant oligarchy in medieval Venice.

Eighteen studies, many based on archival evidence or new methodologies, some proceeding from novel angles, explore the history and culture of Iberia, Italy, and the Mediterranean World in the Middle Ages.
The studies were originally presented at the 27th International Congress of Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo in 1992, and have been collected in honor of Robert I. Burns, S.J., the distinguished medievalist and historian of Mediterranean Spain. Most of the studies mirror the honoree's scholarly interests: Muslim-Christian-Jewish relations in medieval Iberia, the economy and society of the Mediterranean World, religious polemic and ecclesiastical history, and medieval personalities and institutions.
Ten of the studies concern aspects of cultural symbiosis or inter-religious relations in a pluri-ethnic society; and at least an equal number relate to the literary and social history of the Catalan-speaking lands of Mediterranean Spain.

This volume brings together papers by Crusades' experts from England, France, Canada and the United States discussing the confrontation between the Franks and Muslims in twelfth-century Syria, balancing the traditional European view with an Islamic perspective. Each author's individual contribution lies in the new ideas and insights to a particular topic such as new interpretations in Crusade studies, Latin jurists in the Levant, the Italian colonies, propagation of violence and propaganda, the role of individual popes, the impact on Islamic society as reflected in literature, religious propaganda, and diplomatic relations.

This book is a biography of St. Leontios, who lived in the 12th century, written by one of his disciples in the early years of the 13th century. Leontios was Abbot of the celebrated Monastery of St. John the Theologian in the Aegean island of Patmos and later became Greek-Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem.
This study provides a critical edition of the text of The Life of Leontios, an English translation and an extensive commentary on various subjects such as history, language, theology, monasticism and prosopography.
The Life of Leontios is an important and interesting hagiographical work, not only because of the historical information it provides, but also because it is one of the few existing Byzantine historiographies of this period.

The administration of the Norman Kingdom of Sicily has long been held up to be the most advanced government in twelfth-century Europe. However, until now there has been considerable confusion about how this bureaucracy actually functioned, whether it developed in the 12th century or retained the form given it by Roger II; whether it had regional variations, what the identity of different departments of government was, who did what within the structures of government, and what the relationship between the Greek, Arabic and Latin elements within the administration was.
This work goes a long way to sorting out these problems. The author's meticulous work with chronicles and charters enable him to clear up many problems and mysteries in the administration of finance and justice and to identify such uncertainties as remain. This fundamental work forms a basic reference point for future studies of Norman Sicily and of government in the high Middle Ages.