The City and the Cross: the image of Constantinople and the Latin empire in thirteenth-century papal crusading rhetoric
This paper examines the way papal rhetoric made use of the image and reputation of the city of Constantinople in order to legitimise and incite support for its crusading calls for the defence of the Latin empire after 1204.
Glass Bridges: Cross-Cultural Exchange between Florence and the Ottoman Empire
During the medieval period, the main aim of the crusades was recovery of the Holy Land. However, this changed in the fifteenth century for various reasons.
The city of walls: Constantinople
The world owes much of its cultural legacy to Constantinople’s walls. When Constantinople was under siege by neighboring enemies, the Roman city’s elaborate system of moats, outer walls, and inner walls stood tall.
Russian Pilgrims in Constantinople
If one compares the Russian Anthony text with the original Mercati Anonymus text, the longest and most detailed of the three extant contemporary Western descriptions of the shrines of Constantinople, one finds that the Latin text includes only twenty of the seventy-six religious shrines mentioned by the Russian enumeration.
Mandeville’s Intolerance: The Contest for Souls and Sacred Sites in The Travels of Sir John Mandeville
While Chaucer‟s knight has traveled to and fought in Spain, North Africa, Eastern Europe, and Asia Minor, Sir John claims to have visited the entire known world from Constantinople and the Holy Land to the farthest reaches of Asia.
Through the Eyes of a Crusader: An Intensive Study Into the Personal Involvement of Two Men in the Fourth Crusade
What was going through the minds ofthese men who were fighting for the cross when they attacked a Christian city, which was one oftheir allies?
In the Lion’s Den: Orthodox Christians under Ottoman Rule, 1400-1550
A glance at the Orthodox Christian church under the Ottoman Empire from the early fifteenth to mid sixteenth century gives a revealing glimpse at some of the changing relationships of conquered Christians to the state.
George Gemistos Plethon on God: Heterodoxy in Defense of Orthodoxy
The Emperor, John VIII Palaeologos, knew they were going to face some of the finest minds in the Roman Church on their own soil; he therefore wanted the best minds available in support of the Byzantine cause to accompany him. Consequently, the Emperor appointed George Gemistos as part of the delegation.
The Symbolical Career of Georgios Gemistos Plethon
Thus Gemistos was the first who in an authoritative way attacked the hegemony of Aristotle in western thought.
A Spectacle of Great Beauty: The Changing Faces of Hagia Sophia
For Constantine, Justinian, Sultan Mehmed II, and Atatürk, Hagia Sophia served as a model for the changing political and religious ideals of a nation. To use the useful phrase coined by Linda Young, Hagia Sophia is a building that is “in between heritage.”
Hellenism and the Shaping of the Byzantine Empire
While the role of Byzantine Hellenism on the art, literature, and society of the Empire has been the subject of tremendous study, the question of its origins has, nonetheless, rarely been raised, and the strongly Hellenic Byzantine identity seems, to a large extent, to have been taken for granted historiographically.
Praising A City: Nicaea, Trebizond, and Thessalonike
Praising A City: Nicaea, Trebizond, and Thessalonike Aslıhan Akışık Journal of Turkish Studies, Vol.36 (2012) Abstract The late Byzantine period(1204-1461) was distinguished by…
The Triumphal Way of Constantinople and the Golden Gate
In Rome the term triumphus referred to an archaic and highly regulated rite that was decreed by the Senate upon the fulfilment of certain strict preconditions. Scholars have disagreed whether the triumphal procession, which could be held only in Rome, always followed the same itinerary, but the chances are that it did
A Note on Michael the Porphyrogenitus, son of Andronikos III Palaiologos (*1337-+1352)
Michael the Porphyrogenitus was born approximately in the year 1337. TheImperial couple chose the name “Michael” probably in honor of Michael IXPalaiologos, co-emperor of Byzantium (1296-1320) and father of the young Andronikos.
“For the Honor of God and of the Holy Roman Church:” Understanding Venetian Motivations and Involvement during the Fourth Crusade
This thesis will attempt to unravel how it came to be that men who claimed to fight in the name of the cross had come to attack one of the most important cities in all of Christendom. It shall focus particularly on the motivations and actions of the Venetians, a people whose involvement in this crusade and the crusading movement in general has often been misunderstood.
Sacred Things and Holy Bodies: Collecting Relics from Late Antiquity to the Early Renaissance
Intimately tied to concepts of wholeness, corporeal integrity, and the resurrection of the body, the collecting of bones and body parts of holy martyrs was an important aspect of the Christian cult of relics already during Antiquity
Caucasia and the Second Byzantine Commonwealth: Byzantinization in the Context of Regional Coherence
The Romano-Byzantine landscape was forever changed in the seventh century with Heraclius’ defeat of Sasanian Iran, the Arabs’ wresting of the Near East from the Byzantines, the removal of the Monophysite problem from Byzantium proper, and the massive devastation
brought by this ferocious cycle of warfare.
Caucasia and the First Byzantine Commonwealth: Christianization in the Context of Regional Coherence
Since at least the Iron Age, and perhaps much earlier, Caucasia has been a cohesive yet diverse zone of cross-cultural encounter and shared historical experience. Despite their linkage by a web of interconnections which was as dense as it was durable, the peoples inhabiting the isthmus between the Black and Caspian Seas have seldom exhibited a conscious regional identity in their oral, written, and visual monuments.
Byzantium Revisited: The Mosaics of Hagia Sophia in the Twentieth Century
Located at the heart of Constantinople by the Senate and the Imperial Palace, Hagia Sophia was one of the great monuments of Christianity for more than nine hundred years.
The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople
Jonathan Phillips sees one of the most notorious events in European history as a typical ‘clash of cultures’
