“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.
Economy of Ragusa, 1300 – 1800: The Tiger of Mediaeval Mediterranean
An economist is indeed tempted to think of Ragusa as the “Adriatic Tiger “ of yesteryear, an early example of a small open economy with strong fundamentals, and to hypothesize further that, in analogy to the current consensus about what it takes to minimize the impact of external crises, these strengths also allowed Ragusa to mitigate the effects of the many external shocks and financial crises in Medieval Europe.
Pervenimus Edessam: The Origins of a Great Christian Centre Outside the Familiar Mediaeval World
This is the meeting place of the western and eastern worlds, for near here passed the movements between Palestine and Mesopotamia associated with Abraham, near here the Assyrians made their last stand after their capital fell in 610 B.C., and near here Crassus ill-advised attempt to press eastwards came to an end.
Honor, Verbal Duels, and the New Testament in Medieval Iceland
Honor and shame are considered pivotal values of both early Mediterranean and medieval Scandinavian society.
Mapping Metageographies: The Cartographic Invention of Italy and the Mediterranean
This article discusses the emergence of Italy as a discrete object in the Mediterranean in the history of Western cartography. In particular, it focuses on different coexisting Renaissance mapping traditions that rested on two opposed spatial understandings and experiences of the basin
Living the middle life, secular priests and their communities in thirteenth-century Genoa
It has long been known among medievalists that secular priests, like Pagano, standing in front of their churches, rubbing elbows with the other clerics and lay people walking past,occupied a central place within medieval society. Not only did they carry out important duties within the institutional Church, but they also participated in the community life of both city and countryside.
The Medieval Town in Bulgaria, thirteenth to fourteenth century
In my study, the town in late medieval Bulgaria is conceptualized as an explanandum, not as an explanans, as part of the social and economic environment rather than some distinctive entity.
Byzantine Pilgrimage Art
Who were these pilgrims? Literally, they were hoi polloi; they came from every stratum of society, from all vocations (including the indigent and sick), and from every corner of the Christian world.
Great Sites: Hamwic
Helena Hamerow on excavations at Southampton, which reshaped our views of the origins of English towns and of long-distance trade in the 8th/9th centuries.
Greeks in Early Medieval Barcelona?
The aim of this article is to draw attention to a group of persenal names which occurs almost exclusively in the city of Barcelona in tilese decades around the year 1000, which may throw some additional llght on the range of externa1 cgntacts. The name in question is that of Greco.
Silk Roads or Steppe Roads? The Silk Roads in World History
Modern historiography has not fully appreciated the ecological complexity of the Silk Roads. As a result, it has failed to understand their antiquity, or to grasp their full importance in Eurasian history.
Byzantines, Goths and Lombards in Italy: Jewellery, Dress and Cultural Interactions
The temptation is naturally to seek differences or contrasts from one power to another, to reinforce the conflict and tension identified in contemporary historians.
Fiat lux: climatic considerations in medieval stained glass aesthetics
Shelters have always been integral elements of human society; people have relied on them since prehistoric times to provide vital protection from the outside world.
Colophoned Hebrew Manuscripts Produced in Spain and the Distributionof the Localised Codices
The mobility of individual Jews, by cholee or by economic necessity, and of entire
communities by forcé, made them agents of cross-cultural contacts and influences
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’
Culpability and Concealed Motives: An Analysis of the Parties Involved in the Diversion of the Fourth Crusade
This article is in direct contrast to an earlier one by Joseph Gill, in which he utilizes primary sources in an attempt to establish Pope Innocent III’s lack of responsibility in the outcome of the Crusade.