Brepols Online Books Medieval Miscellanea Collection 2022 - bob2022mime

Chronicle, Crusade, and the Latin East offers a collection of essays exploring three closely connected thematic areas: the narrative traditions surrounding the early crusading movement, the influence of these textual traditions on wider processes of medieval historical writing and storytelling, and the history of crusading and the Latin East.

In recent years, the field of crusade studies has witnessed a significant groundswell of scholarly work, with particular emphasis on the narrative construction of crusading deeds in text and song, of the important role played by memory and memorialisation in transmitting crusading tales and promoting participation, and the nature of life in the Latin states of the East. This volume not only engages with, and offer fresh insights into, these topics, but also serves as a monument to the career of Susan B. Edgington, who has done so much to increase modern understanding of crusade narratives and the crusading past, and who has made a significant impact on the careers of many scholars. The collection of essays gathered here by established and early career historians, Edgington’s friends and students, thus furthers the study of both crusading as narrative and crusading as a lived experience.

Over the past several decades, scholars of medieval and early modern Iberia have transformed the study of the region into one of the most vibrant areas of research today. This volume brings together twelve essays from a diverse group of international historians who explore the formation of the multiple and overlapping identities, both individual and collective, that made up the Iberian peninsula during the eleventh through seventeenth centuries. Individually, the contributions in this volume engage with the notion of identity in varied ways, including the formation of collective identities at the level of the late medieval city, the use of writing and political discourse to construct or promote common political or socio-cultural identities, the role of encounters with states and cultures beyond the peninsula in identity formation, and the ongoing debates surrounding the peninsula’s characteristic ethno-religious pluralism.Collectively, these essays challenge the traditional dividing line between the medieval and early modern periods, providing a broader framework for approaching Iberia’s fragmented yet interconnected internal dynamics while simultaneously reflecting on the implications of Iberia’s positioning within the broader Mediterranean and Atlantic worlds.

Crusading and western interaction with the Holy Land is often a contentious topic, not least because modern popular perception of medieval east-west contact is that it was defined by violence, conquest, and religious persecution. Building on recent scholarship, this collection of essays takes an interdisciplinary approach to the role of crusading and contact with the Holy Land in medieval Britain in order to investigate the myriad ways in which these contacts influenced artistic, literary, visual, and social culture in medieval Britain. By looking at new material and focusing on the domestic response to crusading and the Holy Land, the contributions gathered here offer new insights into the influence of these contacts on the medieval British world view, as well as their impact on topics such as ideals about masculinity and kingship, geographical perception, and aspirational codes of conduct for the medieval British elite.

During the Ancient Greek and Roman eras, participation in political communities at the local level, and assertion of belonging to these communities, were among the fundamental principles and values on which societies would rely. For that reason, citizenship and democracy are generally considered as concepts typical of the political experience of Classical Antiquity. These concepts of citizenship and democracy are often seen as inconsistent with the political, social, and ideological context of the late and post-Roman world. As a result, scholarship has largely overlooked participation in local political communities when it comes to the period between the disintegration of the Classical model of local citizenship in the later Roman Empire and the emergence of ‘pre-communal’ entities in Northern Italy from the ninth century onwards.

By reassessing the period c. 300-1000 ce through the concepts of civic identity and civic participation, this volume will address both the impact of Classical heritage with regard to civic identities in the political experiences of the late and post-Roman world, and the rephrasing of new forms of social and political partnership according to ethnic or religious criteria in the early Middle Ages. Starting from the earlier imperial background, the fourteen chapters examine the ways in which people shared identity and gave shape to their communal life, as well as the role played by the people in local government in the later Roman Empire, the Germanic kingdoms, Byzantium, the early Islamic world, and the early medieval West. By focusing on the post-Classical, late antique, and early medieval periods, this volume intends to be an innovative contribution to the general history of citizenship and democracy.