Download or read book Heidenfrage und Slawenfrage im deutschen Mittelalter written by Hans-Dietrich Kahl and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2011-02-21 with total page 1060 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The christianization of Central and Northern Europe, fundamental for the formation of the unity of our civilization was considered by earlier scholarship only in terms of what took place but not in terms of the official norms of the medieval church. On the other hand, the spiritual starting point of so-called “missionary objects” was left largely out of view. Consequently, anachronistic terms came in to use and actual facts became distorted. 26 Studies, published over more than 50 years in four different countries, discuss these problems especially against the background of Carolingian Saxony, and the Slavonic tribes between Germany and Poland, -most of whom may also be seen as the ancestors of modern-day Germans-, with special reference to the strange “Wendenkreuzzug” (Wendish crusade) of 1147.

Download or read book The Slavic Religion in the Light of 11th and 12th Century German Chronicles Thietmar of Merseburg Adam of Bremen Helmold of Bosau written by Stanisław Rosik and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-03-23 with total page 451 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume, Stanisław Rosik focuses on the meaning and significance of Old Slavic religion as presented in three German chronicles (the works of Thietmar of Merseburg, Adam of Bremen, Helmold of Bosau) written during the time of the Christianization of the Western Slavs. The source analyses show the ways the chroniclers understood, explained and represented pre-Christian beliefs and cults, which were interpreted as elements of a foreign, “barbarian”, culture and were evaluated from the perspective of Church doctrine. In this study, individual features of the three authors are discussed– including the issue of the credibility of their information on Old Slavic religion– and broader conclusions on medieval thought are also presented.

Download or read book The Expansion of Central Europe in the Middle Ages written by Nora Berend and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-05-15 with total page 519 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together a set of key studies on the history of medieval Central Europe (Bohemia, Hungary, Poland), along with others specially commissioned for the book or translated, and a new introduction. This region was both an area of immigration, and one of polities in expansion. Such expansion included the settlement and exploitation of previously empty lands as well as rulers' attempts to incorporate new territories under their rule, although these attempts did not always succeed. Often, German immigration has been prioritized in scholarship, and the medieval expansion of Central Europe has been equated with the expansion of Germans. Debates then focused on the positive or negative contribution of Germans to local life, and the consequences of their settlement. This perspective, however, distorts our understanding of medieval processes. On the one hand, Central Europe was not a passive recipient of immigrants. Local rulers and eventually nobles benefited from and encouraged immigration; they played an active role. On the other hand, German immigration was not a unified movement, and cannot be equated with a drang nach osten. Finally, not just Germans, but also various Romance-speaking and other immigrant groups settled in Central Europe. This volume, therefore, seeks to present a more complex picture of medieval expansion in Central Europe.

Download or read book Baltic Crusades and Societal Innovation in Medieval Livonia 1200 1350 written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-07-25 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The societies of the lands around the Baltic Sea underwent remarkable changes in the thirteenth century. This book examines aspects of these religious, economical, societal, and institutional innovations, such as the adaption of the Christianity, emergence of urban life, and the development of economic resources.

Download or read book Continuation or Change Borders and Frontiers in Late Antiquity and Medieval Europe written by Gregory Leighton and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-09-19 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines interdisciplinary boundaries and includes texts focusing on material culture, philological analysis, and historical research. What they all have in common are zones that lie in between, treated not as mere barriers but also as places of exchange in the early Middle Ages. Focusing on borderlands, Continuation or Change uncovers the changing political and military organisations at the time and the significance of the functioning of former borderland areas. The chapters answer how the fiscal and military apparatus were organised, identify the turning points in the division of dynastic power, and assign meaning to the assimilation of certain symbolic and ideological elements of the imperial tradition. Finally, the authors offer answers to what exactly a "statehood without a state" was in regard to semi-peripheral and peripheral areas that were also perceived through the prism of the idea of a world system, network theory, or the concept of so-called negotiating borderlands. Continuation or Change is a useful resource for upper-level undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars interested in medieval warfare, Eastern European history, medieval border regions, and cross-cultural interaction.

Download or read book Livonia Rus and the Baltic Crusades in the Thirteenth Century written by Anti Selart and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-03-31 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph by Anti Selart is the first comprehensive study available in English on the relations between northern crusaders and Rus'. Selart re-examines the central issues of this crucial period of establishing the medieval relations of the Catholic and Orthodox worlds like the Battle on the Ice (1242) and the role of Alexander Nevsky using the relevant source material of both “sides”. He also considers the wide context of the history of crusading and the whole Eastern and Northern Europe from Hungary and Poland to Denmark, Finland, and Sweden in 1180-1330. This monograph contests the existence of the constitutive religious conflict and extensive aggressive strategies in the region – the ideas which had played a central role in modern historiography and ideology.

Download or read book The Uses of the Bible in Crusader Sources written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2017-05-22 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Uses of the Bible in Crusader Sources sets out to understand the ideology and spirituality of crusading by exploring the biblical imagery and exegetical interpretations which formed its philosophical basis. Medieval authors frequently drew upon scripture when seeking to justify, praise, or censure the deeds of crusading warriors on many frontiers. After all, as the fundamental written manifestation of God’s will for mankind, the Bible was the ultimate authority for contemporary writers when advancing their ideas and framing their world view. This volume explores a broad spectrum of biblically-derived themes surrounding crusading and, by doing so, seeks to better comprehend a thought world in which lethal violence could be deemed justifiable according to Christian theology. Contributors are: Jessalynn Bird, Adam M. Bishop, John D. Cotts, Sini Kangas, Thomas Lecaque, T. J. H. McCarthy, Nicholas Morton, Torben Kjersgaard Nielsen, Luigi Russo, Uri Shachar, Iris Shagrir, Kristin Skottki, Katherine Allen Smith, Thomas W. Smith, Carol Sweetenham, Miriam Rita Tessera, Jan Vandeburie, Julian J. T. Yolles, and Lydia Marie Walker.

Download or read book At Europe s Borders Medieval Towns in the Romanian Principalities written by Laurentiu Radvan and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2010-01-28 with total page 648 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This ambitious work focuses on the emergence and the development of medieval towns in the two Romanian principalities of South-Eastern Europe, Wallachia and Moldavia, from their earliest days, in the 13th century, up to the 16th. It is the only work of its kind in English, but at the same time the first in the field seeking to identify and substantiate common elements between towns in this area of Europe. It also covers Poland, Hungary and the lands south of the Danube. By relying both on various written sources, and on archeological finds, the author addresses several controversial issues, starting from the particulars of urbanization, through an analysis of local institutions, of urban society and economy, and concluding with thorough case studies. The result is a book which shows that medieval towns in the Romanian Principalities, despite being on the outskirts of Europe, were nevertheless part of it.

Download or read book Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages 500 1300 2 vols written by Florin Curta and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-07-08 with total page 1426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2020 Verbruggen prize This book provides a comprehensive synthesis of scholarship on Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages. The goal is to offer an overview of the current state of research and a basic route map for navigating an abundant historiography available in more than 10 different languages. The literature published in English on the medieval history of Eastern Europe—books, chapters, and articles—represents a little more than 11 percent of the historiography. The companion is therefore meant to provide an orientation into the existing literature that may not be available because of linguistic barriers and, in addition, an introductory bibliography in English. Winner of the 2020 Verbruggen prize, awarded annually by the De Re Militari society for the best book on medieval military history. The awarding committee commented that the book ‘has an enormous range, and yet is exceptionally scholarly with a fine grasp of detail. Its title points to a general history of eastern Europe, but it is dominated by military episodes which make it of the highest value to anybody writing about war and warmaking in this very neglected area of Europe.’ See inside the book.

Download or read book Ottonian Germany written by David Warner and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Chronicon of Thietmar of Merseburg has long been recognised as one of the most important sources for the history of the tenth and early eleventh centuries, especially for the history of the Ottonian Empire. Thietmar's testimony also has special value because of his geographical location, in eastern Saxony, on the boundary between German and Slavic cultures. He is arguably the single most important witness to the early history of Poland, and his detailed descriptions of Slavic folklore are the earliest on record. This is a very important source in the medieval period, translated here in its entirety for the first time. It relates to an area of medieval studies generally dominated by German scholars, in which Anglo-phone scholars are beginning to make a substantial contribution.

Download or read book The Second Crusade written by Jonathan Phillips and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Second Crusade (1145-49) was an unprecedented attempt to expand the borders of Christianity in the Holy Land, the Baltic, and the Iberian peninsula. This wide-ranging collection offers a series of original interpretations of new and partially explored evidence of the crusade. The essays examine the planning, execution, and consequences of the crusade for Western Europe, the Crusader States of the Holy Land, and the Muslim Near East.

Download or read book The Origin of the Idea of Crusade written by Carl Erdmann and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-23 with total page 485 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though conditioned by the specific circumstances of eleventh-century Europe, the launching of the crusdaes presupposed a long historical evolution of the idea of Christian knighthood and holy war. Carl Erdmann developed this argument first in 1935 in a book that is still recognized as basic to an understanding of how the crusades came about. This first edition in English includes notes supplementing those of the German text, a foreword discussing subsequent scholarship, and an amplified bibliography. Paying special attention to the symbolism of banners as well as to literary evidence, the author traces the changes that moved the Western church away from its initial aversion to armed combat and toward acceptance and encouragement of the kind of holy war that the crusades would represent: a war whose specific cause was religion. Erdmann's analysis stresses the role of church reformers and Gregory VII, without neglecting the "popular" idea of crusade that would assure an astonishingly enthusiastic response to Urban II's appeal in 1095. His book provides an unrivaled account of he interaction of the church with war and warriors during the early Middle Ages. Carl Erdmann (1898-1945) taught at the University of Berlin and was associated with the Monumenta Germania historica. Marshall Baldwin was Professor Emeritus of History at New York University at his death in 1975. Walter Goffart is Professor of History at the University of Toronto. Originally published in 1978. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Download or read book The Second Crusade and the Cistercians written by M. Gervers and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-30 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No subject in medieval history is changing as rapidly as crusade studies. Even so, the Second Crusade has been oddly neglected. The present volume is the first ever to have been devoted to it in English and one of the few which has appeared in any language. Particular attention is paid to the key role played by St.Bernard and the Cistercians in this crusade and their relations with the Military Orders. An interdisciplinary approach is taken, incorporating history, art and music. The Volume contains unparalleled bibliography, listing over 700 primary and secondary sources.

Download or read book Poland Holy War and the Piast Monarchy 1100 1230 written by Darius von Güttner-Sporzyński and published by Brepols Publishers. This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study charts the evolution of the ideology of holy war and crusading in medieval Poland through Polish incursions into the Baltic, the last bastion of paganism in Europe. It traces the transmission of the idea of holy war and crusade to north central Europe, explaining its impact on political and religious life in Poland, and Polish missionary and crusading activity in Prussia, Pomerelia, and Pomerania. Holy war and crusade helped influence state formation, politics, and dynastic succession. Key mechanisms by which the idea of holy war was transmitted to Poland are examined and compelling evidence is provided that the Polish elites were highly familiar with, and receptive to, the idea of crusade. The Polish elites were deliberate participants in Christian holy wars and undertook various crusading activities during the twelfth century. The influence of the idea of holy war on the actions of the Polish dynasts and the central role of women in the establishment of family traditions of participating in crusading are examined in some detail. Furthermore, this book explores the conditions that enabled the cause of the Christianization of Prussia to be taken up by the Teutonic Order by tracing the divergence of the idea of holy war in the Piast realm away from the norms of Latin Christendom in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. This work offers new perspectives for international studies of warfare sanctioned by religion.

Download or read book Tracing the Indo Europeans written by Birgit Anette Olsen and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2019-08-23 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent developments in aDNA has reshaped our understanding of later European prehistory, and at the same time also opened up for more fruitful collaborations between archaeologists and historical linguists. Two revolutionary genetic studies, published independently in Nature, 2015, showed that prehistoric Europe underwent two successive waves of migration, one from Anatolia consistent with the introduction of agriculture, and a later influx from the Pontic-Caspian steppes which without any reasonable doubt pinpoints the archaeological Yamnaya complex as the cradle of (Core-)Indo-European languages. Now, for the first time, when the preliminaries are clear, it is possible for the fields of genetics, archaeology and historical linguistics to cooperate in a constructive fashion to refine our knowledge of the Indo-European homeland, migrations, society and language. For the historical-comparative linguists, this opens up a wealth of exciting perspectives and new working fields in the intersections between linguistics and neighbouring disciplines, for the archaeologists and geneticists, on the other hand, the linguistic contributions help to endow the material findings with a voice from the past. The present selection of papers illustrate the importance of an open interdisciplinary discussion which will gradually help us in our quest of Tracing the Indo-Europeans.

Download or read book Crusaders and Crusading in the Twelfth Century written by Giles Constable and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Crusading in the twelfth century was less a series of discrete events than a manifestation of an endemic phenomenon that touched almost every aspect of life at that time. The defense of Christendom and the recovery of the Holy Land were widely-shared objectives. Thousands of men, and not a few women, participated in the crusades, including not only those who took the cross but many others who shared the costs and losses, as well as the triumphs of the crusaders. This volume contains not a narrative account of the crusades in the twelfth century, but a group of studies illustrating many aspects of crusading that are often passed over in narrative histories, including the courses and historiography of the crusades, their background, ideology, and finances, and how they were seen in Europe. Included are revised and updated versions of Giles Constable's classic essays on medieval crusading, along with two major new studies on the cross of the crusaders and the Fourth Crusade, and two excursuses on the terminology of crusading and the numbering of the crusades. They provide an opportunity to meet some individual crusaders, such as Odo Arpinus, whose remarkable career carried him from France to the east and back again, and whose legendary exploits in the Holy Land were recorded in the Old French crusade cycle. Other studies take the reader to the boundaries of Christendom in Spain and Portugal and in eastern Germany, where the campaigns against the Wends formed part of the wider crusading movement. Together they show the range and depth of crusading at that time and its influence on the broader history of the period.

Download or read book Saracens written by John Victor Tolan and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Medieval Christian writers distorted the teachings of Islam and caricatured its believers in a variety of ways. This book provides a comprehensive study of Christian polemical responses to Islam in the Middle Ages.