Download or read book Monte Cassino in the Middle Ages written by Herbert Bloch and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1986 with total page 1584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The monastery of Monte Cassino, founded by St. Benedict in the sixth century, was the cradle of Western monasticism. It became one of the vital centers of culture and learning in Europe. At the height of its influence, in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries, two of its abbots (including Desiderius) and one of its monks became popes, and it controlled a vast network of dependencies--churches, monasteries, villages, and farms--especially in central and southern Italy. Herbert Bloch's study, the product of forty years of research, takes as its starting point the twelfth-century bronze doors of the basilica of the abbey, the most significant relic of the medieval structure. The panels of these doors are inscribed with a list of more than 180 of the abbey's possessions. Mr. Bloch has supplemented this roster with lists found in papal and imperial privileges and other documents. The heart of the book is a detailed investigation of the nearly 700 dependencies of Monte Cassino from the sixth to the twelfth century and beyond. No comparable study of this or any other great medieval institution has ever before been undertaken. Ironically, it was the bombing of 1944, which destroyed the monastery, that led to an unexpected revelation: the discovery, on the reverse side of some panels of the doors, of magnificent engraved figures of patriarchs and apostles. These proved to be remnants of the church portal ordered from Constantinople by Desiderius in the eleventh century, which marked the beginning of the grandiose reconstruction of the abbey and its church, the latter to become a model for many other churches. In order to solve the riddle of the doors of Monte Cassino, Bloch has investigated other bronze doors of Byzantine origin in Italy and the doors of the great Italian master Oderisius of Benevento, as well as those of S. Clemente a Casauria and of the cathedral of Benevento. Also included is a study of the political and cultural impact of Byzantium on Monte Cassino and a chapter on Constantinus Africanus, Saracen turned monk, one of the most interesting figures in the history of medieval medicine. The text is sumptuously illustrated with 193 plates; most of the more than 300 illustrations have never before been published. This three-volume work, with its nine detailed indexes, offers a wealth of information for scholars in many different fields.

Download or read book Monte Cassino written by Matthew Parker and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2004-06-01 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Monte Cassino is the true story of one of the bitterest and bloodiest of the Allied struggles against the Nazi army. Long neglected by historians, the horrific conflict saw over 350,000 casualties, while the worst winter in Italian memory and official incompetence and backbiting only worsened the carnage and turmoil. Combining groundbreaking research in military archives with interviews with four hundred survivors from both sides, as well as soldier diaries and letters, Monte Cassino is both profoundly evocative and historically definitive. Clearly and precisely, Matthew Parker brilliantly reconstructs Europe’s largest land battle–which saw the destruction of the ancient monastery of Monte Cassino–and dramatically conveys the heroism and misery of the human face of war.

Download or read book The Destruction and Recovery of Monte Cassino 529 1964 written by Kriston R. Rennie and published by Amsterdam University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-30 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between the sixth and twentieth centuries, the Benedictine Abbey of Monte Cassino (est. 529) experienced a cycle of atrocities which forever transformed its identity. This book examines how such a tumultuous history has been constructed, remembered, and represented from the Middle Ages to the present day. It uses this singular and pivotal case to analyse the historical process of remembering and its impact on modern representations of the past. Exactly how Monte Cassino is remembered is distinctive and diagnostic. The abbey is recognizable today as a beacon of western civilization, culture, and learning precisely because of its 'destruction tradition' over fourteen centuries. This book asks how the abbey's fragmented past has been ideologically, politically, and culturally constituted and preserved; how its experience with destruction and suffering - and recovery and rebirth - has become incorporated into a modern narrative of progress and triumph.

Download or read book Monte Cassino written by Rudolf Bohmler and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2015-07-31 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a German battalion commander Rudolf Bohmler fought in the front line during the fierce battles fought at Monte Cassino. After the war he wrote this remarkable history, one of the first full-length accounts of this famous and controversial episode in the struggle for Italy. His pioneering work, which has long been out of print, gives a fascinating insight into the battle as it was perceived at the time and as it was portrayed immediately after the war. While his fluent narrative offers a strong German view of the fighting, it also covers the Allied side of the story, at every level, in graphic detail. The climax of his account, his description of the tenacious defence of the town of Cassino and the Monte Cassino abbey by exhausted, outnumbered German troops, has rarely been equalled His book presents a soldier's view of the fighting but it also examines the tactics and planning on both sides. It is essential reading for everyone who is interested in the Cassino battles and the Italian campaign.

Download or read book Monte Cassino written by Peter Caddick-Adams and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-22 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Selected as a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2013 The most horrific battles of World War II ring in the popular memory: Stalingrad, the Bulge, Iwo Jima, to name a few. Monte Cassino should stand among them. Waged deep in the Italian mountains beneath a medieval monastery, it was an astonishingly brutal encounter, grinding up ten armies in conditions as bad as the Eastern Front at its worst. Now the battle has the chronicle it deserves. In Monte Cassino, military historian Peter Caddick-Adams provides a vivid account of how an array of men from across the globe fought the most lengthy and devastating engagement of the Italian campaign in an ancient monastery town. Not simply Americans, British, and Germans, but Russians, Indians, Georgians, Nepalese, Ukrainians, French, Slovaks, Armenians, New Zealanders, and Poles, among others, fought and died there. Caddick-Adams offers a panoramic view, surveying the strategic heights and peering over the shoulders of troops fruitlessly digging for cover in the stony soil. Here are incisive sketches of the theater commanders--Field Marshal "Smiling Albert" Kesselring, who outmaneuvered Rommel to command German troops in Italy, and the English aristocrat General Harold Rupert Leofric George Alexander, tall, upbeat, "and--crucially for Churchill--looked every inch a general." Caddick-Adams puts Cassino into the context of the Italian campaign and larger Allied war plans, and takes readers into the savage, often hand-to-hand combat in the bombed-out medieval town. He captures the brutal weather and unforgiving terrain--the rubble and rocky slopes that splintered dangerously under artillery barrages and caused shellfire to echo with such volume that men had trouble keeping their sanity due to acoustics alone. Over four months, the struggle would inflict some 200,000 casualties, and Allied planes would level the historic monastery-and eventually the entire town as well. With scholarly care, insightful analysis, and narrative verve, Caddick-Adams has crafted a monumental account of one of World War II's lesser-known but no less devastating battles.

Download or read book Montecassino and Benevento in the Middle Ages written by G.A. Loud and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-10-28 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This second volume by Graham Loud focuses on two key centres of the south Italian church in the central Middle Ages. The first section concentrates on the 'golden age' of the abbey of Montecassino, during the 11th and 12th centuries, when it was at the height of its influence and three of its monks became popes. The studies seek to place the abbey in its context, examining its relations with the papacy, Byzantium, and the local nobility. The second part deals with Benevento and the abbey of St Sophia, and looks at its development and administration, as well as the tensions that arose from its position as a papal enclave within the Kingdom of Sicily. Based on extensive archival research, the volume as a whole presents a fresh and original insight into the society of southern Italy from the coming of the Normans to its conquest by Charles of Anjou.

Download or read book Monte Cassino in the Middle Ages written by Herbert Bloch and published by Ed. di Storia e Letteratura. This book was released on 1986 with total page 666 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Necessity For The Destruction Of The Abbey Of Monte Cassino written by Major John G. Clement and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2015-11-06 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Abbey of Monte Cassino, founded by Saint Benedict in A.D. 529, at the beginning of the Italian campaign was one of only two sites requiring special consideration in the interest of historical preservation. The monastery overlooked the only north-south road from Naples to Rome. The promontory, studied by the Italian War College as an example of a position made impregnable by nature, was the focal point of the German Gustav Line. The German defensive scheme did not include the monastery but did establish positions within 300 meters of its outer walls. After the lackluster landing at Anzio, the Fifth Army was obligated to conduct a winter campaign to break through the Gustav Line and relieve Anzio. In a sinister scape of bush and rock, soldiers endured immeasurable hardships while the monastery stood immune to the scars of war. On 15 February 1944, 253 tons of explosives were dropped on the Abbey of Monte Cassino as hundreds of refugees and wounded assembled in the chapel for morning services. The German paratroopers survived the onslaught of Allied airpower without a casualty and occupied the ruins that would serve as a strongpoint for the next four months. The perceived necessity for the bombing was nested in leadership interpretation of military necessity, psychological impact, and political considerations. Because the bombing was not coordinated with the ground assault, it was tactically irrelevant and failed to meet the requirements of military necessity. Decisions made to bolster friendly morale and to avoid political conflict are not intended for the defeat of the enemy and also fail to meet the requirements of necessity. The bombing was a careless act resulting in the needless death of civilians, destruction of a sacred building, and a waste of valuable military resources.

Download or read book The Bronze Doors of the Abbey of Monte Cassino and of Saint Paul s Rome written by Thomas Jex Preston (jr.) and published by . This book was released on 1915 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Medicine at Monte Cassino written by Erik Kwakkel and published by Brepols Publishers. This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: His most important contribution, an encyclopedia he called the Pantegni (The Complete Art), was translated and adapted from the Complete Book of the Medical Art by the Persian physician ?Ali ibn al-?Abb?s al-Ma??s? (d. 982). This monograph focuses on the oldest manuscript of the Pantegni,Theorica, which represents a work-in-progress with numerous unusual features.00This study, for the first time, identifies Monte Cassino as the origin of this oldest Pantegni manuscript, and asserts that it was made during Constantine?s lifetime. It further demonstrates how a skilled team of scribes and scholars assisted the translator in the complex process of producing this Latin version of the Arabic text. .

Download or read book The Battles for Monte Cassino written by Jeffrey Plowman and published by After the Battle. This book was released on 2022-09-21 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Battles for Monte Cassino encompassed one of the few truly international conflicts of the Second World War. A strategic town on the road to Rome, the fighting lasted four months and cost the lives of more than 14,000 men from eight nations. Between January and May 1944, forces from Britain, Canada, France, India, New Zealand, Poland and the United States, fought a resolute German army in a series of battles in which the advantage swung back and forth, from one side to the other. From fire-fights in the mountains to tank attacks in the valley; from river crossings to street fighting, the four battles of Cassino encompass a series of individual operations unique in the history of the Second World War.

Download or read book The Scriptorium and Library at Monte Cassino 1058 1105 written by Francis Newton and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1999-04-29 with total page 892 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In all the history of hand-written books, one of the most distinctive and handsome scripts is that of the abbey of Monte Cassino. This study examines for the first time in detail the development of this script during the Abbey's greatest period of wealth and influence, under Desiderius (abbot 1058-1087) and his successor Oderisius (abbot 1087-1105). The characteristic Cassinese hand was established long before, but in this period it was transformed into what is today considered its classic form. The present study rests on a fresh examination of many details of the Beneventan (South Italian) script in aspects incompletely studied before. It aims to provide a new history of Monte Cassino as a writing centre and to offer a context for many unique or valuable texts manuscripts that it processed.

Download or read book The History of the Normans written by Amato (di Montecassino) and published by Boydell Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Norman conquest of southern Italy and Sicily was one of the most dramatic events of the eleventh century. To understand the magnitude of the Normans' achievement, and especially those of Robert Guiscard and Richard of Aversa, it is essential to know something of the world in which they lived and the manner in which they were able to create a Norman state in territories with a very different cultural tradition.

Download or read book The Sources of Beneventan Chant written by Thomas Forrest Kelly and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-05-31 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The area whose capital was the southern Lombard city of Benevento developed a culture identified with the characteristic form of writing known as the Beneventan script, which was used throughout the area and was brought to perfection at the abbey of Montecassino in the late eleventh century. This repertory, along with other now-vanished or suppressed local varieties of music, give a far richer picture of the variety of musical practice in early medieval Europe than was formerly available. Thomas Forrest Kelly has identified and collected the surviving sources of an important repertory of early medieval music; this is the so-called Beneventan Chant, used in southern Italy in the early middle ages, before the adoption there of the now-universal music known as Gregorian chant. Because it was deliberately suppressed in the course of the eleventh century, this music survives mostly in fragments and palimpsests, and the fascinating process of restoring the repertory piece by piece is told in the studies in this book. A companion volume to this collection also by Professor Kelly details the practice of Medieval music.

Download or read book Monte Cassino in the Middle Ages vol II pts III IV written by and published by Ed. di Storia e Letteratura. This book was released on with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Catalogue of an Exhibition of Mediaeval Manuscripts and Jeweled Book Covers Shown in the Main Library from January XII to December MCMXII written by John Rylands Library and published by . This book was released on 1912 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Documenting the Past in Medieval Puglia 1130 1266 written by Paul Oldfield and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-01-19 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Documenting the Past in Medieval Puglia, 1130-1266 explores the production of historical memory in the region of Puglia after it was subsumed within the new Kingdom of Sicily in 1130. It assesses the significance of the apparent disappearance of more traditional forms of Pugliese historical writing after 1130, and explores the existence of other historical discourses (beyond those solely preserved in the few 'royal-centred' high-status chronicles) which were embedded in surviving local documentation. The volume incorporates an extensive examination of charters and correspondence, an evidence-type yet to be fully utilised for this purpose in the study of medieval Puglia. Closely analysing the corpus of extant Pugliese charters and correspondence for the period of Norman-Staufen rule (1130-1266) in the kingdom reveals the existence of embedded 'histories'. One of the book's key aims is to examine the role of both Pugliese individuals and communities, and 'central agents' (monarchy, papacy), in producing local historical memory, especially across phases of political upheaval and socio-cultural transformation. The charter evidence demonstrates the preservation and creation of multiple, intersecting public and private historical narratives and remembrances, developed to protect the past, present, and future. These 'histories' were the product of repeated encounters between local communities and centralised superstructures. We can, therefore, identify the vibrant production of local historical narratives and memories claimed by monastic, episcopal, professional, urban, and familial communities. As such this book contributes to a broader understanding of 'use' of the past and of the nuanced inter-relationship between 'Centre' and 'Periphery' in medieval polities.