Making Livonia

Making Livonia
Author: Anu Mänd
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2020-06-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000076938

The region called Livonia (corresponding to modern Estonia and Latvia) emerged out of the rapid transformation caused by the conquest, Christianisation and colonisation on the north-east shore of the Baltic Sea in the late twelfth and the early thirteenth centuries. These radical changes have received increasing scholarly notice over the last few decades. However, less attention has been devoted to the interplay between the new and the old structures and actors in a longer perspective. This volume aims to study these interplays and explores the history of Livonia by concentrating on various actors and networks from the late twelfth to the seventeenth century. But, on a deeper level, the goal is more ambitious: to investigate the foundation of an increasingly complex and heterogeneous society on the medieval and early modern Baltic frontier – ‘the making of Livonia’.

Religious Rites of War beyond the Medieval West

Religious Rites of War beyond the Medieval West
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 331
Release: 2023-11-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004686363

This is Volume One of a two-volume collection that brings together contributions from cultural and military history to offer an examination of religious rites employed in connection with warfare as well as their transformative and power- and identity-building potential across political communities of medieval Northern, Central, and Eastern Europe. Covering the period ca. 900 and 1500, the work takes theoretical, textual and practical approaches to the research on religious warfare, and investigates the connections between, and significance and function of crucial war rituals such as pre-, intra- and postbellum rites, as well as various activities surrounding the military life of individuals, polities, and corporates. Contributors are Robert Antonín, Robert Bubczyk, Dariusz Dąbrowski, Jesse Harrington, Carsten Selch Jensen, Sini Kangas, Radosław Kotecki, Gregory Leighton, Kyle C. Lincoln, Jacek Maciejewski, Yulia Mikhailova, Max Naderer, László Veszprémy, and Dušan Zupka.

Crusades

Crusades
Author: Benjamin Kedar
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2019-01-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 042975762X

Crusades covers seven hundred years from the First Crusade (1095–1102) to the fall of Malta (1798) and draws together scholars working on theatres of war, their home fronts and settlements from the Baltic to Africa and from Spain to the Near East and on theology, law, literature, art, numismatics and economic, social, political and military history. Routledge publishes this journal for The Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East. Particular attention is given to the publication of historical sources in all relevant languages – narrative, homiletic and documentary - in trustworthy editions, but studies and interpretative essays are welcomed too. Crusades also incorporates the Society's Bulletin. The editors are Benjamin Z. Kedar, Hebrew University, Israel; Jonathan Phillips, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK; Nikolaos G. Chrissis, Democritus University of Thrace, Greece.

Visual Culture and Politics in the Baltic Sea Region, 1100-1250

Visual Culture and Politics in the Baltic Sea Region, 1100-1250
Author: Kersti Markus
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 429
Release: 2020-06-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004426175

In Visual Culture and Politics in the Baltic Sea Region, Kersti Markus examines how visual rhetoric was used by the Danish rulers as an instrument in establishing supremacy in the region during the Baltic crusades.

Symbolic Identity and the Cultural Memory of Saints

Symbolic Identity and the Cultural Memory of Saints
Author: Anu Mänd
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2018-07-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 1527515710

This volume examines the relationship between medieval cults of saints and regional and national identity formation in Europe both during and, to some extent, beyond the Middle Ages. It studies how collective identities have been expressed through saints’ cults and their appropriations in texts, visual representations, and music. Attention is given to various aspects of the role of medieval saints’ cults in European identity formation, as saints were used in the service of both religious and political agendas. Focusing on a range of European regions, this volume uses cults of medieval saints and their religious, cultural and political appropriations over time as a vehicle for studying changing cultural and social values. The articles here report research carried out under the European Science Foundation’s collaborative EuroCORECODE project: Symbols that Bind and Break Communities: Saints’ Cults as Stimuli and Expressions of Local, Regional, National and Universalist Identities (2010–2013/14), an international, interdisciplinary research venture funded by the National Research Councils of five countries: Austria, Denmark, Estonia, Hungary, and Norway.

Doing Memory: Medieval Saints and Heroes and Their Afterlives in the Baltic Sea Region (19th-20th Centuries)

Doing Memory: Medieval Saints and Heroes and Their Afterlives in the Baltic Sea Region (19th-20th Centuries)
Author: Cordelia Heß
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2024-04-22
Genre: Art
ISBN: 311135119X

This anthology is about the representations and uses of medieval saints, heroes, and heroic events as elements of popular, local, and national culture during the 19th and 20th centuries in the Baltic Sea region: Scandinavia, Finland, Baltic countries, Northern Germany and North-Western Russia. Authors examine the processes of how medieval saints and heroes have been remembered, commemorated, interpreted, used, and reflected during modernity, and by whom. The focus of the anthology is on "doing" memory as a practice that commemorated the past and shaped spaces and identities in the present. It approaches the memory of saints and heroes, for example, Swedish Saints Birgitta and Eric, Danish Saint Knud, Kyivan Princess Olga, Swedish military leader in Finland Tyrgils Knutsson, Liv/Latvian warrior Imanta and Holsatian count Gerhard III as a shared heritage and as part of national, local and popular culture. The anthology contributes to the understanding of the Baltic Sea region through the study of saints, cults and heroic representations in the longue durée between the Middle Ages and modernity. It also adds nuance to the use of popular concepts of memory studies, particularly an update of Pierre Nora's lieux de mémoire.

Euroscepticism in the Baltic States

Euroscepticism in the Baltic States
Author: Aldis Austers
Publisher:
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2017
Genre: Baltic States
ISBN: 9789934567063

The book explores the neglected issue of Euroscepticism in the Baltic societies. The book consists of a collection of articles from experts in economics, politics and sociology, as well as Eurosceptic politicians. Authors from Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia seek to unveil not only the development of criticism towards the European Union in the Baltic politics over the last twenty-five years, but also sceptical opinions among the Baltic entrepreneurs and the sociological profile of Baltic population, looking separately at the Russian-speaking population in Estonia and Latvia. This book is the most recent successful collaboration between the Latvian Institute of International Affairs and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.

European Elites and Ideas of Empire, 1917-1957

European Elites and Ideas of Empire, 1917-1957
Author: Dina Gusejnova
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 393
Release: 2016-06-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107120624

Explores European civilisation as a concept of twentieth-century political practice and the project of a transnational network of European elites. This title is available as Open Access.

The Boundaries of Europe

The Boundaries of Europe
Author: Pietro Rossi
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2015-04-24
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110420724

Europe’s boundaries have mainly been shaped by cultural, religious, and political conceptions rather than by geography. This volume of bilingual essays from renowned European scholars outlines the transformation of Europe’s boundaries from the fall of the ancient world to the age of decolonization, or the end of the explicit endeavor to “Europeanize” the world.From the decline of the Roman Empire to the polycentrism of today’s world, the essays span such aspects as the confrontation of Christian Europe with Islam and the changing role of the Mediterranean from “mare nostrum” to a frontier between nations. Scandinavia, eastern Europe and the Atlantic are also analyzed as boundaries in the context of exploration, migratory movements, cultural exchanges, and war. The Boundaries of Europe, edited by Pietro Rossi, is the first installment in the ALLEA book series Discourses on Intellectual Europe, which seeks to explore the question of an intrinsic or quintessential European identity in light of the rising skepticism towards Europe as an integrated cultural and intellectual region.