A History of the Crusades

A History of the Crusades
Author: Kenneth Meyer Setton
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
Total Pages: 744
Release: 1969
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780299107444

The six volumes of A History of the Crusades will stand as the definitive history of the Crusades, spanning five centuries, encompassing Jewish, Moslem, and Christian perspectives, and containing a wealth of information and analysis of the history, politics, economics, and culture of the medieval world.

L'Europe Méditerranéenne

L'Europe Méditerranéenne
Author: Marta Petricioli
Publisher: Peter Lang
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2008
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9789052013541

L'Europe de la méditerranée, comparée aux autres régions européennes, dispose d'une histoire et d'une géographie particulières. Et pourtant elle entretient avec ces régions de nombreux rapports qu'il conviendra d'analyser afin d'enrichir notre compréhension de l'Europe dans son ensemble. Une longue tradition de rapports économiques et culturels rapproche tous les pays donnant sur la mer, berceau des principales civilisations du monde, bassin où s'échangent hommes, idées, matières premières, et technologies. L'Union européenne est appelée à développer une grande politique méditerranéenne, aussi bien par l'adhésion de nouveaux pays que par une politique de bon voisinage ou d'associations privilégiées. L'instrument principal devrait en être une politique culturelle servant de pont entre l'Est et l'Ouest, le Nord et le Sud, politique commune afin de répandre les valeurs contenues dans le projet de constitution européenne qui reconnaît dans le concept de diversité son bien le plus précieux. Les pays de l'Europe méditerranéenne, avec leurs expériences et leurs savoirs, peuvent fournir à cette politique une contribution précieuse. Ce volume, fruit de la coopération internationale de vingt chercheurs, apporte des éclairages sur l'Europe méditerranéenne non seulement dans des dimensions historiques, économiques, démographiques et politologiques, mais également dans le domaine des relations internationales et de la politique culturelle. The geography and the history of Mediterranean Europe are very different from those of the other European regions, but their role in the relationships with the other shores of the Mediterranean can be of great assistance to Europe as a whole. All the countries bordering the sea that witnessed the birth of some of the major civilisations of the world share a long tradition of economic and cultural relations. In the past numerous diasporas knit the harbour cities together, transmitting the ideas of the Enlightenment; today an uninterrupted flow of raw materials traverses the Mediterranean, together with people, ideas and technology. The European Union is called upon to develop a major Mediterranean policy, both through the accession of new countries, and by means of a policy of neighbourhood or of privileged associations. The principal tool should be a cultural policy that serves as a bridge between east and west, north and south. A common policy to spread the values contained in the project of the European constitution. In its motto «United in diversity», the Union recognises diversity as its most valuable asset. The countries of Mediterranean Europe, with their experience and their knowledge, can make a precious contribution to this policy. This book, the fruit of international co-operation among 20 researchers, offers a contribution to the study of Mediterranean Europe not only in the historic, economic, demographic and politological ambit, but also in the sphere of international relations and cultural policy.

Against the Modern World

Against the Modern World
Author: Mark J. Sedgwick
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2009
Genre: History
ISBN: 0195396014

Against the Modern World is the first history of Traditionalism, an important yet surprisingly little-known twentieth-century anti-modern movement. Comprising a number of often secret but sometimes very influential religious groups in the West and in the Islamic world, it affected mainstream and radical politics in Europe and the development of the field of religious studies in the United States, touching the lives of many individuals. French writer Rene Guenon rejected modernity as a dark age and sought to reconstruct the Perennial Philosophy - the central truths behind all the major world religions. Guenon stressed the urgent need for the West's remaining spiritual and intellectual elite to find personal and collective salvation in the surviving vestiges of ancient religious traditions. A number of disenchanted intellectuals responded to his call. In Europe, America, and the Islamic world, Traditionalists founded institutes, Sufi brotherhoods, Masonic lodges, and secret societies. Some attempted unsuccessfully to guide Fascism and Nazism along Traditionalist lines; others later participated in political terror in Italy. Traditionalist ideas were the ideological cement for the alliance of anti-democratic forces in post-Soviet Russia, and in the Islamic world entered the debate about the relationship between Islam and modernity. Although its appeal in the West was ultimately limited, Traditionalism has wielded enormous influence in religious studies, through the work of such Traditionalists as Ananda Coomaraswamy, Huston Smith, Mircea Eliade, and Seyyed Hossein Nasr.

The Mongols and the West

The Mongols and the West
Author: Peter Jackson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 449
Release: 2014-05-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 131787899X

The Mongols had a huge impact on medieval Europe and the Islamic world. This book provides a comprehensive survey of contacts between the Catholic West and the Mongol world-empire from the first appearance of Chinggis Khan’s armies in 1221 down to the death of Tamerlane (1405) and the battle of Tannenberg (1410). This book considers the Mongols as allies as well as conquerors; the perception of them in the West; the papal response to the threat (and opportunity) they presented; the fate of the Frankish principalities in the Holy Land in the path of the Mongol onslaught; Western European embassies and missions to the East; and the impact of the Mongols on the expanding world view of the maturing Middle Ages. For courses in crusading history and medieval European history.

Crusading and Trading between West and East

Crusading and Trading between West and East
Author: Sophia Menache
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 424
Release: 2018-10-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351390724

For almost sixty years Professor David Jacoby devoted his research to the economic, social and cultural history of the Eastern Mediterranean and this new collection reflects his impact on the study of the interactions between the Italian city-states, Byzantium, the Latin East and the realm of Islam. Contributors to this volume are prominent scholars from across Medieval Studies and leading historians of the younger generation.

The Latin Church in the Crusader States

The Latin Church in the Crusader States
Author: Bernard Hamilton
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 396
Release: 2016-12-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 135188705X

This is the first major work on the history of the secular church in the Frankish states of Syria and the Holy Land - a subject which has not hitherto attracted the interest of ecclesiastical historians. The present book has been written to fill this important gap in crusader studies. It deals with the period stretching from the establishment of a Latin hierarchy after the First Crusade to the final conquest by the Mamluks in 1291. Dr Hamilton examines the development of the Church in the Patriarchates of Jerusalem and Antioch and its organisation from the parish level upwards. Two chapters are devoted to a study of its sources of income and the financial problems that arose after the Battle of Hattin through the thirteenth century. Particular attention is paid to the relations between the Latin and the Eastern Churches. The author documents the unequal treatment given to the Orthodox and to the separated Churches, and traces the course of the various attempts at church union. In his conclusion he makes an overall assessment of the spiritual achievments of the Church during this period and the extent to which it justified the first crusaders' ideals.

Esoteric Transfers and Constructions

Esoteric Transfers and Constructions
Author: Mark Sedgwick
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2021-04-07
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3030617882

Similarities between esoteric and mystical currents in different religious traditions have long interested scholars. This book takes a new look at the relationship between such currents. It advances a discussion that started with the search for religious essences, archetypes, and universals, from William James to Eranos. The universal categories that resulted from that search were later criticized as essentialist constructions, and questioned by deconstructionists. An alternative explanation was advanced by diffusionists: that there were transfers between different traditions. This book presents empirical case studies of such constructions, and of transfers between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in the premodern period, and Judaism, Christianity, and Western esotericism in the modern period. It shows that there were indeed transfers that can be clearly documented, and that there were also indeed constructions, often very imaginative. It also shows that there were many cases that were neither transfers nor constructions, but a mixture of the two.

The Medieval World

The Medieval World
Author: Peter Linehan
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 770
Release: 2013-09-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 113650012X

This groundbreaking collection brings the Middle Ages to life and conveys the distinctiveness of this diverse, constantly changing period. Thirty-eight scholars bring together one medieval world from many disparate worlds, from Connacht to Constantinople and from Tynemouth to Timbuktu. This extraordinary set of reconstructions presents the reader with a vivid re-drawing of the medieval past, offering fresh appraisals of the evidence and modern historical writing. Chapters are thematically linked in four sections: identities beliefs, social values and symbolic order power and power-structures elites, organizations and groups. Packed full of original scholarship, The Medieval World is essential reading for anyone studying medieval history.

The Great Sea

The Great Sea
Author: David Abulafia
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 849
Release: 2011-06-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 019975263X

Connecting Europe, Asia, and Africa, the Mediterranean Sea has been for millennia the place where religions, economies, and political systems met, clashed, influenced and absorbed one another. In this brilliant and expansive book, David Abulafia offers a fresh perspective by focusing on the sea itself: its practical importance for transport and sustenance; its dynamic role in the rise and fall of empires; and the remarkable cast of characters-sailors, merchants, migrants, pirates, pilgrims-who have crossed and re-crossed it. Ranging from prehistory to the 21st century, The Great Sea is above all a history of human interaction. Interweaving major political and naval developments with the ebb and flow of trade, Abulafia explores how commercial competition in the Mediterranean created both rivalries and partnerships, with merchants acting as intermediaries between cultures, trading goods that were as exotic on one side of the sea as they were commonplace on the other. He stresses the remarkable ability of Mediterranean cultures to uphold the civilizing ideal of convivencia, "living together." Now available in paperback, The Great Sea is the definitive account of perhaps the most vibrant theater of human interaction in history.