This major study is a comprehensive scholarly work on a key moment in the history of Europe, the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. The result of years of research, it presents all available sources along with critical evaluations of these narratives. The authors have consulted texts in all relevant languages, both those that remain only in manuscript and others that have been printed, often in careless and inferior editions. Attention is also given to 'folk history' as it evolved over centuries, producing prominent myths and folktales in Greek, medieval Russian, Italian, and Turkish folklore. Part I, The Pen, addresses the complex questions introduced by this myriad of original literature and secondary sources.
Although the immense importance for the Renaissance of Greek émigrés to fifteenth-century Italy has long been recognized, much basic research on the phenomenon remains to be done. This new volume by John Monfasani gathers together fourteen studies filling in some of the gaps in our knowledge. The philosophers George Gemistus Pletho and George Amiroutzes, the great churchman Cardinal Bessarion, and the famous humanists George of Trebizond and Theodore Gaza are the subjects of some of the articles. Other articles treat the émigrés as a group within the wider frame of contemporary issues, such as humanism, the theological debate between the Orthodox and Roman Catholics, and the process of translating Greek texts into Latin. Furthermore, some notable Latin figures also enter into several of the articles in a detailed way, specifically, Nicholas of Cusa, Niccolò Perotti, and Pietro Balbi.
By 1400, the once-mighty Byzantine Empire stood on the verge of destruction. Most of its territories had been lost to the Ottoman Turks, and Constantinople was under close blockade. Against all odds, Byzantium lingered on for another fifty years until 1453, when the Ottomans dramatically toppled the capital's walls. During this bleak and uncertain time, ordinary Byzantines faced difficult decisions to protect their livelihoods and families against the death throes of their homeland. In this evocative and moving book, Jonathan Harris explores individual stories of diplomatic maneuverings, covert defiance, and sheer luck against a backdrop of major historical currents and offers a new perspective on the real reasons behind the fall of this extraordinarily fascinating empire.
This volume brings together a group of scholars to consider the rituals of eating together in the Byzantine world, the material culture of Byzantine food and wine consumption, and the transport and exchange of agricultural products. The contributors present food in nearly every conceivable guise, ranging from its rhetorical uses - food as a metaphor for redemption; food as politics; eating as a vice, abstinence as a virtue - to more practical applications such as the preparation of food, processing it, preserving it, and selling it abroad. We learn how the Byzantines viewed their diet, and how others - including, surprisingly, the Chinese - viewed it. Some consider the protocols of eating in a monastery, of dining in the palace, or of roughing it on a picnic or military campaign; others examine what serving dishes and utensils were in use in the dining room and how this changed over time. Throughout, the terminology of eating - and especially some of the more problematic terms - is explored. The chapters expand on papers presented at the 37th Annual Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, held at the University of Birmingham under the auspices of the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies, in honour of Professor A.A.M. Bryer, a fitting tribute for the man who first told the world about Byzantine agricultural implements.
This volume builds upon the new worldwide interest in the global Middle Ages. It investigates the prismatic heritage and eclectic artistic production of Eastern Europe between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, while challenging the temporal and geographical parameters of the study of medieval, Byzantine, post-Byzantine, and early-modern art. Contact and interchange between primarily the Latin, Greek, and Slavic cultural spheres resulted in local assimilations of select elements that reshaped the artistic landscapes of regions of the Balkan Peninsula, the Carpathian Mountains, and further north. The specificities of each region, and, in modern times, politics and nationalistic approaches, have reinforced the tendency to treat them separately, preventing scholars from questioning whether the visual output could be considered as an expression of a shared history. The comparative and interdisciplinary framework of this volume provides a holistic view of the visual culture of these regions by addressing issues of transmission and appropriation, as well as notions of cross-cultural contact, while putting on the global map of art history the eclectic artistic production of Eastern Europe.
Increasingly, historians acknowledge the significance of crusading activity in the fifteenth century, and they have started to explore the different ways in which it shaped contemporary European society. Just as important, however, was the range of interactions which took place between the three faith communities which were most affected by crusade, namely the Catholic and Orthodox worlds, and the adherents of Islam. Discussion of these interactions forms the theme of this book. Two essays consider the impact of the fall of Constantinople in 1453 on the conquering Ottomans and the conquered Byzantines. The next group of essays reviews different aspects of the crusading response to the Turks, ranging from Emperor Sigismund to Papal legates. The third set of contributions considers diplomatic and cultural interactions between Islam and Christianity, including attempts made to forge alliances of Christian and Muslim powers against the Ottomans. Last, a set of essays looks at what was arguably the most complex region of all for inter-faith relations, the Balkans, exploring the influence of crusading ideas in the eastern Adriatic, Bosnia and Romania. Viewed overall, this collection of essays makes a powerful contribution to breaking down the old and discredited view of monolithic and mutually exclusive "fortresses of faith". Nobody would question the extent and intensity of religious violence in fifteenth-century Europe, but this volume demonstrates that it was played out within a setting of turbulent diversity. Religious and ethnic identities were volatile, allegiances negotiable, and diplomacy, ideological exchange and human contact were constantly in operation between the period's major religious groupings.
A member of the imperial Palaiologan family, albeit most probably illegitimate, Isidore became a scholar at a young age and began his rise in the Byzantine ecclesiastical ranks. He was an active advocate of the union of the Orthodox and Catholic Churches in Constantinople. His military exploits, including his participation in the defence of Constantinople in 1453, provide us with eyewitness accounts. Without doubt he travelled widely, perhaps more so than any other individual in the annals of Byzantine history: Greece, Asia Minor, Sicily, Russia, Poland, Lithuania, and Italy. His roles included diplomat, high ecclesiastic in both the Orthodox and Catholic churches, theologian, soldier, papal emissary to the Constantinopolitan court, delegate to the Council of Florence, advisor to the last Byzantine emperors, metropolitan of Kiev and all Russia, and member of the Vatican curia. This is an original work based on new archival research and the first monograph to study Cardinal Isidore in his many diverse roles. His contributions to the events of the first six decades of the quattrocento are important for the study of major Church councils and the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks. Isidore played a crucial role in each of these events.
In the arc of western history, Ancient Greece is at the apex, owing to its grandeur, its culture, and an intellectual renaissance to rival that of Europe. So important is Greece to history that figures such as Plato and Socrates are still household names, and the works of Homer are regularly adapted into movies. The most acclaimed hero of all, though, is Alexander the Great.While historians have studied Alexander’s achievements at length, author and professor Richard A. Billows delves deeper into the obscure periods of Alexander’s life before and after his reign. In the definitive Before and After Alexander, Billows explores the years preceding Alexander, who, Billows argues, without the foundation laid by his father, Philip II of Macedon. would not have had the resources or influence to develop one of the greatest empires in history. Alexander was groomed from a young age to succeed his father, and by the time Philip was assassinated in 336 BC, his great empire was already well underway.The years following Alexander's death were even more momentous. In this ambitious new work, Richard Billows robustly challenges the notion that the political strife that followed was for lack of a leader as competent as Alexander, pointing out instead that there were too many extremely capable leaders who exploited the power vacuum created by Alexander's death to carve out kingdoms for themselves.Above all, in Before and After Alexander, Billows eloquently and convincingly posits a complex view of one of the greatest empires in history, framing it not as the achievement of one man, but the culmination of several generations of aggressive expansion toward a unified purpose.
Historical approaches to the study of world politics have always been a major part of the academic discipline of International Relations, and there has recently been a resurgence of scholarly interest in this area. This Oxford Handbook examines the past and present of the intersection between history and IR, and looks to the future by laying out new questions and directions for research. Seeking to transcend well-worn disciplinary debates between historians and IR scholars, the Handbook asks authors from both fields to engage with the central themes of 'modernity' and 'granularity'. Modernity is one of the basic organising categories of speculation about continuity and discontinuity in the history of world politics, but one that is increasingly questioned for privileging one kind of experience and marginalizing others. The theme of granularity highlights the importance of how decisions about the scale and scope of historical research in IR shape what can be seen, and how one sees it. Together, these themes provide points of affinity across the wide range of topics and approaches presented here. The Handbook is organized into four parts. The first, 'Readings', gives a state-of-the-art analysis of numerous aspects of the disciplinary encounter between historians and IR theorists. Thereafter, sections on 'Practices', 'Locales', and 'Moments' offer a wide variety of perspectives, from the longue durée to the ephemeral individual moment, and challenge many conventional ways of defining the contexts of historical enquiry about international relations. Contributors come from a range of academic backgrounds, and present a diverse array of methodological and philosophical ideas, as well as their various historical interests. The Oxford Handbooks of International Relations is a twelve-volume set of reference books offering authoritative and innovative engagements with the principal sub-fields of International Relations. The series as a whole is under the General Editorship of Christian Reus-Smit of the University of Queensland and Duncan Snidal of the University of Oxford, with each volume edited by specialists in the field. The series both surveys the broad terrain of International Relations scholarship and reshapes it, pushing each sub-field in challenging new directions. Following the example of Reus-Smit and Snidal's original Oxford Handbook of International Relations, each volume is organized around a strong central thematic by scholars drawn from different perspectives, reading its sub-field in an entirely new way, and pushing scholarship in challenging new directions.
The 'long' fourteenth century perhaps can be seen as Thessalonica's heyday. Alongside its growing commercial prowess, the city was developing into an important centre of government, where members of the Byzantine imperial family of the Palaiologoi ruled independently under full imperial titles, striking coinage and following an increasingly autonomous external policy. It was also developing into a formidable centre for letters, education, and artistic expression, due in part to Palaiologan patronage. This volume sets out the political and commercial landscape of Thessalonica between 1303 and 1430, when the city fell to the Ottoman Turks, before focusing on the literary and hymnographical aspects of the city's cultural history and its legacy. The cosmopolitan nature of urban life in Thessalonica, the polyphony of opinions it experienced and expressed, its multiple links with centres such as Constantinople, Adrianople, Athos, Lemnos and Lesvos, and the diversity and strength of its authorial voices make the study of the city's cultural life a vital part of our understanding of the Byzantine Eastern Mediterranean.
