Lordships of Southern Italy
Lordships of Southern Italy

Author: Sandro Carocci

Publisher:

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9788867287734

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

What was the real nature of medieval lordship in southern Italy? What can this region and its history bring to the great European debates on feudalism and aristocratic powers, their structures and evolution, and their social and economic impact? What contribution can the Kingdom of Sicily make to studies of the relationships between sovereigns, nobilities and peasant societies? And can the study of seigneurial powers and rural societies reshape the old arguments regarding the economic backwardness of the Mezzogiorno (the South of Italy) and the central role of its monarchy? This book offers the first systematic analysis of lordship in southern Italy in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, under the Norman, Staufen and early Angevin kings. It offers new interpretations of the powers of the nobility, and of rural societies and royal policy. It reveals the complexity of interactions between the king, nobles and peasants, and how they occurred and were expressed through laws and violence, feudal relations and economic investments, debates on freedom and serfdom, and the exploitation of people and natural resources. In these interactions a leading role is played by peasant societies - with previously unsuspected levels of dynamism - to set against that of the kings, who were determined to curb aristocratic powers, and of the nobles who were obliged to adapt their lordship in response to powerful rural societies and crown policies. What emerges is a hitherto unseen Mezzogiorno, vital and complex, whose study allows a deeper understanding not only of the affairs of the South but of many other regions of Europe.

The Various Models of Lordship in Europe between the Ninth and Fifteenth Centuries
The Various Models of Lordship in Europe between the Ninth and Fifteenth Centuries

Author: Antonio Antonetti

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2023-10-25

Total Pages: 371

ISBN-13: 1527529096

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The status of lord represented one of the most original solutions to the political and social transitions of the Medieval period. Questions still remain unanswered and require further investigation, thus many scholars have collaborated to produce this collection which offers a synthesis of the most recent scholarship. This book relates the workings of seigneurial systems in different areas of Europe, from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, from Castile to Pontus. In this way, the perspective remains the same, institutional and material. This book emphasises both the institutional and informal forms of lordship identified and crystallised by social and political actors (for example, communities, sovereigns, nobles, bishops, and abbots). It offers a general framework for those approaching the subject for the first time and a useful in-depth tool with numerous regional cases for long-term scholars.

Medieval Italy
Medieval Italy

Author: Katherine L. Jansen

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2011-09-21

Total Pages: 620

ISBN-13: 0812206061

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Medieval Italy gathers together an unparalleled selection of newly translated primary sources from the central and later Middle Ages, a period during which Italy was famous for its diverse cultural landscape of urban towers and fortified castles, the spirituality of Saints Francis and Clare, and the vernacular poetry of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. The texts highlight the continuities with the medieval Latin West while simultaneously emphasizing the ways in which Italy was exceptional, particularly for its cities that drove Mediterranean trade, its new communal forms of government, the impact of the papacy's temporal claims on the central peninsula, and the richly textured religious life of the mainland and its islands. A unique feature of this volume is its incorporation of the southern part of the peninsula and Sicily—the glittering Norman court at Palermo, the multicultural emporium of the south, and the kingdoms of Frederick II—into a larger narrative of Italian history. Including Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, and Lombard sources, the documents speak in ethnically and religiously differentiated voices, while providing wider chronological and geographical coverage than previously available. Rich in interdisciplinary texts and organized to enable the reader to focus by specific region, topic, or period, this is a volume that will be an essential resource for anyone with a professional or private interest in the history, religion, literature, politics, and built environment of Italy from ca. 1000 to 1400.

Kings and Lords in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem
Kings and Lords in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem

Author: Hans Eberhard Mayer

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-10-28

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 1040248373

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In the present volume, the third selection of his articles to be published, Professor Mayer deals with questions of royal authority and power in the Crusader kingdom of Jerusalem. He first examines the relationship between the monarchy and the Church, questions of royal succession, and aspects of the royal chancery, but is also concerned to trace the king’s efforts to create a new clientele of loyal vassals. The second group of studies reverses the perspective, and looks at the origins and development of the lordships of the kingdom, notably at the important county of Jaffa and at the role of the Ibelin, the most significant family in the land.

Italy and Early Medieval Europe
Italy and Early Medieval Europe

Author: Ross Balzaretti

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-07-26

Total Pages: 592

ISBN-13: 0191083267

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A comprehensive survey of recent work in Medieval Italian history and archaeology by an international cast of contributors, arranged within a broader context of studies on other regions and major historical transitions in Europe, c.400 to c.1400CE. Each of the contributors reflect on the contribution made to the field by Chris Wickham, whose own work spans studies based on close archival work, to broad and ambitious statements on economic and social change in the transition from Roman to medieval Europe, and the value of comparing this across time and space.

Lords of the Sea
Lords of the Sea

Author: Alan G. Jamieson

Publisher: Reaktion Books

Published: 2013-02-15

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 1861899467

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The escalation of piracy in the waters east and south of Somalia has led commentators to call the area the new Barbary, but the Somali pirates cannot compare to the three hundred years of terror supplied by the Barbary corsairs in the Mediterranean and beyond. From 1500 to 1800, Muslim pirates from the Barbary Coast of North Africa captured and enslaved more than a million Christians. Lords of the Sea relates the history of these pirates, examining their dramatic impact as the maritime vanguard of the Ottoman Empire in the early 1500s through their breaking from Ottoman control in the early seventeenth century. Alan Jamieson explores how the corsairs rose to the apogee of their powers during this period, extending their activities from the Mediterranean into the Atlantic and venturing as far as England, Ireland, and Iceland. Serving as a vital component of the main Ottoman fleet, the Barbary pirates also conducted independent raids of Christian ships and territory. While their activities declined after 1700, Jamieson reveals that it was only in the early nineteenth century that Europe and the United States finally curtailed the Barbary menace, a fight that culminated in the French conquest of Algiers in 1830. A welcome addition to military history, Lords of the Sea is an engrossing tale of exploration, slavery, and conquest.