Medieval Europe 395-1270 AD
Medieval Europe 395-1270 AD

Author: Gabriel Monod

Publisher: Jovian Press

Published: 2017-12-06

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 1537806440

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At the end of the fourth century the Roman Empire still comprised the entire basin of the Mediterranean. In Europe its continental limits were the Rhine and the Danube; in Asia, an undefined frontier, modified constantly by wars with the Armenians and Persians, followed the eastern slope of the Pontus Euxinus (Black Sea) to the foot of the Caucasus Mountains and extended into Armenia around Lake Van, thence in an almost straight line to the Red Sea, crossing the Tigris below Tigranocerta, and the Euphrates at its junction with the Chaboras at Circesium. On the south, Egypt up to and beyond the first cataract, and the northern slope of Africa, with Cyrenaica, Tripolitania, and Mauritania, belonged to Rome, which possessed in the valley of the Nile and in the modern Tunis the wheat granaries that supplied the hungry people of the two capitals. On the west the Atlantic Ocean formed the horizon of the ancients, who imagined beyond it the mysterious land of the blessed ones. On the north the island of Britannia belonged to the Empire, with the exception of the mountainous region of Caledonia, which retained its independence, as did Hibernia, or Ireland...

Crusaders and Crusading in the Twelfth Century
Crusaders and Crusading in the Twelfth Century

Author: Giles Constable

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-12-05

Total Pages: 403

ISBN-13: 1351947087

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Crusading in the twelfth century was less a series of discrete events than a manifestation of an endemic phenomenon that touched almost every aspect of life at that time. The defense of Christendom and the recovery of the Holy Land were widely-shared objectives. Thousands of men, and not a few women, participated in the crusades, including not only those who took the cross but many others who shared the costs and losses, as well as the triumphs of the crusaders. This volume contains not a narrative account of the crusades in the twelfth century, but a group of studies illustrating many aspects of crusading that are often passed over in narrative histories, including the courses and historiography of the crusades, their background, ideology, and finances, and how they were seen in Europe. Included are revised and updated versions of Giles Constable's classic essays on medieval crusading, along with two major new studies on the cross of the crusaders and the Fourth Crusade, and two excursuses on the terminology of crusading and the numbering of the crusades. They provide an opportunity to meet some individual crusaders, such as Odo Arpinus, whose remarkable career carried him from France to the east and back again, and whose legendary exploits in the Holy Land were recorded in the Old French crusade cycle. Other studies take the reader to the boundaries of Christendom in Spain and Portugal and in eastern Germany, where the campaigns against the Wends formed part of the wider crusading movement. Together they show the range and depth of crusading at that time and its influence on the broader history of the period.