Spain, 1157-1300 makes use of a vast body of primary and secondary source material to provide a balanced overview of a crucial period of Spanish as well as of European history. Examines the most significant phase of Spanish mainland development Considers the profound intellectual consequences of Christian advances into Islamic Spain Explores the varying fortunes of the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, and focuses on the reign of the learned Alfonso X of Castile Utilizes the vast body of primary and secondary source material published over the past 30 years
“Warrior monks”—the misnomer for the Iberian military orders that emerged on the frontiers of Europe in the twelfth century—have long fascinated general readers and professional historians alike. Proposing “ecclesiastical knights” as a more accurate name and conceptual model—warriors animated by ideals and spiritual currents endorsed by the church hierarchy—author Sam Zeno Conedera presents a groundbreaking study of how these orders brought the seemingly incongruous combination of monastic devotion and the practice of warfare into a single way of life. Providing a detailed study of the military-religious vocation as it was lived out in the Orders of Santiago, Calatrava, and Alcantara in Leon-Castile during the first century, Ecclesiastical Knights provides a valuable window into medieval Iberia. Filling a gap in the historiography of the medieval military orders, Conedera defines, categorizes, and explains these orders, from their foundations until their spiritual decline in the early fourteenth century, arguing that that the best way to understand their spirituality is as a particular kind of consecrated knighthood. Because these Iberian military orders were belligerents in the Reconquest, Ecclesiastical Knights informs important discussions about the relations between Western Christianity and Islam in the Middle Ages. Conedera examines how the military orders fit into the religious landscape of medieval Europe through the prism of knighthood, and how their unique conceptual character informed the orders and spiritual self-perception. The religious observances of all three orders were remarkably alike, except that the Cistercian-affiliated orders were more demanding and their members could not marry. Santiago, Calatrava, and Alcantara shared the same essential mission and purpose: the defense and expansion of Christendom understood as an act of charity, expressed primarily through fighting and secondarily through the care of the sick and the ransoming of captives. Their prayers were simple and their penances were aimed at knightly vices and the preservation of military discipline. Above all, the orders valued obedience. They never drank from the deep wellsprings of monasticism, nor were they ever meant to. Offering an entirely fresh perspective on two difficult and closely related problems concerning the military orders—namely, definition and spirituality—author Sam Zeno Conedera illuminates the religious life of the orders, previously eclipsed by their military activities.
Modern life in increasingly heterogeneous societies has directed attention to patterns of interaction, often using a framework of persecution and tolerance. This study of the economic, social, legal and religious position of three minorities (Jews, Muslims and pagan Turkic nomads) argues that different degrees of exclusion and integration characterized medieval non-Christian status in the medieval Christian kingdom of Hungary between 1000 and 1300. A complex explanation of non-Christian status emerges from the analysis of their economic, social, legal and religious positions and roles. Existence on the frontier with the nomadic world led to the formulation of a frontier ideology, and to anxiety about Hungary's detachment from Christendom, which affected policies towards non-Christians. The study also succeeds in integrating central European history with the study of the medieval world, while challenging such current concepts in medieval studies as frontier societies, persecution and tolerance, ethnicity and 'the other'.
Si l'on se penche sur les phénomènes de contestation de l'autorité politique par la littérature ou les arts qui constitue un axe de recherche majeur du Laboratoire aux travaux duquel contribue ce volume, il appert que, dans bien des pays d'Europe, l'autorité politique s'est identifiée avec celle du Monarque, alors qu'en Italie, cas exceptionnel – et pour cause, puisque le siège de la papauté y est implanté depuis deux millénaires sans autre interruption que le demi-siècle avignonnais –, c'est la papauté qui s'est constituée en pouvoir politique, se revendiquant d'une double autorité, spirituelle et morale, et s'incarnant en un véritable organisme étatique. Le pape et la papauté représentent à leur tour deux "incarnations" de l'autorité : l'une institutionnelle (le gouvernement ecclésiastique), l'autre individuelle (le souverain pontife comme successeur de Pierre investi d'une mission de divine inspiration et exerçant à ce titre une autorité suprême). C'est en tout cas une spécificité italienne que d'être, par tant, un pays à la fois laïc et non-laïc, dans lequel la figure du Pape remplace celle du Roi, suscitant, depuis son affirmation comme telle, polémiques et défenses de l'Institution ecclésiale autant que de papes en particuliers. De fait, l'affirmation de la primauté spirituelle et temporelle du pape sur le monde médiéval chrétien présente, in nuce, les failles juridiques et morales qui légitiment l'expression immédiate d'opposants à cette hégémonie, aussi les vingt études regroupées dans ce volume illustrent-elles à la fois l'ancrage et la permanence d'une tradition historique, artistique, littéraire… la remise en cause en quelque sorte "chronique" du pouvoir du pape et de l'Église du XIe siècle à nos jours. Chacune d'elles montre par ailleurs, en creux ou explicitement, selon les cas, l'idéal d'une Église, d'une papauté et de papes, que leurs partisans comme leurs opposants eussent voulus au-dessus des intérêts matériels et des stratégies de pouvoir, tous se présentant en mal d'une autorité morale incontestable et littéralement incomparable (celle des "Princes" telle qu'elle ressort de ces travaux n'échappant pas non plus à une sévère critique). Dans le balayage temporel et thématique qu'elles effectuent, ces études, du même coup, rendent compte du paradoxe proprement italien d'une tension ancestrale et originale entre la religion de la politique et la politique de la religion.
Two hundred years after canon law prohibited clerical marriage, parish priests in the late medieval period continued to form unions with women that were marriage all but in name. In Defiant Priests, Michelle Armstrong-Partida uses evidence from extraordinary archives in four Catalan dioceses to show that maintaining a family with a domestic partner was not only a custom entrenched in Catalan clerical culture but also an essential component of priestly masculine identity. From unpublished episcopal visitation records and internal diocesan documents (including notarial registers, bishops' letters, dispensations for illegitimate birth, and episcopal court records), Armstrong-Partida reconstructs the personal lives and careers of Catalan parish priests to better understand the professional identity and masculinity of churchmen who made up the proletariat of the largest institution across Europe. These untapped sources reveal the extent to which parish clergy were embedded in their communities, particularly their kinship ties to villagers and their often contentious interactions with male parishioners and clerical colleagues. Defiant Priests highlights a clerical culture that embraced violence to resolve disputes and seek revenge, to intimidate other men, and to maintain their status and authority in the community.
This book provides a detailed analysis of Isidore of Seville's attitude towards Jews and Judaism. Starting out from his anti-Jewish work De fide catholica contra Iudaeos, the author puts Isidore's argument into the context of his entire literary production. Furthermore, he explores the place of Isidore's thinking within the contemporary situation of Visigothic Spain, investigating the political functionalization of religion, most particularly the forced baptisms ordered by King Sisebut, whose advisor Isidore was thought to have been. It becomes clear that Isidore's primary goal is to produce a new "Gothic" identity for the recently established Catholic "nation" of Visigothic Spain; to this end he uses anti-Jewish stereotypes inherited from the tradition of Catholic anti-Judaism.
This work is the introduction to a series of volumes that will make available over 2,000 documents from the registers of Jaume the Conqueror at the Crown Archives in Barcelona the most impressive archives of this kind outside the papal series, and the first extensive use of paper by a European government. Originally published in 1985. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
The nine essays in this volume by Elizabeth Brown deal with the development of representative institutions and monarchial power in Capetian France. One topic covered is that of the evolution of central assemblies, with case studies of the assemblies held between 1316 and 1321 illuminating the impact of theory on practice. A second topic is that of the moral implications of fiscality and of the attempts by French monarchs to regulate their policies by the teachings of moral philosophy. A particular theme is the Capetians’ insistence on reform as a central theme of good government, and their successes and failures living up to their principles. The articles also examine the realm’s reactions to the monarchy’s ideals and principles, emphasizing and attempting to account for the differences in attitude to government on the part of the ruler and ruled that distinguished medieval France and England.
