Western Travellers to Constantinople
Western Travellers to Constantinople

Author: K.N. Ciggaar

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2022-04-19

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 9004478051

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This volume deals with relations between the West and Byzantium, from the accession of Otto I the Great in Germany in 962, until the Fourth Crusade when Constantinople was conquered by the Western crusading armies in 1204. The impact which these contacts and confrontations had on both sides is discussed in sections dealing with specific areas (such as the North, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain) as well as in sections dealing with specific aspects of the process: the journey, the attractions of the East, and the idea of "autoritates" and "translationes" of various political and intellectual ideas. An extensive index will help readers to find specific topics. The book is illustrated with maps, and with a number of objects betraying Byzantine influence in the West, or Western presence in Byzantium.

Western Travellers to Constantinople
Western Travellers to Constantinople

Author: Krijna Nelly Ciggaar

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 450

ISBN-13: 9789004106376

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This volume provides a survey of the thousands and thousands of people from the West who travelled to Constantinople between 962 and 1204, and of the influence Byzantium exerted on them and on those who remained home. Crusaders were an important group, but other social groups played a key role as well in the exchange of ideas.

A Time of Gifts
A Time of Gifts

Author: Patrick Leigh Fermor

Publisher: New York Review of Books

Published: 2011-09-14

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 1590175174

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This beloved account about an intrepid young Englishman on the first leg of his walk from London to Constantinople is simply one of the best works of travel literature ever written. At the age of eighteen, Patrick Leigh Fermor set off from the heart of London on an epic journey—to walk to Constantinople. A Time of Gifts is the rich account of his adventures as far as Hungary, after which Between the Woods and the Water continues the story to the Iron Gates that divide the Carpathian and Balkan mountains. Acclaimed for its sweep and intelligence, Leigh Fermor’s book explores a remarkable moment in time. Hitler has just come to power but war is still ahead, as he walks through a Europe soon to be forever changed—through the Lowlands to Mitteleuropa, to Teutonic and Slav heartlands, through the baroque remains of the Holy Roman Empire; up the Rhine, and down to the Danube. At once a memoir of coming-of-age, an account of a journey, and a dazzling exposition of the English language, A Time of Gifts is also a portrait of a continent already showing ominous signs of the holocaust to come.

Travel in the Byzantine World
Travel in the Byzantine World

Author: Ruth Macrides

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 1351877674

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This latest volume in the SPBS series makes a notable contribution to our understanding both of the evidence for travel, and of the realities and perceptions of communications in the Byzantine world. Four aspects of travel in the Byzantine world, from the 6th to the 15th century, are examined: technicalities of travel on land and sea, purposes of travel, foreign visitors' perceptions of Constantinople, and the representation of the travel experience in images and in written accounts. Sources used to illuminate these aspects include descriptions of journeys, pilot books, bilingual word lists, shipwrecks, monastic documents, but as the opening paper shows the range of such sources can be far wider than generally supposed. The contributors highlight road and travel conditions for horses and humans, types of ships and speed of sea journeys, the nature of trade in the Mediterranean, the continuity of pilgrimage to the Holy Land, attitudes toward travel. Patterns of communication in the Mediterranean are revealed through distribution of ceramic finds, letter collections, and the spread of the plague.

Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West, 411–533
Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West, 411–533

Author: Andrew Gillett

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2003-08-28

Total Pages: 365

ISBN-13: 1139440039

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Warfare and dislocation are obvious features of the break-up of the late Roman West, but this crucial period of change was characterized also by communication and diplomacy. The great events of the late antique West were determined by the quieter labours of countless envoys, who travelled between emperors, kings, generals, high officials, bishops, provincial councils, and cities. This book examines the role of envoys in the period from the establishment of the first 'barbarian kingdoms' in the West, to the eve of Justinian's wars of re-conquest. It shows how ongoing practices of Roman imperial administration shaped new patterns of political interaction in the novel context of the earliest medieval states. Close analysis of sources with special interest in embassies offers insight into a variety of genres: chronicles, panegyrics, hagiographies, letters and epitaph. This study makes a significant contribution to the developing field of ancient and medieval communications.

Islamic Architecture through Western Eyes: Spain, Turkey, India and Persia
Islamic Architecture through Western Eyes: Spain, Turkey, India and Persia

Author: Michael Greenhalgh

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2022-11-28

Total Pages: 390

ISBN-13: 9004524851

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An anthology of mainly 17th to early 20th-century Western published descriptions of Islamic religious buildings in Spain, Turkey, India and Persia, charting decoration, dilapidation and restoration, as well as the impact of Western trade, taste and imports on the East.

Warfare and the Miraculous in the Chronicles of the First Crusade
Warfare and the Miraculous in the Chronicles of the First Crusade

Author: Elizabeth Lapina

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2015-08-13

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 0271073136

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In Warfare and the Miraculous in the Chronicles of the First Crusade, Elizabeth Lapina examines a variety of these chronicles, written both by participants in the crusade and by those who stayed behind. Her goal is to understand the enterprise from the perspective of its contemporaries and near contemporaries. Lapina analyzes the diversity of ways in which the chroniclers tried to justify the First Crusade as a “holy war,” where physical violence could be not just sinless, but salvific. The book focuses on accounts of miracles reported to have happened in the course of the crusade, especially the miracle of the intervention of saints in the Battle of Antioch. Lapina shows why and how chroniclers used these miracles to provide historical precedent and to reconcile the messiness of history with the conviction that history was ordered by divine will. In doing so, she provides an important glimpse into the intellectual efforts of the chronicles and their authors, illuminating their perspectives toward the concepts of history, salvation, and the East. Warfare and the Miraculous in the Chronicles of the First Crusade demonstrates how these narratives sought to position the crusade as an event in the time line of sacred history. Lapina offers original insights into the effects of the crusade on the Western imaginary as well as how medieval authors thought about and represented history.

Reimagining Europe
Reimagining Europe

Author: Christian Raffensperger

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2012-03-12

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 0674065468

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Main description: An overriding assumption has long directed scholarship in both European and Slavic history: that Kievan Rus' in the tenth through twelfth centuries was part of a Byzantine commonwealth separate from Europe. Christian Raffensperger refutes this conception and offers a new frame for two hundred years of history, one in which Rus' is understood as part of medieval Europe and East is not so neatly divided from West. With the aid of Latin sources, the author brings to light the considerable political, religious, marital, and economic ties among European kingdoms, including Rus', restoring a historical record rendered blank by Rusianmonastic chroniclers as well as modern scholars ideologically motivated to build barriers between East and West. Further, Raffensperger revises the concept of a Byzantine Commonwealth that stood in opposition to Europe-and under which Rus' was subsumed-toward that of a Byzantine Ideal esteemed and emulated by all the states of Europe. In this new context, appropriation of Byzantine customs, law, coinage, art, and architecture in both Rus' and Europe can be understood as an attempt to gain legitimacy and prestige by association with the surviving remnant of the Roman Empire. Reimagining Europe initiates an expansion of history that is sure to challenge ideas of Russian exceptionalism and influence the course of European medieval studies.

Sources for Byzantine Art History: Volume 3, The Visual Culture of Later Byzantium (1081–c.1350)
Sources for Byzantine Art History: Volume 3, The Visual Culture of Later Byzantium (1081–c.1350)

Author: Foteini Spingou

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2022-04-21

Total Pages: 1683

ISBN-13: 1108643906

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In this book the beauty and meaning of Byzantine art and its aesthetics are for the first time made accessible through the original sources. More than 150 medieval texts are translated from nine medieval languages into English, with commentaries from over seventy leading scholars. These include theories of art, discussions of patronage and understandings of iconography, practical recipes for artistic supplies, expressions of devotion, and descriptions of cities. The volume reveals the cultural plurality and the interconnectivity of medieval Europe and the Mediterranean from the late eleventh to the early fourteenth centuries. The first part uncovers salient aspects of Byzantine artistic production and its aesthetic reception, while the second puts a spotlight on particular ways of expressing admiration and of interpreting of the visual.