This critical edition of the legal treatise by John of Ibelin, count of Jaffa and Ascalon (died 1266) is the first to take into account all the surviving medieval manuscripts and the first to be published since 1841.
Evolving from a patrician domus, the emperor's residence on the Palatine became the centre of the state administration. Elaborate ceremonial regulated access to the imperial family, creating a system of privilege which strengthened the centralised power. Constantine followed the same model in his new capital, under a Christian veneer. The divine attributes of the imperial office were refashioned, with the emperor as God's representative. The palace was an imitation of heaven. Following the loss of the empire in the West and the Near East, the Palace in Constantinople was preserved – subject to the transition from Late Antique to Mediaeval conditions – until the Fourth Crusade, attracting the attention of Visgothic, Lombard, Merovingian, Carolingian, Norman and Muslim rulers. Renaissance princes later drew inspiration for their residences directly from ancient ruins and Roman literature, but there was also contact with the Late Byzantine court. Finally, in the age of Absolutism the palace became again an instrument of power in vast centralised states, with renewed interest in Roman and Byzantine ceremonial. Spanning the broadest chronological and geographical limits of the Roman imperial tradition, from the Principate to the Ottoman empire, the papers in the volume treat various aspects of palace architecture, art and ceremonial.
This is a new critical edition of the legal treatise by John of Ibelin, count of Jaffa and Ascalon (died 1266). John was a leading magnate in the Latin East, and his first-hand experience of the courts meant that he was well-placed to write authoritatively on his subject. His work is in French and describes in detail the procedures of the High Court of the kingdom of Jerusalem, and the law as administered there. The treatise has long been recognized as being of fundamental importance for the legal, institutional and social history of the Latin settlements in the Levant, and this is the first edition to take into account all the surviving medieval manuscripts and the first to be published since 1841.
Emperor Frederick II, called "enlightened" by historians yet decried as a despot by contemporaries, unleashes a civil war that tears the Holy Land apart. The heir to an intimidating legacy, a woman artist, and a boy king are caught up in the game of emperors and popes. Set against the backdrop of the Sixth Crusade, Rebels against Tyranny takes you from the harems of Sicily to the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, from the palaces of privilege to the dungeons of despair. This is a timeless tale of youthful audacity taking on tyranny―but sometimes courage is not enough....
The establishment of feudal principalities in the Levant in the wake of the First Crusade (1095-1099) saw the beginning of a centuries-long process of conquest and colonization of lands in the eastern Mediterranean by French-speaking Europeans. This book examines different aspects of the life and literary culture associated with this French-speaking society. It is the first study of the crusades to bring questions of language and culture so intimately into conversation. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to the study of the crusader settlements in the Levant, this book emphasizes hybridity and innovation, the movement of words and people across boundaries, seas and continents, and the negotiation of identity in a world tied partly to Europe but thoroughly embedded in the Mediterranean and Levantine context.
John d'Ibelin, son of the legendary Balian, will one day defy the most powerful monarch on earth. But first he must survive his apprenticeship as squire to a man determined to build a kingdom on an island ravaged by rebellion. The Greek insurgents have already driven the Knights Templar from the island, and now stand poised to destroy Richard the Lionheart's legacy to the Holy Land: a crusader foothold on the island of Cyprus.