This pioneering study explores early medieval Frankish identity as a window into the formation of a distinct Western conception of ethnicity. Focusing on the turbulent and varied history of Frankish ...identity in Merovingian and Carolingian historiography, it offers a new basis for comparing the history of collective and ethnic identity in the Christian West with other contexts, especially the Islamic and Byzantine worlds. The tremendous political success of the Frankish kingdoms provided the medieval West with fundamental political, religious and social structures, including a change from the Roman perspective on ethnicity as the quality of the 'Other' to the Carolingian perception that a variety of Christian peoples were chosen by God to reign over the former Roman provinces. Interpreting identity as an open ended process, Helmut Reimitz explores the role of Frankish identity in the multiple efforts through which societies tried to find order in the rapidly changing post-Roman world.
Eric J. Goldberg traces the long history of early medieval hunting from the late Roman Empire to the death of the last Carolingian king, Louis V, in a hunting accident in 987. He focuses chiefly on ...elite men and the changing role that hunting played in articulating kingship, status, and manhood in the post- Roman world. While hunting was central to elite lifestyles throughout these centuries, the Carolingians significantly altered this aristocratic activity in the later eighth and ninth centuries by making it a key symbol of Frankish kingship and political identity. This new connection emerged under Charlemagne, reached its high point under his son and heir Louis the Pious, and continued under Louis's immediate successors. Indeed, the emphasis on hunting as a badge of royal power and Frankishness would prove to be among the Carolingians' most significant and lasting legacies.Goldberg draws on written sources such as chronicles, law codes, charters, hagiography, and poetry as well as artistic and archaeological evidence to explore the changing nature of early medieval hunting and its connections to politics and society. Featuring more than sixty illustrations of hunting imagery found in mosaics, stone sculpture, metalwork, and illuminated manuscripts, In the Manner of the Franks portrays a vibrant and dynamic culture that encompassed red deer and wild boar hunting, falconry, ritualized behavior, female spectatorship, and complex forms of specialized knowledge that united kings and nobles in a shared political culture, thus locating the origins of courtly hunting in the early Middle Ages.
In the wake of Jerusalem's fall in 1099, the crusading armies of western Christians known as the Franks found themselves governing not only Muslims and Jews but also local Christians, whose culture ...and traditions were a world apart from their own. The crusader-occupied swaths of Syria and Palestine were home to many separate Christian communities: Greek and Syrian Orthodox, Armenians, and other sects with sharp doctrinal differences. How did these disparate groups live together under Frankish rule? InThe Crusades and the Christian World of the East, Christopher MacEvitt marshals an impressive array of literary, legal, artistic, and archeological evidence to demonstrate how crusader ideology and religious difference gave rise to a mode of coexistence he calls "rough tolerance." The twelfth-century Frankish rulers of the Levant and their Christian subjects were separated by language, religious practices, and beliefs. Yet western Christians showed little interest in such differences. Franks intermarried with local Christians and shared shrines and churches, but they did not hesitate to use military force against Christian communities. Rough tolerance was unlike other medieval modes of dealing with religious difference, and MacEvitt illuminates the factors that led to this striking divergence. "It is commonplace to discuss the diversity of the Middle East in terms of Muslims, Jews, and Christians," MacEvitt writes, "yet even this simplifies its religious complexity." While most crusade history has focused on Christian-Muslim encounters, MacEvitt offers an often surprising account by examining the intersection of the Middle Eastern and Frankish Christian worlds during the century of the First Crusade.
This book provides a new interpretation of the fall of the Roman Empire and the 'barbarian' kingdom known conventionally as Ostrogothic Italy. Relying primarily on Italian textual and material ...evidence, and in particular the works of Cassiodorus and Ennodius, Jonathan J. Arnold argues that contemporary Italo-Romans viewed the Ostrogothic kingdom as the Western Roman Empire and its 'barbarian' king, Theoderic (r.489/93–526), as its emperor. Investigating conceptions of Romanness, Arnold explains how the Roman past, both immediate and distant, allowed Theoderic and his Goths to find acceptance in Italy as Romans, with roles essential to the Empire's perceived recovery. Theoderic and the Roman Imperial Restoration demonstrates how Theoderic's careful attention to imperial traditions, good governance, and reconquest followed by the re-Romanization of lost imperial territories contributed to contemporary sentiments of imperial resurgence and a golden age. There was no need for Justinian to restore the Western Empire: Theoderic had already done so.
If Martin Luther was remembered at all in the reforming and reformed English Church, it was as someone awkward and even embarrassing. "Where was your Church before Luther?" was the inconvenient ...question asked of the divines of the Church of England by Roman Catholic writers from the sixteenth century onwards. The question was intended to assert both the schism and the heresy that Catholics saw as the origin of the Church of England, and that its foundation was based on the novelty of the sixteenth-century reforms.
If Martin Luther was remembered at all in the reforming and reformed English Church, it was as someone awkward and even embarrassing. "Where was your Church before Luther?" was the inconvenient ...question asked of the divines of the Church of England by Roman Catholic writers from the sixteenth century onwards. The question was intended to assert both the schism and the heresy that Catholics saw as the origin of the Church of England, and that its foundation was based on the novelty of the sixteenth-century reforms.
In den gentilen Verbänden der Übergangsphase von der Antike zum Mittelalter ist eine Vielzahl von duces bekannt, die herausgehobene Funktionen hatten. Trotz ihrer großen Bedeutung fehlte bisher eine ...systematische, vergleichende Darstellung dieser Amtsträger und auch die Frage nach der Vorbildwirkung der römischen duces wurde nicht tiefgehend behandelt. Diese Forschungslücke wird durch den Band geschlossen. Für die Untersuchung wurden die Reiche der Alemannen, Burgunder, Westgoten, Ostgoten, Langobarden und Franken (auch der rechtsrheinischen Dukate) bis zum Anfang des siebenten Jahrhunderts betrachtet. Dabei zeigte sich, dass nur in vier davon duces existierten. Diese entwickelten sich zwar auf ähnliche Weise, doch ließen sich auch Unterschiede feststellen. Anders als andere, aus dem Römischen bekannte Positionen, waren die duces deutlich variabler. Auch die Analyse der Übernahme römischer Strukturen fiel nicht eindeutig aus, jedoch sind Fälle eindeutiger Kontinuität sehr selten. Die Ergebnisse der Studie sind durch zahlreiche Karten illustriert. Die Gesamtdarstellung bietet einen neuen Zugang aus der Perspektive der Verwaltungsgeschichte und ergänzt die intensive Erforschung des Wandels in der Spätantike um eine weitere Facette.
In this book, Spracklen and Spracklen use the idea of collective memory to explore the controversies and boundary-making surrounding the genesis and progression of the modern gothic alternative ...culture. They suggest that the only way for goth culture to survive is if it becomes transgressive and radical again.
