Proceedings From Spain And The Western Mediterranean

This illustrated book is a coherently conceived collection of interdisciplinary essays by distinguished authors on the city of Rome and its contacts with western Christendom in the early Middle Ages (c. 500-1000 AD). The first part integrates historical, archaeological, numismatic and art historical approaches to studying the transition of the city of Rome from Antiquity to the Middle Ages and offers groundbreaking new analyses of selected sites and problems. Attention is given to the economic, social, religious and cultural history of the city. In the second part of the volume historical, archaeological, liturgical and palaeographical approaches address Rome's contacts and influence in Latin Christendom in this period, with particular regard to Rome's place within Italian politics and its cultural influence in Carolingian Francia and Anglo-Saxon England.

This first book-length, English-language study of medieval urban citizenship focuses on Perpignan, a town second in population only to Barcelona in fourteenth-century Catalonia, yet neglected by modern historians. True Citizens describes and analyzes the rules that governed membership in the community of citizens, the definition of citizenship, and how the development of divergent memories within the community resulted in a crisis of citizenship. This study uses urban citizenship to shed new light on many important historiographical issues, such as Jewish-Christian relations, the place of towns in feudal society, the place of Catalonia in the urban history of medieval Europe, and the transition from the High to the Late Middle Ages.

This volume gives an in-depth account of the relations between the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and Syria and the Armenian Kingdom, centred on Cilicia in southern Asia Minor, in the period after the collapse of the Crusader States. As well as diplomatic encounters, the work describes in detail, for example, the course of the Mamluk invasions of Cilicia, and the Armenian involvement with the Mongol invasions of Mamluk Syria. The work is substantially based on sources written in Arabic in the Mamluk Sultanate. Using them in conjuction with more 'pro-Armenian' sources, it demonstrates the value of these Arabic histories, which provide many new insights and details. Both in its subject, and in its use of sources, this work demonstrates an important new direction for scholars of the Middle East.

This book provides a new and fascinating view of the peasant society in thirteenth-century Galicia (Spain). The four authors open up a world of knights, squires and middle peasants who limited the actions of the monasteries settled in the area.

This book examines the presence of the converted Jews in Sicily following the 1492 expulsion, discussing their legal status, economic activities and integration into Sicilian society, and the phenomenon of conversion and return of many exiles. The research is based on the account of books of the Spanish Inquisition in Sicily and other contemporary sources. Detailed inventories of confiscated property offer insights into the converts' cultural world, and can also be of interest to the scholar of social and material history in Early Modern Europe. By focussing on royal policies towards the converted Jews, and on the process of establishing the Spanish Inquisition in Sicily, the study sheds new light on Ferdinand the Catholic's politics in Sicily and southern Italy.

This volume examines the development and evolution of the war galley known as the Dromon, and its relative, the Chelandion, from first appearance in the sixth century until its supercession in the twelfth century by the Galea developed in the Latin West. Beginning as a small, fully-decked, monoreme galley, by the tenth century the Dromon had become a bireme, the pre-eminent war galley of the Mediterranean. The salient features of these ships were their two-banked oarage system, the spurs at their bows which replaced the ram of classical antiquity, their lateen sails, and their primary weapon: Greek Fire. The book contextualizes the technical characteristics of the ships within the operational history of Byzantine fleets, logistical problems of medieval naval warfare, and strategic objectives. Surviving Byzantine sources, especially tactical manuals, are subjected to close literary and philological analysis.