O City of Byzantium

O City of Byzantium PDF Author: Nicetas Choniates
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 488

Get Book Here

Book Description
One of the most important accounts of the Middle Ages, the history of Niketas Choniates describes the Byzantine Empire from 1118 to 1207. Niketas provides an eyewitness account of the sack of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade. O City of Byzantium is the first English translation of a history which chronicles the period of Byzantine history from 1118 to 1207. The historian Niketas Choniates provides an eye-witness account of the inexorable events that led to the destruction of the longest lived Christian empire in history, and to the ultimate catastrophe of the fall of Constantinople in 1204 to the Fourth Crusade. For the student of the Middles Ages who cannot read Greek, and for the historians and the general public, this volume contains one of the most important historical accounts of the Middle Ages. Recorded in detail are the political, economic, social, and religious causes of alienation between the Latin West and the Greek East that separated the two halves of the Christian world and broke apart the great bulwark of European civilization.

O City of Byzantium

O City of Byzantium PDF Author: Nicetas Choniates
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 488

Get Book Here

Book Description
One of the most important accounts of the Middle Ages, the history of Niketas Choniates describes the Byzantine Empire from 1118 to 1207. Niketas provides an eyewitness account of the sack of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade. O City of Byzantium is the first English translation of a history which chronicles the period of Byzantine history from 1118 to 1207. The historian Niketas Choniates provides an eye-witness account of the inexorable events that led to the destruction of the longest lived Christian empire in history, and to the ultimate catastrophe of the fall of Constantinople in 1204 to the Fourth Crusade. For the student of the Middles Ages who cannot read Greek, and for the historians and the general public, this volume contains one of the most important historical accounts of the Middle Ages. Recorded in detail are the political, economic, social, and religious causes of alienation between the Latin West and the Greek East that separated the two halves of the Christian world and broke apart the great bulwark of European civilization.

Romanland

Romanland PDF Author: Anthony Kaldellis
Publisher: Belknap Press
ISBN: 0674986512
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 393

Get Book Here

Book Description
A leading historian argues that in the empire we know as Byzantium, the Greek-speaking population was actually Roman, and scholars have deliberately mislabeled their ethnicity for the past two centuries for political reasons. Was there ever such a thing as Byzantium? Certainly no emperor ever called himself “Byzantine.” And while the identities of minorities in the eastern empire are clear—contemporaries speak of Slavs, Bulgarians, Armenians, Jews, and Muslims—that of the ruling majority remains obscured behind a name made up by later generations. Historical evidence tells us unequivocally that Byzantium’s ethnic majority, no less than the ruler of Constantinople, would have identified as Roman. It was an identity so strong in the eastern empire that even the conquering Ottomans would eventually adopt it. But Western scholarship has a long tradition of denying the Romanness of Byzantium. In Romanland, Anthony Kaldellis investigates why and argues that it is time for the Romanness of these so-called Byzantines to be taken seriously. In the Middle Ages, he explains, people of the eastern empire were labeled “Greeks,” and by the nineteenth century they were shorn of their distorted Greekness and became “Byzantine.” Only when we understand that the Greek-speaking population of Byzantium was actually Roman will we fully appreciate the nature of Roman ethnic identity. We will also better understand the processes of assimilation that led to the absorption of foreign and minority groups into the dominant ethnic group, the Romans who presided over the vast multiethnic empire of the east.

The Byzantine Republic

The Byzantine Republic PDF Author: Anthony Kaldellis
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674967402
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 309

Get Book Here

Book Description
Although Byzantium is known to history as the Eastern Roman Empire, scholars have long claimed that this Greek Christian theocracy bore little resemblance to Rome. Here, in a revolutionary model of Byzantine politics and society, Anthony Kaldellis reconnects Byzantium to its Roman roots, arguing that from the fifth to the twelfth centuries CE the Eastern Roman Empire was essentially a republic, with power exercised on behalf of the people and sometimes by them too. The Byzantine Republic recovers for the historical record a less autocratic, more populist Byzantium whose Greek-speaking citizens considered themselves as fully Roman as their Latin-speaking “ancestors.” Kaldellis shows that the idea of Byzantium as a rigid imperial theocracy is a misleading construct of Western historians since the Enlightenment. With court proclamations often draped in Christian rhetoric, the notion of divine kingship emerged as a way to disguise the inherent vulnerability of each regime. The legitimacy of the emperors was not predicated on an absolute right to the throne but on the popularity of individual emperors, whose grip on power was tenuous despite the stability of the imperial institution itself. Kaldellis examines the overlooked Byzantine concept of the polity, along with the complex relationship of emperors to the law and the ways they bolstered their popular acceptance and avoided challenges. The rebellions that periodically rocked the empire were not aberrations, he shows, but an essential part of the functioning of the republican monarchy.

Deeds of John and Manuel Comnenus

Deeds of John and Manuel Comnenus PDF Author: Joannes Cinnamus
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780231040808
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 274

Get Book Here

Book Description
Surveying the expanding conflict in Europe during one of his famous fireside chats in 1940, President Franklin Roosevelt ominously warned that "we know of other methods, new methods of attack. The Trojan horse. The fifth column that betrays a nation unprepared for treachery. Spies, saboteurs, and traitors are the actors in this new strategy." Having identified a new type of war--a shadow war--being perpetrated by Hitler's Germany, FDR decided to fight fire with fire, authorizing the formation of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) to organize and oversee covert operations. Based on an extensive analysis of OSS records, including the vast trove of records released by the CIA in the 1980s and '90s, as well as a new set of interviews with OSS veterans conducted by the author and a team of American scholars from 1995 to 1997, The Shadow War Against Hitler is the full story of America's far-flung secret intelligence apparatus during World War II. In addition to its responsibilities generating, processing, and interpreting intelligence information, the OSS orchestrated all manner of dark operations, including extending feelers to anti-Hitler elements, infiltrating spies and sabotage agents behind enemy lines, and implementing propaganda programs. Planned and directed from Washington, the anti-Hitler campaign was largely conducted in Europe, especially through the OSS's foreign outposts in Bern and London. A fascinating cast of characters made the OSS run: William J. Donovan, one of the most decorated individuals in the American military who became the driving force behind the OSS's genesis; Allen Dulles, the future CIA chief who ran the Bern office, which he called "the big window onto the fascist world"; a veritable pantheon of Ivy League academics who were recruited to work for the intelligence services; and, not least, Roosevelt himself. A major contribution of the book is the story of how FDR employed Hitler's former propaganda chief, Ernst "Putzi" Hanfstengl, as a private spy. More than a record of dramatic incidents and daring personalities, this book adds significantly to our understanding of how the United States fought World War II. It demonstrates that the extent, and limitations, of secret intelligence information shaped not only the conduct of the war but also the face of the world that emerged from the shadows.

Insanity and Sanctity in Byzantium

Insanity and Sanctity in Byzantium PDF Author: Youval Rotman
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674057619
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 267

Get Book Here

Book Description
Prologue. Insanity and religion -- Part I. Sanctified insanity: between history and psychology -- The paradox that inhabits ambiguity -- Meanings of insanity -- Part II. Abnormality and social change: early Christianity vs. rabbinic Judaism -- Abnormality and social change -- Socializing nature: the ascetic totem -- Epilogue. Psychology, religion, and social change

The Conquered

The Conquered PDF Author: Eleni Kefala
Publisher: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library & Collection
ISBN: 9780884024767
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 166

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Conquered probes issues of collective memory and cultural trauma in three sorrowful poems composed soon after the conquest of Constantinople and Tenochtitlán. These texts describe the fall of an empire as a fissure in the social fabric and an open wound on the body politic, and articulate, in a familiar language, the trauma of the conquered.

The Cambridge Intellectual History of Byzantium

The Cambridge Intellectual History of Byzantium PDF Author: Anthony Kaldellis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110821021X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1438

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume brings into being the field of Byzantine intellectual history. Shifting focus from the cultural, social, and economic study of Byzantium to the life and evolution of ideas in their context, it provides an authoritative history of intellectual endeavors from Late Antiquity to the fifteenth century. At its heart lie the transmission, transformation, and shifts of Hellenic, Christian, and Byzantine ideas and concepts as exemplified in diverse aspects of intellectual life, from philosophy, theology, and rhetoric to astrology, astronomy, and politics. Case studies introduce the major players in Byzantine intellectual life, and particular emphasis is placed on the reception of ancient thought and its significance for secular as well as religious modes of thinking and acting. New insights are offered regarding controversial, understudied, or promising topics of research, such as philosophy and medical thought in Byzantium, and intellectual exchanges with the Arab world.

The Routledge Handbook of Byzantine Visual Culture in the Danube Regions, 1300-1600

The Routledge Handbook of Byzantine Visual Culture in the Danube Regions, 1300-1600 PDF Author: Maria Alessia Rossi
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1003844898
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 428

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume aims to broaden and nuance knowledge about the history, art, culture, and heritage of Eastern Europe relative to Byzantium. From the thirteenth century to the decades after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the regions of the Danube River stood at the intersection of different traditions, and the river itself has served as a marker of connection and division, as well as a site of cultural contact and negotiation. The Routledge Handbook of Byzantine Visual Culture in the Danube Regions, 1300–1600 brings to light the interconnectedness of this broad geographical area too often either studied in parts or neglected altogether, emphasizing its shared history and heritage of the regions of modern Greece, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, and Czechia. The aim is to challenge established perceptions of what constitutes ideological and historical facets of the past, as well as Byzantine and post-Byzantine cultural and artistic production in a region of the world that has yet to establish a firm footing on the map of art history. The 24 chapters offer a fresh and original approach to the history, literature, and art history of the Danube regions, thus being accessible to students thematically, chronologically, or by case study; each part can be read independently or explored as part of a whole.

Greek Realities

Greek Realities PDF Author: Finley Hooper
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 9780814315972
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 484

Get Book Here

Book Description
The questions they raised and the answers they offered are still the concern of us all."--Finley Hooper

The Old Testament in Byzantium

The Old Testament in Byzantium PDF Author: Paul Magdalino
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780884023487
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Old Testament in Byzantium contains papers from a Dumbarton Oaks symposium based on an exhibition of early Bible manuscripts titled "In the Beginning: Bibles before the Year 1000." Topics include manifestations of the holy books in Byzantine manuscript illustration, architecture, and government, as well as in Jewish Bible translations.