Author: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies
Publisher: PIMS
ISBN: 9780888442888
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Author: Angeliki E. Laiou
Publisher: Dumbarton Oaks
ISBN: 9780884022220
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
The essays in this volume investigate themes related to the place of law in Byzantine ideology and society. Was this a society which was meant to be governed by law? For answers, these essays look to the intent of the legislators; the attitudes toward the law; the relationship between law, religion, literature, and art.

Author: Daivi Rodima-Taylor
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1800733496
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
The mortgaging of land is not just economic and legal but also social and cultural. Here, anthropologists, historians, and economists explore origins, variations, and meanings of the land mortgage, and the risks to homes and livelihoods. Combining findings from archives, printed records, and live ethnography, the book describes the changing and problematic assumptions surrounding mortgage. It shows how mortgages affect people on the ground, where local forms of mutuality mix with larger bureaucracies. The outcomes of mortgage in Africa, Europe, Asia, and America challenge economic development orthodoxies, calling for a human-centered exploration of this age-old institution.

Author: James Howard-Johnston
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198897936
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Byzantium was a strange entity--a relic of classical antiquity which survived deep into the Middle Ages. Drawing on a lifetime's work in the field of Byzantine studies, James Howard-Johnston aims to explain Byzantium's longevity, first as a state geared to fighting a two-centuries long guerrilla war of defence, then as an increasingly confident regional power. It is only by analysing its economic, social, and institutional structures that this strange medieval afterlife of the rump of the Roman empire can be understood. This collection of linked essays outlines the fundamental features of Byzantium, with a focus on the seventh to eleventh centuries. The essays delve below the agitated surface of political, religious, and intellectual history to home in on (1) alterations in economic conditions; and (2) structural change in the social order and apparatus of government. The economic foundations of society and state are examined over the long term, with emphasis placed on mercantile enterprise throughout. Howard-Johnston identifies warfare as the prime driver of social and institutional change in a first phase (seventh to eighth centuries), when the peasant villager rose to a dominant position in the collective mindset and the administration was centralised and militarised as never before. A second phase of change is then highlighted, after the mid-ninth century when Byzantium's security was assured. Military and administrative arrangements were adapted as the empire expanded. The service aristocracy which had developed in the dark centuries began to assert itself to the detriment of the peasantry, but was, Howard-Johnston argues, countered reasonably effectively by new legislation. There was a renaissance in cultural life, most marked in the intellectual sphere in the eleventh century. Finally, the sharp decline in Byzantium's military fortunes from the mid-eleventh century is attributed to external factors rather than internal weakness.

Author: Martin Gutmann
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192848755
Category : Sustainable development
Languages : en
Pages : 577

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Book Description
"Before the UN Sustainable Development Goals: A Historical Companion enables professionals, scholars and students engaged with the SDGs to develop a richer understanding of the legacies and historical complexities of the policy fields behind each goal. Each of the seventeen chapters tells the decades or centuries-old backstory of one SDG, including an examination of how the SDG problem impacted past societies and the various attempts at understanding and addressing it. Collectively, the chapters reveal the multiple and often interwoven histories that have shaped the challenges later encompassed in the SDGs. The book's chapters, written in an accessible style, are authored by international experts from multiple disciplines. The book is an indispensable resource and a vital foundation for understanding the past's indelible footprint on our contemporary sustainable development challenges"--

Author: James Howard-Johnston
Publisher: Oxford University Press (UK)
ISBN: 0198841612
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
The eleventh century saw both the heyday of Byzantium and its almost immediate subsequent decline following serious military defeats and heavy territorial losses. The papers in this volume view the social order as a prime determinant of change, tracking it through archaeological and documentary evidence to deepen our understanding of the period.

Author: Lewis Ayres
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108871917
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 1232

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Book Description
This book is for scholars and students of the ideas, literatures, and cultures of early Christianity and late antiquity, ancient philosophers, and historians of theology. It offers new perspectives on early Christian modes of knowing and ordering knowledge in relation to changing discourses, institutions, and material culture of late antiquity.

Author: Anthony Kaldellis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190253223
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 441

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Book Description
A long overdue and thrillingly paced narrative of one of the most dramatic periods in Medieval history, Streams of Gold, Rivers of Blood provides an engaging chronicle of the various imperial upheavals, from the conquests of Basil to the collapse of Constantinople, concluding with the First Crusade.

Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004277870
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 455

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Book Description
Diverging Paths? investigates an important question, to which the answers must be very complex: “why did certain sorts of institutionalisation and institutional continuity characterise government and society in Christendom by the later Middle Ages, but not the Islamic world, whereas the reverse end-point might have been predicted from the early medieval situation?” This core question lies within classic historiographical debates, to which the essays in the volume, written by leading medievalists, make significant contributions. The papers, drawing on a wide range of evidence and methodologies, span the middle ages, chronologically and geographically. At the same time, the core question relates to matters of strong contemporary interest, notably the perceived characteristics of power exercised within Islamic Middle Eastern regimes. Contributors are Stuart Airlie, Gadi Algazi, Sandro Carocci, Simone Collavini, Emanuele Conte, Nadia El Cheikh, Maribel Fierro, John Hudson, Caroline Humfress, Michel Kaplan, Hugh Kennedy, Simon MacLean, Eduardo Manzano, Susana Naroztky, Annliese Nef, Vivien Prigent, Ana Rodríguez, Magnus Ryan and Bernard Stolte.

Author: Denis Sullivan
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 900438216X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
In The Rise and Fall of Nikephoros II Phokas, Denis Sullivan presents five Byzantine Greek texts that document the remarkable career of Nikephoros II Phokas, emperor from 963 until his death in 969. The first three texts are historical chronicles covering the period 944-963, which sees Nikephoras’ rise from military general. The fourth is a “historical epic” poem on the successful Byzantine expedition against Arab Crete in 960-961, for which Nikephoros was the field commander. The last text is a liturgical office that declares the slain emperor a martyr and a saint. These texts, translated into English for the first time, provide information on the Phokades that is not found elsewhere in the Greek sources, and the chronicles appear to reflect now lost pro-Phokan family sources.