Author: Paul Strathern
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1643131834
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 488
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Book Description
The Borgia family have become a byword for evil. Corruption, incest, ruthless megalomania, avarice and vicious cruelty—all have been associated with their name. And yet, paradoxically, this family lived when the Renaissance was coming into its full flowering in Italy. Examples of infamy flourished alongside some of the finest art produced in western history.This is but one of several paradoxes associated with the Borgia family. For the family which produced corrupt popes, depraved princes and poisoners, would also produce a saint. Previously history has tended to condemn, or attempt in part to exonerate, this remarkable family. Yet in order to understand the Borgias, the Borgias must be related to their time, together with the world which enabled them to flourish. Within this context the Renaissance itself takes on a very different aspect. Was the corruption part of the creation, or vice versa? Would one have been possible without the other?The powerful forces which first played out in the amphitheaters of ancient Greece: hubris, incest, murder, rivalries and doomed families, treacheries of political power, twists of fate—they are all here. Along with the final, tragic downfall. All these elements are played out in full in the glorious and infamous history of the Borgia family.
Author: Thomas Merton
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1429945079
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 350
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Book Description
Thomas Merton (1915-1968) is one of the foremost spiritual thinkers of the twentieth century. Though he lived a mostly solitary existence as a Trappist monk, he had a dynamic impact on world affairs through his writing. An outspoken proponent of the antiwar and civil rights movements, he was both hailed as a prophet and castigated for his social criticism. He was also unique among religious leaders in his embrace of Eastern mysticism, positing it as complementary to the Western sacred tradition. Merton is the author of over forty books of poetry, essays, and religious writing, including Mystics and Zen Masters, and The Seven Story Mountain, for which he is best known. His work continues to be widely read to this day.
Author: Jennifer Mara DeSilva
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429560303
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 299
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Book Description
The Borgia Family: Rumor and Representation explores the historical and cultural structures that underpin the early modern Borgia family, their notoriety, and persistence and reinvention in the popular imagination. The book balances studies focusing on early modern observations of the Borgias and studies deconstructing later incarnations on the stage, on the page, on the street, and on the screen. It reveals how contemporary observers, later authors and artists, and generations of historians reinforced and perpetuated both rumor and reputation, ultimately contributing to the Borgia Black Legend and its representations. Focused on the deeds and posthumous reputations of Pope Alexander VI and his children, Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia, the volume charts the choices made by the family and contextualizes them amid contemporary expectations and reactions. Extending beyond their deaths, it also investigates how the Borgias became emblems of anti-Catholic and anti-Spanish criticism in the later early modern period and their residing reputation as the best and worst of the Renaissance. Exploring a spectrum of traditional and modern media, The Borgia Family contextualizes both Borgia deeds and their modern representations to analyze the family’s continuing history and meaning in the twenty-first century. It will be of great interest to researchers and students working on interdisciplinary aspects of the Renaissance and early modern Italy.
Author: Giuseppe Portigliotti
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 324
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Book Description
Author: Eddie Ferraioli
Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
ISBN: 1035813602
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 546
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Book Description
Love, hate, sibling rivalry, the Italian mafia, the Vatican, mental disorders, and war are some of the topics that will engulf you in this family saga that has its beginnings in Alciello, a small village in the mountainous region of Naples from where twins Alessandro and Nicola descend. Alessandro will be the first to become a coffee magnate of Rome and Nicola to be the personal secretary of Pope Leo XIII. Their search for “black gold” in the island of Puerto Rico will unite them in spite of their philosophical and religious differences and will plunge Alessandro into the midst of the Spanish-American War of 1898.
Author: Richard Tara
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780615491714
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 492
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Book Description
The winter of 1451 was one of the coldest in Europe. The continent was still in the clutches of a mini ice age that had lasted for nearly a century and had left famine, disease, and the dreaded Black Death in its path. It had also brought in hungry invaders and marauders from central Asia in search of food and warmth. These ravenous intruders followed the path of their great ancestors, the Mongolian hordes of Genghis Khan, who had ravaged Russia and the Middle East two centuries earlier, except this time around they cast their eyes further into conquering the whole of Europe. The mightiest of those invading tribes were the brutal Ottomans, who, by mid fifteenth century, had conquered all of Asia Minor, parts of the Middle East, and most of the Balkans. In that brutally cold winter, an impetuous and sometimes vicious young man succeeded to the throne of the mighty Turkish Ottoman Empire. The young man, who took the name of Mohammed II was barely nineteen years old. His father, Sultan Murat II, On his deathbed, made him promise that he would try to achieve the victory that had eluded the Ottoman rulers for over three hundred years: the conquest of Constantinople. At that time, Constantinople was the last outpost of Western civilization at the tail end of Europe. The city was surrounded on all sides by hostile Muslim forces. No sooner had Murat died than Mohammed began preparations for a great battle between the two major civilizations. On the other side of Mediterranean, nearly two thousand miles away, there was another young nobleman -Rodrigo Borgia- who would take the leading role in the ensuing conflict, yet he had no land or money and was unaware of the role he would play in the destiny of the world. When the Pope summoned young Rodrigo Borgia, the impoverished knight did not know that he would be entrusted with a mission against the deadliest enemy of Europe. The naive knight did not expect that his life would be in danger from traitors in his own camp, on a daily basis. His mission was simple; find the True Cross, save it from the Ottoman Turks and bring it back to Rome! What he did not expect was the vicious Turkish Sultan who knew about every step that he took and had his own plans to destroy Rodrigo Borgia and his Templar Knight friend. When, Princess Aziza, the virgin 16-year-old sister of the Sultan, left her palace to be married to Abdullah, the Butcher of the Balkans, she did not know that she would be entangled in the deadliest game of betrayal and love that would change a whole civilization and shape the life of the world, as we know it today. When Rodrigo kidnapped the virgin princess in a desolate mountain pass in Serbia, he did not know that he was risking the future of Europe in one action.Then Rodrigo and his new love were captured. The rest is history, but Rodrigo Borgia became the infamous, Borgia Pope. This fact based story is a tale of forbidden love and lust laced with venomous hate during the last conflict between Muslims and Christians. The Borgia Seed is the story of Rodrigo Borgia, then a peasant knight, who kidnapped the sister of the Turkish sultan only to fall in love with her and embarked on a dangerous journey to rescue the holiest object of Christianity, which had been lost for generations? Contains erotic poetry from Princess Aziza's diary.
Author: Edward McLean Test
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496212894
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 248
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Book Description
More than five hundred years after the fact, present-day writers still use hyperbolic adjectives to describe the "discovery" of the Americas. Columbus's crossing of the Atlantic--and the age of exploration that ensued--dramatically and forever changed the early modern world. The societies, economies, cultures, arts, and burgeoning sciences of Europe were quickly transformed by the ongoing encounter with the New World. The meeting of the New and the Old Worlds, however, was more than a meeting of disparate civilizations. It was also a confluence of exciting and often surprising associations that continually created new interfaces between materials and knowledge. The Western and Eastern Hemispheres, brought together by sailing ships for the first time on a large scale, helped create the global landscape we take for granted today. Central to this formative moment in global history were New World plants. The agriculture of indigenous peoples mythically and materially shaped English society and, subsequently, its literature in new and startling ways. Sacred Seeds examines New World plants--tobacco, amaranth, guaiacum, and the prickly pear cactus--and their associated Native myths as they moved across the Atlantic and into English literature. Edward McLean Test reinstates the contributions of indigenous peoples to European society, charting an alternative cultural history that explores the associations and assemblages of transatlantic multiplicity rather than Eurocentric homogeny.
Author: Andrea Frediani
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1838932984
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 426
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Book Description
How the mighty will fall... 1497. Pope Alexander VI Borgia is perfecting his plans for the control of Italy when a heinous crime deprives him of one of the people dearest to him. All of Rome is mobilised to discover the perpetrator but a strange series of coincidences means famous court painter Pinturicchio finds himself on the front line. To shed light on a murder that has cut the papacy to the quick, Pinturicchio is assisted by the city's most established artists, from Michelangelo Buonarroti and Filippino Lippi to Piermatteo d'Amelia and Perugino. The Borgias have so many enemies that the list of suspects grows by the day, but a masked man may be the key witness to the crime – or even its perpetrator... Andrea Frediani brings one of the most famous cold cases in history to life in this thrilling tale of intrigue and deceit set in Renaissance Rome. What Amazon reviewers are saying about The Borgias' Spy: 'You walk into history with ease and once inside... you don't want to get out of it!' 5* Review 'Intriguing plot, sustained narrative rhythm.' 5* Review 'Intriguing, interesting' 5* Review
Author: Emma Robinson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 522
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Book Description
Author: Kent Bradford
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1405173270
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 391
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Book Description
The formation, dispersal and germination of seeds are crucial stages in the life cycles of gymnosperm and angiosperm plants. The unique properties of seeds, particularly their tolerance to desiccation, their mobility, and their ability to schedule their germination to coincide with times when environmental conditions are favorable to their survival as seedlings, have no doubt contributed significantly to the success of seed-bearing plants. Humans are also dependent upon seeds, which constitute the majority of the world’s staple foods (e.g., cereals and legumes). Seeds are an excellent system for studying fundamental developmental processes in plant biology, as they develop from a single fertilized zygote into an embryo and endosperm, in association with the surrounding maternal tissues. As genetic and molecular approaches have become increasingly powerful tools for biological research, seeds have become an attractive system in which to study a wide array of metabolic processes and regulatory systems. Seed Development, Dormancy and Germination provides a comprehensive overview of seed biology from the point of view of the developmental and regulatory processes that are involved in the transition from a developing seed through dormancy and into germination and seedling growth. It examines the complexity of the environmental, physiological, molecular and genetic interactions that occur through the life cycle of seeds, along with the concepts and approaches used to analyze seed dormancy and germination behavior. It also identifies the current challenges and remaining questions for future research. The book is directed at plant developmental biologists, geneticists, plant breeders, seed biologists and graduate students.
