Segregation or Choice?

Author(s):  
Maristella Botticini ◽  
Zvi Eckstein

This chapter assesses the argument that both their exclusion from craft and merchant guilds and usury bans on Christians segregated European Jews into moneylending during the Middle Ages. Already during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, moneylending was the occupation par excellence of the Jews in England, France, and Germany and one of the main professions of the Jews in the Iberian Peninsula, Italy, and other locations in western Europe. Based on the historical information and the economic theory presented in earlier chapters, the chapter advances an alternative explanation that is consistent with the salient features that mark the history of the Jews: the Jews in medieval Europe voluntarily entered and later specialized in moneylending because they had the key assets for being successful players in credit markets—capital, networking, literacy and numeracy, and contract-enforcement institutions.

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-12
Author(s):  
Wei Zheng ◽  

For medieval Europe, spices have always been of great significance, so the spice trade has become the object of competition for various countries in Western Europe. With the improvement of navigation technology, countries obsessed with spices have opened up the way to explore the origin of spices and monopolize the spices trade. Among them, the most typical country is the Netherlands. From the perspective of the spice trade, this paper discusses how the beneficiary of the spice trade, the Netherlands, has become a generation of marine hegemons by transferring spice to monopolizing the spice trade.


2007 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 311-330
Author(s):  
Steffen Dix

AbstractIn recent years the study of local religious histories, especially in Europe, has gained in prominence. Because of the encounters between different cultural traditions in the Middle Ages and the voyages of discovery, the religious history of the Iberian Peninsula became one of the most complex in Europe. This article focuses on one portion of this history around the turn of the 19th/20th century, and in particular on two attempts to blame the Catholic religion for the general crisis in Spain and Portugal at the start of the modern era. These two forms of critiquing religion are illustrated by the examples of Miguel de Unamuno and Antero de Quental, whose writings were characteristic of the typical relationship between religion and intellectuals in this period. Not only were the Spanish philosopher and the Portuguese poet influential on their own and later generations, but they are also truly representative of a certain tragic ”loss“ of religion in the Iberian Peninsula.


ATAVISME ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-41
Author(s):  
Dian Swandayani ◽  
Imam Santoso ◽  
Ari Nurhayati ◽  
Nurhadi Nurhadi

Tiga novel Umberto Eco, The Name of The Rose, Baudolino, dan Foucault’s Pendulum, dengan lingkup latar masing-masing yang dikisahkannya, membantu pembaca Indonesia guna lebih mengenal kondisi Eropa, khususnya kondisi Eropa pada abad pertengahan, suatu rentang waktu dalam sejarah Eropa yang panjang dengan berbagai peristiwa historis lainnya. Meskipun berupa novel, informasi faktual yang disampaikan lewat ketiga novel tersebut dapat memperkaya wawasan pembaca guna mengetahui situasi Eropa pada masa abad pertengahan, meliputi rentangan teritorial yang melampaui kawasan Eropa sekarang, bahkan juga mengisahkan suatu kelompok sosial yang memegang peran penting dalam perjalanan sejarah Eropa. Novel‐novel Eco tampaknya tidak mudah dipahami oleh pembaca Indonesia, apalagi tentang detail yang dipaparkan mengenai sejarah Eropa abad pertengahan, terkait dengan detail situs-­‐situs geografis dan tokoh-tokoh utama yang menjadi titik penting dalam perjalanan sejarah Eropa. Meskipun demikian, hal ini bisa dimanfaatkan sebagai wahana pembelajaran sejarah, khususnya sejarah Eropa abad pertengahan. Abstract: Umberto Eco’s novels, The Name of The Rose, Baudolino, and Foucault’s Pendulum, with each specific setting, can help Indonesian readers to understand Europe, particularly in the Middle Ages, a long period in the European history which has various other historical events. Although the works are imaginary, the factual information in the novels can enrich the readers’ knowledge about the situation of Europe in the period of time, including the territorial extent which exceeded the present European territory. The works, in fact, tell aboutthe social group which played significant roles in the history of Europe. For Indonesian readers, it is not easy to understand the novels, let alone the details related to the history of Europe in the Middle Ages, the geographical sites, and the important people who played significant roles in the European history. However, the novels can be used as a medium for learning history, particularly the Medieval Europe. Key Words: history of Europe; novels; setting; learning; Indonesian readers


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 11
Author(s):  
D. V. Semikopov ◽  
A. A. Zakhriapin

Introduction. The paper reviews the phenomenon of perception of Western Europe as the "other" in Russian intellectual tradition. The purpose of this survey is to analyze and identify the features of Russian historiosophical consciousness in the transition of Russian civilization from the middle ages to modernity in the context of the idea of perceiving Europe as the "other".Materials and Methods. The main material of the paper is a monograph by Nizhny Novgorod researches «The problem of correlation of panhuman and national in the history of Russian thought». In addition, the material of the research is the works and articles by Russians and foreign authors focus on the subject under consideration. The article used the following methods: historical-philosophical analysis, interpretation, comparison and generalization.Results. In the medieval period the main consolidating power of society was religion, which identified the «other» as the Catholic of Western Europe. During the reign of Emperor Nicholas I, the «other» is still the same West, but the revolutionary West with its slogan «Liberty, equality, fraternity». The minister of national education – the earl S.S. Uvarov, in turn, proposed the following triad – «Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality». Formation of the Russian nationality was under intense pressure from the West (the «other» of Russian civilization) during this period. The split of the Russian Orthodox Church (Raskol) in XVII century led to destruction of the Orthodox unity. The Orthodoxy was the source of sacralisation of monarchial power. However, the autocracy, having dealt a blow tothe Orthodoxy, set a course for the Western absolutism. Certain social circles, keeping up old traditions of the Orthodoxy, perceived the political authority as the «other». This led not only to the religion split (Orthodoxy), but also to the split in nationality. A pro-Western elite is being formed and, having lost its connection with Orthodoxy and traditional folk culture, it finds itself in the desert of its own historical identity. As a result, historiosophical projects, created by government and intelligentsia, caused an additional split, being unable to restore the lost unity.Discussion and Conclusions. The authors of the research managed to make systematic and detailed historical-philosophical analysis of sources and literature on this topic. The paper presents the main concepts that explain the phenomenon of Russian national identity. This makes it possible to consider and evaluate the key ideas of Russian thinkers. As a result, the authors of the research managed to make comprehensive and systematic historical-philosophical analysis of the development of the idea of Russian national identity through the prism of the concept of perception of Western Europe as the «other» of Russia.


2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (1/2) ◽  
pp. 553
Author(s):  
Matías Múgica

The author argues, developing an idea proposed by French phoneticist Henri Gavel in the fifties, that the examination of the clearly Latin ancient toponymy of Upper Navarre suggests that the linguistic stratification usually proposed for the Middle Navarre (Navarra Media), an area where Basque was intensely spoken throughout the Middle Ages, should be reviewed and that in that area the Latin can be chronologically prior to the Basque, which would satisfactorily explain some unresolved knots of the linguistic history of the Basque Country and its surroundings.


Author(s):  
Maristella Botticini ◽  
Zvi Eckstein

This chapter shows that once the Jews became literate, urban, and engaged in skilled occupations, they began migrating within the vast territory under Muslim rule—stretching from the Iberian Peninsula to India during the eighth through the twelfth centuries, and from the Byzantine Empire to western Europe via Italy and within western Europe in the ninth through the thirteenth centuries. In early medieval Europe, the revival of trade concomitant with the Commercial Revolution and the growth of an urban and commercial economy paralleled the vast urbanization and the growth of trade that had occurred in the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates four to five centuries earlier. The Jewish diaspora during the early Middle Ages was mainly the outcome of literate Jewish craftsmen, shopkeepers, traders, scholars, teachers, physicians, and moneylenders migrating in search of business opportunities to reap returns on their investment in literacy and education.


Traditio ◽  
1969 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 376-386
Author(s):  
Zoltan J. Kosztolnyik

Early Hungarian history is so poor in sources of contemporary origin that any work written and any writer living in the early Árpádian age is bound to provide information on the period — the beginnings of the Hungarian Christian kingdom of the Middle Ages. The Venetian-born Benedictine monk, Gerard, who from 1030 to his death in 1046 occupied as its first bishop the see of Csanád, is one of these writers. Gerard is not an historian in the true sense of the term. He is no Gregory of Tours, no Venerable Bede. He was a learned, western-educated ecclesiastic who in his theological writings left many a side remark on his age and on the political and social background of his religious activities in Hungary from the mid-1020s through the mid-1040s. His major theological treatise on the Song of Daniel, hisAdmonitionesto the heir of King Stephen on the Hungarian throne, and his participation in compiling the legal statutes enacted by Stephen and his council make him, beside the king, the most important historical personage of Hungarian history of the time. His works together with thevita minorand the biography of King Stephen by Bishop Hartvic form a valuable source of historical information. His own life is covered by a short though trustworthyvitacomposed in the early 1080s.


Traditio ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 76 ◽  
pp. 185-213
Author(s):  
NIGEL HARRIS

Several scholars have studied meanings attributed to the lion in the western European Middle Ages, but their accounts have tended to be partial and fragmentary. A balanced, coherent interpretive history of the medieval lion has yet to be written. This article seeks to promote and initiate the process of composing such a history by briefly reviewing previous research, by proposing a thematic and chronological framework on which work on the lion might reliably be based, and by itself discussing numerous textual examples, not least from German, Latin, and French literature. The five categories of lion symbolism covered are, respectively, the threatening lion, the Christian lion, the noble lion, the sinful lion, and the clement lion. These meanings are shown successively to have constituted regnant fashions that at various times profoundly shaped people's understanding of the lion; but it is demonstrated also that they existed alongside, and in a state of creative tension with, a “ground bass” of lion meanings that changed relatively little. Lions nearly always, for example, represented important, imposing things and people (for example, kings); and the New Testament's polarized presentation of the lion as either Christ or the devil proved enormously influential both throughout and beyond the Middle Ages. As such any cultural history of the lion — and indeed of many other natural phenomena — must be continually sensitive to the co-existence and interaction of tradition and innovation, stability and dynamism.


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