Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Brian Patrick McGuire
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Inner Life ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Saint Bernard Of Clairvaux ◽  
History Of ◽  
Saint Bernard ◽  
Point Of Departure

This introductory chapter provides an overview of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, who almost defies characterization. Monk, abbot, adviser of kings and popes, author of some of the finest Latin prose to emerge from the Middle Ages, he was a man of many talents. At first glance he can seem abrasive, overconfident, and almost arrogant. But as this book shows, he is a point of departure for European culture in its search for faith, meaning, and community. Any history of Western Europe in the twelfth century has to include Bernard and his almost frenetic activities. Bernard deserves reevaluation as a person and participant in the history of Christian life and spirituality. His inner life and external actions illuminate his own time and provide a context for ours. In addition to his sophisticated theology, his moving sermons, and his influence among kings and popes, Bernard can plausibly be considered the first European. Through his vision and talent for inspiring people to work together, he helped build Christianity's first continent-wide monastic order, the Cistercians, whose monasteries extended from Ireland to Sicily and Norway.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ildar Garipzanov
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Dominant Role ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Sources Of Authority ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Periods

The concluding chapter highlights how the cultural history of graphic signs of authority in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages encapsulated the profound transformation of political culture in the Mediterranean and Europe from approximately the fourth to ninth centuries. It also reflects on the transcendent sources of authority in these historical periods, and the role of graphic signs in highlighting this connection. Finally, it warns that, despite the apparent dominant role of the sign of the cross and cruciform graphic devices in providing access to transcendent protection and support in ninth-century Western Europe, some people could still employ alternative graphic signs deriving from older occult traditions in their recourse to transcendent powers.

Twelfth-Century Italian Prices: Food and Clothing in Pisa and Venice

1983 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 381-403
Author(s):  
Louise Buenger Robbert
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
American Philosophical Society ◽  
Cost Of Living ◽  
Good Opportunity ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Material ◽  
The Cost

Seventy-three years ago pioneer American medievalist Dana Carlton Munro (1911: 504) delivered a paper in Philadelphia to the American Philosophical Society entitled “The Cost of Living in the Twelfth Century.” He threw down the gauntlet by concluding that in this paper an attempt has been made to set forth only a few of the facts, merely to indicate the nature and importance of the problem. Every one of the subjects here discussed is susceptible of elaboration, and needs to be worked out in detail for each country of Western Europe and each period in the twelfth century. The material is voluminous…. This field, as a whole, offers a good opportunity for many monographs, and such work is essential before we can understand the economic history of the century which was most important in the advance of western Europe.This article takes up this challenge with new material on the cost of living in Italy in the twelfth century.

CHARTRES SCHOOL IN THE 12TH CENTURY CULTURAL RENAISSANCE: SUBSTANTIVE PRIORITIES AND EVOLUTION VECTORS

2021 ◽  
pp. 48-58
Author(s):  
Michael A. Kornienko ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Religious Education ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
The Body ◽  
Christian Mysticism ◽  
Chartres Cathedral ◽  
12Th Century ◽  
Cultural Renaissance ◽  
History Of

The author analyzes the prerequisites for the formation of a theological and philosophical school, founded in 990 by Bishop Fulbert in Chartres, which flourished during the years of the Episcopal ministry of Yves of Chartres (1090–1115), a recognized intellectual center of Western Europe. The role of the Chartres Cathedral School as a citadel of metaphysical, cosmological and natural-scientific Platonism in the era of early scholasticism is revealed. The philosophical orientation of the Chartres school (orientation to the ideas of Neoplatonism), as shown in the work, is the result of a combination of the ideas of Plato, aristotelism, stoicism, pythagoreanism, Eastern and Christian mysticism and religion. The body of ideas characteristic of the Neoplatonism tradition is analyzed, the account of which is essential in understanding the specifics of the Chartres school ideological platform: the ideas of a mystically intuitive knowledge of the higher, the stages of transition from “one and the universal” to matter, the idea of comprehension of pure spirituality. The thesis is substantiated that the time of the highest prosperity of the Chartres school, its highest fame is the XII century, which went down in the history of civilization as the era of the cultural renaissance taking place in France. The specificity of the 12th century renaissance, as shown in the study, lies in the growing interest in Greek philosophy and Roman classics (this also determines the other name of the era – the Roman Renaissance), in expanding the field of knowledge through the assimilation of Western European science and the philosophy of the ancient Greeks. The thesis in which the specifics of the entry of Greek science into the culture of Western Europe is also identified. This entry was carried out through the culture of the Muslim world, which also determined the specifics of the cultural renaissance of France of the XII century. Radical changes are revealed that affect the sphere of education and, above all, religious education; the idea of reaching the priority positions of philosophy and logic is substantiated – a situation that has survived until the end of the Middle Ages. This situation, as shown in the work, was facilitated by the rare growth rate of the translation centers of Constantinople, Palermo, Toledo. It is shown that scholasticism in its early version is oriented towards religious orthodoxy. In the teaching of philosophy, the vector turned out to be biased towards natural philosophy, which was due, as shown in the work, to the spread of the ideas of Aristotle and Plato. In its educational program, the school synthesized the teachings of Plato and Aristotle. Elements of natural philosophy are inherent in the works of Bernard of Chartres, Gilbert of Poitiers, Thierry of Chartres representing the Chartres school. Deep studies on the problem of universals ensured the invasion of logic in the field of metaphysical constructions of the Chartres school.

Kings and Knights at Play in Late Medieval and Early Modern Spain

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teofilo F. Ruiz
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Symbiotic Relationship ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Early Modern Spain ◽  
Deep Roots ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Courtly Culture ◽  
To Come

This chapter examines tournaments. The origins of tournaments in Western Europe can be traced back to classical sources and to a sparse number of references to events that looked like tournaments in the Central Middle Ages. While these early mentions provide interesting glimpses of the genealogy of fictitious combat, it was the twelfth century that truly saw the formal beginnings of these traditions of artificial warfare that would hold such a powerful grip on the European imagination for many centuries to come. Closely tied to courtly culture and in a symbiotic relationship with the great outburst of courtly literature that took place in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, the tournament sank deep roots in England, France, the Low Countries, and parts of Germany during the twelfth century, and then developed elaborate rules of engagement and pageantry in succeeding centuries.

Segregation or Choice?

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maristella Botticini ◽  
Zvi Eckstein
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Iberian Peninsula ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Alternative Explanation ◽  
Historical Information ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
History Of ◽  
Salient Features ◽  
The Middle Ages

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.

On the Latin Sources of Thèbes and Énéas

PMLA ◽  
1901 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 375-387
Author(s):  
F. M. Warren
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Romantic Love ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
The Middle Ages

The French poems Troie, Thèbes, and Énéas, contemporaneous with one another in the sixth and seventh decades of the twelfth century, have many characteristics in common. They each repeat in a modernized form, and with incidents and details suited to their own age, the story of one of the great epics of classical antiquity, the Iliad, the Thebaid, and the Aeneid. They also combine with this traditional outline of adventure and conquest the narrative of romantic love and courtship, as conceived by Western Europe in the Middle Ages. And finally they each and all show an effort to attain some degree of excellence in style and composition. Thus they form a class by themselves, animated, as they are, by the same spirit and having the same purpose in view, and are the first exponents in the modern tongues of the ideals of chivalry. The sources of these poems, therefore, are an object of unusual interest to the student of mediaeval literature.

A neverending stream : human trafficking in Medieval Europe

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Christopher Paolella
Keyword(s):  
Human Trafficking ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Labor Demand ◽  
Sex Industry ◽  
Agricultural Labor ◽  
Long Distance

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] This study focuses on human trafficking patterns from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Era. I argue that while slavery, as a means of compelling agricultural labor, disappeared across much of Western Europe by the middle of the twelfth century, the commercial sex industry grew. As slavery died out, the slave trade withered across Western Europe and gradually reoriented itself around the Mediterranean basin. Yet, human trafficking networks remained in Western Europe, if in attenuated form. They continued to supply a smaller, but no less persistent, labor demand that was now fueled by brothels and prostitution rings instead of agriculture. I argue further that the experiences of women link the sex trade and the slave trade, and that twelfth-century socio-economic development linked the earlier long-distance slave trade and the local and regional trafficking networks of the later Middle Ages.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
George E. Demacopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Mature Form ◽  
Fourth Crusade ◽  
Cultural Alienation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Colonial Encounter

This introductory chapter begins with a brief history of the Fourth Crusade. When Pope Innocent III ascended Peter's throne in 1198, he almost immediately began planning for what was supposed to be the largest crusade to date. What is important to the present study is the fact that the crusaders transformed the very structure of Byzantine society by seizing control of both church and state and by often imposing a Western feudal structure throughout the Balkans that would serve as a beachhead for further Frankish and papal aspirations in the Christian East. By framing the events of the Fourth Crusade as a kind of colonial encounter, this book draws from some of the basic insights of postcolonial critique to look in new ways at the discourse of Orthodox/Roman Catholic difference that took its mature form in the thirteenth century. As such, one of the most important conclusions of this study is that the development of the most vitriolic statements of Orthodox/Catholic religious polemic in the Middle Ages were based in political and cultural alienation, not theological development.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
State Building ◽  
Court System ◽  
The Times ◽  
The Church ◽  
Written Sources

This introductory chapter provides an overview of Russian and Ukrainian witchcraft from the Middle Ages to the turn of the twentieth century. Like their European neighbors, Russia and the Ukrainian lands recorded incidents of witchcraft and sorcery from the times of the earliest written sources, and along with other Christian cultures, they formally condemned the practice of magic outside of the Church. In synch with their European contemporaries, they saw spikes in formal legal prosecution during the early modern period. In the case of Russia, this was a time of ambitious state building and expansion of the tsarist court system. Formal trials of witches there began as a minute trickle in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, when they were already well underway or even inching toward an end in parts of Western Europe. Peaking in the second half of the seventeenth and first half of the eighteenth centuries, Russian and Ukrainian trials abated only during the 1770s but did not cease altogether until the mid-nineteenth century. Witchcraft was energetically prosecuted in Russia and Ukraine after the entire notion of magic had fallen into disrepute (or even become laughable) among most members of the educated classes in Western areas.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Stephen G. Rabe
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
South America ◽  
National Security ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Latin Americans ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Foreign Policies ◽  
History Of

This introductory chapter provides an overview of U.S. policies toward Latin America during Henry Kissinger's career as national security adviser and secretary of state. Henri Kissinger directed inter-American relations between 1969 and 1977. Like his predecessors, Kissinger judged relations with Western Europe, the Soviet Union, and China as strategically more important than relations with Latin America. But Kissinger launched noteworthy initiatives, such as the attempt to normalize relations with Cuba and to transfer the canal to Panama. The Kissinger years were also historically significant for Latin Americans. The 1970s represented the most violent period in the history of post-independence (1825) South America. This book provides a comprehensive investigation of the foreign policies of the Nixon and Ford administrations toward Latin America and Kissinger's central role in formulating and implementing those policies.

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