Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices

by Abulafia,David

• ISBN13: 9780754605225
• ISBN10: 0754605221
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-06-28
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

In recent years, the 'medieval frontier' has been the subject of extensive research. But the term has been understood in many different ways: political boundaries; fuzzy lines across which trade, religions and ideas cross; attitudes to other peoples and their customs. This book draws attention to the differences between the medieval and modern understanding of frontiers, questioning the traditional use of the concepts of 'frontier' and 'frontier society'. It contributes to the understanding of physical boundaries as well as metaphorical and ideological frontiers, thus providing a background to present-day issues of political and cultural delimitation. The articles span Europe from the Baltic to Iberia, from the Canary Islands to central Europe, Byzantium and the Crusader states, and are preceded by an important introduction by David Abulafia.

Table of Contents

List of Maps and Figures	vii
Contributors	viii
Preface	x
Nora Berend
Introduction: Seven Types of Ambiguity, c. 1100-c. 1500	1	(34)
David Abulafia
Crossing the Frontier of Ninth-Century Hispania	35	(20)
Ann Christys
Emperors and Expansionism: From Rome to Middle Byzantium	55	(28)
Jonathan Shepard
Byzantium's Eastern Frontier in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries	83	(22)
Catherine Holmes
Were there Borders and Borderlines in the Middle Ages? The Example of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem	105	(16)
Ronnie Ellenblum
Government and the Indigenous in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem	121	(12)
Jonathan Riley-Smith
Latins and Greeks on Crusader Cyprus	133	(10)
Peter W. Edbury
Geuensis civitas in extremo Europae: Caffa from the Fourteenth to the Fifteenth Century	143	(10)
Michel Balard
Granting Power to Enemy Gods in the Chronicles of the Baltic Crusades	153	(20)
Rasa Mazeika
The Blue Baltic Border of Denmark in the High Middle Ages: Danes, Wends and Saxo Grammaticus	173	(22)
Kurt Villads Jensen
Hungary, `the Gate of Christendom'	195	(22)
Nora Berend
Boundaries and Men in Poland from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Century: The Case of Masovia	217	(22)
Grzegorz Mysliwski
The Frontiers of Church Reform in the British Isles, 1170-1230	239	(16)
Brendan Smith
Neolithic meets Medieval: First Encounters in the Canary Islands	255	(24)
David Abulafia
Index	279