Visions of Community in the Post-Roman World

by Payne, Richard, Dr

• ISBN13: 9781409427100
• ISBN10: 1409427102
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2016-03-03
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Summary

In the last few years, the old debate about the Fall of Rome' has become rather heated once again. But Rome did not fall only once. It fell in at least four different ways. Apart from the Western transition from empire to kingdoms in the course of the fifth century, there was, in the early seventh, the Slavic rupture in the Balkans, and only a little later the Islamic conquest of the east. As a fourth element, we have to take the Byzantine transformation of Eastern Rome into account. It is striking at first glance how differently these four post-Roman worlds developed. Much remains to be done to understand the process. This volume looks at the different role of communities, of ethnic and religious identities in the political landscape of the post-Roman world, from Late Antiquity to the dawning of the age of crusades, providing in-depth comparative studies on the political role of ethnicity and religion in the post-Roman Mediterranean.Perhaps too many scholars have taken the long-term significance of national' identities for granted, without caring to distinguish between imperial identities (Roman, Arabic) or broad umbrella terms (Germanic, Slavic) on the one hand, and specific ethnic communities with political potential on the other. Others have insisted that nations are modern' and have denied any role of ethnicity in medieval state-building. The net distintinction between inclusive' religious and exclusive' ethnic identities has tended to obscure the many ways in which the two could overlap. These summary views certainly should not be replaced by a similarly simple distinction between an ethnic' West and an East dominated by an imperial religion. Rather, systematic comparison should pave the way for a more differentiated view of the various visions of community that lay behind political integration. The volume addresses the topic within a fairly precise chronological frame, from the 5th to the 11th centuries AD, but taking long-time perspectives and diachronic comparison into account