The Principality of Epirus was a medieval Greek state established in the western part of the Balkans after the fall of Constantinople to the forces of the Fourth Crusade in 1204. The Epirote rulers from the Komnenos Doukas family claimed to be legitimate successors to the Byzantine imperial throne and, with the support of the high clergy and the aristocracy within their domain, carefully maintained their Byzantine identity under the conditions of exile. This book explores a corpus of Epirote architecture, frescoes, sculpture, and inscriptions from the early thirteenth to the early fourteenth century within a comparative and interdisciplinary framework, focusing on the nexus of art, patronage, and political ideology. Through an examination of a vast array of visual and textual sources, many of them understudied or hitherto unpublished, the book uncovers how the Epirote elite mobilised art and material culture to address the issues of succession and legitimacy, construct memory, reclaim Constantinople, and mediate encounters and exchanges with the Latin West. In doing so, this study offers a new perspective on Byzantine political and cultural history in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade.

Byzantine Childhood examines the intricacies of growing up in medieval Byzantium, children’s everyday experiences, and their agency. By piecing together a wide range of sources and utilising several methodological approaches inspired by intersectionality, history from below and microhistory, it analyses the life course of Byzantine boys and girls and how medieval Byzantine society perceived and treated them according to societal and cultural expectations surrounding age, gender, and status. Ultimately, it seeks to reconstruct a more plausible picture of the everyday life of children, one of the most vulnerable social groups throughout history and often a neglected subject in scholarship. Written in a lively and engaging manner, this book is necessary reading for scholars and students of Byzantine history, as well as those interested in the history of childhood and the family.

Drawing on rich archival research and focusing on works by leading artists including Guido Reni and Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Karen J. Lloyd demonstrates that cardinal nephews in seventeenth-century Rome – those nephews who were raised to the cardinalate as princes of the Church – used the arts to cultivate more than splendid social status. Through politically savvy frescos and emotionally evocative displays of paintings, sculptures, and curiosities, cardinal nephews aimed to define nepotism as good Catholic rule. Their commissions took advantage of their unique position close to the pope, embedding the defense of their role into the physical fabric of authority, from the storied vaults of the Vatican Palace to the sensuous garden villas that fused business and pleasure in the Eternal City. This book uncovers how cardinal nephews crafted a seductively potent dialogue on the nature of power, fuelling the development of innovative visual forms that championed themselves as the indispensable heart of papal politics. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, early modern studies, religious history, and political history.

The reputations of artists are curious things, influenced by factors beyond the quality of the work. Affairs of the Art explores the role those left behind play in burnishing an artist's reputation after he or she dies. Through interviews with those handling the estates of artists including Fred Williams, Brett Whiteley, John Brack, Howard Arkley, Bronwyn Oliver, George Baldessin and Albert Tucker, as well as a raft of art dealers, academics, curators and auctioneers, Strickland traverses the strange alleyways of the art market, where power resides with those who hold the best stock, and highlights the sometimes heart-wrenching way emotion and duty intersect in the making of decisions by those left behind.

Based on the evidence of artistic production and material culture this collective volume aims at exploring cross-cultural relations and interaction between Greeks and Latins in late medieval Greece in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade. Fourteen essays discuss mostly new and unpublished archaeological and artistic material, including architecture, sculpture, wall-paintings and icons, pottery and other small finds, but also the evidence of music and poetry. Through the surviving material of these artistic activities this volume explores the way Byzantines and Latins lived side by side on the Greek mainland and the Aegean islands from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries and traces the mechanisms that led to the emergence of the new, composite world of the Latin East. Issues of identity, patronage, papal policy, the missionary activities of the Latin religious orders and the reactions and responses of the Byzantines are also re-considered, offering fresh insights into and a better understanding of the various manifestations of the interrelationship between the two ethnicities, confessions and cultures.

This book seeks to deepen readers’ understanding of world history by investigating urbanization and the evolution of urban systems, as well as the urban world, from the perspective of historical analysis. The theoretical framework of the approach stems directly from space-economy, and, more generally, from location theory and the theory of urban systems. The author explores a certain logic to be found in world history, and argues that this logic is spatial (in terms of spatial inertia, spatial trends, attractive and repulsive forces, vector fields, etc.) rather than geographical (in terms of climate, precipitation, hydrography). Accordingly, the book puts forward a truly original vision of urban world history, one that will benefit economists, historians, regional scientists, and anyone with a healthy curiosity.

War in Eleventh-Century Byzantium presents new insights and critical approaches to warfare between the Byzantine Empire and its neighbours during the eleventh century. Modern historians have identified the eleventh century as a landmark era in Byzantine history. This was a period of invasions, political tumult, financial crisis and social disruption, but it was also a time of cultural and intellectual innovation and achievement. Despite this, the subject of warfare during this period remains underexplored. Addressing an important gap in the historiography of Byzantium, the volume argues that the eleventh century was a period of important geo-political change, when the Byzantine Empire was attacked on all sides, and its frontiers were breached. This book is valuable reading for scholars and students interested in Byzantium history and military history.