The Dawn of the Dark Ages PDF Download

Author: István Bóna
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Carpathian Mountains
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Author: Jo Ann McNamara
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822382369
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Sainted Women of the Dark Ages makes available the lives of eighteen Frankish women of the sixth and seventh centuries, all of whom became saints. Written in Latin by contemporaries or near contemporaries, and most translated here for the first time, these biographies cover the period from the fall of the Roman Empire and the conversion of the invading Franks to the rise of Charlemagne's family. Three of these holy women were queens who turned to religion only after a period of intense worldly activity. Others were members of the Carolingian family, deeply implicated in the political ambitions of their male relatives. Some were partners in the great Irish missions to the pagan countryside and others worked for the physical salvation of the poor. From the peril and suffering of their lives they shaped themselves as paragons of power and achievement. Beloved by their sisters and communities for their spiritual gifts, they ultimately brought forth a new model of sanctity. These biographies are unusually authentic. At least two were written by women who knew their subjects, while others reflect the direct testimony of sisters within the cloister walls. Each biography is accompanied by an introduction and notes that clarify its historical context. This volume will be an excellent source for students and scholars of women's studies and early medieval social, religious, and political history.

Author: Michael Grant
Publisher: Random House Value Publishing
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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A brilliant historian of the ancient world, Michael Grant turns his attention to the decisive centuries of turmoil and rebirth that followed the final collapse of the Roman Empire in the West. The years from 476 to 816 constitute a relatively neglected period, sometimes dismissed by historians as a "Dark Age." But this impressively illustrated volume puts the dawn of the Middle Ages in a new perspective. Far from a time of "barbarian" darkness, this emerges as a remarkably rich period, in both east and west, a crucial time of innovation and development that went very far toward shaping our modern world. It was an age of great leaders. So many dominant personalities of the period have cast long shadows across the centuries and into our own time. From the pages of Michael Grant's readable, moving text there emerge fresh portraits of such giants as Justinian the Great in the heyday of Byzantium; Mohammed, the prophet of Arabia; St. Benedict of Italy; St. Patrick of Ireland; and, in the heart of western Europe, the larger-than-life figure of Charlemagne. It was, too, an age of great religions. Here we witness the birth of Islam both as a church and as a political force--and the fateful split, almost from the beginning, between the Arabic and the Iranian branches. These centuries witnessed the rise of such great Christian institutions as the papacy and the monastic orders, which were to change the Catholic Church forever. Judaism, too, underwent crucial changes, in the further refinement of Talmudic studies and the establishment of the longlasting patterns of ghetto community life. Above all, this was an age of great art. From Spain to China, from Sweden and the British Isles to north Africa, this book captures the glories of that past age in a remarkable series of fine color illustrations. Highlights include the gleaming tile surfaces of the Moslem palaces and mosques, the cavernous splendor of the church of Haghia Sophia in Istanbul, the dazzling illuminated manuscripts of Ireland and England, the jewelry of the Merovingians, exotic T'ang and Sui ceramics of China, Hebrew murals, and the glittering, other-worldly mosaics of Ravenna. And throughout it all, there is Michael Grant's text as a guide. Whether he is tracing a clear path for us through the tangle of Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties, probing the mysteries of Islamic theology or medieval cannon law, or providing flesh-and-blood portraits where before we only had names, Michael Grant provides the utmost in information, perspective, balance, color, and readability. -- Inside jacket flaps.

Author: Caroline Alexander
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 1426208146
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Presents a history of England from the departure of Roman forces in 450 A.D. to the Norman invasion of 1066, focusing on the gold and silver artifacts of the Staffordshire Hoard found in 2009 to highlight the events and art of the period.

Author: John Howard Bertram Masterman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Europe
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Author: Michael Anderle
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781975667542
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Michael returns to fulfill a promise to his love, but the world isn't the same place.Michael, the Archangel himself, has returned after a hundred and fifty years rejuvenating in the Etheric Dimension. Now, the most powerful male Vampire the world had ever known is back.The problem? The world went through an Apocalypse and what little honor and justice that previously existed, is gone. Further, his love has left to the stars somewhere, fighting for those on Earth.Now, Michael has to figure out where he is, where he needs to go, help those who need help and figure out how to follow in his love's path. Because if there is one thing that Honor Demands, it is that he make good on his promise to Bethany Anne.Those feeding themselves on the backs of others have very little time to realize an important fact.This Dark Messiah has little compunction about killing.

Author: Dawn Hadley
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317882989
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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An original and highly accessible collection of essays which is based on a huge range of historical sources to reveal the realities of mens' lives in the Middle Ages. It covers an impressive geographical range - including essays on Italy, France, Germany and Byzantium - and will span the entire medieval period, from the fourth to the fifteenth century. The collection is divided into four main sections: attaining masculinity; lay men and churchmen: sources of tension; sexuality and the construction of masculinity; and written relationships and social reality. The contributors are: Dawn Hadley, Jenny Moore, William M. Aird, Jeremy Goldberg, Matthew Bennet, Janet Nelson, Conrad Leyser, Robert Swanson, Patricia Cullum, Ross Balzaretti, Shaun Tougher, Julian Haseldine, Marianne Ailes and Mark Chinca.

Author: Seb Falk
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1324002948
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Named a Best Book of 2020 by The Telegraph, The Times, and BBC History Magazine An illuminating guide to the scientific and technological achievements of the Middle Ages through the life of a crusading astronomer-monk. "Falk’s bubbling curiosity and strong sense of storytelling always swept me along. By the end, The Light Ages didn’t just broaden my conception of science; even as I scrolled away on my Kindle, it felt like I was sitting alongside Westwyk at St. Albans abbey, leafing through dusty manuscripts by candlelight." —Alex Orlando, Discover Soaring Gothic cathedrals, violent crusades, the Black Death: these are the dramatic forces that shaped the medieval era. But the so-called Dark Ages also gave us the first universities, eyeglasses, and mechanical clocks. As medieval thinkers sought to understand the world around them, from the passing of the seasons to the stars in the sky, they came to develop a vibrant scientific culture. In The Light Ages, Cambridge science historian Seb Falk takes us on a tour of medieval science through the eyes of one fourteenth-century monk, John of Westwyk. Born in a rural manor, educated in England’s grandest monastery, and then exiled to a clifftop priory, Westwyk was an intrepid crusader, inventor, and astrologer. From multiplying Roman numerals to navigating by the stars, curing disease, and telling time with an ancient astrolabe, we learn emerging science alongside Westwyk and travel with him through the length and breadth of England and beyond its shores. On our way, we encounter a remarkable cast of characters: the clock-building English abbot with leprosy, the French craftsman-turned-spy, and the Persian polymath who founded the world’s most advanced observatory. The Light Ages offers a gripping story of the struggles and successes of an ordinary man in a precarious world and conjures a vivid picture of medieval life as we have never seen it before. An enlightening history that argues that these times weren’t so dark after all, The Light Ages shows how medieval ideas continue to color how we see the world today.

Author: Matthew Gabriele
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062980912
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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"The beauty and levity that Perry and Gabriele have captured in this book are what I think will help it to become a standard text for general audiences for years to come….The Bright Ages is a rare thing—a nuanced historical work that almost anyone can enjoy reading.”—Slate "Incandescent and ultimately intoxicating." —The Boston Globe A lively and magisterial popular history that refutes common misperceptions of the European Middle Ages, showing the beauty and communion that flourished alongside the dark brutality—a brilliant reflection of humanity itself. The word “medieval” conjures images of the “Dark Ages”—centuries of ignorance, superstition, stasis, savagery, and poor hygiene. But the myth of darkness obscures the truth; this was a remarkable period in human history. The Bright Ages recasts the European Middle Ages for what it was, capturing this 1,000-year era in all its complexity and fundamental humanity, bringing to light both its beauty and its horrors. The Bright Ages takes us through ten centuries and crisscrosses Europe and the Mediterranean, Asia and Africa, revisiting familiar people and events with new light cast upon them. We look with fresh eyes on the Fall of Rome, Charlemagne, the Vikings, the Crusades, and the Black Death, but also to the multi-religious experience of Iberia, the rise of Byzantium, and the genius of Hildegard and the power of queens. We begin under a blanket of golden stars constructed by an empress with Germanic, Roman, Spanish, Byzantine, and Christian bloodlines and end nearly 1,000 years later with the poet Dante—inspired by that same twinkling celestial canopy—writing an epic saga of heaven and hell that endures as a masterpiece of literature today. The Bright Ages reminds us just how permeable our manmade borders have always been and of what possible worlds the past has always made available to us. The Middle Ages may have been a world “lit only by fire” but it was one whose torches illuminated the magnificent rose windows of cathedrals, even as they stoked the pyres of accused heretics. The Bright Ages contains an 8-page color insert.

Author: Johannes Fried
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674744675
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 653

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Since the fifteenth century, when humanist writers began to speak of a “middle” period in history linking their time to the ancient world, the nature of the Middle Ages has been widely debated. Across the millennium from 500 to 1500, distinguished historian Johannes Fried describes a dynamic confluence of political, social, religious, economic, and scientific developments that draws a guiding thread through the era: the growth of a culture of reason. “Fried’s breadth of knowledge is formidable and his passion for the period admirable...Those with a true passion for the Middle Ages will be thrilled by this ambitious defensio.” —Dan Jones, Sunday Times “Reads like a counterblast to the hot air of the liberal-humanist interpreters of European history...[Fried] does justice both to the centrifugal fragmentation of the European region into monarchies, cities, republics, heresies, trade and craft associations, vernacular literatures, and to the persistence of unifying and homogenizing forces: the papacy, the Western Empire, the schools, the friars, the civil lawyers, the bankers, the Crusades...Comprehensive coverage of the whole medieval continent in flux.” —Eric Christiansen, New York Review of Books “[An] absorbing book...Fried covers much in the realm of ideas on monarchy, jurisprudence, arts, chivalry and courtly love, millenarianism and papal power, all of it a rewarding read.” —Sean McGlynn, The Spectator