DOCSLIB.ORG

Crusades.Pdf

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Crusades.Pdf 12272-Crusades & the Christian (reprint) 7/6/09 2:39 PM Page i The Crusades and the Christian World of the East 12272-Crusades & the Christian (reprint) 7/6/09 2:39 PM Page ii THE MIDDLE AGES SERIES Ruth Mazo Karras, Series Editor Edward Peters, Founding Editor A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher 12272-Crusades & the Christian (reprint) 7/6/09 2:39 PM Page iii The Crusades and the Christian World of the East Rough Tolerance Christopher MacEvitt University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia 12272-Crusades & the Christian (reprint) 7/6/09 2:39 PM Page v Contents Note on Transliteration and Names vii Map viii Introduction 1 The Twelfth-Century Middle East 3 Historiography of the Crusades 13 Rough Tolerance: A New Model of Religious Interaction 21 1 Satan Unleashed: The Christian Levant in the Eleventh Century 27 A Brief History of the Christian East 29 Contact and Knowledge Between Eastern and Western Christians 43 2 Close Encounters of the Ambiguous Kind: When Crusaders and Locals Meet 50 Responses to the First Crusade 54 The Franks in Edessa 65 Armenian Resistance 71 3 Images of Authority in Edessa, 1100–1150 74 Frankish Authority 75 Armenian Authority: A Response to the Franks 81 Edessa Under Joscelin I 92 Edessa and the Frankish East 97 4 Rough Tolerance and Ecclesiastical Ignorance 100 Local Christians from a Latin Perspective 102 Local Priests and Patriarchs in the Frankish Levant 106 Architecture and Liturgy 126 Pilgrimage 132 12272-Crusades & the Christian (reprint) 7/6/09 2:39 PM Page vi vi Contents 5 The Legal and Social Status of Local Inhabitants in the Frankish Levant 136 Historiography 136 The Peasantry 142 Local Rural Landowners and Administrators 149 6 The Price of Unity: Ecumenical Negotiations and the End of Rough Tolerance 157 Manuel I Komnenos and the Mediterranean World 158 Ecumenical Dialogue with the Armenian Church 161 Jacobite Patriarch Michael and the Quest for Legitimacy 167 Cultural Consequences of Ecumenical Negotiation 171 Conclusion 177 Notes 181 Bibliography 229 Index 253 Acknowledgments 271 12272-Crusades & the Christian (reprint) 7/6/09 2:39 PM Page vii Note on Transliteration and Names The names of people and places mentioned in this book have been translated and transliterated into English in a variety of ways that are not always consistent. I have attempted to render personal names in a way that reflects most closely the sound in the original language, even when that name is being used in another language. I have thus referred to the Ayyubid sultan as Salah al-Din rather than Saladin. Many names of towns and geo- graphical features have different names in Armenian, Syriac, Arabic, Greek, Latin, Turkish, and Old French. I have generally used the name of the com- munity that was dominant in the period under discussion, with a few excep- tions for well-known places. Thus, I have consistently used Edessa for the sake of familiarity, when almost everyone in the twelfth century knew it by some variation of its ancient Syriac name, Urhay (Latin Rohas, Arabic al-Ruha, Turkish Urfa, Armenian Urha). Only a few classicizing Latin chroniclers used Edessa, but that has stuck. In transliterating Armenian into English, I have generally followed the system of transliteration of the Library of Congress. I have generally used the standard western calendar for dates, although the communities under discussion used a variety of different calendars. 12272-Crusades & the Christian (reprint) 7/6/09 2:39 PM Page viii The Frankish Levant, c. 1130. 12272-Crusades & the Christian (reprint) 7/6/09 2:39 PM Page 1 Introduction A few months after the capture of Antioch (3 June 1098), the lead- ers of the First Crusade wrote a letter to Pope Urban II, on whose urging they had embarked on their long, strange journey across Europe and Byzantium. The rigors of nearly two years on the march, the exhausting eight-month siege of Antioch, the euphoria of its capture, the miraculous discovery of the relic of the Holy Lance, and the astonishing victory over yet another Turkish army had left the crusaders dazed and overwhelmed. The last straw came on 1 August with the death of Adhemar of LePuy, the papal representative accompanying the crusaders. His passing left the crusaders without a guiding and unifying voice. Confused and lacking direction, the crusaders hoped a letter to Urban might elicit further guidance. After summarizing the recent events of the crusade, the letter-writers urged that Urban himself come to Antioch, which was, as they noted, the first seat of St. Peter, and that the pope then lead the crusaders on to Jerusalem. Why? The crusaders confessed that they had found some challenges beyond their military skills: “we have subdued the Turks and the pagans,” they wrote to Urban, “but the heretics, Greeks and Armenians, Syrians and Jacobites, we have not been able to over- come (expugnare).”1 What the crusaders wanted to do to the “heretics” is unclear: kill them as they had the Turkish inhabitants of Antioch? Expel them from the lands the crusaders had conquered? Or perhaps the crusaders’ frustration arose because they did not know how to confront an issue as complex and unexpected as eastern Christianity. For the modern historian, the letter is a glimpse at a moment of possi- bility, as the army’s leaders gathered in Antioch on that late summer’s day to consider the direction of their journey. At Antioch, the crusaders stood at the edge of the Byzantine world, a world different from their own yet more fa- miliar than the great sweep of Islamic lands that lay open to the south and east of them. The letter from Antioch hints at their anxiety on leaving the fa- 12272-Crusades & the Christian (reprint) 7/6/09 2:39 PM Page 2 2 Introduction miliar to venture into the unknown. Yet their anxiety circled not so much around the Turks or Islam; for as the writers confidently asserted, “we have subdued the Turks and the pagans.” Rather, the crusaders were alarmed by the religious diversity of the Christian world of the Middle East. Turks and Muslims they were prepared for, but for Armenians, Greeks, and Jacobites they were not. The letter raises a series of questions. How would the Franks approach local Christians? What language would they use to frame their re- lationship? Would the Franks perceive them as a conquered community like the Muslims, or would they see them as fellow Christians, or simply as an oc- cupied subordinate people? These inquiries have provoked strikingly diver- gent answers from historians of the crusades and of the Frankish East. In one sense, the harsh attitude displayed in the crusader letter from An- tioch conforms to what many would expect from a group of soldiers who be- lieved that killing Muslims was a meritorious act—it simply extended that persecutory and violent agenda to another foreign and suspect group, indige- nous Christians. Scholars and educated readers alike have seen the twelfth- century Middle East as an era dominated by crusade and jihad: a world in which conflict between Muslims and western (Latin Catholic) Christians not only expressed itself in a series of battles fought in the name of religious ide- ology, but formed a fundamental part of the way individuals and communi- ties defined themselves and others. For such Christian and Muslim leaders as Bernard of Clairvaux, Nur al-Din, or Richard the Lion-heart, this may well have been true. But for communities living in the Levant, both indigenous and Frankish, crusade and jihad played little role in the way they understood or experienced the world around them. Rather, individuals and communities formed their identity through a network of families, civic relationships, pro- fessional ties, and associations with churches, shrines, and local holy places. Taken together, such identities often crossed religious boundaries. This book examines the intersection of two Christian worlds, that of western Christians (or Franks, as they were generally known in the Middle East) who conquered Syria and Palestine as part of the First Crusade and re- mained to settle in the occupied lands, and that of eastern Christians over whom they ruled. The society that emerged at that intersection has been characterized as colonial and European, or as creole and orientalized; both descriptions rely on a dichotomized understanding of interreligious relations as either oppressive or tolerant. Instead, I argue for a mode of social interac- tion between local Christians and the Franks in twelfth-century Syria and Palestine that I call “rough tolerance,” which encompassed conflict and op- 12272-Crusades & the Christian (reprint) 7/6/09 2:39 PM Page 3 Introduction 3 pression yet allowed multiple religious communities to coexist in a reli- giously charged land. The Twelfth-Century Middle East Over the period of a century (1090–1190), the Middle East underwent dra- matic political change. So rapid were these changes that one Armenian chronicler believed that contemporary events “were showing us change, decay, and disappearance of what exists and revealing to us the instability of mankind on earth.”2 The north Syrian town of Marash, for example, in the course of the century fell under the rule of Armenians, Byzantines, Franks, the Seljuk Turks of Rum, and the Zengids of Mosul—in essence every major power in the Levant. This sense of instability and change underlies much of the cultural permeability of twelfth-century Syria and Palestine. Political Change in the Levant Two moments capture the dramatic changes the twelfth century brought. The first moment comes in the 1160s, when Franks, Byzantines, and Turks vied for political dominance.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Doctoral Dissertation Márton Rózsa Byzantine Second-Tier Élite In
    Eötvös Loránd University Faculty of Humanities DOCTORAL DISSERTATION MÁRTON RÓZSA BYZANTINE SECOND-TIER ÉLITE IN THE ‘LONG’ TWELFTH CENTURY Doctoral School of History Head of the doctoral school: Dr. Gábor Erdődy Doctoral Programme of Medieval and Early Modern World History Head of the doctoral programme: Dr. Balázs Nagy Supervisor: Dr. Balázs Nagy Members of the assessment committee: Dr. István Draskóczy, Chair Dr. Gábor Thoroczkay, PhD, Secretary Dr. Floris Bernard, opponent Dr. Andreas Rhoby, opponent Dr. István Baán, member Dr. László Horváth, PhD, member Budapest, 2019 ADATLAP a d o kt ori ért e k e z é s n yit v á n o s s á gr a h a z at al á h o z l. A d o kt ori ért e k e z é s a d at ai A s z et z ő n e v e: Ró z s a ] u í árt o n MT M'f-azonosító: 1 0 0 1 9 2 7 0 A d o kt ori ért e k e z é s c í m e é s al c í m e: B y z a nti n e Second-Tie, Éttt ein t h e 'Lang'Tu,e\th C e nt ur y f) Ol-azonosító: 1 íl. l 5 1 7 6/ E L T E. 2 0 I 9. 0 5 ő A d o kt ori i s k ol a n e v e: Tü,t énele míuclo mányi D ol ú ori { sl ail a A d o kt ori pr o gr í } m n e v e: Köz é p k ori é s kora újkori e gt e í e m e s tört é n eti Doktori Progratn A t é mavezető n e v e ó s tudo mányos fcrkozata: § a g y * B ai ú z s.
    [Show full text]
  • A Synopsis of Byzantine History, –
    Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-40474-8 - John Skylitzes: A Synopsis of Byzantine History, 811–1057 John Wortley Frontmatter More information JOHN SKYLITZES: A synopsis of Byzantine history, – John Skylitzes’ extraordinary Middle Byzantine chronicle covers the reigns of the Byzantine emperors from the death of Nicephorus I in to the deposition of Michael VI in , and provides the only surviving continuous narrative of the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. A high offi cial living in the late eleventh century, Skylitzes used a number of existing Greek histories (some of them no longer extant) to create a digest of the previous three centuries. It is with- out question the major historical source for the period, cited con- stantly in modern scholarship, and has never before been available in English. Th is edition features introductions by Jean-Claude Cheynet and Bernard Flusin, along with extensive notes by Cheynet. It will be an essential and exciting addition to the libraries of all historians of the Byzantine age. is Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Manitoba. He has published widely on the Byzantine era, and completed several translations to date, including Les Récits édifi - ants de Paul, évêque de Monembasie, et d’autres auteurs (), Th e ‘Spiritual Meadow’ of John Moschos, including the additional tales edited by Nissen and Mioni (), Th e spiritually benefi cial tales of Paul, Bishop of Monembasia and of other authors () and John Skylitzes: A Synopsis of Histories (AD –) , a provisional transla- tion published
    [Show full text]
  • Component 1A the Age of the Crusades, C1071-1204
    History Paper 1A (A-level) Specimen Question Paper Question 02 Student 1 Specimen Answer and Commentary V1.1 12/08/15 Strictly confidential Specimen Answer plus commentary The following student response is intended to illustrate approaches to assessment. This response has not been completed under timed examination conditions. It is not intended to be viewed as a ‘model’ answer and the marking has not been subject to the usual standardisation process. Paper 1A (A-level): Specimen question paper 02 To what extent was effective leadership responsible for the establishment of the crusader states in the years 1096 to 1154? (25 marks) Student Response There are a number of reasons why the crusader states were successfully established in the years 1097-1154, but by far the most important of these reasons was that they had effective leadership, for the most part. From the outset, the crusader states relied on effective leadership. For example, on the First Crusade, the leadership of Bohemond of Taranto was pivotal both at the Battle of Dorylaeum and the Siege of Antioch. Even after the First Crusade, when the crusader states were “little more than a loose network of dispersed outposts” (Asbridge), the leadership of Baldwin I of Jerusalem was important in establishing this nascent kingdom. Through a clever use of clemency mixed with ruthlessness, Baldwin was able to take Arsuf, Caesarea, and Acre in quick succession by 1104. As there was a real threat to Baldwin’s kingdom from Egypt, he had to not only pacify the region between Egypt and Syria, but also create a loyal and subservient aristocracy, which he did.
    [Show full text]
  • The Arsenite Schism and the Babai Rebellion: Two Case Studies
    THE ARSENITE SCHISM AND THE BABAI REBELLION: TWO CASE STUDIES IN CENTER-PERIPHERY RELATIONS by Hüsamettin ŞİMŞİR Submitted to the Institute of Social Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in History Sabancı University June 2018 © Hüsamettin Şimşir 2018 All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT THE ARSENITE SCHISM AND THE BABAI REBELLION: TWO CASE STUDIES IN CENTER-PERIPHERY RELATIONS Hüsamettin Şimşir M.A Thesis, June 2018 Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Fac. Member Ferenc Péter Csirkés This thesis aims to present an analysis of the interaction between Christians and Muslims in the west of Asia Minor at the end of the 13th and the beginning of the 14th centuries after two religious-social movements in the Byzantine and the Rum Seljuk Empires, the Arsenite Schism and the Babai Rebellion. After the unsuccessful rebellion of the Babais, antinomian dervishes who had migrated to the west of Asia Minor because of a heavy oppression as well as inquisition by the state and had a different religious belief apart from the mainstream religious understanding of the center initiated missionary activities in the regions along the Byzantine border. Accordingly, these dervishes had joined the military activities of the Turcoman chieftains against the Byzantines and interacted with the local Christian population and religious figures. As a result of this religious interaction, messianic and ascetic beliefs were increasingly present among the Greek-speaking population as well as spiritual leaders of western Anatolia. Since such interfaith and cross- cultural interaction had a considerable impact on the course of all these events, this thesis focuses on them to create a better understanding of the appearance of the Hesychasm in the Byzantine spiritual environment in the later period.
    [Show full text]
  • A Political History of the Kingdom of Jerusalem 1099 to 1187 C.E
    Western Washington University Western CEDAR WWU Honors Program Senior Projects WWU Graduate and Undergraduate Scholarship Spring 2014 A Political History of the Kingdom of Jerusalem 1099 to 1187 C.E. Tobias Osterhaug Western Washington University Follow this and additional works at: https://cedar.wwu.edu/wwu_honors Part of the Higher Education Commons, and the History Commons Recommended Citation Osterhaug, Tobias, "A Political History of the Kingdom of Jerusalem 1099 to 1187 C.E." (2014). WWU Honors Program Senior Projects. 25. https://cedar.wwu.edu/wwu_honors/25 This Project is brought to you for free and open access by the WWU Graduate and Undergraduate Scholarship at Western CEDAR. It has been accepted for inclusion in WWU Honors Program Senior Projects by an authorized administrator of Western CEDAR. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 1 Tobias Osterhaug History 499/Honors 402 A Political History of the Kingdom of Jerusalem 1099 to 1187 C.E. Introduction: The first Crusade, a massive and unprecedented undertaking in the western world, differed from the majority of subsequent crusades into the Holy Land in an important way: it contained no royalty and was undertaken with very little direct support from the ruling families of Western Europe. This aspect of the crusade led to the development of sophisticated hierarchies and vassalages among the knights who led the crusade. These relationships culminated in the formation of the Crusader States, Latin outposts in the Levant surrounded by Muslim states, and populated primarily by non-Catholic or non-Christian peoples. Despite the difficulties engendered by this situation, the Crusader States managed to maintain control over the Holy Land for much of the twelfth century, and, to a lesser degree, for several decades after the Fall of Jerusalem in 1187 to Saladin.
    [Show full text]
  • Chronicle of Michael the Syrian and the Armenian Version (1248): a Textual Comparison
    The Chronicle of Michael the Great, Patriarch of the Syrians Translated from Classical Armenian by Robert Bedrosian For Reverend Father Krikor Vardapet Maksoudian, who taught me the language Sources of the Armenian Tradition (Long Branch, N.J., 2013) This work is in the public domain. It may be copied and distributed freely. Maps: From Atlas Antiquus (Berlin, 1869) by Heinrich Kiepert: Asia Minor and Neighbors Syria Mesopotamia Greater Cappadocia Armenia and Neighbors Additional maps are available on the Maps page. Chronological tables are available on the Chronological Tables page. Translator's Preface Composite 1871 Edition 1870 Edition 1871 Edition (below) The Chronicle of Michael the Great, Patriarch of the Syrians The following Table of Contents for the Composite 1871 edition was created for the convenience of readers and is not part of the Armenian text. Author's Preface Sources Problems of Chronology Adam Seth Jared; Mt. Hermon Chaldean Kings Methusaleh Noah Sons of Noah and Their Lands Tower of Babel The Amazons Rulers of Babylon Abraham Shamiram (Semiramis) Jacob Moses Exodus Judges Saul Solomon The Queen of Sheba and Her Riddles Rulers after Solomon Tiglathpilesar Shalmaneser Darius, Daniel, Cyrus Xerxes, B.C. 486-465 Persian Kings Alexander, B.C. 356-323 Ptolemy, B.C. 323-285 Translators of the Bible Haykazean Kings Maccabees, B.C. 167-160 138 B.C. 90 B.C. Genealogy of Herod Barzaphran Julius Caesar, B.C. 100-44 Herod's Rule over the Jews Cleopatra, reigned B.C. 51-30 Birth of Jesus Coming of the Magi Selection of the Apostles Selection of the Disciples Philo, Jewish Sects Abgar, King of Edessa Claudius, A.D.
    [Show full text]
  • The Latin Principality of Antioch and Its Relationship with the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, 1188-1268 Samuel James Wilson
    The Latin Principality of Antioch and Its Relationship with the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia, 1188-1268 Samuel James Wilson A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Nottingham Trent University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy March 2016 1 Copyright Statement This work is the intellectual property of the author. You may copy up to 5% of this work for private study, or personal, non-commercial research. Any re-use of the information contained within this document should be fully referenced, quoting the author, title, university, degree level and pagination. Queries or requests for any other use, or if a more substantial copy is required, should be directed to the owner of the Intellectual Property Rights. 2 Abstract The Latin principality of Antioch was founded during the First Crusade (1095-1099), and survived for 170 years until its destruction by the Mamluks in 1268. This thesis offers the first full assessment of the thirteenth century principality of Antioch since the publication of Claude Cahen’s La Syrie du nord à l’époque des croisades et la principauté franque d’Antioche in 1940. It examines the Latin principality from its devastation by Saladin in 1188 until the fall of Antioch eighty years later, with a particular focus on its relationship with the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia. This thesis shows how the fate of the two states was closely intertwined for much of this period. The failure of the principality to recover from the major territorial losses it suffered in 1188 can be partly explained by the threat posed by the Cilician Armenians in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.
    [Show full text]
  • Downloaded from Brill.Com10/04/2021 08:59:36AM Via Free Access
    Chapter 12 Aristocrats, Mercenaries, Clergymen and Refugees: Deliberate and Forced Mobility of Armenians in the Early Medieval Mediterranean (6th to 11th Century a.d.) Johannes Preiser-Kapeller 1 Introduction Armenian mobility in the early Middle Ages has found some attention in the scholarly community. This is especially true for the migration of individuals and groups towards the Byzantine Empire. A considerable amount of this re- search has focused on the carriers and histories of individual aristocrats or noble families of Armenian origin. The obviously significant share of these in the Byzantine elite has even led to formulations such as Byzantium being a “Greco-Armenian Empire”.1 While, as expected, evidence for the elite stratum is relatively dense, larger scale migration of members of the lower aristocracy (“azat”, within the ranking system of Armenian nobility, see below) or non- aristocrats (“anazat”) can also be traced with regard to the overall movement of groups within the entire Byzantine sphere. In contrast to the nobility, however, the life stories and strategies of individuals of these backgrounds very rarely can be reconstructed based on our evidence. In all cases, the actual signifi- cance of an “Armenian” identity for individuals and groups identified as “Ar- menian” by contemporary sources or modern day scholarship (on the basis of 1 Charanis, “Armenians in the Byzantine Empire”, passim; Charanis, “Transfer of population”; Toumanoff, “Caucasia and Byzantium”, pp. 131–133; Ditten, Ethnische Verschiebungen, pp. 124–127, 134–135; Haldon, “Late Roman Senatorial Elite”, pp. 213–215; Whitby, “Recruitment”, pp. 87–90, 99–101, 106–110; Isaac, “Army in the Late Roman East”, pp.
    [Show full text]
  • Reflections on Fieldwork in the Region of Ani Christina Maranci I Study the Medieval Armenian Monuments—Churche
    In the Traces: Reflections on Fieldwork in the Region of Ani Christina Maranci I study the medieval Armenian monuments—churches, monasteries, fortresses, palaces, and more—in what is now eastern Turkey (what many call western Arme- nia). For me, this region is at once the most beautiful, and most painful, place on earth. I am the grandchild of survivors of the Armenian Genocide of 1915–22, in which Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire suffered mass deportation and extermination: a crime that still goes unrecognized by the Turkish state.1 Scholars have characterized the Armenian monuments in Turkey as physical traces of their lost homeland.2 While my scholarship addresses these sites as historical and archi- tectural/artistic phenomena, that work does not often capture the moods and emotions I feel when I am there.3 I hope to offer here a sense of the more personal dimensions of firsthand work with the buildings and their landscapes. Many important medieval Armenian monuments stand on and around the closed international border between the Republics of Turkey and Armenia. Some of them are accessible to tourists, while others, like the church of Mren, remain forbidden, as they lie within or too close to the military zone. Dated to circa 638, and once part of the princely territory of the Kamsarakan family, Mren became the summer residence of the royal Armenian Bagratids in the tenth century.4 Once surrounded by a network of buildings, vineyards, and roads, now the church stands alone. Figure 1 illustrates the Armenian high plateau: deforested from antiquity, it is a rocky tableland lacerated by gorges and ringed with mountain chains.
    [Show full text]
  • The Relief on the Door of the Msho Arakelots Monastery (1134) As a Source for Studying Arms and Armour of Medieval Armenian Warriors1
    Studia Ceranea 9, 2019, p. 207–250 ISSN: 2084-140X DOI: 10.18778/2084-140X.09.12 e-ISSN: 2449-8378 Dmytro Dymydyuk (Lviv) https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5067-5530 The Relief on the Door of the Msho Arakelots Monastery (1134) as a Source for Studying Arms and Armour of Medieval Armenian Warriors1 The history of swords [weapons] is the history of humanity (R.F. Burton)2 Introduction he Bagratid Kingdom of Armenia (884/8863–1045/10644) was the first inde- T pendent Armenian state in the Middle Ages. Having been under the control of the Persians and Umayyad Arabs for centuries, the Royal House of Bagratid was finally able to secure their independence from Arabs at the end of the 9th century. Located at the frontier, between Eastern Roman Empire and the Muslim world, Armenia faced encroachment from both sides, but, on the other hand, adopted the best military solutions from both sides, creating its own military culture. After the fall of the Bagratid Armenia in the middle of the 11th c., the Armenian territory was under the rule of the Seljuk Turks. One of the Turks’ principalities was founded in Western Armenia after the Battle of Manzikert (1071) and called Shah- Armenia (1100–1207)5, whose capital city was Ahlat, located on the north-western 1 I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Valery Yotov from Varna Museum (Bulgaria) for his ideas and materials, which enabled me to prepare the present paper. Furthermore, I would like to thank Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation for a travel grant (2018), which allowed me to find necessary books in the libraries of Armenia and helped me to finish this article.
    [Show full text]
  • Aspects of St Anna's Cult in Byzantium
    ASPECTS OF ST ANNA’S CULT IN BYZANTIUM by EIRINI PANOU A thesis submitted to The University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity College of Arts and Law The University of Birmingham January 2011 Acknowledgments It is said that a PhD is a lonely work. However, this thesis, like any other one, would not have become reality without the contribution of a number of individuals and institutions. First of all of my academical mother, Leslie Brubaker, whose constant support, guidance and encouragement accompanied me through all the years of research. Of the National Scholarship Foundation of Greece ( I.K.Y.) with its financial help for the greatest part of my postgraduate studies. Of my father George, my mother Angeliki and my bother Nick for their psychological and financial support, and of my friends in Greece (Lily Athanatou, Maria Sourlatzi, Kanela Oikonomaki, Maria Lemoni) for being by my side in all my years of absence. Special thanks should also be addressed to Mary Cunningham for her comments on an early draft of this thesis and for providing me with unpublished material of her work. I would like also to express my gratitude to Marka Tomic Djuric who allowed me to use unpublished photographic material from her doctoral thesis. Special thanks should also be addressed to Kanela Oikonomaki whose expertise in Medieval Greek smoothened the translation of a number of texts, my brother Nick Panou for polishing my English, and to my colleagues (Polyvios Konis, Frouke Schrijver and Vera Andriopoulou) and my friends in Birmingham (especially Jane Myhre Trejo and Ola Pawlik) for the wonderful time we have had all these years.
    [Show full text]
  • Coat of Arms of Armenia - Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
    Coat of arms of Armenia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coat_of_arms_of_Armenia Coat of arms of Armenia From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The national coat of arms of Armenia consists of an eagle and a lion supporting a shield. The coat of arms combines new and old symbols. The eagle and lion are ancient Armenian symbols dating from the first Armenian kingdoms that existed prior to Christ. The current coat of arms was adopted on April 19, 1992 by the Armenian Supreme Council decision. On June 15, 2006, the law on the state coat of arms of Armenia was passed by the Armenian Parliament. Contents 1 Symbolism 1.1 Shield 1.2 Eagle and Lion 1.3 Five vital elements 2 History 2.1 Coat of arms of the Democratic Republic of Armenia 2.2 Transcaucasian SFSR 2.3 Soviet coat of arms 3 References 4 See also 5 External links Symbolism Shield The shield itself consists of many components. In the center is a depiction of Mount Ararat with Noah's Ark sitting atop it. According to tradition, the ark is said to have finally rested on the mountain after the great flood. Ararat is considered the national symbol of Armenia and thus is of principle importance to the coat of arms. Surrounding Mount Ararat are symbols of old Armenian dynasties. In the lower left portion of the shield, there are two eagles looking at each other, symbolizing the length of the Armenian territory during the reign of the Artaxiad Dynasty that ruled in the 1st century BC.
    [Show full text]