This volume presents evidence of the extent and effects of intercultural contacts across Europe and the Mediterranean rim, opening up a new understanding of early medieval civilisation and its continuing influence in both Western and Eastern cultures today. From the perspectives of textual transmission, cultural memory, religion, art and cultural traditions, this work explores the central question of how ideas travelled in the medieval world, challenging the conventional notion of insular communities in the Middle Ages. Despite the schism between East and West that took hold after the thirteenth century this volume reveals a rich and extensive cultural exchange and demonstrates that transmission of ideas and culture across borders began much earlier than the Crusades. It contributes to new perspectives on medieval cities, Christian Europe's history with the Byzantine and Islamic Mediterranean, the landscape of power and the power-plays of the medieval Church, and the way in which cross-cultural transmission affected all of these areas.

Featuring eight innovative studies by prominent scholars of medieval art and architecture, this special issue of Medieval Encounters examines the specific means by which art and architectural forms, techniques, and ideas were transmitted throughout the medieval world (ca. 1000-1500). While focusing on the Mediterranean region, the collection also includes essays that expand this geographic zone into a cultural and artistic one by demonstrating contact with near and distant neighbors, thereby allowing an expanded understanding of the interconnectedness of the medieval world. The studies are united by a focus on the specific mechanisms that enabled artistic and architectural interaction, as well as the individuals who facilitated these transmissions. Authors also consider the effects and collaboration of portable and monumental arts in the creation of intercultural artistic traditions. Contributors are: Justine Andrews, Maria Georgopoulou, Ludovico Geymonat, Heather E. Grossman, Eva Hoffman, Melanie Michailidis, Renata Holod, Scott Redford and Alicia Walker.

These essays by medievalists touch upon many aspects of intercultural links in the medieval Mediterranean, covering not only strictly cultural and religious contacts, but also political, military, ethnic, social institutional, scientific and technological relationships.

The Medieval Mediterranean was first published in 1991. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. "Three faiths—Jewish, Christian, and Muslim—became the dominant religions of western civilization in the course of the Middle Ages. Within each, there is and was great cultural and ethnic diversity. The complex relationships today among Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the Mediterranean, the tensions and attempts at resolution of conflicts among these groups, have their roots in the Middle Ages." Contributors: Oleg Grabar, The Meaning of the Dome of the Rock; Oliver Nicholson, Golden Age and the End of the World: Myths of Mediterranean Life from Lactantius to Joshua the Stylite; Ivan Havener, OSB, Two Early Anecdotes Concerning Gregory the Great from the Greek Tradition; Catherine B. Asher, The Public Baths of Medieval Spain: An Architectural Study; Jonathan M. Bloom, The Revival of Early Islamic Architecture by the Umayyads of Spain; Marvin Mills, Scenario for a Roman Provenance for the Mosque of Cordoba; Sybil H. Mintz, The Carpet Pages of the Spanish-Hebrew Farhi Bible; Ann Thorson Walton, The Three Hebrew Children in the Fiery Furnace: A Study of Christian Iconography; W. Eugene Kleinbauer, Pre-Carolingian Concepts of Architectural Planning; Clara Estow, Iberia and North Africa: A Comparative View of Religious and Sexual Discrimination in a Medieval Plural Society; Moshe Sokolow, Arabic Books in Jewish Libraries: The Evidence of Genizah Booklist; Leslie S. B. MacCoull, Coptic Alchemy and Craft Technology in Islamic Egypt: The Papyrological Evidence; Thomas S. Noonan, Technology Transfer Between Byzantium and Eastern Europe: A Case Study of the Glass Industry in Early Russia; Stephanie Cain Van D'Elden, Black and White: Contact with the Mediterranean World in Medieval German Narrative; Gerhard Weiss, The Pilgrim as Tourist: Travels to the Holy Land as Reflected in the Published Accounts of German Pilgrims Between 1450 and 1550

This collection explores multiple artefactual, visual, textual and conceptual adaptations, developments and exchanges across the medieval world in the context of their contemporary and subsequent re-appropriations.

This book is a study of architecture and urban design across the Mediterranean Sea from the 12th to the 14th Century, a time when there was no single, hegemonic power dominating the area. The focus of the study--four cities on the Italian peninsula, and four in Syria and Egypt--is the interconnectedness of the design and use of urban structures, streets and open space. Each chapter offers an historical analysis of the buildings and spaces used for trade, education, political display and public action. The work includes historical and social analyses of the mercantile, social, political and educational cultures of the eight cities, highlighting similarities and differences between Christian and Islamic practices. Sixteen new maps drawn specifically for this book are based on the writings of medieval travelers.

Honouring Erica Cruikshank Dodd, Art and Material Culture in the Byzantine and Islamic Worlds analyzes aspects of the constructed narratives and reconstructed realities of the visual-material record of diverse Mediterranean faith communities from medieval into contemporary times.