One of the great seats of learning and repositories of knowledge in the ancient world, Alexandria, and the great school of thought to which it gave its name, made a vital contribution to the development of intellectual and cultural heritage in the Occidental world. This book brings together twenty papers delivered at a symposium held at the J. Paul Getty Museum on the subject of Alexandria and Alexandrianism. Subjects range from “The Library of Alexandria and Ancient Egyptian Learning” and “Alexander’s Alexandria” to “Alexandria and the Origins of Baroque Architecture.” With nearly two hundred illustrations, this handsome volume presents some of the world’s leading scholars on the continuing influence and fascination of this great city. The distinguished contributors include Peter Green, R. R. R. Smith, and the late Bernard Bothmer.

This volume aims to clarify the context for the expansion of Western Europe by focusing on what had been the greatest power in early medieval Europe, the Byzantine empire, and on the continuing strengths and expansion of the Orthodox world. Byzantine 'orthodoxy' offered a format for faith, hope and fear in various combinations, involving religious beliefs and an idealised world-order. Its multifaceted nature helps explain Byzantium's success - the resilience of the earthly empire and the appeal of its religious organisation and rites to other societies. The volume reprints a set of key studies, combining classic treatments of Byzantine and Slavic history with far-reaching explorations of the extent of those worlds. Part I focuses on the empire in its heyday: some studies illustrate the sense of manifest destiny bolstering the imperial order until - and even beyond - Constantinople's fall to the fourth crusaders in 1204. The spread of the Byzantines' cult enlarged their trading zone northwards across Rus, while Byzantine-based merchants were more active than is generally realised in the Eastern Mediterranean. Part II includes an overview of the 'fragmentation' following 1204. Studies show how Byzantine rites and ideals of rulership were adopted by Serb and Bulgarian dynasts. Particular attention is paid to Rus: although subjugated by the Mongols, Rus churchmen, monks and leading princes all drew on Byzantine religious texts and imagery. From the later fifteenth century Moscow's rulers began to be portrayed as new guardians of religious correctness, even as the World's End supposedly drew nigh. The Introduction contextualises the studies included here, highlighting the significance (and not just in terms of rivalry) of the Byzantine Orthodox world for developments in Western Europe.

In recent years, the 'medieval frontier' has been the subject of extensive research. But the term has been understood in many different ways: political boundaries; fuzzy lines across which trade, religions and ideas cross; attitudes to other peoples and their customs. This book draws attention to the differences between the medieval and modern understanding of frontiers, questioning the traditional use of the concepts of 'frontier' and 'frontier society'. It contributes to the understanding of physical boundaries as well as metaphorical and ideological frontiers, thus providing a background to present-day issues of political and cultural delimitation. In a major introduction, David Abulafia analyses these various ambiguous meanings of the term 'frontier', in political, cultural and religious settings. The articles that follow span Europe from the Baltic to Iberia, from the Canary Islands to central Europe, Byzantium and the Crusader states. The authors ask what was perceived as a frontier during the Middle Ages? What was not seen as a frontier, despite the usage in modern scholarship? The articles focus on a number of themes to elucidate these two main questions. One is medieval ideology. This includes the analysis of medieval formulations of what frontiers should be and how rulers had a duty to defend and/or extend the frontiers; how frontiers were defined (often in a different way in rhetorical-ideological formulations than in practice); and how in certain areas frontier ideologies were created. The other main topic is the emergence of frontiers, how medieval people created frontiers to delimit areas, how they understood and described frontiers. The third theme is that of encounters, and a questioning of medieval attitudes to such encounters. To what extent did medieval observers see a frontier between themselves and other groups, and how does real interaction compare with ideological or narrative formulations of such interaction?

As periodical of the International Academy of the History of Medicine, this Clio Medica volume contains 10 papers.