Texts in Context: The Chalice and the Sword
The thirteenth century was the high noon of Christendom; which also means it is when its light began to decline.
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religion
Texts in Context: An Examination of the Holy Office
The Inquisition might be the single most faultily-understood institution in history; and yet there is a core of truth in all the errors about it.
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Texts in Context: The Apostolic Poverty Movement
One of the most potent forces throughout medieval society was the apostolic poverty movement, heretical and orthodox by turns; but what was it?
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Texts in Context: The Great Estrangement
The Early Middle Ages faintly, but insistently, filed away at the integrity of Christendom; as they drew to a close, it gave way with a snap.
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Texts in Context: Varangians and Vinlanders
In the tenth century, northern Europe (with exceptions and false starts) is seen at last to enter the circle of post-Classical civilization.
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Texts in Context: The Realignment of the Eight Century
The Roman Empire—not as a concrete state, but as an idea—was about to take on quite a different shape.
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Texts in Context: The Surrender
Texts in Context:The Surrender By Gabriel Blanchard Into the established dichotomies of the Græco-Roman West and the Syro-Persian East, suddenly, out of the south, something new leapt forth
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Texts in Context: The Song of the Desert
The defining institution of antiquity had been the forum; that of early modernity would, perhaps, be a school. The path from the one to the other ran through a cloister.
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Texts in Context: The Long Dusk of Antiquity
Texts in Context:The Long Dusk of Antiquity By Gabriel Blanchard The ancient world—from the morning glow on the Bronze Age, through the high noon of Periclean Athens and
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Texts in Context: Once, Now, and Forever
You can say what you like about the Emperor Nero. … No really, go ahead. The bloke’s dead, he can’t stop you.
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