Derek Baker – författare

In the Roman Empire, relations between East and West meant connections between the eastern and western parts of a unified structure of empire. Romans sometimes complained about the corrupting influence on their city of Greeks and Orientals, but they employed Greek tutors to educate their sons. People did not think of the eastern and western parts of the empire as being separate entities whose relations with each other must be the object of careful study. Even at the moment of the empire's birth, there was a clear idea of where the Latin West ended and the Greek East began. This began to change with Constantine, when the Roman Empire was split in two, with Rome itself in decay.This volume, first published in 1973, derives from a colloquium on medieval history held at Edinburgh University. Its theme was the fl uctuating balance-of-power of Latin West and Greek East, Rome and Constantinople. The book starts with Justinian's attempt to reunite the two halves of the old Roman Empire and then goes on to consider the polarization of Christianity into its Catholic and Orthodox sectors, and the misunderstandings fostered by the Crusades; and ends with the growing power and conquests of Islam in the fourteenth century.The contributions included in Relations between East and West in the Middle Ages are: Old and New Rome in the Age of Justinian, by W. H. C. Frend; The Tenth Century in Byzantine-Western Relationships, by Karl Leyser; William of Tyre, by R. H. C. Davis; Cultural Relations between East and West in the Twelfth Century, by Anthony Bryer; Innocent III and the Greeks, Aggressor or Apostle? by Joseph Gill; Government in Latin Syria and the Commercial Privileges of Foreign Merchants, by Jonathan Riley-Smith; and Dante and Islam, by R. W. Southern.

This eighth volume of Studies in Church History contains twenty-six papers read at two recent meetings of the Ecclesiastical History Society. Popular religion, in theory and practice, within established religious forms and outside them, against a background of acceptance or of controversy, is examined in studies ranging from Professor Momigliano's analysis of the attitude of the later Roman historians to Professor Latreille's discussion of popular piety in modern France. A number of papers focus on the attitudes to sanctity and relics in the central Middle Ages. There is also a significant and wide-ranging discussion centred on the theme of the Presidential Address: post-Reformation popular religion both in its local and general setting. These contributions clearly demonstrate the significance of current research into social and economic influences upon popular faith, practice and allegiance, and indicate the large areas and difficult problems which require further research.

The thirty papers which comprise this volume are selected from those delivered at the summer and winter conferences of the Ecclesiastical History Society in 1971 and 1972. The volume opens with three important, wide ranging surveys of the nature and types of religious orthodoxy and dissent in the early Christian centuries. A further group of papers considers the emergence and treatment of earlier medieval heresies, while a number of contributions concerned with Lollardy have their focus in M. J. Wilks' examination of relations between Wyclif and Hus. For developments in more modern times K.T. Ware supplies a wider perspective to a rich and varied series of papers on more familiar matters in British, Continental and American history. In this volume, considerable attention is paid to the relationship of movements of protest and dissent to their social, intellectual, cultural and political backgrounds: in this many of the authors reflect the interest in 'religious sociology' which characterises much contemporary Continental work in the field of ecclesiastical history.

Primary source material - 149 items, with 47 illustrations - cover the political, ecclesiastical and social history of Plantagenet England, from the reign of Edward III to that of Richard II. Arrangement by topic covers King and Government, The Church, Land and People.