IMC 2015: Sessions
Session 1225: Southern Italy in Context (10th-13th Centuries), II: Crossing Cultures
Wednesday 8 July 2015, 14.15-15.45
| Organiser: | Isabella Bolognese, School of Modern Languages and Cultures- University of Leeds |
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| Moderator/Chair: | Graham A. Loud, School of History, University of Leeds |
| Paper 1225-a | Manuel Komnenos's Attempted Restoration of Byzantine Power in Southern Italy (Language: English) Index terms: Byzantine Studies, Military History, Politics and Diplomacy |
| Paper 1225-b | Reform and Restoration in Frederick II's Policy towards Lay Lords (Language: English) Index terms: Administration, Law |
| Paper 1225-c | The Naples Book of Bishops: Historiography at the Dawn of the Middle Ages (Language: English) Index terms: Ecclesiastical History, Historiography - Medieval, Language and Literature - Latin, Theology |
| Abstract | This session will explore themes of continuity and change between the successive Byzantine, Norman, and Swabian rulers in southern Italy. Paper -a will examine the military campaign launched by Manuel Komnenos to recover land lost to the Normans in the 12th century, the reasons for undertaking the campaign and for its eventual failure. Paper -b will discuss the aims of Frederick II’s Assizes of Capua by analysing a selection of documents from the Norman abbey of Cava dei Tirreni. It will show that Frederick never explicitly used the concepts of 'reform' and 'renewal' in the corpus. On the contrary, he legitimized these laws as a way of restoring the bonos usus et consuetudines set by the former Norman kings. Paper -c attempts to deepen our understanding of how historiography came into existence at the beginning of the 9th century in southern Italy by exploring and analyzing the only surviving manuscript of the so-called Neapolitan chronicle of bishops. |