Rome across Time and Space: Cultural Transmission and the Exchange of Ideas, c.500-1400

Description

Medieval Rome was uniquely important, both as a physical city and as an idea with immense cultural capital, encapsulating the legacy of the ancient Empire, the glorious world of the martyrs and the triumph of Christian faith. Rome across Time and Space explores these twin dimensions of 'place' and 'idea' and analyses Rome's role in the transmission of culture throughout the Middle Ages. Ranging widely over liturgy, architecture, sculpture and textual history, the authors focus on the mutual enrichment derived from the exchange of ideas and illuminate how cultural exchanges between Rome and its 'neighbours' (Byzantium, Italy, England and France), and within Rome (between Ancient and early Christian Rome and the medieval city) worked as catalysts for change, both to shape the medieval city and to help construct the medieval idea of Rome itself. The result is a rich and original perspective on a beguiling city with enduring appeal.

Claudia Bolgia is Lecturer in the History of European Art at the University of Edinburgh. She has written extensively about medieval Rome and its historical and intellectual context in a range of international journals, and is on the Advisory Board for the e-journal Art in Translation. Rosamond McKitterick is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College. Her previous publications include History and Memory in the Carolingian World (Cambridge University Press, 2004), Perceptions of the Past in the Early Middle Ages (2006) and Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity (Cambridge University Press, 2008). John Osborne is Professor of Art History at Carleton University, Ottawa. He is a medievalist and cultural historian who has published widely on the art and architecture of Rome and Venice between the third and sixteenth centuries.

'With its clearly defined questions, and its innovative papers, [Rome across Time and Space] proves to be an extremely useful compass that will help you navigate whether you are going towards or coming from Rome ... it diversifies and refreshes our understanding of the idea(s) of Rome prevailing in the Middle Ages ... a volume worthwhile reading both for its individual papers and for the overarching concept.' Reka Forrai, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 'This book offers the latest word on a range of subjects: the early Liber Pontificalis, the Gelasianum, the abbey church of St Denis, Charlemagne's columns, and the Vatican Job manuscript, to name a few. It shows the people of medieval Rome to have been highly literary, historically aware and politically savvy, and that that cultural sophistication proved influential beyond the Aurelian Wall.' Caroline Goodson, Early Medieval Europe