A Short History of the Middle Ages Fourth Edition

One Prelude: The Roman World Transformed (c.300–c.600) IN THE THIRD CENTURY, the Roman Empire wrapped around the Mediterranean S ...

Map 1.1: TThe Roman Empire in the Third Century The Provincialization of the Empire (c.250–c.350) ...

The Roman Empire was too large to be ruled by one man in one place, except in peacetime. This became clear during the “crisis of ...

supply the army. To meet its demand for ready money, the Roman government debased the currency, increasing the proportion of inf ...

Palestine gave birth to religious groups of breathtaking originality. One coalesced around Jesus. After his death, under the imp ...

above all in times of crisis. At such moments the Romans feared that the gods were venting their wrath on the Empire because Chr ...

Map 1.2: Christian Churches Founded before the Great Persecution of Diocletian (303–304) This it received in 313, in the so-call ...

church council, the Council of Nicaea, in 325. There the assembled bishops hammered out some of the canon law and doctrines of t ...

was heresy—the wrong “choice” (the root meaning of the Greek term hairesis)—and a damnable faith. The Council of Nicaea wrote th ...

and what that meant for the rest of humanity. For these huge questions, Saint Augustine wrote most of the definitive answers for ...

The Eucharist was one potent source of God’s grace. There were others. Above all, there were certain people so beloved by God, s ...

dust near their tombs). Pious people knew this very well. They wanted access to these “special dead.” Rich and influential Roman ...

goat frolics. Shadowy shepherds and goats appear in the distance. The scene is based on observation of the natural world, here i ...

Plate 1.1: Mars and Venus, Pompeii (1st cent.). Venus, goddess of love and beauty, and Mars, god of war, are utterly absorbed in ...

Plate 1.2: Landscape, Pompeii (1st cent.). The Roman artist of this painting created the illusion of space, air, and light direc ...

Plate 1.3: A City Scene, Boscoreale (1st cent. BCE). In the bedroom of an extremely wealthy patron, an artist filled an entire w ...

Plate 1.4: Meleager on a Roman Sarcophagus (2nd cent.). This relief depicts part of the story of the hero Meleager, who awarded ...

who made these pieces valued decorative elements divorced from natural forms. The Jerusalem coffer plays with formal, solemn geo ...

interaction. Though Venus is attended by two water nymphs, they look straight out at the viewer, not at one another. They exist ...

Plate 1.6: Tombstone, near Carthage (2nd cent.?). The stiff, frontal figures on this relief show a delight in order, hierarchy, ...