BAPTIZING EUROPE, January 17th, 2008 article

[Benjachrist]

http://historycentral.wordpress.com/2008/0...edieval-europe/

Please keep all discussion of the article to this thread.

[Benjachrist]

To personally start one of these discussions let me congratulate you on a well written article first, and then go on with my 5-cents.

First of all let me say that I am not an expert on European history of this era. But I was wondering if there might be more sources for the creation of a European Identity (not hereby saying that you limit the sources to those included in your article). I'm thinking of a historian like Christian Meier who talks of the "Special European Path" (in his book From Athens to Auschwitz*) starting with the Athenian democracy. He argues that the democratic ideological and institutional heritage from the Athenian city state has had an immense influence on Europeans not only percieving themself as something different from the opposing world, but also actually being it. Then of course it can be argued whether or not those democratic values were present in medieval Europe outside Switzerland's cantons, and even here the acclaimed historian Mogens Herman Hansen, who's an expert on the subject, hasn't been able to find any links to the Athenian tradition**.



* "From Athens To Auschwitz" - Harvard University Press, 2005
** "Det athenske demokrati - og vores/The Athenian democracy - and ours" - Museum Tusculanum 2005

[Villums]

The sources are many and varied and I have, admitably, not read all of them. With my primary focus on Medieval Europe I can however recommend Jacques Le Goff's "The Medieval World"*, Sverre Bagge's "Europa tar form/Shaping Europe** and Bartlett's*** book, which complement each other very well. If one is searching for more graphic approach to the question, the "Atlas of Medieval Europe"**** is quite useful as it shows the reader the shifting territorial borders and migrations that occured after the fall of the Roman Empire.

* Le Goff, Jacques: "The Medieval World", London 1990

** Bagge, Sverre: "Europa tar form", Oslo 2004

*** Bartlett, Robert: "The Making of Europe", London 1994

**** Atlas of Medieval Europe, London 1999

[Benjachrist]

I thank you most humbly.

[Villums]

Should one be interested in reading Robert the Monk's account of Pope Urban's speech at Clermont in 1095 it can be found in part two of "Medieval Europe - A Short Sourcebook", New York 1997, p. 150.