Download PDF | Kenneth M. Setton - The Papacy and the Levant, 1204-1571 (Vol.1-3) The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (1976-84)
Vol.1 523 Pages, Vol.2 590 Pages
Vol.3 575 Pages,Vol.4 624 Pages
THIS is the first of three volumes, the product Tof almost twenty years' effort and fourteen voyages paléographiques to Italian archives. The remaining two volumes, now nearly finished, will (I trust) make their appearance in due time. They were not easy to write, which is one of the reasons they are not easy to read, especially the first seven or eight chapters of the present volume.
I have worked like a mosaicist- appropriate for one whose studies take him to Byzantium-fitting sometimes broken tesserae into their topical and chronological place. Over the years the writing has been done at the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania, the University of Wis- consin, and the Institute for Advanced Study, and in Rome, in Venice, and at the Gennadeion in Athens.
I have thus not always had access to the same edition of, for example, Raynaldus's Annales ecclesiastici, but I trust that my references in the footnotes are clear, and that my occasional use of different editions will cause the reader no inconvenience. While working on these volumes, I have often thought (as I do now in jotting down this preface) of the shortness of human life and the transi- tory possession of The and downs power. ups of fortune depicted in this volume provide ample grounds for such reflections.
As the historian clears away the snows of yesteryear, he opens up the approach to the hovels of the poor as well as to the palaces of the great. Entering their dwellings, reading their documents, he can often observe their personal hopes and fears, ambi- tions and frustrations, successes and defeats. The makers of history, great and small, are short- lived in every generation. Death soon overtakes them. And yet, whatever the disorder and vio- lence of their lives, the historian can see them all in a grand procession.
This I have sought to do. While I have not hesitated to expose the reader to a good deal of detail, always drawn from the sources and (after the thirteenth cen- tury) often from unpublished sources, I have tried not to lose sight of this panorama. In addition to the main political and diplo- matic concerns of this volume, which is essen- tially a history of the later crusades (to the year 1400), I have dealt in passing with various items-crusading propaganda, relevant ecclesi- astical and feudal lawsuits, the postal service of the fourteenth century, social conditions in papal
Avignon, and even such trivia as fashions in foot- wear. Here and there I have been at pains to note the theological and intellectual differences which separated the Greek East from the Latin West as well as certain social changes which took place from one generation to the next. I could hardly resist depicting the needs and tastes of the times as shown by the shopping sprees of Amadeo VI of Savoy in Venice and Negroponte, Constantinople and Pera (in 1366-1367).
Such matters of economic interest as papal finance, the costs of the later crusades, Mediterranean com- merce, and Venetian shipping practices loom - large in the following pages. Homely examples culled from the sources are usually more illus- trative of the social life of the Latins in the Levant after the Fourth Crusade than generaliza- =tions drawn from modern assumptions. We per- =ceive the Greek attitude toward the invaders when, shortly after the crusade, the peasants and townsmen of Gravia beat up Master Hugo, the Latin archdeacon of Daulia.
The continued poverty of the Latin hierarchy in Greece is clear when, almost two centuries after the conquest, a titular bishop of Megara had to leave "a box full of books" with two Greek moneylenders as surety for the twenty ducats he had borrowed for the hire of two horses he needed. In an era in which an accomplished scholar often confines his studies to a generation or a half century in the past, I can only ask the indulgence of such a specialist for the errors and oversights which my temerity has made in- evitable.
I have done the best I could, and have incurred many debts in the doing. Most of them are indicated in the footnotes. It is a pleasure, however, to express my indebtedness to Mons. Martino Giusti, the prefect, to Mons. Hermann Hoberg, the vice-prefect, and to Mr. Sergio Damiani of the Archivio Segreto Vaticano and to the always helpful archivists and officials of the Archivi di Stato of Florence, Mantua, Milan, Modena, Siena, and especially Venice, to the last of which archives I have made an almost annual pilgrimage for years.
I am happy to express my obligation to Dr.George W. Corner, the executive officer and editor, and to Miss Marie A. Richards, the as- sociate editor, of the American Philosophical Society, for their assistance, and to Miss Margaret C. Nolan, Mrs. Loretta Freiling, Miss Susan Babbitt, and Mrs. Jean T. Carver for typing or proofreading. Mrs. Carver has typed and re- typed the final version of the entire manuscript and read the proofs of the entire volume. To Dr. Harry W. Hazard, my fellow editor of A History of the Crusades, I am under especial obligation.
He has read this and parts of the two following volumes, offered innumerable sugges- tions of fact, style, and organization, and per- formed the herculean task of making the Index. I only wish that our association of twenty-five years could have been half as profitable to him as it has been to me. My wife has read both the typescript and the proofs, and removed many an awkward expression. Dedication of the volume to her is slight recognition of the time and effort she has expended on the text. Among my larger debts are those which I owe the Institute for Advanced Study for the oppor- tunity to continue my work with few interrup- tions and for a generous subsidy to help pay the costs of printing.
I am most grateful also to the American Philosophical Society for under- taking the considerable task of publication. The inadequacies of the work I claim for myself. Princeton, N.J. 15 March, 1976. е , K. M. S.
Link
0 التعليقات :
إرسال تعليق