This volume presents evidence of the extent and effects of intercultural contacts across Europe and the Mediterranean rim, opening up a new understanding of early medieval civilisation and its continuing influence in both Western and Eastern cultures today. From the perspectives of textual transmission, cultural memory, religion, art and cultural traditions, this work explores the central question of how ideas travelled in the medieval world, challenging the conventional notion of insular communities in the Middle Ages. Despite the schism between East and West that took hold after the thirteenth century this volume reveals a rich and extensive cultural exchange and demonstrates that transmission of ideas and culture across borders began much earlier than the Crusades. It contributes to new perspectives on medieval cities, Christian Europe's history with the Byzantine and Islamic Mediterranean, the landscape of power and the power-plays of the medieval Church, and the way in which cross-cultural transmission affected all of these areas.

Author Biography

David W. Kim is a research associate at the University of Sydney and lectures at Charles Sturt University in Sydney. He is currently a visiting fellow at the University of Edinburgh's Faculty of Divinity. Stephanie L. Hathaway has published and presented papers on medieval queens and chivalry, medieval German epic, and the Saracens. Her monograph volume Saracens and Conversion: Chivalric Ideals in Aliscans and Wolfram's Willehalm is forthcoming in 2012. She is currently lecturing at the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages at the University of Oxford, UK.