Ravenna

Its role in earlier medieval change and exchange

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• Publisher: University of London Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781909646148
• eBook ISBN:
  9781909646339
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: History

In the long-debated transition from late antiquity to the early middle ages, the city of Ravenna presents a story rich and strange. From the fourth century onwards it suffered decline in economic terms. Yet its geographical position, its status as an imperial capital, and above all its role as a connecting point between East and West, ensured that it remained an intermittent attraction for early medieval kings and emperors throughout the period from the late fifth to the eleventh century. Ravenna's story is all the more interesting because it was complicated and unpredictable: discontinuous and continuous, sometimes obscure, sometimes including bursts of energetic activity. Throughout the early medieval centuries its flame sometimes flared, sometimes flickered, but never went out.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of contributors
• List of illustrations
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. A tale of two cities: Rome and Ravenna under Gothic rule
• 2. Episcopal commemoration in late fifth-century Ravenna
• 3. Production, promotion and reception: the visual culture of Ravenna between late antiquity and the middle ages
• 4. Ravenna in the sixth century: the archaeology of change
• 5. The circulation of marble in the Adriatic Sea at the time of Justinian
• 6. Social instability and economic decline of the Ostrogothic community in the aftermath of the imperial victory: the papyri evidence
• 7. A striking evolution: the mint of Ravenna during the early middle ages
• 8. Roman law in Ravenna
• 9. The church of Ravenna, Constantinople and Rome in the seventh century
• 10. Nobility, aristocracy and status in early medieval Ravenna
• 11. Charlemagne and Ravenna
• 12. The early medieval naming-world of Ravenna, eastern Romagna and the Pentapolis
• 13. San Severo and religious life in Ravenna during the ninth and tenth centuries
• 14. Life and learning in earlier eleventh-century Ravenna: the evidence of Peter Damian’s letters
• 15. Culture and society in Ottonian Ravenna: imperial renewal or new beginnings?