![]() ![]() Yersinia Pestis - a germ hiding inside the gut of a flea, perched on the fur of a rat - was unknowingly ferried by ships from Egypt to Constantinople in 542 AD. Rosen gives us a vivid account of the outbreak of the plague during the reign of Justinian. Justinian's Flea: Plague, Empire and the Birth of Europe , by William Rosen I've read some of these rich stories many times over, and they never fail to move me. It now seems like a miracle that such a remote, sparsely populated island could give birth to one of the world's great storytelling cultures. The Viking men and women of the sagas say and do extraordinary things, but the authors never tell us what they're thinking. They contain tales of love, death, power and revenge that were told for centuries until they were written down on calfskin vellum in the thirteenth century. Kari thinks these are the greatest stories ever written and I'm inclined to agree with him. The sagas are the stories of the first Viking families who settled on that remote island in the early Middle Ages. ![]() I was introduced to the sagas by my friend Kari Gislason, an Australian writer born in Iceland. She passed her days by writing a colourful history of her father's reign known as The Alexiad, and in doing so became the world's first female historian. The scheme was discovered and Anna was sent to live in a convent in the city. Anna hoped to succeed her father, but when the throne passed to her little brother instead, she plotted to overthrow him. ![]() Born in Constantinople as the daughter of Emperor Alexius Comnenus, Anna received a first-class education and administered a hospital for women, where she lectured in medicine. I adore this book.Īnna Comnena is one of my favourite people of the medieval world. But seen from the point of view of people living in Byzantium, Persia and Arabia, it was a time of invention and renewal, when the pulse of culture and conquest started to quicken. Previously, western historians had presented this transitional period as a slow and sad winding down of the glory of Rome. Peter Brown, with this hugely influential and beautifully written book, changed the way we see the crucial period between the decline of ancient Rome and the sudden emergence of the Arab empire in the mid seventh century. The World of Late Antiquity, by Peter Brown On the Riotous, Bloody Mess that is the Middle Ages ![]()
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