Christian Identity Formation Across the Elbe in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries: 1 (Christianity and Conversion in Scandinavia and the Baltic Region, c. 800-1600) - Hardcover

Dragnea

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1433184311 ISBN 13: 9781433184314

Publisher: Peter Lang, 2021

Synopsis

This book addresses the conversion of the Wends, and how Christian writers of the tenth and eleventh centuries perceived the submission of the Wends to the Christian faith. The main concern of the ecclesiastical authorities was to bring the apostate Wends back into the imperium Christianum: everyone who had accepted Christian baptism had to be prevented by all possible means from religious and political apostasy. More widely, the formation of a Christian identity is an excellent example of how conversion was a fluid set of propositions, discussed and rehearsed, influenced by many factors (not just canonical), and deployed in many contexts. This book’s task is to unravel how this dynamism played out against a marginal group.

Reviewed in English by Aleksander Paroń, Speculum, Vol. 99, No. 2 (2024): 567-568; Miroslav Atanasov, Religious Studies Review, Vol. 49, No. 3 (2023): 39; in German by Felix Biermann, Baltische Studien. Pommersche Jahrbücher für Landesgeschichte, Vol. 108 (2022): 201-203; in English by Antoni Grabowski, Acta Poloniae Historica, Vol. 125 (2022): 206-262, Marian Dygo, Zapiski Historyczne, Vol. 87, No. 4 (2022): 145-151, David Kalhous, Historia Slavorum Occidentis, Vol. 1, No. 32 (2022): 186-188 and Tomislav Galović, Journal of the Institute of Croatian History, Vol. 53, No. 2 (2021): 316-318; in Czech by Jaroslav Vokoun, Studia Theologica, Vol. 23, No. 4, (2021): 155-157; in Slovenian by Simon Malmenvall, Bogoslovni vestnik, Vol. 81, No. 1, 2021, pp. 250-252).

About this title

About the Author

Mihai Dragnea (PhD 2018) is associate researcher at the University of South-Eastern Norway, president of the Balkan History Association, and editor of Hiperboreea, the journal affiliated with the association. His interests and collaboration include cultural, social and political relations between Germans, Scandinavians and Wends during the High Middle Ages; the Viking Age; early Slavic ethnicity and state formation; and identity and conflict in the Balkans. His PhD dissertation entitled Mission Crusade in the Wendish Territory, 12th Century was published in Romanian (2019). A second short format book The Wendish Crusade, 1147: The Development of Crusading Ideology in the Twelfth Century was published in 2019.

Edition details

• Publisher: Peter Lang
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1433184311
• ISBN 13: 9781433184314
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 130