Book at Lunchtime: Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe

TORCH Book at Lunchtime webinar on Ravenna: Capital of Empire,
Crucible of Europe written by Professor Judith Herrin. Date: 4
November 2020. Book at Lunchtime
https://www.torch.ox.ac.uk/book-at-lunchtime is a series of
bite-sized book discussions held weekly during term-time, with
commentators from a range of disciplines. The events are free to
attend and open to all. About the book: From 402 AD until 751 AD,
Ravenna was first the capital of the Western Roman Empire, then
that of the immense kingdom of Theoderic the Goth and finally the
centre of Byzantine power in Italy. In Ravenna: Capital of Empire,
Crucible of Europe, Judith Herrin explains how scholars, lawyers,
doctors, craftsmen, cosmologists and religious luminaries were
drawn to Ravenna where they created a cultural and political
capital that dominated northern Italy and the Adriatic. As she
traces the lives of Ravenna's rulers, chroniclers and inhabitants,
Herrin shows how the city became the meeting place of Greek, Latin,
Christian and barbarian cultures and the pivot between East and
West. The book offers a fresh account of the waning of Rome, the
Gothic and Lombard invasions, the rise of Islam and the devastating
divisions within Christianity. It argues that the fifth to eighth
centuries should not be perceived as a time of decline from
antiquity but rather, thanks to Byzantium, as one of great
creativity - the period of 'Early Christendom'. These were the
formative centuries of Europe. Author Judith Herrin won the
Heineken Prize for History (the 'Dutch Nobel Prize') in 2016 for
her pioneering work on the early Medieval Mediterranean world,
especially the role of Byzantium, the influence of Islam and the
significance of women. She is the author of Byzantium: The
Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire, The Formation of Christendom,
A Medieval Miscellany and Women in Purple. Herrin worked in
Birmingham, Paris, Munich, Istanbul and Princeton before becoming
Professor of Late Antique and Byzantine Studies at King's College
London until 2008, where she is now the Constantine Leventis
Visiting Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Classics.
Panel: Peter Frankopan is Professor of Global History at Oxford
University, where he is also Senior Research Fellow at Worcester
College and Stavros Niarchos Foundation Director of the Oxford
Centre for Byzantine Research. He works on the history of the
Mediterranean, Russia, the Middle East, Persia/Iran, Central Asia
and beyond, and on relations between Christianity and Islam. His
books The Silk Roads (2015) and The New Silk Roads (2018) received
huge acclaim. He writes regularly for the international press,
advises governments on geopolitics, and is chair of this year's
Cundill History Prize. Professor Dame Averil Cameron was Warden of
Keble College, Oxford from 1994-2010, and before that Professor of
Late Antique and Byzantine History at King's College London where
she was also the first Director of the Centre for Hellenic Studies.
She has been President of CBRL (Council for British Research in the
Levant) and FIEC (Fédération internationale des associations
d'études classiques) and is currently President of the Society for
the Promotion of Byzantine Studies. Dr Conrad Leyser is Associate
Professor of History at Oxford and a Fellow and Tutor of History at
Worcester College. He specialises in the religious and social
history of the Latin West in late Antiquity and the early Middle
Ages (300-1100). His current research project centres on celibacy
and the professionalisation of the priesthood in the so-called
'unreformed' Church of the tenth century. He is the author of
Authority and Asceticism from Augustine to Gregory the Great and
the co-editor of England and the Continent in the Tenth Century.