Full name: The Sicilian Vespers: A History of the Mediterranean World in the Later Thirteenth Century

Author: Steven Runciman Year: 1958 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: History, Non Fiction Purchase/reserch links: LibraryThing Goodreads Amazon ISBNs: 9780521437745 0521437741

On 30 March 1282, as the bells of Palermo were ringing for Vespers, the Sicilian townsfolk, crying 'Death to the French', slaughtered the garrison and administration of their Angevin King. Seen in historical perspective it was not an especially big massacre: the revolt of the long-subjugated Sicilians might seem just another resistance movement. But the events of 1282 came at a crucial moment. Steven Runciman takes the Vespers as the climax of a great narrative sweep covering the whole of the Mediterranean in the thirteenth century. His sustained narrative power is displayed here with concentrated brilliance in the rise and fall of this fascinating episode. This is also an excellent guide to the historical background to Dante's Divine Comedy, forming almost a Who's Who of the political figures in it, and providing insight into their placement in Hell, Paradise or Purgatory. Similar books: The Fall of Constantinople 1453 by Steven Runciman The Assault on Jerusalem by Steven Runciman Time, Work, and Culture in the Middle Ages by Jacques Le Goff The Normans in Sicily by John Julius Norwich Those Terrible Middle Ages by Regine Pernoud Chivalry by Maurice Keen The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century by Charles Homer Haskins Intellectuals in the Middle Ages by Jacques Le Goff Feudal Society, Volume 1: The Growth of Ties of Dependence by Marc Bloch On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State by Joseph R. Strayer Medieval Cities by Henri Pirenne Medieval Civilization by Jacques Le Goff Terry Jones' Medieval Lives by Terry Jones Chronicles of the Age of Chivalry by Elizabeth Hallam The Three Orders by Georges Duby Medieval World by Jane Bingham The Civilization of the Middle Ages by Norman F. Cantor Dead Wake by Erik Larson One Summer: America, 1927 by Bill Bryson Six Frigates by Ian W. Toll