Tomaz Mastnak's provocative analysis of the roots of peacemaking in the Western world elucidates struggles for peace that took place in the high and late Middle Ages. Mastnak traces the ways that eleventh-century peace movements, seeking to end violence among Christians, shaped not only power structures within Christendom but also the relationship of the Western Christian world to the world outside. The unification of Christian society under the banner of "holy peace" precipitated a fundamental division between the Christian and non-Christian worlds, and the postulated peace among Christians led to holy war against non-Christians.
Tomaz Mastnak is Director of Research at the Institute of Philosophy of the Center for Scientific Research at the Slovene Academy of Sciences and Arts in Ljubljana.
"An outstanding work that successfully engages a historical phenomenon of major influence on our lives today and also looks into one of the more treacherous aspects of human thought and behavior... Mastnak shows, in a robust and convincing fashion, that the crusades and the peace movement were two faces of the same coin and analyzes in compelling detail how this dynamic played itself out from the eleventh through the fourteenth centuries."—Michael A. Sells, author of The Bridge Betrayed
"An enormously important contribution to understanding how Western Europe defined itself as Christendom and then acted on that understanding to shape new and hostile relations with other parts of the world."—Gabrielle M. Spiegel, author of The Past as Text
420 pp.6 x 9
9780520226357$68.95|£58.00Hardcover
Feb 2002