Croatia in the Early Middle Ages: A Cultural Survey (Croatia & Europe, Culture, Art) [Hardcover]

Ivan Supicic (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 2, 2003 | ISBN-10: 0856674990 | ISBN-13: 978-0856674990

This volume presents 30 highly illustrated essays charting a cultural survey of Croatia from the 7th to the end of the 12th century. Richly illustrated with colour plates, maps, plans, and diagrams, it provides a major new resource for all those seeking to gain a broad understanding of the medieval world in central Europe and the Adriatic region before the Ottoman invasions.

Since the mid-nineties, the republic of Croatia has taken its place among the independent nations of Europe, and its strong cultural identity is becoming better understood. As a result, the Croatian academy of Sciences and Arts, based in Zagreb, has embarked on an ambitious five-volume history of Croatian culture, commissioning essays on the arts and sciences from over 100 leading specialists in the field. Throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the relationship between Croatia and Western Europe was very close, with many important artists moving freely between them. Visitors to Zagreb and the Dalmatian Coast have long enjoyed the opportunity of sampling the enormous wealth and variety of Croatian art and architecture, and these volumes make the achievements of this ancient but inadequately understood area of Europe readily accessible for the first time.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 624 pages
• Publisher: Philip Wilson Publishers (May 2, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0856674990
• ISBN-13: 978-0856674990
• Product Dimensions: 12 x 9.4 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,557,455 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read for Historians, April 4, 2000

By 

Mrs. Hilda M. Foley (Santa Ana, Ca. USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Croatia in the Early Middle Ages: A Cultural Survey (Croatia & Europe, Culture, Art) (Hardcover)

An excellent and easy to read book that should be available in all universities and libraries world-wide for scholars and anyone interested in studying the history of Europe's Middle Ages. Croatia as a country and nation has been sadly ignored by most historians, even though it is one of the oldest continuously existing countries in Europe. There has been a Croatia since its people appeared in the 7th century and settled in about the same land as today's Croatia. First a Principality, then a kingdom in the Middle Ages, it kept its identity and a Parliament throughout its history, in spite of the take-over, first by Hungary, then Austro-Hungary and finally by incorporation into Yugoslavia in the last century. Today Croatia is a sovereign country again and its history should finally be acknowledged. This book serves as an important part of such confirmation.

4 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars much interesting detail -- presenting one large untruth, March 5, 2008

By 

Dr. Michael T. Pearse "Meic Pearse" (Houghton, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Croatia in the Early Middle Ages: A Cultural Survey (Croatia & Europe, Culture, Art) (Hardcover)

This massive, impressively illustrated tome is the first in a projected series, begun in the late 1990s. The origins of the work -- that is, its commissioning by the Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences during the Tudj'man years and the immediate aftermath of the break-up of Yugoslavia -- are crucial to understanding the book's central purpose. That purpose is to demonstrate that there has 'always' (OK, since the early Middle Ages) been a 'Croatian nation'. The reading of the past is designed to provide an undergirding for modern Croatian statehood and nationalism.

The result is a book full of fascinating antiquarian information, yet significantly blighted by a didacticism scarcely less dreary than that of the Academy's immediate Communist predecessors. To be fair, the interpretation of the data presented can be interesting, at the micro-level, at least. But the reader must bear constantly in mind that he/she is being led by the hand to read back modern nationalist categories into a distant past that was, in actual fact, innocent of them.