"The Saint and the Emir: Christian-Muslim Encounters in Early Medieval Italy"
Within the incredibly diverse political, cultural, and linguistic landscape of early medieval southern Italy, Muslims lived and worked alongside Christians (both Latin and Greek) and Jews. While most of the medieval texts that record the interactions between these various religious communities highlight the violence of raids and attacks, other accounts, such as the Italo-Greek hagiographies, reveal surprising moments of détente and even peaceful cooperation between Muslims and Christians. This talk will discuss both aspects of the Muslim-Christian encounter—the violent and the peaceful—in order to sketch a more complete picture of the relationships between these two cultures in early medieval Italy.
Dr. Davis-Secord is Associate Professor of History in the Department of History at the University of New Mexico.
