Rome Global Gateway Conference: "Knighthood, Crusades, and Diplomacy in the Eastern Mediterranean at the Time of King Peter I of Cyprus"

Knighthood, Crusades, and Diplomacy in the Eastern Mediterranean at the time of King Peter I of Cyprus
October 14-16, 2016
Rome Global Gateway

Jointly sponsored by the Medieval Institute of the University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame Global Gateway in Rome, and Notre Dame Institute for the study of the Liberal Arts.

This conference focuses on a fascinating and multifaceted figure in the history of the crusades and the late medieval Eastern Mediterranean, King Peter I Lusignan of Cyprus (1328-1369). King Peter's Alexandrian crusade of 1365 was a decisive moment in the history of the later crusades,which left its imprint on a wide range of European, Levantine, and Muslim literary sources. The 650th anniversary of this event provides the international scholarly community with an occasion to reconsider both the broader historical context of this event and King Peter I's reign in general. Interpretation of the medieval Eastern Mediterranean, a hub of cross-cultural interaction, requires interdisciplinary approaches involving documents and narratives written in Latin, French, Italian, Greek, Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and other languages. With this multicultural perspective, this conference aims at contextualizing King Peter I and his deeds within the broader political, institutional, socio-economic, and intellectual developments of the Eastern Mediterranean in the fourteenth century.