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Historian and author Judith Herrin has won the £5,000 2020 Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize for historical work Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe (Allen Lane).
The book explores how in the early Middle Ages, scholars, lawyers, doctors, craftsmen, cosmologists and religious luminaries were drawn to Ravenna, where they created a cultural and political capital that dominated northern Italy and the Adriatic.
The synopsis states: "As she traces the lives of Ravenna's rulers, chroniclers and inhabitants, Herrin shows how the city became the meeting place of Greek, Latin, Christian and barbarian cultures, and the pivot between East and West. The book offers a fresh account of the waning of Rome, the Gothic and Lombard invasions, the rise of Islam and the devastating divisions within Christianity. It argues that the fifth to eighth centuries should not be perceived as a time of decline from antiquity but rather, thanks to Byzantium, as one of great creativity; the period of 'Early Christendom'. These were the formative centuries of Europe.
"While Ravenna's palaces have crumbled, its churches have survived. In them, Catholic Romans and Arian Goths competed to produce an unrivalled concentration of spectacular mosaics, many of which still astonish visitors today. Beautifully illustrated with specially commissioned photographs, and drawing on the latest archaeological and documentary discoveries, Ravenna: Capital of Empire, Crucible of Europe brings the early Middle Ages to life through the history of this dazzling city."
Artemis Cooper, chair of the jury, said: “The early Medieval mosaics of Ravenna still dazzle us today, but while little of its early history remains, the Byzantine scholar Judith Herrin has consulted sources from all over Europe to piece it together. In this beautifully written and gorgeously illustrated book, she reveals a city that was a melting pot of Greek, Latin, Christian and Barbarian cultures, and a vital pivot between the rival worlds of Rome and Constantinople.”
The prize of £5,000 will be presented informally in 2021, as it was last year, in view of the continuing Covid-19 restrictions.
Now administered by New College, Oxford, the first Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize was made in 1956 to Alan Moorehead for his book Gallipoli, and has been awarded annually ever since.