The Tarragona Vortex

This extensive bibliographic essay underpins the entire Tarragona Vortex study by focusing on this arena as one of the most contested frontiers in Western history, comparable to Jerusalem in the East, for broad issues of Romanization, Westernization, Islamization, and Christianization. Its book length chapters treat (1) diverse historiographies from local and Spanish to comparative Mediterranean and Crusade History, and especially Ethno-historiography and the explanatory concept of frontiers; (2) the phenomena of religion conversion and reform, and the conditioning agents of Islam and Latin Christianity in practice and adversity; (3) religious universalism and violence, especially religious war; (4) the Crusade and Reconquest paradigms and century-long debate; (5) the environment on land and sea, and setting for this History. Although these themes are explored to include due reconsideration but avoid major digressions in its telling about Tarragona and the Tarraconensis, they underly so much of Late-Antique and Medieval historical research that this discussion pertains to the whole field of historical, cultural, and religious studies.