Introduction

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the unpublished articles by Ernst Kantorowicz. Kantorowicz is customarily understood to have been a medieval historian, but this characterization fails to recognize his astounding chronological range. Seven articles range over a span of eighteen centuries: “Synthronos” refers mainly to the Hellenistic era, with a glance at Pharaonic Egypt and culminating with early Christianity; “Roman Coins” mainly to the Roman period; “Coronation Scenarios” mainly to early Byzance. After that, “Charles the Bald” concentrates on a later Carolingian ruler; “Roma and the Coal” on an event in Rome that took place in the year 1000. “Late-Medieval State Imagery” deals mainly with the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; and “The Dukes of Burgundy and the Italian Renaissance” treats the reign of Charles the Bold (1467–1477). Lest we think that Kantorowicz's range stopped in the fifteenth century, one might add that “Postage Stamps and the Historian” ventures to refer to the Napoleonic era and to postage stamps from the 1850s to the 1940s. As the chronological range of the pieces offered here is astounding, so is the diverse range of source materials. The chapter then considers Kantorowicz's polymathic erudition and his exploration of “radiations.”