The Sixth Century: The West Goes Its Own Way

2007 ◽  
pp. 27-52
Author(s):  
Lynette Olson
Keyword(s):  
Sixth Century ◽  
The West

“In what has been allowed to them, [the Jews] should not sustain any prejudice.”

2020 ◽  
pp. 315-341
Author(s):  
Ross Shepard Kraemer
Keyword(s):  
Public Life ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
The West ◽  
Gregory The Great ◽  
Anti Jewish

In the West, Arian Gothic administrations seem less interested in the active anti-Jewish programs of their Nicene counterparts and less susceptible to the pressures of Nicene bishops. Jewish advisors, such as one Symmachus, served in the court of Theoderic. Gregory of Tours recounts how his catholic colleague, Avitus of Clermont, forced Jews in sixth-century Clermont to convert—strikingly reminiscent of the account about events on Minorca. In Gregory’s writings, synagogues are sometimes attacked, yet Jews participate in public life in major towns like Orleans. The late sixth-century letters of Gregory the Great depict a landscape still populated by unconverted Jews, dissident Christians, and recalcitrant practitioners of ancestral religions. They provide glimpses of Christian attacks on synagogues and Jewish rights, complexities of life for often impoverished newly converted Jews, and strategies to evade restrictions on Jewish slaveholding. Gregory advocated kindness and persuasion, rather than violence and coercion, but his relatively irenic stance toward Jews would not prevail.

The West Court at Perachora

1967 ◽  
Vol 62 ◽  
pp. 353-371
Author(s):  
J. J. Coulton
Keyword(s):  
Short Distance ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
East Side ◽  
The South ◽  
The West ◽  
Rock Face ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
South West ◽  
East And West

About 10 metres south-west of the sixth-century temple of Hera Akraia at Perachora, and nearly due west of the little harbour lies the small courtyard previously known as the ‘Agora’. Since its purpose is not known, it will here be non-committally referred to as the West Court. It was first excavated in 1932, and more fully, under the supervision of J. K. Brock, in 1933, but it was not entirely cleared until 1939, and it was at that time that the Roman house which stood in the middle of the court was demolished. The West Court is discussed briefly (under the name of ‘Agora’) in Perachora 1 and in the preliminary reports of the Perachora excavations. Short supplementary excavations were carried out in 1964 and 1966 to examine certain points of the structure.In shape the West Court is an irregular pentagon, about 24 metres from north to south and the same from east to west (Fig. 1; Plate 91 a, b). It is enclosed on the west, north, and on part, at least, of the east side by a wall of orthostates on an ashlar foundation. For a short distance on either side of the south corner, the court is bounded by a vertically dressed rock face which is extended to the north-east and west by walls of polygonal masonry. At the south-west corner the west orthostate wall butts against the polygonal wall, which continues for about 0·80 m. beyond it and then returns north for about 8 metres behind it.

Philosophy, Hagiology and the Early Byzantine Origins of Purgatory

2009 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 41-51
Author(s):  
Matthew J. Dal Santo
Keyword(s):  
Status Quo ◽  
The Body ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Post Mortem ◽  
The West ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Early Byzantine

On 8 June 1438, the Council of Ferrara-Florence began proceedings aimed at the reunion of the Eastern and Western Churches. One of the first issues discussed was the Latin doctrine of purgatory. This article examines a particular moment in the divergence of eschatological doctrine between the Latin, Greek and Syriac Churches – indeed, representatives of the West Syrian ‘Jacobites’ and East Syrian ‘Nestorians’ were at Ferrara too. It argues that a debate concerning the post mortem activity of the saints proved crucial for the formation of various Christian eschatological orthodoxies. The catalyst for this debate was the sixth-century revival of Aristotelian philosophy, especially Aristotelian psychology which emphasized the soul’s dependence on the body. This threatened the cult of the saints and the Church’s sacramental ‘care of the dead’. Defenders of the hagiological and cultic status quo rejected Aristotle’s claims and asserted the full post mortem activity of the soul after separation from the body by developing a novel doctrine of immediate post mortem judgement. This led to the formulation of eschatological opinions which, if not normative in their day, came to be considered so by later generations. One of these ideas was post mortem purgation.

The Magi and the Star

2020 ◽  
pp. 212-223
Author(s):  
D. H. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Country Of Origin ◽  
Illuminated Manuscripts ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
The West ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The World

Matthew’s account of the Magi (magoi) is unique in the Bible and has led to a great many questions about their identity and what we should make of the ‘star’ that prompted their trip in the first place and led them to Christ. Exactly when Christian writers first ascribed the Magi as kings is unknown, but attribution of royalty to the Magi appears to have been established by the onset of the sixth century. Thereafter, the three ‘kings’ become commonplace in European illuminated manuscripts and art. Although it is generally assumed that the Magi were three in number, because they presented three gifts, three is not the only accounting. In the later Eastern sources, especially in Syria, the names of twelve Magi are also listed. But in the West, three names prevailed: Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, with different spellings. By Late Antiquity, it was commonly thought that each of the Magi had a separate country of origin: each one signified one of the three parts of the world—Africa, Asia, and Europe—and that these were linked with the sons of Noah, who fathered the three races of Earth. Writers perpetuated this construct through the medieval period.

‘Instructing readers’ minds in heavenly matters’: Carolingian History Writing and Christian Education

2019 ◽  
Vol 55 ◽  
pp. 56-71
Author(s):  
Robert A. H. Evans
Keyword(s):  
Christian Education ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
History Writing ◽  
The West ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Historia Ecclesiastica ◽  
Late Roman

This article explores the ways in which histories were used in the moral and doctrinal education of Christian elites in the West from the late Roman to the Carolingian periods. In the sixth century, Cassiodorus wrote that histories, whether Christian or not, were useful for ‘instructing the minds of readers in heavenly matters’. How far was this characteristic of the period? Traditionally, scholars have emphasized either the apologetic purpose or the moral of specific histories, such as Orosius'sHistoriaeor Bede'sHistoria Ecclesiastica. Few modern scholars, however, have examined the long-term development of history writing as a vehicle for Christian education during the transformation of the Roman world. Those who have done, such as Karl-Ferdinand Werner and Hans-Werner Goetz, have emphasized continuity rather than change. The article sketches some of the changes and continuities across the period. In particular, it demonstrates that there was a shift from the apologetic concerns of the fifth-century historians, writing to educate Christians from pagan backgrounds, to the doctrinal (as much as moral) concerns of Frankish historians, emerging from the Carolingian Renaissance.

Expressions of the Elites

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Hinton
Keyword(s):  
Olive Oil ◽  
Cultural Differences ◽  
West Coast ◽  
Good Evidence ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Similar Distribution ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
The West ◽  
Loire Valley

Because both Gildas and Bede wrote of mutual antipathy between Britons and Anglo-Saxons, it used to be thought self-evident that their hostility was expressed by the cultural differences that appear so obvious in the formers’ Christianity, Celtic speech, hillforts, and unfurnished graves, and the latters’ cremations, furnished inhumations, sunken-featured buildings, great squareheaded brooches, and the like. Different ideas about the adaptations that had to be made to meet changing circumstances have led to reappraisals of extreme positions about racial exclusiveness, however, and emphasis is now placed on the ways that people created new identities rather than on how they inherited one of two alternative dichotomies. The spread of furnished graves westwards and northwards in the second half of the sixth century could be taken as evidence of further waves of immigrants from the continent, but at least as likely is that existing populations were changing their practices as new conditions developed. In the west and north, the most visible change in the archaeological record after the middle of the sixth century is the disappearance of Mediterranean imported pottery from hillforts and other sites, replaced by southern French wares, implying that wine and olive oil shipped in wooden casks from the Loire valley and Bordeaux replaced Greek and African supplies sent in clay amphoras. As with the earlier bowls and dishes, the assumption is that much of the pottery was ‘associative’, sought after because it was seen as appropriate to use at feasts when luxuries were offered by a host. Unlike the earlier imports, however, in the seventh century there were also open-topped jars that seem to have been used as containers, presumably for dry goods as liquids would have slopped out. Some were used for cooking. The French seventh-century pottery, now called E-ware, is a little more often found than are the earlier wares; its absence from South Cadbury is good evidence that that site went out of use c.600, despite its former importance—a sign of the continued instability of the period. Just as none of the Mediterranean imported pottery had reached places far from the west coast, so too the French wares did not pass inland, or up the English Channel. Imports of glass have a broadly similar distribution, although dating is more difficult.

Introduction

On Hospitals ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 3-30
Author(s):  
Sethina Watson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
The West ◽  
General Lack ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Medieval Church ◽  
Legal Model ◽  
Medieval Christianity

This chapter redefines the problem of hospitals in the medieval church. It surveys the spread of welfare foundations to the West and, especially, the intensive foundation of welfare houses, in many forms, during the ‘charitable revolution’ of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This messy picture of hospitals on the ground, ‘between church and world’, has never conformed to the legal model that historians have long held for hospitals, as ecclesiastical houses under the bishop (a model that rests fundamentally on the sixth-century laws of Justinian, the East Roman/Byzantine Emperor). This gap between the ‘theory’ and ‘practice’ of hospitals, so familiar in scholarship, has long been attributed to lax enforcement—and a general lack of concern—by bishops, popes, and canonists. This chapter redefines the problem as the model itself, which was established by early twentieth-century historians. It unpicks this model, identifying the national agendas that produced it and the frameworks that have continued to shape the field. It argues for canon law as a European question and for the place of welfare at the heart of medieval Christianity. The overall approach and structure of the book is then introduced.

Investigations of the Western Temenos of Olbia

1995 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
A.S. Rusyaeva
Keyword(s):  
Ceramic Material ◽  
Urban Area ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
The West ◽  
Main Street ◽  
East And West ◽  
The City ◽  
Votive Offerings

AbstractExcavations since the 1920s show the presence in Olbia of two sacred areas (temene), East and West, divided by a main street. The author's excavations of the Western temenos reveal what was probably the earliest sanctuary, of the sixth century, followed at the end of that century by a stone temple dedicated to Apollo Ietros, guardian deity of the city. The sanctuary can be shown to have been considered a sacred area right down to the end of the city's history. The excavation of a sanctuary of Cybele, dated from at least the 2nd half of the 6th c. B.C., refutes earlier views that situated it on the E. temenos. Also found was a sanctuary of Hermes and Aphrodite with a 3rd c. B.C. temple. The presence of a sanctuary of the Dioscuri can be shown from dedications but its site cannot yet be pinpointed. Altars found on the West temenos can be classified as rectangular, round and primitive. Intact ash piles have also been analyzed. Many bothroi were found, including reused water cisterns. Their contents included masses of ceramic material (Attic pottery, local grey-ware and other East Greek ware), Olbian dolphin and arrowhead coins, votive offerings, ostraca and an abundance of architectural terracotta. It is clear that from the foundation of the city a considerable area of its urban area was assigned to sanctuaries and that this area remained the focus of the religious life of the Olbian state throughout its existence.

The Heirs of Odysseus, 800 BC–550 BC

The Great Sea ◽  
2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Abulafia
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Far East ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
The West ◽  
Recent Immigrants ◽  
The North ◽  
New Settlements

Whether the early Greeks possessed as powerful a sense of identity as the Phoenicians is far from clear. Only when a massive Persian threat appeared to loom from the east, in the sixth century, did the diverse Greek-speakers of the Peloponnese, Attika and the Aegean begin to lay a heavy emphasis on what they had in common; the sense of a Hellenic identity was further strengthened by bitter conflicts with Etruscan and Carthaginian navies in the west. They knew themselves as distinct groups of Ionians, Dorians, Aeolians and Arcadians, rather than as Hellenes. There were the Spartans, proud inheritors of the Dorian name, who saw themselves as recent immigrants from the north. There were the Athenians, who insisted they were the unconquered descendants of more ancient Greeks. There were the Ionians, thriving in the new settlements across the Aegean, in Chios, Lesbos and on the Asian coast. The ‘Greeks’ cannot be identified simply as those who took delight in tales of the Greek gods and heroes, which were common currency elsewhere, especially among the Etruscans; nor would the Greeks have wished to recognize as fellow- Greeks all inhabitants of what we now call Greece, since they identified among the population of the islands and coasts strange remnants of earlier peoples, generically called ‘Pelasgians’ or ‘Tyrsenians’; besides, the Greek-speakers were themselves moving outwards from the Aegean and Peloponnese towards Asia Minor, where they would remain for over two and a half millennia, and towards Sicily, Italy and North Africa. How, when and why this great diaspora was created remains one of the big puzzles about the early Iron Age Mediterranean. What is certain is that it transformed the area, bringing goods and gods, styles and ideas, as well as people, as far west as Spain and as far east as Syria. The Greeks remembered these movements of people and things by way of often complex and contradictory tales of ancient ancestors who spread their seed across the Mediterranean: whole peoples at times reportedly boarded ships to be carried across distances of many hundreds of miles.

Archaic Greek trade: three conjectures

1979 ◽  
Vol 99 ◽  
pp. 152-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. M. Cook
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Early Period ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
The West ◽  
Commercial Use ◽  
Precise Statement ◽  
Ancient Literature ◽  
Parallel Channels

Not much attention is given to the diolkos across the Isthmus of Corinth, nor is much known about it. There are a dozen or so explicit or probable references to it in ancient literature, one relevant inscription and some remains of its track. The remains, principally at the west and close to the modern canal, are from a paved roadway with two parallel channels about 1·50 m apart, evidently to hold the wheels of some sort of carrier; and associated pottery and inscribed letters suggest that it was constructed in the late seventh or early sixth century B.C. The written references tell us that the eastern end of the diolkos was at Schoinos, that it was said to be 40 stades long, that warships were transported across the Isthmus in 412, 220, 217, 102 and 30 B.C., that the diolkos was in use in the early period of the Roman Empire, and that some ships were too big for it: there is, though, no precise statement of the commercial use of the diolkos.Yet transport of warships is not likely to have been the normal use of the diolkos: ancient historical writers were more interested in war than commerce, and warships cannot have needed transporting very frequently.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document