The Making of Medieval Rome

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hendrik Dey
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Depth Profile ◽  
The Past ◽  
Imperial Capital ◽  
Medieval Archaeology ◽  
The City ◽  
Past Half ◽  
Written Sources

Integrating the written sources with Rome's surviving remains and, most importantly, with the results of the past half-century's worth of medieval archaeology in the city, The Making of Medieval Rome is the first in-depth profile of Rome's transformation over a millennium to appear in any language in over forty years. Though the main focus rests on Rome's urban trajectory in topographical, architectural, and archaeological terms, Hendrik folds aspects of ecclesiastical, political, social, military, economic, and intellectual history into the narrative in order to illustrate how and why the cityscape evolved as it did during the thousand years between the end of the Roman Empire and the start of the Renaissance. A wide-ranging synthesis of decades' worth of specialized research and remarkable archaeological discoveries, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in how and why the ancient imperial capital transformed into the spiritual heart of Western Christendom.

scholarly journals The collections of the Palace of Lausos in Constantinople

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 248-258
Author(s):  
Valeriy P. Porshnev ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Natural Process ◽  
High Ranking ◽  
The Past ◽  
City Street ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
Main City ◽  
Written Sources

Constantinople throughout the IV–VI centuries became the largest center for collecting monuments of ancient art. Initially, the incentive for this was the desire to decorate the new capital of the Roman Empire. Therefore, both collecting, and the arrangement of statues, bas-reliefs, obelisks, and architectural fragments on streets and squares had quite a chaotic character. The turning point came in the first decades of the V century when, after Theodosius the Great’s decree on the ban of pagan divine services, ancient sanctuaries, having been left without the care of the authorities, fell into full decay as a result of riots by fanatics and looting. As a result, the natural process of destruction began. With such events comes an incentive to preserve the creations of outstanding masters of the past which have their lost sacral function, and are considered as works of art. The collecting activity of Lavsos, the high-ranking imperial official, and owner of a large palace on the main city street dates back to this time. The article examines the motives for collecting ancient art’s masterpieces, among which were the works of Lysippos, Pheidias and Praksitel’s, their possible systematization and degree of availability to citizens. The research is based on written sources, compositions of the Byzantine authors, and on results of recent archeological excavations in the center of Istanbul, which revealed fragments of the palace of Lausos.

Literacy and the Decolonization of Africa's Intellectual History

2011 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. 35-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Esperanza Brizuela-Garcia
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Intellectual Development ◽  
Complex Nature ◽  
African History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Middle Way ◽  
History Of ◽  
Written Sources

In his book In My Father's House Anthony Appiah made a powerful argument for historians and intellectuals at large to recognize the diverse and complex nature of Africa's cultural and historical experiences. He stated, for instance, that: “ideological decolonization is bound to fail if it neglects either endogenous ‘tradition’ or exogenous ‘Western’ ideas, and that many African (and African American) intellectuals have failed to find a negotiable middle way.”During the past fifty years, Africanist historians have focused much of their efforts on the goals of decolonizing or Africanizing the study of the African past. These have been guided by the need to produce a more authentic and relevant history of the continent. The search for such authenticity has shown that African cultures and societies are often the result of a broad range of influences and that the notions of what is indigenous or authentically African needs to take into account this historical complexity. Intellectual historians, in particular, have faced this question with regards to written sources. The question of literacy and its impact on the intellectual development of Africa is an interesting example of how historians have made some strides towards redefining the notion of a decolonized African history.

A WELL-TEMPERED LIBERALISM: MODERN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY AND POLITICAL THEORY

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 655-682
Author(s):  
JAMES T. KLOPPENBERG
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
The Family ◽  
Family Resemblances ◽  
History Of ◽  
Similar Materials ◽  
Past Half

Intellectual history and the history of political thought are siblings, perhaps even twins. They have similar origins and use similar materials. They attract many of the same friends and make some of the same enemies. Yet like most siblings, they have different temperaments and ambitions. This essay explores the family resemblances and draws out the contrasts by examining two major works by one of the most prominent political theorists of the past half-century, Alan Ryan, who has recently published two big books that intellectual historians will find rewarding and provocative.

FORUM: THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF AMERICAN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY INTRODUCTION

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
THOMAS BENDER
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Current Practice ◽  
Half Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
Fair Representation ◽  
American Intellectual ◽  
American Intellectual History ◽  
Past Half

The following essays present six distinct but broadly compatible narratives of scholarship in United States intellectual history over the past half-century: postwar dominance, a season of despair, and then the field's rise, transformation, and expansion. The essays are a feast of erudition; any reader will come away from them with a list of “must-read” books. But there is much more here. These are rigorous and sophisticated explorations—at once historical and prescriptive—of a flourishing field. The writers span different generations, with authors representative of older, middling, and younger scholars. These appraisals are various yet they are unambiguously within the mainstream, tracking the current understandings of the somewhat fuzzy boundaries of the field. While additional writers might have further enriched the coverage, these writers together offer a fair representation of current practice in the field.

Concealment and Revelation: The Pola Casket and the Visuality of Early Christian Relics

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaś Elsner
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
The West ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The Past ◽  
Multiple Processes ◽  
Archaeological Artefact ◽  
The City

The archaeological artefact is typically unearthed. It comes to us marked by the depredations of time, tarnished by burial, reclaimed from loss. Yet the perspective of excavation, according to which all objects are disinterred and salvaged for the collection or the museum, with more or less of a contextual history arising from their unearthing, may risk simplifying or ignoring the conditions of their original interment. The differences between the kinds of burial, between the multiple processes at stake in the loss of objects to the earth in the past—insofar as they can be reconstructed—are interesting. For example, the amazingly well-preserved statue of Flavius Palmatus, Consular Governor of Caria and acting Vicar of Asiana at some point before 536 CE, was discovered toppled beside its inscribed base at the west colonnade of the square adjoining the theater of the city of Aphrodisias in Asia Minor, in the mid-twentieth century. It fell in the course of time, we have no idea when—probably as the result of an earthquake—in a city virtually abandoned after the seventh century and was subsequently covered by debris and soil until its excavation in modernity. By contrast, the Meroe head, an over-life-size bronze head of Augustus, which was excavated by the British in Sudan in the teens of the twentieth century, was probably cut from the statue of which it was part and buried by barbarian tribesmen beneath steps leading to the native temple of Victory in the Kushite capital of Meroe in the Sudan. Far from falling where it stood, it was the victim of deliberate iconoclasm and burial by the enemies of the Roman empire, probably shortly after its erection when the Kushites invaded Roman Egypt in 25 BCE. In its buried form it lay as a hidden trophy permanently trampled by the Kushites—a sign of independence from Rome, autonomy, and hatred of the Roman emperor even when the tribesmen had forgotten that it was hidden there. Other kinds of deliberate burial, however, were made by those who owned the objects interred, rather than thieves or rampagers.

Arcana and Ambiguity in Intellectual History

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Knox Peden
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Human Heart ◽  
Historical Understanding ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Episode ◽  
The Face ◽  
Modern Learning ◽  
History Of

As history became a narrative of contexts as well as of actions, the moral and exemplary character of the actions related was affected … The narrative of action became a narrative of mystery, meaning not only the mystery of random contingency, but the mystery of how decision and action were framed in the face of contingency. Whether action had proved successful or disastrous, that which was exemplary about it was at the same time that which was arcane, formed in the depths of the human heart as it interacted with fortune. The epigraph comes from the “prelude” to the second volume of Barbarism and Religion, J. G. A. Pocock's masterpiece devoted to reconstructing the manifold contexts for understanding Edward Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. In this passage, Pocock is addressing the transformation of historical understanding in the wake of the Pyrrhonian controversy that dominated early modern learning. Reconstruction of contexts, Pocock argued, was one answer to skepticism about our knowledge of the past, but it could not come at the expense of an understanding of action and motivations. For his part, Gibbon sought a neoclassical synthesis designed to generate “narrative at the point where the exemplary became the arcane.” Such is the paradox of historiography as a modern craft. That which gives a historical episode its value (its exemplarity) is typically that which escapes the explanatory frameworks we bring to it (its arcana).

scholarly journals Non-metric digital reconstruction of Roman mosaics excavated in the city of Ravenna (Italy)

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (19) ◽  
pp. 66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariapaola Monti ◽  
Giuseppe Maino
Keyword(s):  
Information Technology ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
General Public ◽  
Specific Information ◽  
Digital Workflow ◽  
Geometric Patterns ◽  
The Past ◽  
Digital Reconstruction ◽  
The City

<p>During the excavations carried out in summer 2011 in Piazza Anita Garibaldi in Ravenna, during construction of the new underground  waste  containers,  five  rooms  decorated  with  mosaic  floors  were  found,  probably  dating back to  the  early Roman Empire (1<sup>st</sup>-2<sup>nd</sup>century AD). The mosaics were removed for restoration and musealisation, however –given the size of the large lacunae-it would not be possible to reintegrate them in a traditional restoration without creating arbitrary reconstructions. Therefore, we opted for a digital reconstruction of the lacunae, attempting virtual restoration hypotheses for the recovered mosaics. Subsequently, it was possible to grasp the trend of the figuration and how it could have appeared in the past. The characteristics of many mosaics, such as the symmetry and the repetition of geometric patterns, make them suitable for both a simulated integration and are construction by the analogies of the pattern. As a matter of fact, we used simple and easily accessible software to perform this work.  The purpose of this digital workflow was to give an example of virtual processing useful for conservators and restorers, as well as for scholars (archaeologists, art historians, etc.) that can be carried out without specific information technology expertise and computer skills. After the images were acquired digitally, we were able to proceed with the reconstruction of the floor, by taking into account the geometric motifs that make up the mosaic assembly and that made the recomposition the most reliable. The virtual restoration also provides the  opportunity  of  simulating  the  type  of  integration  and  the  colour  so  that  scholars,  restorers  and  conservators  may evaluate the final appearance of the work and the different aesthetic choices. The virtual restoration is finally considered an essential tool for the enhancement of cultural heritage.</p><p><strong>Highlights:</strong></p><ul><li><p>An example of virtual restoration is presented relevant to Roman mosaics recently found in Ravenna (Italy).</p></li><li><p>A simulated integration by the analogies of the geometric patterns present in the mosaics allows a reliable reconstruction.</p></li><li><p>Virtual restoration results in a useful tool for enhancement, knowledge and improvement of understanding of mosaics by the general public.</p></li></ul>

scholarly journals Toronto: A new global city of learning

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Hamlin ◽  
Scott Davies
Keyword(s):  
School Choice ◽  
Global Education ◽  
New Economy ◽  
Policy Network ◽  
The Past ◽  
Social Wellbeing ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
World Centre ◽  
The City ◽  
Past Half

Toronto, Canada, is emblematic of a new stratum of global cities. Unlike many world capitals, the city has gained stature only over the past half century, having successfully post-industrialized into a new economy and become a major world centre for immigration. Paradoxically, education has emerged as both a major driver of change and a divider of social wellbeing in the city. To interpret this paradox, we discuss: (1) how Toronto is a node in a global education policy network, particularly as an exporter of equity-oriented reforms; (2) how the city's own school system reflects ongoing tensions between forward-looking ideals and its own historical legacies; and (3) how goals of integration are being challenged by new pressures for educational differentiation, which are themselves driven by competing conceptions of multiculturalism and movements for school choice.

EPITAFIES OF THE RELATIVES OF HADJI IBRAHIM AL-URADI AS A SOURCE ON THE BIOGRAPHY OF THE SCIENTIST AND ON THE HISTORY OF GIDATL

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 13-21
Author(s):  
Sh M Khapizov ◽  
M G Shekhmagomedov
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
Medieval History ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
The Past ◽  
Arabic Script ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Culture ◽  
The Look ◽  
Cultural Monuments ◽  
Written Sources

The article is devoted to the study of inscriptions on the gravestones of Haji Ibrahim al-Uradi, his father, brothers and other relatives. The information revealed during the translation of these inscriptions allows one to date important events from the history of Highland Dagestan. Also we can reconsider the look at some important events from the past of Hidatl. Epitaphs are interesting in and of themselves, as historical and cultural monuments that needed to be studied and attributed. Research of epigraphy data monuments clarifies periodization medieval epitaphs mountain Dagestan using record templates and features of the Arabic script. We see the study of medieval epigraphy as one of the important tasks of contemporary Caucasian studies facing Dagestani researchers. Given the relatively weak illumination of the picture of events of that period in historical sources, comprehensive work in this direction can fill gaps in our knowledge of the medieval history of Dagestan. In addition, these epigraphs are of great importance for researchers of onomastics, linguistics, the history of culture and religion of Dagestan. The authors managed to clarify the date of death of Ibrahim-Haji al-Uradi, as well as his two sons. These data, the attraction of written sources and legends allowed the reconstruction of the events of the second half of the 18th century. For example, because of the epidemic of plague and the death of most of the population of Hidatl, this society noticeably weakened and could no longer maintain its influence on Akhvakh. The attraction of memorable records allowed us to specify the dates of the Ibrahim-Haji pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, as well as the route through which he traveled to these cities.

Portuguese Sardines - from the ritual to the brand

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-120
Author(s):  
Cecília Avelino Barbosa
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Place Branding ◽  
Symbolic Capital ◽  
City Council ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
City Branding ◽  
The Past ◽  
Behavioral Expression ◽  
The City ◽  
City Identity

Place branding is a network of associations in the consumer’s mind, based on the visual, verbal, and behavioral expression of a place. Food can be an important tool to summarize it as it is part of the culture of a city and its symbolic capital. Food is imaginary, a ritual and a social construction. This paper aims to explore a ritual that has turned into one of the brands of Lisbon in the past few years. The fresh sardines barbecued out of doors, during Saint Anthony’s festival, has become a symbol that can be found on t-shirts, magnets and all kinds of souvenirs. Over the year, tourists can buy sardine shaped objects in very cheap stores to luxurious shops. There is even a whole boutique dedicated to the fish: “The Fantastic World of Portuguese Sardines” and an annual competition promoted by the city council to choose the five most emblematic designs of sardines. In order to analyze the Sardine phenomenon from a city branding point of view, the objective of this paper is to comprehend what associations are made by foreigners when they are outside of Lisbon. As a methodological procedure five design sardines, were used of last year to questioning to which city they relate them in interviews carried in Madrid, Lyon, Rome and London. Upon completion of the analysis, the results of the city branding strategy adopted by the city council to promote the sardines as the official symbol of Lisbon is seen as a Folkmarketing action. The effects are positive, but still quite local. On the other hand, significant participation of the Lisbon´s dwellers in the Sardine Contest was observed, which seems to be a good way to promote the city identity and pride in their best ambassador: the citizens.

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