Review: People, Personal Expression and Social Relations in Late Antiquity, Volume II. Selected Latin Texts from Gaul and Western Europe

2004 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 521-522
Author(s):  
J. Harries
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Western Europe

The Stigmata in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn Muessig
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Introductory Overview ◽  
Devotional Practices ◽  
The Face ◽  
Biblical Commentaries

Francis of Assisi’s reported reception of the stigmata on Mount La Verna in 1224 is often considered to be the first account of an individual receiving the five wounds of Christ. The thirteenth-century appearance of this miracle, however, is not as unexpected as it first seems. Interpretations of Galatians 6:17—I bear the stigmata of the Lord Jesus Christ in my body—had been circulating in biblical commentaries since late antiquity. These works explained stigmata as wounds that martyrs received, like the apostle Paul, in their attempt to spread Christianity in the face of resistance. By the seventh century, stigmata were described as marks of Christ that priests received invisibly at their ordination. In the eleventh century, monks and nuns were perceived as bearing the stigmata in so far as they lived a life of renunciation out of love for Christ. By the later Middle Ages holy women like Catherine of Siena (d. 1380) were more frequently described as having stigmata than their male counterparts. With the religious upheavals of the sixteenth century, the way stigmata were defined reflected the diverse perceptions of Christianity held by Catholics and Protestants. This study traces the birth and evolution of religious stigmata as expressed in theological discussions and devotional practices in Western Europe from the early Middle Ages to the early seventeenth century. It also contains an introductory overview of the historiography of religious stigmata beginning in the second half of the seventeenth century to its treatment and assessment in the twenty-first century.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ildar Garipzanov
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Dominant Role ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Sources Of Authority ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Periods

The concluding chapter highlights how the cultural history of graphic signs of authority in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages encapsulated the profound transformation of political culture in the Mediterranean and Europe from approximately the fourth to ninth centuries. It also reflects on the transcendent sources of authority in these historical periods, and the role of graphic signs in highlighting this connection. Finally, it warns that, despite the apparent dominant role of the sign of the cross and cruciform graphic devices in providing access to transcendent protection and support in ninth-century Western Europe, some people could still employ alternative graphic signs deriving from older occult traditions in their recourse to transcendent powers.

A neverending stream : human trafficking in Medieval Europe

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Christopher Paolella
Keyword(s):  
Human Trafficking ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Labor Demand ◽  
Sex Industry ◽  
Agricultural Labor ◽  
Long Distance

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] This study focuses on human trafficking patterns from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Era. I argue that while slavery, as a means of compelling agricultural labor, disappeared across much of Western Europe by the middle of the twelfth century, the commercial sex industry grew. As slavery died out, the slave trade withered across Western Europe and gradually reoriented itself around the Mediterranean basin. Yet, human trafficking networks remained in Western Europe, if in attenuated form. They continued to supply a smaller, but no less persistent, labor demand that was now fueled by brothels and prostitution rings instead of agriculture. I argue further that the experiences of women link the sex trade and the slave trade, and that twelfth-century socio-economic development linked the earlier long-distance slave trade and the local and regional trafficking networks of the later Middle Ages.

Feudal Modes

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Hinton
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Leisure Activities ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Feudal Society ◽  
Anglo Norman ◽  
Chess Piece ◽  
Female Presence ◽  
Time To Learn

The trend away from ornamented brooches, rings, and swords that demonstrates changing social pressures and expression during the eleventh century was maintained in the first half of the twelfth. The Anglo-Norman aristocracy had considerable wealth for its castles and churches, but the spending power of the Anglo-Saxon majority was very much diminished by the impositions that followed the Conquest. Social relations among the former were based primarily on land, and although sentiments of personal loyalty were defined by oaths of fealty, there is no record of gift-giving from lord to retainer other than the increasingly formalized bestowal of arms. Towns were growing both in size and number, but only a few merchants were really rich, and the peasantry in the countryside was increasing in number but had decreasing opportunity for individual advancement. Excavations at castles and other baronial residences generally yield the evidence of martial appearance and activity that would be expected, like spurs, and slightly more evidence of wealth, with coins a little more profligately lost, than at other sites. There are also luxuries like gilt strips, from caskets of bone or wood, and evidence of leisure activities, such as gaming-pieces; chess was being introduced into western Europe, and appealed to the aristocracy because it was a complicated pastime that only the educated would have time to learn and indulge in. Furthermore, it could be played by both sexes, though ladies were expected to show their inferior skill and intelligence by losing to the men; it echoed feudal society and its courts; and it could be played for stakes. An occasional urban chess-piece find, not always well dated, shows that a few burgesses might seek to emulate the aristocracy. Other predominantly castle finds include small bone and copper-alloy pins with decorated heads that have been interpreted as hairpins, as at Castle Acre, attesting a female presence, but other personal ornaments are infrequent. Some pictures in manuscripts suggest that in the early twelfth century the highest ranks of the aristocracy were wearing brooches. These were probably conventional representations, however, as there are no valuable brooches or finger-rings in the archaeological record, as there had been earlier.

Writing and Literacy/Illiteracy

2015 ◽  
pp. 286-316
Author(s):  
Krešimir Matijević
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Italian Population ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Level Of Education ◽  
Roman Provinces ◽  
Pictorial Representations

This chapter examines archaeological evidence that demonstrates literacy/illiteracy in the Roman Empire based on the ancient written documents available, including stone inscriptions. It first considers the level of education amongst the Italian population in ancient Rome, particularly in the Roman provinces, along with the level of literacy prior to Roman provincialization in Western Europe. It then turns to other documents such as books, wooden tablets, small inscriptions, and pictorial representations, and the Roman military’s ability to read and write. Finally, it discusses the level of literacy in late antiquity.

DECORATED VESSELS: THE FUNCTION OF DECORATION IN LATE ANTIQUITY

2009 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 385-409
Author(s):  
Ellen Swift
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
The Way

This paper re-integrates decoration with the function of the object and its social context in Late Antiquity. It examines the way that decoration prescribes the function of objects, for example, through the representation upon an object of the activity for which the object is intended to be used. It is suggested that in some instances decoration may also be matched to the interior decor of a room, i.e., to the context within which an object was used. These correlations of decoration with function and context correspond to Roman ideas of ‘appropriateness’ in decor and, in turn, contribute to the structuring of social identities and social relations in Late Antiquity.

scholarly journals Disabling Power of Class and Ideology: Analyzing War Injury through the Transnational Disability Theory and Praxis

2019 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sona Kazemi
Keyword(s):  
Disability Studies ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Theory Model ◽  
Armed Conflicts ◽  
Disability Theory ◽  
Alternative Research ◽  
Further Development

My doctoral thesis, through a case study of the theocratic-nationalist politics of the Iranian regime and the imperialist politics of the U.S., Russia, and Western Europe in the Middle East, investigated the ways in which gendered-, ideological-, and raced social-relations sustain armed conflicts and generate disability/injury. The study contributed to the emerging field of materialist/Marxist disability studies and critical race moves in disability studies by engaging the dialectics of geopolitics in order to contextualize war, and by proposing a new transnational theory for theorizing disability. In this paper, I extensively discuss my theoretical framework, along with the methodology for collecting and analyzing data in order to offer a radical alternative research method to traditionally biomedical, post-conventionist, liberal, and bourgeois approaches to disability. Additionally, I discuss how I built the new model using the case study in details while introducing its core theoretical constructs emerging directly from the case study. My conceptualization of a transnational theory/model interrogates the violence of the global political economy in producing disablement on a global scale. Finally, I discuss possible directions for further development of the transnational disability model not just as a theory, but also as praxis, active revolutionary knowledge, and political consciousness.

The First Principles of Latin Neoplatonism: Augustine, Macrobius, Boethius

Vivarium ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Gersh
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
First Principles ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Systematic Theory ◽  
De Trinitate ◽  
Chronological Sequence ◽  
Thierry Of Chartres ◽  
Traditional Manner ◽  
Selection Of

Abstract This essay attempts to provide more evidence for the notions that there actually is a Latin (as opposed to a Greek) Neoplatonic tradition in late antiquity, that this tradition includes a systematic theory of first principles, and that this tradition and theory are influential in Western Europe during the Middle Ages. The method of the essay is intended to be novel in that, instead of examining authors or works in a chronological sequence and attempting to isolate doctrines in the traditional manner, it proceeds by identifying certain philosophemes (a concept borrowed from structuralist and post-structuralist thought and here signifying certain minimal units from which philosophical “systems” can be constructed), and then studying the combination and re-combination of these philosophemes consciously and unconsciously by a selection of important medieval writers. These philosophemes occur in Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram; Augustine, De Trinitate; Augustine, De Vera Religione; Augustine, De Musica; Macrobius, Commentarius in Somnium Scipionis; and Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae. The sampling of medieval authors who use these philosophemes includes Eriugena, William of Conches, Thierry of Chartres, and Nicholas of Cusa.

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