Art, Nature, Power

2019 ◽  
pp. 339-354
Author(s):  
Steven D. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Imperial Power

This final chapter demonstrates the importance of contextualizing epigrams into the sociohistorical circumstances of their era if we want to achieve a deeper comprehension of the transformations that various motifs undergo through space and time. The chapter analyses a cluster of epigrams on imperial gardens that date from the first to the seventh century CE, and shows how these poems reflect diverse views about imperial power, aesthetics, pagan culture, and Christianity. The chapter discusses first an epigram from the Neronian era, then moves forward to late antiquity to consider a sequence of garden epigrams from the age of the Emperor Justinian (sixth century CE). The chapter concludes with an explicitly Christian garden epigram from the reign of the Emperor Heraclius (seventh century CE).

scholarly journals New perspectives on Byzantine Spain: the Discriptio Hispaniae

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 278-308
Author(s):  
Oriol Olesti Vila ◽  
Ricard Andreu Expósito ◽  
Jamie Wood
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Southern Spain ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
Territorial Division ◽  
Short Section

AbstractThe Discriptio Hispaniae is a passage from the Geometry of Gisemundus, also entitled Ars Gromatica Gisemundi (AGG), a medieval treatise of agrimensura written by an unknown author, probably a monk known as Gisemundus who had some agrimensorial experience. The work was compiled around AD 800 by collecting passages of a range of sizes, from just a few words to several pages, extracted from ancient and medieval sources. Although modern research into Roman agrimensorial texts has admitted the importance of the AGG, its corrupt condition has not invited sustained analysis. The passage now known as the Discriptio Hispaniae, a short section from chapter three of the second book of the AGG entitled III De segregatione provinciarum ab Augustalibus terminis, is particularly interesting for the information that it provides concerning the territorial division of Hispania in Late Antiquity. This article presents an edition and English translation of the Discriptio Hispaniae and argues that the most likely point of origin for the Discriptio Hispaniae is during the Byzantine occupation of parts of southern Spain during the second half of the sixth century and the first quarter of the seventh century. We suggest that the Discriptio Hispaniae was preserved because the Byzantine authorities were keen to keep on record information about the borders of the province of Carthaginensis, perhaps the main theme in the text.

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.

Secular Monograms, Social Status, and Authority in the Late Roman World and Early Byzantium

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ildar Garipzanov
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Imperial Authority ◽  
Christian Culture ◽  
Noble Identity ◽  
Late Roman

This chapter examines the use of monograms as graphic signs of imperial authority in the late Roman and early Byzantine empire, from its appropriation on imperial coinage in the mid-fifth century to its employment in other material media in the following centuries. It also overviews the use of monograms by imperial officials and aristocrats as visible signs of social power and noble identity on mass-produced objects, dress accessories, and luxury items. The concluding section discusses a new social function for late antique monograms as visible tokens of a new Christian paideia and of elevated social status, related to ennobling calligraphic skills. This transformation of monograms into an attribute of visual Christian culture became especially apparent in sixth-century Byzantium, with the cruciform monograms appearing in the second quarter of the sixth century and becoming a default monogrammatic form from the seventh century onwards.

Merovingian Meditations on Jesus

2020 ◽  
pp. 1070-1105
Author(s):  
Lynda Coon
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Lives Of Saints ◽  
External Influences ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Biblical Texts

The final chapter of this volume explores the conversation on Jesus held between material and textual sources, where monumental works of sculpture extend salvific themes found in the lives of saints and the verses of poets. Merovingian meditations on Jesus are multivocal, reflecting the cross-cultural rhythms of a world open to and receptive of external influences, whether originating in classical or biblical texts or hailing from Mediterranean or Northern lands. In order to prove this hypothesis on the Merovingian body and the embodied savior, three works of sculpture produced during the early Middle Ages serve as sounding boards for Jesus’ earthly ministry as enacted by human players: the crucified savior featured on the seventh-century Moselkern Stele; the eighth-century Hypogée des Dunes’s sculpted relief of the two thieves crucified along with Jesus; and the so-called Niederdollendorf “Christ,” carved most likely in the seventh century. Saintly actors, such as Radegund of Poitiers (d. 587), animate three themes expressed in the sculpted sources respectively: (1) absence, (2) torture, and (3) light. The three subjects—light, torture, and absence—all point to strategies of integrating the realm of humanity within the celestial spheres, and each motif tracks different styles of meditating on Merovingian Jesus.

The Fate of Small Towns, Hilltop Settlements, and Elite Residences in Merovingian-Period Gaul

2020 ◽  
pp. 610-640
Author(s):  
Luc Bourgeois
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Power Networks ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
The Many

The study of places of power in the Merovingian realm has long been focused on cities, monasteries, and royal palaces. Recent archaeological research has led to the emergence of other categories. Four of them are addressed in this chapter. These include the capitals of fallen cities, which continue to mark the landscape in one way or another. Similarly, the fate of small Roman towns during the early Middle Ages shows that most of them continued to host a variety of secular and ecclesiastical powers. In addition, from the fourth century onward, large hilltop fortified settlements multiplied anew. They complemented earlier networks of authority, whether elite residences, artisan communities, or real towns. Finally, from the seventh century onward, the great aristocratic villas of late antiquity were transformed into settlements organized around one or more courtyards and supplemented by funerary and religious structures. The evolution of political spaces and lifestyles explains both the ruptures in power networks that occurred during the Merovingian epoch and the many continuities that can be seen in the four kinds of places studied in this chapter that were marked by these developments.

scholarly journals THE HISTORY OF BILINGUAL DICTIONARIES RECONSIDERED: AN ANCIENT FRAGMENT RELATED TO PS.-PHILOXENUS (P.VARS. 6) AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Eleanor Dickey
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Alphabetical Order ◽  
Bilingual Dictionaries ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Republic

Abstract This article identifies a papyrus in Warsaw, P.Vars. 6, as a fragment of the large Latin–Greek glossary known as Ps.-Philoxenus. That glossary, published in volume II of G. Goetz's Corpus Glossariorum Latinorum on the basis of a ninth-century manuscript, is by far the most important of the bilingual glossaries surviving from antiquity, being derived from lost works of Roman scholarship and preserving valuable information about rare and archaic Latin words. It has long been considered a product of the sixth century a.d., but the papyrus dates to c.200, and internal evidence indicates that the glossary itself must be substantially older than that copy. The Ps.-Philoxenus glossary is therefore not a creation of Late Antiquity but of the Early Empire or perhaps even the Republic. Large bilingual glossaries in alphabetical order must have existed far earlier than has hitherto been believed.

Antioch in the Sixth Century: Resilience or Vulnerability?

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-41
Author(s):  
Lee Mordechai
Keyword(s):  
Natural Disasters ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Scientific Data ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Civil Strife ◽  
Continuous Support ◽  
The City

Abstract Sixth century Antioch is perhaps the best example of state-city resilience in Late Antiquity. Over the century, the city suffered multiple natural disasters, civil strife and external conflict. Scholars have generally accepted that the city declined as a result. This study integrates historical, archaeological and scientific data to illuminate the city’s fate. It concludes that Antioch demonstrated remarkable resilience at the city level throughout the 6th c. The most important factor was the continuous support the city received from the central government.

The Triumph of the Mule

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
History Of ◽  
Symbolic Value ◽  
The Middle Ages

This chapter starts as the Roman Empire fragmented, encompasses the emergence of Christianity and Islam, and explores the donkey’s place in the history of the Middle Ages, as well as what Fernand Braudel termed ‘the triumph of the mule’ in the ensuing early modern period from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Being closer in time to the present, historical documents are generally richer and more plentiful than for earlier periods, but archaeological excavations and surveys—especially of post-medieval sites and landscapes—are still undeveloped in many regions. Inevitably, therefore, what I present draws as much on textual sources as it does on them. I look first at the symbolic value of donkeys and mules in Christianity and Islam. Next, I consider their disappearance from some parts of Europe in the aftermath of Rome’s collapse and their re-expansion and persistence elsewhere. One aspect of this concerns their continuing contribution to agricultural production, another their consumption as food, a very un-Roman practice. A second theme showing continuities from previous centuries is their significance in facilitating trade and communication over both short and long distances. Tackling this requires inserting donkeys and mules into debates about how far pack animals replaced wheeled forms of transport as Late Antiquity gave way to the Middle Ages. Wide-ranging in time and space, this discussion also provides opportunities for exploring their role in human history in areas beyond those on which I have concentrated thus far. West Africa is one, the Silk Road networks linking China to Central Asia a second, and China’s southward connections into Southeast Asia a third. According to the New Testament Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday seated on a donkey (Plate 20). The seventh-century apocryphal Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew also envisages donkeys carrying His mother to Bethlehem, being present at the Nativity, and conveying the Holy Family into temporary exile in Egypt. Donkeys thus framed both ends of Jesus’ life and, given their importance in moving people and goods in first-century Palestine, must have been a familiar sight. But the implications of their place in Christianity’s narrative were originally quite different from those that are generally understood today.

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