The Icon

2021 ◽  
pp. 58-74
Author(s):  
Rebecca W. Corrie
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Byzantine Empire ◽  
Anthropological Theory ◽  
History Of ◽  
Byzantine Period ◽  
Byzantine Icons ◽  
Iconoclastic Controversy ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Early Byzantine

Perhaps no form of visual culture is more closely associated with the history and religious life of the Byzantine Empire than the painted icon. Known from the Early Byzantine period in encaustic images, its theological and liturgical functions are usually understood in light of theory that emerged in the wake of the Iconoclastic Controversy. As the imprinting of sacred form on matter, icons provide access to the sacred. Although often characterized as static and unchanging, they were produced in a variety of media, and over time new formats and new image types appeared. Recent discussions of Byzantine icons have successfully employed anthropological theory. Continued investigation of the reception of icons beyond the empire’s borders will similarly illuminate the history of their meaning and form.

scholarly journals Catalogue of small finds from excavations outside the fortified palace of Romuliana, 2005-2007

Starinar ◽  
2007 ◽  
pp. 277-307 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maja Zivic
Keyword(s):  
Geophysical Survey ◽  
History Of ◽  
Byzantine Period ◽  
Small Finds ◽  
Early Byzantine

The excavations of the trial trenches extra muros Romuliana, in the 2005-2007 period, were carried out in cooperation with the DAI RGK (R?misch-Germanische Kommission des Deutches Arh?ologische Instituts), in order to verify the results of a previously conducted geophysical survey. Although the number of finds obtained from the eight test-pits (05/1, 05/2, 06/1, 06/2, 07/1, 07/2 07/3 and 07/4), that had been explored during four campaigns, was not big among them we can still find artifacts of great importance for studying the history of Romuliana, relating to the Late Classical and Early Byzantine period, from the end of the III up to the end of the VI century A.D. We point out finds of cruciform, gold fibula, coming from the tomb explored in the year 2005, and a gilded specimen with imperial portraits, from grave 6 explored in 2006. Finds of early Byzantine bronze fibulae, with a reversed back foot, are also of some importance, as well as glass vessels and a large number of iron tools. The finds in the catalogue are listed according to the explored units.

scholarly journals The Early Byzantine and Khazar Periods in the Evolution of the Towns on the Inner Mountain Ridge in the Crimea

2021 ◽  
pp. 475-497
Author(s):  
Alexander I. Aibabin
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Mountain Ridge ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Crimea ◽  
History Of ◽  
Byzantine Period ◽  
The One ◽  
Early Byzantine

From the large-scale archaeological researches of individual urban centres located on the Inner Mountain Ridge of the Crimea, atop of the plateaus of Mangup, Eski-Kermen, and Bakla, there are enough reasons to identify and reconstruct the Early Byzantine and Khazar Periods in the evolution of these towns. The analysis of written sources and materials of archaeological excavations allows the one to substantiate the chronology of the two initial periods in the history of the evolution of the towns located on the Inner Mountain Ridge as: 1 – Early Byzantine, from 582 AD to the early eighth century; 2 – Khazar, from the early eighth century to 841 AD. In the early sixth century, there was the only oppidum or civitatium Dory known in the region in question. Obviously, its fortifications were built by the Goths living atop of the plateau of Mangup from the mid-third century on. In the Early Byzantine Period, in the late sixth century, when the region of Dory was incorporated into the Empire’s borderland province, military engineers realised the state-sponsored program and constructed fortifications and a church in the castle (κάστρον) of Δόροϛ and fortified towns of various types (πόλισμα) atop of the mountains of Eski-Kermen and Bakla. Although the engineers immediately planned and constructed fortifications, access roads, gates, sally ports, a church, streets, and other objects on a greater part of the uninhabited plateau of Eski-Kermen, only the citadel was built on the already inhabited terrace of the plateau of Bakla. In the Khazar Period, Δόροϛ kept the status of the capital of Gothia and the bishop’s see. At Eski-Kermen there probably was an archon supervising the building of the town according to a single plan, while at Bakla there appeared suburban area covered by residential houses. The archontes of the towns located atop of Eski-Kermen and Bakla were civil and church governors of the klimata, just as their predecessors had done earlier.

Patron's review. The role of images in the development of Renaissance natural history

2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sachiko Kusukawa
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
History Of ◽  
Important Means ◽  
Over Time

This review surveys recent scholarship on the history of natural history with special attention to the role of images in the Renaissance. It discusses how classicism, collecting and printing were important catalysts for the Renaissance study of nature. Classicism provided inspiration of how to study and what kind of object to examine in nature, and several images from the period can be shown to reflect these classical values. The development of the passion for collecting and the rise of commerce in nature's commodities led to the circulation of a large number of exotic flora and fauna. Pictures enabled scholars to access unobtainable objects, build up knowledge of rare objects over time, and study them long after the live specimens had died away. Printing replicated pictures alongside texts and enabled scholars to share and accumulate knowledge. Images, alongside objects and text, were an important means of studying nature. Naturalists' images, in turn, became part of a larger visual culture in which nature was regarded as a beautiful and fascinating object of admiration.

scholarly journals Embracing Icons: The Face of Jacob on the Throne of God

Images ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Neis
Keyword(s):  
Rabbinic Literature ◽  
Religious Images ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
Byzantine Period ◽  
Mystical Traditions ◽  
Early Byzantine

AbstractRachel Neis' article treats Hekhalot Rabbati, a collection of early Jewish mystical traditions, and more specifically §§ 152–169, a series of Qedusha hymns. These hymns are liturgical performances, the highlight of which is God's passionate embrace of the Jacob icon on his throne as triggered by Israel's utterance of the Qedusha. §§ 152–169 also set forth an ocular choreography such that the gazes of Israel and God are exchanged during the recitation of the Qedusha. The article set these traditions within the history of similar Jewish traditions preserved in Rabbinic literature. It will be argued that §§ 152–169 date to the early Byzantine period, reflecting a Jewish interest in images of the sacred parallel to the contemporaneous Christian intensification of the cult of images and preoccupation with the nature of religious images.

The Visual Culture of Revelation: Visions and the Images that Reveal Them

2021 ◽  
pp. 002114002110176
Author(s):  
David Morgan
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Direct Observation ◽  
Visual Interpretation ◽  
Visual Form ◽  
Devotional Practice ◽  
Visual Process ◽  
History Of ◽  
Scholarly Inquiry ◽  
Over Time

It is often thought that since remote, rare, and ephemeral events such as apparitions are not available to the direct observation of scholars, the question of their nature as events must be set aside in scholarly inquiry. This results in a focus on meaning that can ignore the qualities of the event as reported and as apprehended by devotional imagery that emerges over time to provide access to the event and its relevance for devotional practice. It also encourages concepts of revelation that are not able to consider the event as a visual form of experience and regard revelation itself as something that must be either true or false. This essay proceeds otherwise, arguing that revelation is not a single, closed event, but an ongoing visual process in which sketchy schemata interact with fixed imagery to interpret the event in an ongoing history of iconography and visual interpretation. The essay focuses on the visuality of devotion to Our Lady of Fátima as a case study in how seeing works and imagery functions to make revelation a visual process whose devotional life is ongoing.

Saints and Doctors in the Early Byzantine Empire: The Case of Theodore of Sykeon

1982 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peregrine Horden
Keyword(s):  
Medical Treatment ◽  
Social History ◽  
Hot Springs ◽  
Byzantine Empire ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early Byzantine

‘Have done with doctors. Don’t fall into their clutches: you will get no help from them. Be satisfied with this prayer and blessing and you will be completely restored to health.’ Theodore of Sykeon’s obloquy and exhortation find numerous parallels in the social history of early Byzantine medicine. The hostility of holy men to doctors is a familiar theme. Less familiar may be that delegation of responsibility and spirit of cooperation suggested by another passage in theLifeof Theodore:Again, if any required medical treatment for certain illnesses, or surgery or a purging draught or hot springs, this God-inspired man would prescribe the appropriate remedy to each like an experienced doctor trained in the art. He might recommend one to have recourse to surgery and would always state clearly which doctor he should employ. In other cases he would dissuade those who wished to have an operation or to undergo some other medical treatment, and would recommend rather that they should visit hot springs, and would name the springs to which they should go.

scholarly journals Turbulent Ethnopolitical Processes in the Eastern Taurica in the Sixth and Seventh Centuries

2021 ◽  
pp. 71-89
Author(s):  
Viktor N. Zin’ko ◽  
Alexey V., Zin’ko
Keyword(s):  
Seventh Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Byzantine Empire ◽  
Urban Buildings ◽  
Seasonal Migrations ◽  
Archaeological Materials ◽  
Byzantine Period ◽  
Scanty Information ◽  
The One ◽  
Early Byzantine

This paper presents the results of archaeological researches allowing the one to reconstruct ethnopolitical processes in the eastern Taurica in the sixth and seventh centuries. By the sixth century, the eastern Crimean steppes were depopulated and used for seasonal migrations of the Hunnic tribes. The Byzantine Empire made a significant influence on the ethnopolitical processes in the Bosporos in the sixth and seventh centuries when annexed this country in 527/528. Archaeological researches supply scanty information about the urban buildings of the Bosporan capital in the sixth century. Alternative archaeological situation developed with the preserved Early Byzantine layers of the Bosporan town of Tyritake, where continuous many-year-long archaeological research uncovered large areas. According to the archaeological materials and a few epigraphic finds, Bosporan Greeks constituted the overwhelming majority of the population of Tyritake in the sixth century as before, being mostly the persons of moderate means, engaged in fishing and agricultural production, crafts and petty trade. After the raid of the Turks in 576, Bosporos and Tyritake declined, with only isolated residential houses reconstructed in certain areas in these towns; these houses lived to the third quarter of the seventh century when they were burned down by the Khazars. Bosporos constantly experienced the pressure from nomadic hordes, which, over the centuries, moved here and there, replacing each other, along the great tract of the steppes. The turbulence of ethnopolitical processes in the Eastern Taurica especially intensified in the Early Byzantine Period. Following the Khazar devastation, all the Bosporan settlements were depopulated, and the insignificant remnants of the former population concentrated in the fire-ravaged town of Bosporos, which for centuries became an out-of-the-way provincial town forming a part of different polities.

Icon and Aura

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Morgan
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Visual Culture ◽  
Byzantine Empire ◽  
Orthodox Christianity ◽  
Cultural Icon ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Action At A Distance ◽  
Religious Image ◽  
Early Byzantine

The icon is not just a certain kind of religious image developed during the early Byzantine empire and still used today in Orthodox Christianity. The chapter defines a broader category of the cultural icon as a key feature of modern visual culture and a powerful instance of enchantment in a secular context. With examples from popular culture and history, the text shows the enduring quality of an icon. Indeed, icons are powerful devices that operate in terms of an extended apparatus of iterations that shuttle aura across space and time in traffic with what matters. The icon enchants by pledging action at a distance, mediated by unseen chains of images reiterated in it.

scholarly journals Some remarks on economic history of Byzantine Sardis in the 5th century

2013 ◽  
pp. 75-111
Author(s):  
Marko Draskovic
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
Historic Structures ◽  
History Of ◽  
Byzantine Period ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
Early Byzantine

Supported by broader sighting at economic, social and other vital historic structures of Sardis in Early byzantine period, partly by digressions at relevant singularities of the contemporary urban order itself, the paper tries to suggest a new interpretation of economic and other circumstances which in 459. led to signing an agreement between ekdikos and builders of Sardis.

THE FATE OF RURAL TEMPLES IN LATE ANTIQUITY AND THE CHRISTIANISATION OF THE COUNTRYSIDE

2004 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Béatrice Caseau
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Rural Landscape ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Sacred Sites ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Byzantine Period ◽  
Early Byzantine

Throughout the Roman period the countryside was a landscape of sacred sites both monumental and natural. Rural temples were numerous and essential to the religious life of peasants and landowners. The fate of rural temples reveals something of the conflicting religious beliefs that were present in the rural landscape until the 6th c. Rural temples were among the first temples to be destroyed on some Christian estates, but in other places their power of attraction remained strong until the Early Middle Ages, even when they were in ruins. In the Early Byzantine period, however, temples were too visible, causing some Christians to lead expeditions against them. Convinced pagans searched for other, more remote, cult places to where they could maintain some form of pagan practice. These included inner sanctuaries inside their homes, or remote natural sites. Temple traditions were lost as a result.

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