Early Christian Mosaics in Context

2019 ◽  
pp. 274-295
Author(s):  
Karen C. Britt
Keyword(s):  
Short Discussion ◽  
Regional Approach ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Local Traditions ◽  
Universal Themes ◽  
Selection Of

This chapter provides an introduction to early Christian mosaics that emphasizes the important role played by archaeology in improving our understanding of their geographical and architectural contexts. After a short discussion of the position of early Christian mosaics in the history of the medium, a brief review of the most productive methodologies used in research on mosaics is undertaken, followed by a survey of mosaic technology that includes the workshops and artists involved in mosaic production. In the rest of the chapter, a selection of mosaics in churches, martyria, chapels, and Christian mausolea located in various parts of the Mediterranean world is examined. The evidence from archaeology demonstrates that although early Christian mosaics share universal themes, the diversity reflected in their iconography and the presence of secondary themes rooted in local traditions necessitate a regional approach to their interpretation.

Rough Waters: American Involvement with the Mediterranean in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: An Introduction

Rough Waters ◽  
2010 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Silvia Marzagalli ◽  
James R. Sofka ◽  
John J. McCusker
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Mediterranean Sea ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Transport Services ◽  
Mediterranean Countries ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Early Modern Times ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries

In his path-breaking study of the sixteenth-century Mediterranean world, Fernand Braudel identified the “invasion” by Atlantic ships and merchants as one of the major, long-lasting events in the history of the Mediterranean Sea in early modern times.2 According to Braudel, the arrival of English, Flemish and French Atlantic vessels and their captains began discretely in the early sixteenth century as a result of an increased Mediterranean demand for cheap transport services. Within a few decades, however, northern Europeans evolved from a complementary to a commanding position in the region. Atlantic shipping and trade came to dominate the most lucrative Mediterranean trades, and the Atlantic powers steadily imposed their rules and politics on Mediterranean countries, progressively subordinating the region to Atlantic interests. Their ...

Hagiography, Historiography, and Identity in Sixth-Century Gaul

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamar Rotman
Keyword(s):  
Identity Crisis ◽  
Religious History ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
Historical Perspectives ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Mediterranean

Gregory of Tours, the sixth-century Merovingian bishop, composed extensive historiographical and hagiographical corpora during the twenty years of his episcopacy in Tours. These works serve as important sources for the cultural, social, political and religious history of Merovingian Gaul. This book focuses on Gregory’s hagiographical collections, especially the Glory of the Martyrs, Glory of the Confessors, and Life of the Fathers, which contain accounts of saints and their miracles from across the Mediterranean world. It analyses these accounts from literary and historical perspectives, examining them through the lens of relations between the Merovingians and their Mediterranean counterparts, and contextualizing them within the identity crisis that followed the disintegration of the Roman world. This approach leads to groundbreaking conclusions about Gregory’s hagiographies, which this study argues were designed as an “ecclesiastical history” (of the Merovingian Church) that enabled him to craft a specific Gallo-Christian identity for his audience.

scholarly journals From the Judaean Desert to the Great Sea: Qumran in a Mediterranean Context

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 378-406
Author(s):  
Dennis Mizzi
Keyword(s):  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Ecological History ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Comparative Case Studies ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Dining Room ◽  
The One ◽  
Splendid Isolation ◽  
Marginal Zones

Abstract The time when Qumran was studied in splendid isolation is long gone, but much work remains to be done when it comes to situating the site in its wider context. In this paper, Qumran is contextualized, on the one hand, within the larger ecological history of the Mediterranean and, on the other, within the Mediterranean world of classical antiquity. Questions regarding the functions of the Qumran settlement are addressed from the perspective of “marginal zones” in the Mediterranean, which provides an ideal backdrop through which to illumine aspects of daily life at Qumran. Furthermore, it is shown how comparative case studies from the Graeco-Roman Mediterranean help us to nuance the discussion concerning “Hellenization” or “Romanization” with regard to Qumran. Finally, a new understanding of L4, which is here interpreted primarily as a dining room, is proposed on the basis of archaeological parallels from the Graeco-Roman world. A pan-Mediterranean perspective, therefore, allows us to generate new insights on old questions and novel interpretations.

Ethnicity and Early Christianity: New Approaches to Religious Kinship and Community

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-227
Author(s):  
Todd Berzon
Keyword(s):  
Early Christianity ◽  
Christian Community ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
New Approaches ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
Ethnic History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Human Difference ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
Sacred History

This article outlines how recent scholarly interventions about notions of race, ethnicity and nation in the ancient Mediterranean world have impacted the study of early Christianity. Contrary to the long-held proposition that Christianity was supra-ethnic, a slate of recent publications has demonstrated how early Christian authors thought in explicitly ethnic terms and developed their own ethnic discourse even as they positioned Christianity as a universal religion. Universalizing ambitions and ethnic reasoning were part and parcel of a larger sacred history of Christian triumphalism. Christian thinkers were keen to make claims about kinship, descent, blood, customs and habits to enumerate what it meant to be a Christian and belong to a Christian community. The narrative that Christians developed about themselves was very much an ethnic history, one in which human difference and diversity was made to conform to the theological and ideological interests of early Christian thinkers.

The Geohistory of Fernand Braudel

1950 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 212-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melvin M. Knight
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Philip Ii ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Temporal Field ◽  
Fernand Braudel

Any historian feels free to shift, enlarge, or contract his spatial or temporal field of attention, but the building of formal conceptions of time and space as flexible is something else. Fernand Braudel's recent book contains many revisions of judgment concerning the economic history of the centuries it treats, and also a way of handling space and time that gives the volume theoretical as well as historical interest. In his title, “the Mediterranean” refers to the region as well as to the sea. His “Mediterranean world” includes various outside areas, some remote, that have been related to the region by the activities of man in society. Peripheral mountains and deserts, for example, are considered in much detail, and four historic corridors (he calls them isthmuses) to northern waters are formally discussed. His “Epoch of Philip II” is in the first third of the book hardly a temporal “home port”; it is touched more frequently in Part II and is much used in the final section.

A Note on the Embassy of Q. Marcius Philippus, 172 B.C.

1941 ◽  
Vol 31 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 82-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. W. Walbank
Keyword(s):  
Mediterranean World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Mediterranean

Fifty years separated the Declaration of Corinth in 196 and the destruction of Corinth in 146, two milestones in the history of Graeco-Roman relations. Exactly midway between these two events comes the embassy of Q. Marcius Philippus, notorious for a piece of sharp practice which aroused the compunction of a section of the Roman Senate itself, and as the prelude to a war regarded by many in Greece as the first step in a policy which was to end in the ruin of two of the greatest cities of the Mediterranean world. The object of the following note is to examine in some detail the date and purpose of this embassy.

scholarly journals Reading Cleopatra VII: The Crafting of a Political Persona

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Angelica Delaney ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Visual Art ◽  
Roman History ◽  
Julius Caesar ◽  
Direct Connection ◽  
Ancient Egyptian ◽  
Broad Audience ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
Aesthetic Pleasure ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Mediterranean

The purpose of this paper is to examine the history of Cleopatra VII, as well as how and why she wanted to be depicted in a certain manner with respect to visual art. As the last noble of the Ptolemaic Dynasty, her images communicate her political abilities, her religious fervor, her maternal obligations and obstinacy in perpetuating royal lineage, and her direct connection to ancient Egyptian gods. Additionally, by consummating relationships with two of the most powerful men in ancient Roman history (Julius Caesar and Mark Antony), she was able to cultivate her skills as an influential pharaoh, equal to that of her male counterparts, and solidify her status as pharaoh. In exploring the multicultural facets of her images, I argue that not only did they not function solely as objects of aesthetic pleasure, they also appealed to a broad audience so as to communicate her level of influence as recognized not only in Egypt, but throughout the Mediterranean world.

The Free Port of Livorno and the Transformation of the Mediterranean World

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corey Tazzara
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Port City ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
History Of ◽  
General Program ◽  
Free Port ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
The Town

In the twilight of the Renaissance, the grand duke of Tuscany—a scion of the fabled Medici family of bankers—invited foreign merchants, artisans, and ship captains to settle in his port city of Livorno. The town quickly became one of the most bustling port cities in the Mediterranean, presenting a rich tableau of officials, merchants, mariners, and slaves. Nobody could have predicted in 1600 that their activities would contribute a chapter in the history of free trade. Yet by the late seventeenth century, the grand duke’s invitation had evolved into a general program of hospitality towards foreign visitors, the liberal treatment of goods, and a model for the elimination of customs duties. Livorno was the earliest and most successful example of a free port in Europe. The story of Livorno shows the seeds of liberalism emerging, not from the studies of philosophers such as Adam Smith, but out of the nexus between commerce, politics, and identity in the early modern Mediterranean.

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