The Archaeology of Monastic Households

2020 ◽  
pp. 184-203
Author(s):  
Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom
Keyword(s):  
Household Archaeology ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Archaeological Remains ◽  
Ordinary Life ◽  
Monastic Life ◽  
History Of ◽  
Complex Households

This chapter explores the buildings and artefacts of late antique monastic sites in Egypt and Palestine. It uses household archaeology to examine the daily behaviours of those who lived in monastic settlements. Household archaeology combines methodologies from archaeology, anthropology, geography, and history. Its application enables us to read the archaeology of monasticism with greater sophistication, so that the artefacts and the places of ordinary life can be interpreted alongside other sources, such as liturgy, images, and texts. Archaeological remains offer an additional lens for reading monastic settlements as complex households or homesteads, and they permit us to write a more nuanced history of monastic life.

The Absence of Evidence as the Evidence of Absence

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-42
Author(s):  
Ross Shepard Kraemer
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Archaeological Remains ◽  
History Of ◽  
Absence Of Evidence ◽  
Evidence Of Absence ◽  
Late Roman

Evidence for Jews in the late antique Mediterranean diaspora declines precipitously from the fourth to the seventh centuries CE. No identifiable writings in Greek or Latin survive from late antique Jews, forcing reliance on late Roman laws, accounts in non-Jewish authors, and limited archaeological remains. This increasing absence of evidence ultimately seems to be actual evidence of increasing absence. The category “diaspora”—in opposition to the homeland of Israel—has practical and theoretical limitations and is implicated in debates about contemporary Jewish identifications. Still, a study devoted almost exclusively to Jews of the late ancient Mediterranean is warranted by virtue of prior neglect, a history of privileging rabbinic sources, and a related tendency to assimilate the history of all Jews in late antiquity into that of the rabbis. The study tries to avoid the derogatory terms “pagan” and “heretics,” preferring the admittedly more cumbersome “dissident Christians” and “practitioners of (other) traditional Mediterranean religions.”

Classical Conceptions of Visuality and Representation in John of Damascus' Defense of Holy Images1

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 284-308
Author(s):  
James A. Francis
Keyword(s):  
Violent Conflict ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Second Sophistic ◽  
Word And Image ◽  
John Of Damascus ◽  
History Of ◽  
Classical Culture ◽  
Common Era ◽  
Iconoclastic Controversy

The Defense of Holy Images by John of Damascus stands as the archetypal exposition of the Christian theology of images. Written at the outbreak of the Iconoclastic Controversy, it has been mostly valued for its theological content and given scholarly short shrift as a narrowly focused polemic. The work is more than that. It presents a complex and profound explication of the nature of images and the phenomenon of representation, and is an important part of the “history of looking”in western culture. A long chain of visual conceptions connects classical Greek and Roman writers, such as Homer and Quintilian, to John: the living image, the interrelation of word and image, and image and memory, themes elaborated particularly in the Second Sophistic period of the early Common Era. For John to deploy this heritage so skillfully to the thorny problem of the place of images in Christianity, at the outbreak of a violent conflict that lasted a further 100 years after his writing, manifests an intellect and creativity that has not been sufficiently appreciated. The Defense of Holy Images, understood in this context, is another innovative synthesis of Christianity and classical culture produced by late antique Christian writers.

The Making of the Medieval Middle East

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack Tannous
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Religious History ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Conversion To Islam ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Muslim Communities ◽  
The Middle Ages

In the second half of the first millennium CE, the Christian Middle East fractured irreparably into competing churches and Arabs conquered the region, setting in motion a process that would lead to its eventual conversion to Islam. This book argues that key to understanding these dramatic religious transformations are ordinary religious believers, often called “the simple” in late antique and medieval sources. Largely agrarian and illiterate, these Christians outnumbered Muslims well into the era of the Crusades, and yet they have typically been invisible in our understanding of the Middle East's history. What did it mean for Christian communities to break apart over theological disagreements that most people could not understand? How does our view of the rise of Islam change if we take seriously the fact that Muslims remained a demographic minority for much of the Middle Ages? In addressing these and other questions, the book provides a sweeping reinterpretation of the religious history of the medieval Middle East. The book draws on a wealth of Greek, Syriac, and Arabic sources to recast these conquered lands as largely Christian ones whose growing Muslim populations are properly understood as converting away from and in competition with the non-Muslim communities around them.

ABOUT THE PERIODIZATION AND CHRONOLOGY OF THE HISTORY OF TAURIC CHERSONESUS IN THE PRE-ROMAN AND THE LATE ANTIQUE PERIODS

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (72) (3) ◽  
pp. 127-148
Author(s):  
S. V. Ushakov
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Literature ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Transitional Time ◽  
Early Byzantine

Hundreds of scientific works are devoted to the study of the Tauric Chersonesus, but the problem of chronology and periodization of its ancient history is not sufficiently developed in historiography. Analysis of scientific literature and a number of sources concerning this subject allows to define the chronological framework and to reveal 10 stages of the history of ancient Chersonesos (as a preliminary definition). The early stage, the Foundation and formation of the Polis, is defined from the middle/last third of the VI century (or the first half of the V century BC) to the end of the V century BC. The end of the late-Antique − early-Byzantine (transitional) time in Chersonesos can be attributed to the second half of the VI – first third of the VII centuries ad).

Urban Space and Aristocratic Power in Late Antique Rome

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Machado
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
The Social ◽  
Traditional Elite ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

This book analyses the physical, social, and cultural history of Rome in late antiquity. Between AD 270 and 535, the former capital of the Roman empire experienced a series of dramatic transformations in its size, appearance, political standing, and identity, as emperors moved to other cities and the Christian church slowly became its dominating institution. Urban Space and Aristocratic Power in Late Antique Rome provides a new picture of these developments, focusing on the extraordinary role played by members of the traditional elite, the senatorial aristocracy, in the redefinition of the city, its institutions, and spaces. During this period, Roman senators and their families became increasingly involved in the management of the city and its population, in building works, and in the performance of secular and religious ceremonies and rituals. As this study shows, for approximately three hundred years the houses of the Roman elite competed with imperial palaces and churches in shaping the political map and the social life of the city. Making use of modern theories of urban space, the book considers a vast array of archaeological, literary, and epigraphic documents to show how the former centre of the Mediterranean world was progressively redefined and controlled by its own elite.

scholarly journals The Royal Institution in Ancient Iran

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (10) ◽  
pp. 71
Author(s):  
Jafar Aghazadeh ◽  
Hasan Mohammadi
Keyword(s):  
Analytical Method ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Main Obstacle ◽  
Ordinary Life ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Royal Institution ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Right

<p>In the thoughts and beliefs of Iranians, kingdom has had a history of the creation of human beings on the earth. Accordingly, Iranians believe that the first creature and human being on the earth was the first king of Iran. Iranians connects the history of their mythical royal dynasties to the creation of humanity. For Iranians, the mythical kings of Iran are the creators of the royal institution and the functions and duties of the royal institution have been established, developed and transferred to next generations by the measures of these kings. The objective of the present study is to investigate the establishment of the royal institution and the development of royal institution in ancient Iran by a descriptive-analytical method. The findings indicate that Iranians had specific sacredness for their kings and called the first creature of Ahura Mazda as the King. In addition, they believed that kings should perform particular tasks whose formation was attributed to the mythical kings of Iran. Further, they believed that only those persons had the right of being a king who were from the race of kings and were approved by Ahura Mazda. to examine Lessing’s elucidation of authentic knowledge in <em>Shikasta</em>. The methodology appropriated in the paper entails depiction of visible world as an illusion of the Real pointed in Plato’s allegory of Cave and Nagarjuna’s Mundane Truth. We clarify emotion as the main motivator of such illusionary status stressed in both Plato and Nagarjuna’s thoughts. We argue that while the importance of reason and eradicating emotion cannot be ignored, what adjoins people to Truth is mindfulness and intuitive knowledge which is close to Nagarjuna’s non-dual patterns. By examining ordinary life as the illusion of Real, and emotion as the main obstacle to achieve the Truth emphasized in both Nagarjuna and Plato’s trends, we depart from other critics who undermine the eminence of essentialist trace in Lessing’s works and examine her approach towards Truth merely under postmodern lens. This departure is significant since we clarify while essentialism has been abandoned to a large extent and supporters of Plato have become scarce, amalgamation of his thoughts with spiritual trends opens a fresh way to earn authenticity in Lessing’s novel. </p><p> </p>

scholarly journals Renouncing the World and Taking Ordination

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2021/1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Krisztina Teleki
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Dominant Role ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Family Ties ◽  
The Family ◽  
The World ◽  
Monastic Life ◽  
History Of ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Written Sources

The 20th century brought different periods in the history of Mongolia including theocracy, socialism and democracy. This article describes what renouncing the world (especially the home and the family), taking ordination, and taking monastic vows meant at the turn of the 20th century and a century later. Extracts from interviews reveal the life of pre-novices, illustrating their family backgrounds, connections with family members after ordination, and support from and towards the family. The master-disciple relationship which was of great significance in Vajrayāna tradition, is also described. As few written sources are available to study monks’ family ties, the research was based on interviews recorded with old monks who lived in monasteries in their childhood (prior to 1937), monks who were ordained in 1990, and pre-novices of the current Tantric monastic school of Gandantegčenlin Monastery. The interviews revealed similarities and differences in monastic life in given periods due to historical reasons. Though Buddhism could not attain its previous, absolutely dominant role in Mongolia after the democratic changes, nowadays tradition and innovation exist in parallel.

scholarly journals Świętość w czasach podbojów islamskich. Męczennicy chrześcijańscy z Gazy z VII wieku

Vox Patrum ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 65 ◽  
pp. 497-521
Author(s):  
Mieczysław Celestyn Paczkowski
Keyword(s):  
Latin Translation ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Monastic Life ◽  
History Of ◽  
Christian History

The article focuses the story of the martyrdom of 60 Christian soldiers in Gaza who were executed for their refusal to convert to Islam during the Muslim inva­sion of Palestine. It is a final episode of varied Christian history of that region. Christian history of Gaza appears as complex and fascinating. In this region in the 4th century paganism was still strong but the monastic life developed in the vicinity of Gaza. Literary sources annotated the anti-Chalcedonian resistance of monastic circles in the wake of the council of Chalcedon. Christian history of the Gaza region ended dramatically with the Arab conquest in the 7th century. Just at that time a group of Christian soldiers refused the offer of the commander of the winners Muslims. The narrative of their martyrdom was preserved in a Latin translation of a Greek original. According to the text of the Passio, the Christian soldiers were executed in two groups: at Jerusalem and at Eleutheropolis. Bi­shop Sophronius of Jerusalem intervened in favor of these Martyrs and comforted them. He also gained the palm of martyrdom. The Passio in two different Latin recensions reveals a relatively neglected aspect in the history of the Holy Land during the period of heightened religious tension.

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