Expressing Political Legitimacy and Cultural Identity Through the Use of Spolia On the Ambo of Henry II

1999 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 156-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Rose Mathews
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Artistic Production ◽  
Symbolic Value ◽  
Political Economic

AbstractThis paper will explore the significant role appropriated objects played in Ottonian artistic production through a close examination of the Ambo of Henry II. Created by the last Ottonian emperor for the Palace Chapel at Aachen between 1002 and 1014, the Ambo of Henry II abounds with spolia. I will argue that the spolia reused on the Ambo of Henry II presented an innovative statement of Henry II's political, economic, and cultural agenda. The spolia from ancient Rome and contemporary Byzantium portrayed Henry II as the political successor to an illustrious Roman past, and as an equal to the Byzantine emperors in the East. The luxury objects reused on the Ambo also served as commodities whose symbolic value increased dramatically when they were taken out of economic circulation and used on this precious artwork. Finally, the Islamic and Byzantine spolia on the Ambo allowed Henry II to define himself and his Western Roman Empire in terms of an Other, associating his rule with the power, prestige, and sophistication of contemporary and competitive foreign cultures.

scholarly journals The Return of the Sacral King

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 51-65
Author(s):  
Paul R. DeHart ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Political Order ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
The World ◽  
Ancient Christianity ◽  
The City

In Pagans & Christians in the City, Steven D. Smith argues that in contrast to ancient Rome, ancient Christianity, following Judaism, located the sacred outside the world, desacralizing the cosmos and everything in it—including the political order. It thereby introduced a political dualism and potentially contending allegiances. Although Smith’s argument is right so far as it goes, it underplays the role of Christianity’s immanent dimension in subverting the Roman empire and the sacral pattern of antiquity. This division of authority not only undermined the Roman empire and antique sacral political order more generally—it also subverts the modern state, which, in the work of Hobbes and Rousseau, sought to remarry what Western Christianity divorced.

scholarly journals Clash of Linguistic Ethnocultures and Its Effect (Iberian Region from the point of view of Historical Ethnolinguistics)

2019 ◽  
pp. 209-218
Author(s):  
N. M. Korbozerova
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Original Design ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Culture Form ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
Ambiguous Effect ◽  
Complex Relationships ◽  
Political Economic

Modern Spanish is a multi-ethnic, complex structured, hierarchical formation ofnan abstract nature that serves its communicative, cognitive, pragmatic and other needs, diverse peoples, ethnos and social groups in contemporary Spanish -speaking countries located on different continents. This language has gone the difficult way of asserting its identity and has felt the ambiguous effect of collision with other linguistic cultures in the process of socio-political, economic and cultural changes. We consider that the language is the main consolidating force of society, it participates in the complex relationships in the triad society-language-culture, and simultaneously plays a key role in social transformations and preserving national and cultural identity. A culture that relies on the language system and cannot exist without it, is a decisive factor in changes in social practices. Therefore, we regard the language as a kind of a framework for culture, and in its complex, both the language and the culture, form an indivisible phenomenon such as the linguoculture, which is inherent in a particular people, ethnicity, society. Within the limits of the theory of linguistic collision, the causes of the original design of the Iberian-Roman linguistic culture can be considered as the intrinsic processes, which were set in the crisis (in the Vth century) and the fall (in the VIth cenury) of the Roman Empire, in the collapse of the Roman linguistic culture. The effect of the contact with German and Arabic linguistic cultures were manifested in complete abandoning of German linguoculture or partial rejection of Arabic linguoculture and in the Spaniards’ awareness of their own national linguistic and cultural identity.

The Oxford Handbook of the Merovingian World

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Art History ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
The Political ◽  
Byzantine Empire ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
British Isles ◽  
European Culture ◽  
The World

The Merovingian era is one of the best studied yet least known periods of European history. From the fifth to the eighth centuries, the inhabitants of Gaul (what now comprises France, southern Belgium, Luxembourg, Rhineland Germany and part of modern Switzerland), a mix of Gallo-Romans and Germanic arrivals under the political control of the Merovingian dynasty, sought to preserve, use, and reimagine the political, cultural, and religious power of ancient Rome while simultaneously forging the beginnings of what would become medieval European culture and identity. As a result, the Merovingian era is at the heart of historical debates about what happened to western Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. Yet in these centuries, the inhabitants of the Merovingian kingdoms created a culture that was the product of these traditions and achieved a balance between the world they inherited and the imaginative solutions that they bequeathed to Europe. Situated at the crossroads of Europe, connecting northern Europe with the Mediterranean and the British Isles with the Byzantine empire, Merovingian Gaul also benefitted from the global reach of the late Roman Empire. In this collection of 46 essays by scholars of Merovingian history, archaeology, and art history, we encounter the new perspectives and scientific approaches that shape our changing view of this extraordinary era.

Ancient Rome and Northern England. A Historical Summary

Antiquity ◽  
1940 ◽  
Vol 14 (55) ◽  
pp. 292-300
Author(s):  
I. A. Richmond
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Related Factors ◽  
Agricultural Communities ◽  
Man And Nature ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
The Military ◽  
Political Character ◽  
Civil Government

On the northwest frontier of the Roman Empire, the upland country of northern England always belonged to the military zone. Even today, anyone traversing the wild fells of Pennine or Cheviot, which form its backbone, can soon appreciate why this should be: and understanding becomes complete when imagination has pierced the dark vista of medieval forest and outlaws’ haunts and apprehended a state of affairs when the bounds between man and nature were still more loosely defined. No Anglian settler had yet begun to clear the overgrown dales for farm, hamlet and township. Man was eking out an unenviable existence between forest and fell, selecting where he could the limestone shelves whose natural drainage afforded him good pasturage and meagre tillage. Two closely related factors thus determined the political character of the country. Forest and fell not only gave cover to enemies and outlaws but at the same time prevented the growth of flourishing agricultural communities, such as were capable of developing social instincts receptive of civilization. The result was chronic unrest and potential hostility to civil government.

scholarly journals Toponyms and the Political and Ethnic Identity in Serbia

2012 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ljubiša Rajić
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Personal Names ◽  
Research Institutes ◽  
Political Relations ◽  
State Administration ◽  
Sport Clubs ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Name Changes

In the course of the last 150 years about 25 place-name changes have taken place in Belgrade. Some were more significant than others, and some of the renamed places have suffered as many as six name changes. These changes are part of a blanket process that includes renaming of state administration institutions, research institutes, schools, universities, factories, museums, sport clubs, etc., as well as personal names. This process reflects political, economic, demographic, and cultural changes serving the purpose of constructing and reconstructing political, ethnic, religious, and cultural identity, as well as political relations, and history. In this paper the author discusses this renaming process, its causes and consequences, as well as its potential for constructing and reconstructing reality.

Framing strategies in referendums from below

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donatella della Porta ◽  
Francis O’Connor ◽  
Martín Portos ◽  
Anna Subirats Ribas
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Framing Strategies ◽  
Current Context ◽  
Economic Austerity ◽  
Political Economic

This chapter examines the framing strategies in referendums from below in Scotland and Catalonia. It considers how the current context of economic austerity, along with the crisis of political legitimacy, have paved the way for the emergence of social justice and democratic-emancipatory frames with higher potential for resonance across audiences (and, therefore, for mobilisation) — to the detriment of other types of frames: the national-identity frame, the socioeconomic frame and the political frame. It shows that the Catalan and Scottish social movements have strategically avoided the traditional nationalist frame in order to expand the movement and avoid being assimilated with other national European movements. It also highlights how the campaigns for self-determination in Catalonia and Scotland shifted their frames towards broader political, economic and social issues to legitimise their discourses, relating their arguments to the national-identity, socioeconomic and political frames.

scholarly journals Działalność Obozu Narodowo-Radykalnego i Ruchu Narodowo-Radykalnego w Krakowie i na terenie województwa krakowskiego w latach 1934–1939

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 99-148
Author(s):  
Jakub Bodaszewski
Keyword(s):  
Significant Role ◽  
Its Region ◽  
The Political ◽  
New Members ◽  
Main Period ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Political Scene

Activities of the National-Radical Camp and Falanga National-Radical Camp in Krakow and the Krakow region in the years 1934–1939 The goal of the article is to describe the activities of the initially legal, and later illegal, National-Radical Camp (ONR) in Krakow and its region in the years 1934–1939. The main period of activity for this organisation in Krakow itself and the Krakow region was in 1934 and, after its breakup, as the Falanga National-Radical Camp in the years 1937–1939. Groups also existed in Tarnow, Nowy Targ and Zakopane. Numerous splits, its illegal structures, lack of funds for activities, arrests and invigilation of its ranks by police informers did not help the development of the party. The name of the organisation changed a few times, but it remained subordinate to the leaders of the Falanga National-Radical Camp in Warsaw. The small number of active members did not prevent it from penetrating various political, economic and cultural environments with the objective of obtaining new members or necessary funds. All the activities of ONR in Krakow were, however, more of a hooligan than a revolutionary nature. It did not play a significant role in the political scene in Krakow after the end of the 1930s.

Archias the Good Immigrant

2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 382-410
Author(s):  
Hannah Čulík-Baird
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Roman Poet ◽  
Bona Fide ◽  
Cultural Tensions

Cicero's Pro Archia has historically been taken as a bona fide expression of humanism. In this article, I demonstrate how this reading of the Pro Archia has allowed the political and cultural tensions in the speech to remain hidden. Cicero's vision of Archias as an idealized amalgam sanitizes both the poetic and the cultural identity of his Syrian client in favour of a projection which combined generic “Greekness” with a politicized invocation of the Roman poet, Q. Ennius. Contextualizing the Pro Archia within its contemporary political moment reveals that Cicero is consciously constructing a narrative of Archias as a “good immigrant.”

Exploring the Diversity of Religion

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-66
Author(s):  
Arkotong Longkumer
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
The Political ◽  
Alternative Route ◽  
British Colonialism ◽  
The North

This article considers the importance of “religion” and “identity” in the process of fieldwork in the North Cachar Hills, Assam, India. The political sensitivities in the region provided a difficult context in which to do fieldwork. This is chiefly because of the various armed insurrections, which have arisen as a consequence of the complicated remnants of British colonialism (1834–1947), and the subsequent post-independence challenge of nation building in India. This article raises important methodological questions concerning fieldwork and the relational grounding of the fieldworker relative to the inside/outside positions. It reflects on these issues by discussing the Heraka, a Zeme Naga religious movement. Their ambiguity and “in-between” character accommodates both the “neo-Hindu” version of a nation or Hindutva (Hinduness) and the larger Naga (primarily Christian) assertion of their own cultural and religious autonomy. The Heraka provides an alternative route into ideas of nationhood, religious belonging and cultural identity.

Leisurely Islam

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lara Deeb ◽  
Mona Harb
Keyword(s):  
Political Context ◽  
The Political ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
Spatial Practices ◽  
Class Mobility ◽  
Political Economic

South Beirut has recently become a vibrant leisure destination with a plethora of cafés and restaurants that cater to the young, fashionable, and pious. What effects have these establishments had on the moral norms, spatial practices, and urban experiences of this Lebanese community? From the diverse voices of young Shi'i Muslims searching for places to hang out, to the Hezbollah officials who want this media-savvy generation to be more politically involved, to the religious leaders worried that Lebanese youth are losing their moral compasses, this book provides a sophisticated and original look at leisure in the Lebanese capital. What makes a café morally appropriate? How do people negotiate morality in relation to different places? And under what circumstances might a pious Muslim go to a café that serves alcohol? This book highlights tensions and complexities exacerbated by the presence of multiple religious authorities, a fraught sectarian political context, class mobility, and a generation that takes religion for granted but wants to have fun. The book elucidates the political, economic, religious, and social changes that have taken place since 2000, and examines leisure's influence on Lebanese sociopolitical and urban situations. Asserting that morality and geography cannot be fully understood in isolation from one another, the book offers a colorful new understanding of the most powerful community in Lebanon today.

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