In Search of Soul

Author(s):  
Alejandro Nava

This book explores the meaning of “soul” in sacred and profane incarnations, from its biblical origins to its central place in the rich traditions of black and Latin history. Surveying the work of writers, artists, poets, musicians, philosophers, and theologians, the book shows how their understandings of the “soul” revolve around narratives of justice, liberation, and spiritual redemption. The book contends that biblical traditions and hip-hop emerged out of experiences of dispossession and oppression. Whether born in the ghettos of America or of the Roman Empire, hip-hop and Christianity have endured by giving voice to the persecuted. This book offers a view of soul in living color, as a breathing, suffering, dreaming thing.

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 523-542
Author(s):  
Christopher Korten

This article reveals for the first time how Catholic clerics survived financially during the Napoleonic period in Italy (1796–1814). Despite the very rich, 200-year historiography on one of the Church's most critical periods, there is almost nothing on how religious clerics coped at this time. Their institutions had been despoiled by the French, often in collaboration with locals, negating traditional forms of clerical income, such as alms or rental income from non-ecclesiastical properties. This caused clerics to search out unorthodox – at times, non-canonical – ways of eking out a living, either for themselves, their religious communities or both, as such distinctions were often blurred. Masses were monetized and traded; ecclesiastical paraphernalia composed of precious metals were smelted and commodified, and relics were sold for profit. The uncovering of these controversial acts by men who in normal times were upstanding reveals the desperation of the times and provides insight into the rich discussion on determining the degrees of separation (and overlap) between the sacred and profane.


Traditio ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 1-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Gillett

Olympiodorus of Thebes is an important figure for the history of late antiquity. The few details of his life preserved as anecdotes in hisHistorygive glimpses of a career which embraced the skills of poet, philosopher, and diplomat. A native of Egypt, he had influence at the imperial court of Constantinople, among the sophists of Athens, and even outside the borders of the empire. HisHistory(more correctly, his “materials for history”) is lost, surviving only as fragments in the narratives of Zosimus, Sozomen, and Philostorgius, and in the rich summary given by the ninth-century Byzantine patriarch Photius. These remains comprise the most substantial narrative sources for events in the western Roman Empire in the early fifth century. Besides its value as a source, theHistoryis important as a monument to the vitality of the belief in the unity of the Roman Empire under the Theodosian dynasty. Olympiodorus wrote in Greek, and knowledge of his work is attested only in Constantinople, yet his political narrative, from 407 to 425, concerns only events in the western half of the empire. To understand the significance of these facts, it is necessary to set the composition of Olympiodorus's work in its proper context. Clarifying the date of publication is the first step toward this goal. Internal and external evidence suggests that the work was written in 440 or soon after, more than a decade later than the date of composition usually accepted. Taken with thematic emphases evident in the structure of theHistory, this revised dating explains why an eastern writer should have written a detailed account of western events in the early part of the century. Olympiodorus's account is a characteristic product of the highly literate class of eastern imperial civil servants, and of their genuine preoccupation with the relationship between the eastern and western halves of the Roman Empire at a time when both were threatened by the rise of the new Carthaginian power of the Vandals.


2021 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-242
Author(s):  
Erica van Boven

Abstract Rob van Essen’s award-winning novel The good son (2018) offers its readers a puzzling reading experience. It contains a tangle of storylines and seems to lack head or tail. This contribution aims to discover composition and meaning by analyzing various aspects provided by the novel itself: timeline, plot, science fiction, ideas, poetica. This approach provides insight into the rich reservoir of meanings, whereby the importance of imagination and creation appears to have a central place. The novel, which can be labelled as a dystopian science fiction novel, as well as a novel of ideas or a novel of poetics, wants us to become aware of the mysteriousness of everyday reality. Nederlandstalig abstract Rob van Essens bekroonde roman De goede zoon (2018) biedt de lezers een verwarrende leeservaring. De roman bevat een wirwar aan verhaallijnen en heeft op het eerste gezicht nauwelijks samenhang. In deze bijdrage wordt geprobeerd compositie en betekenis te ontdekken door middel van een analyse van verschillende aspecten die uit de roman zelf naar voren komen: tijdsverloop, plot, sciencefiction, ideeën, poëtica. Daarmee ontstaat inzicht in een rijk reservoir aan betekenissen waarin het belang van scheppen en verbeelden een centrale plaats heeft. De roman, die beschouwd kan worden als een dystopische sciencefictionroman maar ook als een ideeënroman of een poëticale roman, lijkt ons te willen doordringen van de raadselachtigheid van de alledaagse werkelijkheid.


2019 ◽  
pp. 258-276
Author(s):  
Sylvain Destephen

This article analyses processes in detail based on the evidence now provided by the relevant volumes of Prosopographie chr�tienne du Bas-Empire, Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, Lexicon of Greek Personal Names and the rich cemetery at Korykos. It is argued that the onomastic patrimony of late antique Asia Minor underwent a twofold process of transformation and simplification but did not vanish. The complete hegemony that the Romans achieved in Asia Minor in the 1st century BC induced a Latinisation of the region that was only superficial. This development had two contrasting effects. Firstly, Hellenistic and Roman influences reduced ethnic and cultural diversity in Asia Minor to the point where indigenous languages were more or less extinct when Christianity arose. Secondly, Hellenisation and Romanisation allowed a general enrichment of the onomastic patrimony in Asia Minor. The study of names therefore provides a balanced response since Asia Minor possesses a rich, varied onomastic patrimony. It also relates to how the conversion of the Roman Empire in general, and of Asia Minor in particular, brought about an overall transformation of the names people bore, even though modifications occurred more rapidly within ecclesiastical and monastic milieus than among ordinary laymen.


Author(s):  
Laura Salah Nasrallah

The letters of the apostle Paul contain the earliest evidence we have of followers of Christ. Archaeology and the Letters of Paul is about these letters, and, even more, about the social, political, economic, and religious lives of those to whom and with whom Paul wrote. This book uses archaeological materials to consider specific, local contexts among the cities of the Roman Empire. It engages in the imaginative work of history, amassing details from archaeology to build cases of the rich, complicated, embroiled lives of those adelphoi, the brothers and sisters whom Paul addressed in his letters.


1961 ◽  
Vol 11 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 199-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Baldwin

This paper owes its inspiration to a remark made by Professor M. Rostovtzeff; in a note in his Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire on the widespread social unrest of the first two centuries A.D., having cited other literary authorities such as Dio Chrysostom, Aelius Aristides, etc., he writes: ‘The social problem as such, the cleavage between the poor and the rich, occupies a prominent place in the dialogues of Lucian; he was fully aware of the importance of the problem.’ No one, as far as I know, has attempted to collect and discuss the main passages in Lucian on this topic, and the latest writer on this aspect of Lucian reaches a conclusion quite opposed to Rostovtzeff and one which I believe to be wholly misleading. The aim of this paper is to collect and discuss the main references in Lucian to the social problem interpreting them in the light of Lucian's life and background, and the social and economic conditions of his age. In particular I shall stress the importance of the Cynic tradition as it bears on Lucian's attitude, but shall endeavour to show that this tradition is firmly rooted in practical politics and actual participation in social revolutionary movements and goes far beyond the repetition of mere ethical cliches generally ascribed to it.


2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-170
Author(s):  
Lorinda Cramer

Abstract Australia’s gold-rush history has long been dominated by narratives of male adventure: of landscapes where men lived side by side, mateship took on increasing importance in the pursuit of gold, masculine behaviours and manners were emphasized and domesticity was shunned. In the early years of the rich discoveries of gold, men often travelled alone to the colony of Victoria in their search for wealth. This article examines a situation this unique environment created: where men unaccompanied by women – although women, too, were present on the diggings – were required to adopt practices perceived as feminine. It focuses in on needlework to explore the tensions that emerged given sewing was a defining female occupation during the nineteenth century, inhabiting a central place in the female experience. As this article highlights, sewing became an essential practice for men on the Victorian goldfields in order to keep themselves clothed, warm and dry. I consider how men approached their sewing tasks given needlework’s inextricable link with women, and the various strategies they used to frame their sewing in letters, diaries and memoirs – sometimes for close friends and family alone, and other times for wider dissemination. Drawing on sociological frameworks on constructions of gender, masculinity and manliness, I then consider how a shifting engagement with domestic practices may have strengthened rather than challenged identity on the goldfields.


2004 ◽  
Vol 60 (1/2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dieter H. Reinstorf

This article explores the social and religious dynamics of parables of Jesus in which “rich” and “poor” are juxtaposed. It focuses on Luke 16:19-31 (the parable of the rich man and the poor beggar Lazarus) and on Luke 18:9-14 (the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector). The core of the exploration relates to questions concerning “wealth” and “poverty” in a limited-good society such as first-century Palestine. The article aims to expose the legitimisation provided by the Israelite elite to ensure the collection of taxes placed on the peasant population by the Roman Empire.


2019 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 422-434
Author(s):  
Scott Kennedy
Keyword(s):  
The Poor ◽  

The Ostrogothic king Theoderic I (a.d.475–526) drew on his experience of ruling post-imperial Italy when he famously remarked that ‘The poor Roman imitates the Goth and the rich Goth imitates the Roman’. Written well after the fall of the western Roman empire, these words have prefaced many discussions of the process of Roman and barbarian assimilation and mutual acculturation. This topic has long captured the imagination of scholars, who have approached the topic from many different angles, such as archaeology, religion, prosopography and literature.


Antiquity ◽  
1931 ◽  
Vol 5 (19) ◽  
pp. 315-321
Author(s):  
Percy Gardner

When I acceded to the suggestion of the Editor of ANTIQUITY that I should write a review of the third volume of Sir Arthur Evans’ great work on the palace at Cnossus I was aware of the difficulty of the task I was undertaking. It would of course be quite impossible in a brief article to give any notion of the vast operations which the author has carried through with infinite skill and patience, revealing to us the character of a most curious civilization in Crete, the very existence of which was not suspected until the excavations of Schliemann at Mycenae gave us data. In 1877 I was so much interested by these revelations of the spade that I went to Greece to investigate them, and at Athens Sir Charles Newton and I were shown all the treasures of Mycenae. Newton’s article on them in the Edinburgh Review; and mine in the Quarterly Review, introduced them to English archaeologists, greatly to Schliemann’s satisfaction, as he was openly accused at that centre of scandal, Athens, of having had the rich treasures made by local goldsmiths. And Stephani, perhaps the most learned archaeologist living, was claiming them as the buried spoil of the barbarian invaders of the Roman Empire.Look on this picture and on that! By slow degrees Evans has succeeded in recovering in a great measure the architecture, the art, the manners and customs, the physical type, the religion, of the great civilization of which that revealed at Mycenae was but a late offshoot, a civilization contemporary with the mighty empires of the East, and in some ways more interesting than any of them, since it is more European, more in the line of our civilization and progress.


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