The prayers of evocatio and devotio: Between religious ritual and Roman law

2021 ◽  
Vol 60 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 399-416

Abstract This paper, which is a work in progress and a continuation of previous articles that were published on the Roman concepts of evocatio and devotio, will explore a new approach: the juridical context and implications of these religious and magical rituals. After reminding briefly the traditional interpretation (religious prayers pronounced only in a context of war) and the results of our previous articles 1 (evocatio was not limited to military context, and evocatio and devotio included magical elements very similar to formulas of execration (defixiones), we will ask questions that seem to be innovative: on the one hand, “can we compare these prayers with juridical contracts?”, and on the other hand, “had these rituals juridical and political consequences?”, such as the loss of status of a person (in this case, the devotio of enemies) and the loss of status of a place/city (in the case of evocatio). Were these religious rituals a way of making possible the symbolical destruction of a territory and the transfer of a divinity's statue to Rome, and consequently a way of making possible the real destruction of this territory and justifying its conquest? To carry out this study, we will analyze different texts that mention evocatio and devotio, and we will contrast them with texts that refer to juridical concepts (such as consecratio capitis et bonorum, exsecratio, bellum iustum, and damnatio memoriae). We will also analyze the case of cities (Veii, Praeneste, Falerii Veteres, and Carthago) that probably lost their juridical and political status after a war and after religious rituals such as evocatio and devotio. It would not be the first time that religion was used for political reasons, to justify Roman imperialism.

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 83-88
Author(s):  
M. S. Eliseev

Updated ACR recommendations for the treatment of gout concerning lifestyle are discussed. Factors related to a lifestyle, above all food habits, for many years were of leading importance in the treatment of patients with gout, even after application of effective drugs. The authors of the updated ACR recommendations for the first time offered to reconsider the role of environmental factors in the genesis of gout and objectively assess the possibility of its non-drug treatment. On the one hand, regardless of the activity of the disease, the need for restrictions of the alcohol, purine-rich products and fructose-containing beverages, as well as the decrease of body weight in obese patients and vitamin C usage unviability are confirmed. On the other hand, these recommendations are conditional. Their new version of ACR recommendations is significantly different from both its previous version and other international and national recommendations, including recommendations on the diagnosis and treatment of gout used in the Russian Federation.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 358-367
Author(s):  
Nikolai V. Belenov

Introduction. The article presents the results of research of the geographical vocabulary of the Shilan dialect, one of the Erzya-Mordovian dialects of the Samara region, common among Erzya population of Shilan village in Krasnoyarsk region. The dialect belongs to rare Mordovian dialects of the Samara Volga region that were formed in the region since the middle of the XIX century, and therefore its research is of extra interest. Materials and Methods. The research methods are determined by the purpose and objectives of the study. The analysis of the geographical vocabulary of the Shilan dialect is carried out with the involvement of relevant items made in other Mordovian dialects of Samara region, adjacent territories of neighboring regions, as well as other territories of settlement of the Mordovians. Data on geographical vocabulary of the dialect introduced into research for the first time. The main source materials for the article is based on field studies in Silane village during the field seasons in 2017 and 2020, as well as in other Erzya-Mordovian and Moksha-Mordovian villages of Samara region and adjacent territories in 2015 – 2020. Results and Discussion. The study showed that the geographical vocabulary of the Shilan dialect of the Erzya-Mordovian language is significantly different from the corresponding lexical clusters in other dialects of the Mordovian region, which can be explained by natural geographical conditions surrounding Shilan village and the original composition of this lexical cluster of Erzya immigrants who founded this village. Conclusion. The analysis of the geographical vocabulary of the Shilan dialect allowed, on the one hand, to identify specific features of this cluster that distinguish it from the corresponding materials of other Mordovian dialects of the region, and, on the other hand, to identify common isoglosses between it and a number of the Erzya-Mordovian dialects of the Samara Volga region.


2004 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 243-268
Author(s):  
Wiesław Dyk

The discussion about the rights of animals is always up-to-date. The dichotomy division into philoanimalists and philohominists, although reasonable, is not satisfactory to everyone. It is too strongly associated with the division into people and things in Roman law. To avoid this association in the context of biocentric trends in ecological ethics, accomplishments of evolutionary psychology and the concept of animal welfare, it is suggested that a third moral dimension dealing with creatures with highly developed nervous system be introduced between moral objectivity of creatures with high perception and moral subjectivity of people - creatures characterized by self-awareness and reflexive awareness. Human beings on the one hand are responsible for recognizing their rights given by nature and on the other hand, they are obliged to create a law to protect themselves.


Author(s):  
Kseniya V. Donik

The article considers the role of Prince A. Menshikov as a specific type of agent of supreme authority in the process of reforming the maritime administration. The problem context of reforms resulted from the involvement of the naval generals and officials in abuses, which was a consequence of nepotism and unrest in the navy. The involvement of sailors in the Decembrist revolt significantly affected the attitude of the tsar to the general situation in the naval environment. Distrustful of the existing naval administration, Nicholas I needed an intermediary who would implement his idea of the arrangement of the navy on the one hand, and provide him with an objective “impartial” account of maritime problems, on the other hand. As a result of that, Adjutant General Prince A. Menshikov, who had had nothing to do with the naval service earlier, joined the navy to become the monarch’s agent in charge of the naval issues in the bodies of autocratic authority. The objective of the article is to identify the functions of such an agent based on the example of the Maritime Department. The sources of the article include official records and personal documents, some of which are introduced into scientific circulation for the first time. The principal methodological approach to the problem under study is an attempt to bring the appointment of Menshikov beyond the scope of narrow departmental history which was based on the unmotivated decision of the emperor and to propose an interpretation of the events in the context of tsarist government via agents, which has already been described in historiography. The author makes a conclusion about the interconnection between the crisis in the naval department, the attitude of the supreme authority towards it, and the appearance of the monarch’s agent with a number of his own functional characteristics.


2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 205-234
Author(s):  
Warren C. Campbell

This article examines both 4 and 5 Ezra as two textual reactions to Roman imperialism utilizing Homi Bhabha's notion of ‘hybridity’. The central argument offered here is that 4 and 5 Ezra both exemplify resistance to and affiliation with the discourse of dominance integral to imperial ideology. Such reactions are, however, inverted. On the one hand, 4 Ezra primarily offers a theodicean resistance to the destruction of the Second Temple during the First Jewish Revolt (66–70 CE), but relies upon essentialized binaries integral to a colonial discourse of domination. On the other hand, 5 Ezra advances a notion of religious replacement in the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–135 CE); an expression of dominance that is simultaneously a strategy of communal preservation arising from a position of proximity to a Jewish heritage.


2021 ◽  
pp. 104-116
Author(s):  
Ivan O. Volkov ◽  

For the first time, in the article, Vladimir Titov’s letter (dated 12/24 February 1869) is published and commented. In the 1820s, in Russia, Titov was well-known as a writer and literature theorist, the author of a romantic novella The Remote House on Vasilyevsky Island (1829) close to Society of Lyubomudriye. The letter extracted from the archives of the National Library of Russia is addressed to Duke Vladimir Odoevsky whose relationship with Titov was friendly from the very beginning of their acquaintance. The letter focuses on Ivan Turgenev’s speech published in the first issue of Sovremennik and titled “Hamlet and Don Quixote”. Reacting to Turgenev’s article, Titov shortly and critically accesses the comparison concentrating mainly on the image of Hamlet and thoroughly expresses his opinion on the essence of his tragic state. Titov’s opinion is just the opposite of Turgenev’s complex and multidimensional interpretation. Having experienced the great impact of the philosophy of German idealism at the beginning of his career, Titov to a great extent idealizes Shakespeare’s character whom he long knows and whom he is clearly eager to vindicate. Meanwhile, Titov does not pursue the aim to absolutely advocate the romantic halo of Hamlet as a Titanic personality (grandiose intellect and scale of feeling) and to enact the tragic pathos of the inner fight only. Developing Goethe’s definition of the essence of the character’s inner conflict, Titov, on the one hand, approaches its real understanding underlying the prince’s necessity to stay in a derogatory position of a “pitiful semiclown, indecisive grouch and shred”. On the other hand, the assessment can not be absolutely objective because Titov wants to see Hamlet as a victim of the fatal fortune which turns him into a character of an almost classical tragedy of fate. Titov’s bright and developed reaction (in the document of private nature) to Turgenev’s article is attractive and important first of all for its vividly demonstrated novelty and creativity of the writer’s view, wideness and multimodality of the author’s perception of Hamlet’s image. For the first time, Turgenev gave a developed interpretation of Shakespeare’s image in the tale “Hamlet of Shchigrovsky Province” (1848). Continuing his searches in the area of “Russian” (or “steppe”) Hamlet, Turgenev creates moral and philosophical problems of the English tragedy in the crisis socio-historical and cultural atmosphere of Russia of the 1840s. However, the principles of the artistic generalization and the peculiarities of the new reading, not mentioned and not fully comprehended by his contemporaries, were surprising and rejected when the speech “Hamlet and Don Quixote” appeared, in which Shakespeare’s character is presented ultimately vividly and lively in the then current interpretation.


Author(s):  
Tatiana A. Bystrova ◽  

The paper examines two key novels by Sandro Veronesi, the modern Italian writer, Calm Chaos (2006) and Colibri (2020). Both novels were awarded Italy’s main literary prize, the Premio Strega, which is a unique precedent. The relevance of the article comes from the high demand for research on contemporary Italian literature on the one hand and from the novelty of the proposed interpretation for the novel Calm Chaos on the other hand. For the first time, the protagonist of Calm Chaos, Pietro Palladini, is presented not as a preacher of eternal values, returning the reader to the theme of knowing oneself and the surrounding world, but as a mad visionary with clear signs of psychopathy and schizophrenia. The analysis of Veronesi’s latest novel Colibri reveals the character’s evolution and the writer’s narrative manner. The theme of psychiatry in the life of a modern person appears to be one of the key ones in Veronesi’s work.


Author(s):  
Paul Torremans

This chapter first discusses the two roots of copyright. On the one hand, copyright began as an exclusive right to make copies—that is, to reproduce the work of an author. This entrepreneurial side of copyright is linked in with the invention of the printing press, which made it much easier to copy a literary work and, for the first time, permitted the entrepreneur to make multiple identical copies. On the other hand, it became vital to protect the author now that his or her work could be copied much more easily and in much higher numbers. The chapter then outlines the key concepts on which copyright is based.


1994 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 207-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
M.Y. Manga-González ◽  
M.P. Morrondo-Pelayo

AbstractDevelopment of Neostrongylus linearis larvae was studied in the snail intermediate hosts Oestophora (Oestophora) barbula, Oestophorella buvinieri, Cepaea nemoralis and Helix (Cryptomphalus) aspersa. The molluscs of each species, all adults, were divided into groups of 40 for infection purposes. The infection doses for the first two snail species were 90 and 50 first stage larvae (L1) of N. linearis, respectively. For C. nemoralis two batches were tested: one with 200 L1 kept at 19°C and the other with 250 L1 at a temperature of 21°C. The same was done with Helix (C.) aspersa with 200 L1 at a temperature of 21°C, on the one hand and 300 L1 at 24°C on the other. One or two molluscs of each species were killed in series from the 6th day post-infection (p.i.) until the 44th. Percentage values for total larvae (1, 2 and 3) and L3 were higher with the lower dose for C. nemoralis, whilst the same was true with the higher dose in Helix (C.) aspersa. In both cases, the higher temperature appeared to contribute to cycle acceleration. Using one way analysis of variance, statistically significant differences were detected between the species of molluscs tested concerning percentages of L1 which penetrated, total larvae and L3. According to our results, the decreasing order of susceptibility of these species of molluscs as experimental intermediate hosts of N. linearis is: O. buvinieri, Oestophora (O.) barbula, C. nemoralis and Helix (C.) aspersa. It is the first time that Oestophora (O.) barbula and Oestophorella buvinieri have been named as experimental intermediate hosts of N. linearis.


Traditio ◽  
1943 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 355-408 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gaines Post

By the end of the thirteenth century the royal writ of summons to Parliament usually specified that communities send representatives with “full power” to consent to whatever should be ordained by the king in his court and council. This “full power” was the famous plena potestas which was stated in the mandates carried by knights and burgesses to Parliament and by delegates of cities and towns to Cortes and States General, and which is still current in proxies for stockholders' meetings. It has, of course, like almost every word of the terminology in documents relating to representation, challenged interpretation: on the one side is the argument of J. G. Edwards, who confines himself to England, that plena potestas implied an almost political or sovereign consent which limited the royal authority; on the other, the assumption that it was an expression of involuntary consent to the acts and decisions of the royal government. In general, of course, whatever modern scholars have decided as to the right of consent has resulted either from modern conceptions of representation or from a strict interpretation of the terminology in the sources for the history of assemblies. No one has examined plena potestas in the light of the legal theory and procedure of the thirteenth century It is possible that by studying how legists and canonists viewed the meaning of plena potestas—for it, like most of the terminology in the mandate, came from Roman Law—we can find at least a relatively new approach to the problem of medieval consent.


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