scholarly journals Some Remarks on the Genesis of One of the Images of Early Medieval Art

2019 ◽  
pp. 25-46
Author(s):  
Ilia Akhmedov
Keyword(s):  
Eastern European ◽  
Medieval Art ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Buddhist Art ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Byzantine Art ◽  
Classical Mythology ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Greek Tradition ◽  
The Creation

The article focuses on the origin of the image of a dragon with a serpentine body known in the early medieval antiquities of Eastern European nomads. Researchers have long been discussing such images found on the sites of the Volga region and the Urals. According to the most recent hypothesis proposed by N.A. Lifanov, these dragon figures generally match the image of ancient κyτος which was adopted as a result of the acquaintance of the steppe inhabitants with works of late antique or early Byzantine art. The present study addresses a wide range of sources allowing us to construct an alternative version of the genesis of the dragon image. The group of images of fantastic creatures associated with early Buddhist art can be found in East Turkestan. They show immediate morphological and stylistic conformity with Eastern European images. They are also similar to the figures of Sogdian mural and plastic arts. East Turkestan’s images reproduce the well-known patterns of the Buddhist art of Gandhara. Gandhara figures originate from the images of κÞτεα and other widespread in Hellenistic art of Bactria sea monsters. KÞτεα which were companions of sea deities in classical mythology were seamlessly included in the decoration of headwear of Buddha sculptures, worship or relic veneration scenes. They are often found on the architectural details of stūpas. Some believe that κÞτεα evolved from the creation of sea into the creation of sea, air, and earth in the Indo-Greek tradition. They became mediators between worlds. Finally, they could exercise some sort of soteriological function. Apparently, Turkic peoples who were actively involved in all processes that took place in Central Asia and East Turkestan could comprehend these properties. So, the κÞτεα images could be reinterpreted and integrated into their imagery.

Self-Revision and the Arabic Historical Tradition: Identifying Textual Reuse and Reorganization in the Works Of Al-Balā Dhurāi

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-30
Author(s):  
Ryan J. Lynch
Keyword(s):  
Late Antique ◽  
Textual Reuse ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Historical Material ◽  
Historical Tradition ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Textual Traditions ◽  
Early Islamic ◽  
Islamic Institutions

While there is growing historiographical analysis of the reuse of circulating narrative materials in medieval books from various textual traditions, there have been fewer studies of the late antique and early medieval periods that have considered the process of authorial self-revision. This is especially the case with early Arabic/Islamicate texts. This study is a discussion of the historical material that is reused in the two surviving Arabic works of the Muslim author al-Balādhurī (d. ca. 892 CE/279 AH), material which appears in his Kitāb Futūḥ al-buldān (The Book of the Conquest of Lands) and that was apparently reused in his Ansāb al-Ashrāf (The Lineage of Nobles). In discussing how al-Balādhurī recycled this information and emplotted it in verbatim and near-verbatim forms, it shows how shifting the location of these shared traditions demonstrates the different goals of his two books and also showcases his work as an author: in the former, he places an emphasis on the creation of early Islamic institutions; in the later, he eulogizes the character and qualities of Islam's earliest leaders. Additionally, all of the reused material discussed here was identified through computer meditated analysis, so this study also highlights how the tools of the digital and computational humanities demonstrate immense promise in enhancing and expediting the research of scholars across the medieval globe.

Reuse of Roman Artefacts in Late Antiquity and the Early Medieval West

2020 ◽  
pp. 425-446
Author(s):  
Ellen Swift
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Ferrous Metal ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Silver Plate ◽  
Metal Artefacts ◽  
Wide Range

In Late Antiquity, reuse and recycling has mainly been considered in relation to spolia and to precious metal artefacts such as silver plate and coins. Yet there is much evidence for reuse behaviour across a wide range of artefact types in more everyday materials. Some of this is connected to ordinary habits of reuse and recycling found throughout the Roman and late antique periods, although it is in part also a response to prevailing economic and social conditions. Since these may vary from one place to another or across different social groups, interpretations must take account of the particular contexts within which objects were used. This chapter addresses reuse behaviour from the late antique and early medieval periods in the West, with a case study drawn from the author’s detailed studies of particular non-ferrous metal objects from Britain, including objects newly produced in the fifth century.

Graphic Signs of Authority in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, 300-900

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ildar Garipzanov
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Visual Spatial ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Medieval Europe

This book presents a cultural history of graphic signs such as the sign of the cross, christograms, monograms, and other graphic devices, examining how they were employed to relate to and interact with the supernatural world, and to represent and communicate secular and divine authority in the late antique Mediterranean and early medieval Europe. It analyses its graphic visual material with reference to specific historical contexts and to relevant late antique and early medieval texts as a complementary way of looking at the cultural, religious, and socio-political transition from the late Graeco-Roman world to that of medieval Europe. This monograph treats such graphic signs as typologically similar forms of visual communication, reliant on the visual-spatial ability of human cognition to process object-like graphic forms as proxies for concepts and abstract notions—an ability that is commonly discussed in modern visual studies with reference to categories such as visual thinking, graphic visualization, and graphicacy. Thanks to this human ability, the aforementioned graphic signs were actively employed in religious and socio-political communication in the first millennium ad. This approach allows for a synthetic study of graphic visual evidence from a wide range of material media that have rarely been studied collectively, including various mass-produced items and unique objects of art, architectural monuments, and epigraphic inscriptions, as well as manuscripts and charters. As such, this book will serve as a timely reference tool for historians, art historians, archaeologists, epigraphists, manuscript scholars, and numismatists as well as the informed general public.

The Letter Collection of Paulinus of Nola

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis Trout
Keyword(s):  
Late Antique ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Current Standard ◽  
Standard Edition ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Letter Collection

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Paulinus made no effort to copy, edit, and organize his much-admired letters, but, at some point, readers and admirers began to build collections of his letters. Unfortunately, the late antique steps that led to the creation of the medieval representatives of this process cannot be retrieved, but, by all indications, late antique and early medieval collectors had organized Paulinus’s letters according to recipient. The current standard edition of Paulinus’s letters, however, divide his works between those written in prose and those composed in verse. The labeling of the two standard volumes of Paulinus’s opera as epistulae and carmina is clearly problematic, and the very fact that Paulinus’s ideas and themes habitually disregard the boundary between verse and prose poses serious challenges to the conceptual division implied by any such taxonomy.

The Church of San Salvatore at Spoleto: some structural notes

1949 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 72-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. B. Ward Perkins
Keyword(s):  
Eighth Century ◽  
Medieval Art ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Church

The church of San Salvatore, on the outskirts of Spoleto, is a monument as familiar as it is puzzling. Together with the closely related Clitumnus temple, 10 km. distant between Spoleto and Trevi, it has been the subject of at least one monograph and of numerous articles, and it figures in all the standard works on late antique and early medieval art in Italy. It first appears in history in a document of 815, confirming to the abbey of Farfa certain possessions, including monasterium sancti Salvatoris situm prope eandem civitatem (i.e. Spoleto). The majority of writers have regarded both it and the Clitumnus Temple as the product of a late antique, classicising revival, and have assigned them to dates ranging from the late fourth to the sixth centuries. Recently Deichmann has advanced the novel, but attractive, suggestion that they belong rather to the latter part of the eighth century, and are the work of the Dukes of Spoleto, produced under Carolingian domination and under strong Carolingian artistic influence.

History of the Study of Apocrypha in Early Medieval England

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 13-26
Author(s):  
Brandon W. Hawk
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Medieval England ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Early Judaism ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Early English

Literature written in England between about 500 and 1100 CE attests to a wide range of traditions, although it is clear that Christian sources were the most influential. Biblical apocrypha feature prominently across this corpus of literature, as early English authors clearly relied on a range of extra-biblical texts and traditions related to works under the umbrella of what have been called “Old Testament Pseudepigrapha” and “New Testament/Christian Apocrypha." While scholars of pseudepigrapha and apocrypha have long trained their eyes upon literature from the first few centuries of early Judaism and early Christianity, the medieval period has much to offer. This article presents a survey of significant developments and key threads in the history of scholarship on apocrypha in early medieval England. My purpose is not to offer a comprehensive bibliography, but to highlight major studies that have focused on the transmission of specific apocrypha, contributed to knowledge about medieval uses of apocrypha, and shaped the field from the nineteenth century up to the present. Bringing together major publications on the subject presents a striking picture of the state of the field as well as future directions.

Icon(icity) and causality: On the role of indexical semiotic modes in development of Byzantine art

2017 ◽  
pp. 711-726
Author(s):  
Todor Mitrovic
Keyword(s):  
Integrated Approach ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Cultural Patterns ◽  
Byzantine Art ◽  
Semiotic Model ◽  
Iconic Images ◽  
Specific Object ◽  
Byzantine Church ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Indexical Sign

Determined by its biblical origins, the birth of specifically Christian visual culture had to be given through overcoming the inevitable resistance of early church towards images. In order to find its stable place on late antique cultural scene, early byzantine art, thus, had to rely on support of religious and cultural patterns remote of magisterial artistic trends. Among those, contemporary theory recognizes as especially important: 1) cult of relics and 2) sealing practices. Crossing the possibility of theoretical definition of unique semiotic model standing behind those two cultural- religious practices with the fact that after iconoclasm byzantine art will be systematically distanced from both of them, this research attempts to explore the relation between iconophile theory and byzantine artistic production from a yet unexplored interpretative position. Hypothesis that category of indexical sign, as it is proposed by contemporary semiotics (based on Peircean legacy), can be used for extraction of this unique semiotic model is used here as a specific methodological tool for re-approach to both - 1) the pre-iconoclastic need for accentuating the indexical aspects of iconic images and 2) the mystery of post-iconoclastic radical distancing towards such a semiotic need. On the basis of such an integrated approach it is possible not only to search for more precise explanation of co-relations between artistic practices and contemporaneous (iconophile) theory, but to explain curious historical delay in application of this theoretic knowledge in artistic and liturgical realms, together with a late outburst of iconoclastic behaviour provoked by this very delay. Namely, one of the most prominent incarnations of pre-iconoclastic need for ?indexicalisation? of iconic medium, the mysterious Mandylion from Edessa, had very curious role in historical development of post-iconoclastic plastic arts in Byzantium. This specific object was miraculously and undividedly uniting both key indexical aspects of pre-iconoclastic cognitive settings in one icon - causally connected with the archetypehimself. However, exactly this kind of synthetic, relic-seal-image status turned out to be the specific semiotic stumbling stone in the process of application of iconophile theory in liturgical arts. This is why in XI century byzantine church decided to refrain Mandylion from public life for good and lock it in court chapel, under the protection of the emperor himself. As one of the most curious theological decisions of medieval Christianity, this extraordinary semiotic conversion was, actually, the final step in application of the most advanced achievements of the late iconophile theory, which was, at the same time, the first step in development of artistic system relaxed from the pressure of need for legalistic, causal validation of pictorial language.

Recycling and Reuse in the Roman Economy

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Building Materials ◽  
Computational Modelling ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Roman Economy ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Status ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Methodological Approaches ◽  
First Time ◽  
Site Types

The recycling and reuse of materials and objects were extensive in the past, but have rarely been embedded into models of the economy; even more rarely has any attempt been made to assess the scale of these practices. Recent developments, including the use of large datasets, computational modelling, and high-resolution analytical chemistry, are increasingly offering the means to reconstruct recycling and reuse, and even to approach the thorny matter of quantification. Growing scholarly interest in the topic has also led to an increasing recognition of these practices from those employing more traditional methodological approaches, which are sometimes coupled with innovative archaeological theory. Thanks to these efforts, it has been possible for the first time in this volume to draw together archaeological case studies on the recycling and reuse of a wide range of materials, from papyri and textiles, to amphorae, metals and glass, building materials and statuary. Recycling and reuse occur at a range of site types, and often in contexts which cross-cut material categories, or move from one object category to another. The volume focuses principally on the Roman Imperial and late antique world, over a broad geographical span ranging from Britain to North Africa and the East Mediterranean. Last, but not least, the volume is unique in focusing upon these activities as a part of the status quo, and not just as a response to crisis.

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