FORMS OF RELIGIOUS ASCETICISM IN EGYPT: TRIGGERS IN THE HISTORY OF WORLDVIEWS

2021 ◽  
pp. 421-438
Author(s):  
С.В. АРХИПОВА
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Social Role ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Early Form ◽  
Ascetic Ideal ◽  
Public Consciousness ◽  
History Of ◽  
New System

Целью статьи является рассмотрение последовательно сменявших друг друга форм аскетического идеала в Египте, способствовавших переходу от античных социокультурных ориентиров к новой системе христианских общественно значимых ценностей и норм. Во II в. до н.э. парадоксы крайних воплощений религиозной аскезы, чуждые традиционной египетской ментальности, вызывали негативную реакцию со стороны приверженцев общепринятых мировоззренческих стереотипов, которая проявлялась в актах варварской агрессии. По мере смещения мировоззренческих парадигм к христианству смещался и вектор агрессии: в III–IV вв. ее объектами становились уже сторонники прежних стереотипов. Являясь, с одной стороны, выражением экзистенциального кризиса своего времени, египетские аскезы в то же время несли в себе мощный цивилизационный потенциал, включивший механизм перехода общественного сознания от Поздней Античности к Раннему Средневековью. Инверсия варварства и цивилизации в оценках этих исторических процессов современниками и последующими поколениями была неизбежна. В сплаве идей, представлений, общественных ориентиров и ценностей выкристаллизовывался вектор развития будущего христианского культурного сообщества, породившего в качестве своего стержня явление монашества с его социальной ролью «патрона», «заступника» и «посредника», характерной для позднеантичного сознания и перепереосмысленной в рамках новой системы ценностей. Однако без ранней формы аскезы катохов, воплотивших первоначальный аскетический идеал, эволюционный скачок в истории мировоззрений был бы невозможен. Ни в российской ни в зарубежной научной литературе не освещалась историческая роль катохов и не рассматривались египетские аскезы в аспекте их взаимосвязи. The purpose of the article is to consider the successive forms of the ascetic ideal in Egypt, which contributed to the transition from ancient socio-cultural guidelines to a new system of Christian socially significant values and norms. In the second century BC, the paradoxes of extreme embodiments of religious asceticism, alien to the traditional Egyptian mentality, caused a negative reaction from adherents of generally accepted ideological stereotypes, which was manifested in acts of barbaric aggression. As the worldview paradigms shifted to Christianity, the vector of aggression also shifted: in the III–IV centuries its objects were already supporters of the previous stereotypes. Being, on the one hand, an expression of the existential crisis of their time, Egyptian asceticism at the same time carried a powerful civilizational potential, which included a mechanism for the transition of public consciousness from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. The inversion of barbarism and civilization in the assessments of these historical processes by contemporaries and subsequent generations was inevitable. In the fusion of ideas, ideas, social guidelines and values, the vector of development of the future Christian cultural community was crystallized, which gave rise to the phenomenon of monasticism as its core, with its social role of “patron”, “intercessor” and “mediator”, characteristic of the late Antique consciousness and reinterpreted within the framework of a new system of values. However, without the early form of asceticism of the Catholics, who embodied the original ascetic ideal, an evolutionary leap in the history of worldviews would have been impossible. Neither Russian nor foreign scientific literature has covered the historical role of the Catholics and has not considered Egyptian asceticism in the aspect of their relationship.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ildar Garipzanov
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Dominant Role ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Sources Of Authority ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Periods

The concluding chapter highlights how the cultural history of graphic signs of authority in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages encapsulated the profound transformation of political culture in the Mediterranean and Europe from approximately the fourth to ninth centuries. It also reflects on the transcendent sources of authority in these historical periods, and the role of graphic signs in highlighting this connection. Finally, it warns that, despite the apparent dominant role of the sign of the cross and cruciform graphic devices in providing access to transcendent protection and support in ninth-century Western Europe, some people could still employ alternative graphic signs deriving from older occult traditions in their recourse to transcendent powers.

The Comparative Study of “Scholasticism” in Late Antique Mesopotamia: Rabbis and East Syrians

AJS Review ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam H. Becker
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Great Distance ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Rabbinic Judaism ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Transmission Of Knowledge ◽  
History Of

Now is an appropriate time to reconsider the historiographical benefit that a comparative study of the East Syrian (“Nestorian”) schools and the Babylonian rabbinic academies may offer. This is attributable both to the recent, rapid increase in scholarship on Jewish–Christian relations in the Roman Empire and late antiquity more broadly, and to the return by some scholars of rabbinic Judaism to the issues of a scholarly exchange of the late 1970s and early 1980s about the nature of rabbinic academic institutionalization. Furthermore, over the past twenty years, scholars of classics, Greek and Roman history, and late antiquity have significantly added to the bibliography on the transmission of knowledge—in lay person's terms, education—in the Greco-Roman and early Christian worlds. Schools continue to be an intense topic of conversation, and my own recent work on the School of Nisibis and the East Syrian schools in general suggests that the transformations and innovations of late antiquity also occurred in the Sasanian Empire, at a great distance from the centers of classical learning, such as Athens, Alexandria, and Antioch. The recently reexamined East Syrian sources may help push the conversation about rabbinic academic institutionalization forward. However, the significance of this issue is not simply attributable to its bearing on the social and institutional history of rabbinic institutions. Such inquiry may also reflect on how we understand the Babylonian Talmud and on the difficult redaction history of its constituent parts. Furthermore, I hope that the discussion offered herein will contribute to the ongoing analysis of the late antique creation and formalization of cultures of learning, which were transmitted, in turn, into the Eastern (i.e., Islamic and “Oriental” Christian and Jewish) and Western Middle Ages within their corresponding communities.

The conquest of Antioch by the Persians and the beginning of the geopolitical catastrophe of Byzantium in the East

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 627-633
Author(s):  
Yu.V. Buzanakov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Military History ◽  
Persian Wars ◽  
Coordination Center ◽  
History Of ◽  
Regional Centers ◽  
The Military ◽  
The City

The article discusses the military history of Antioch, one of the regional centers of the Byzantine state from the 4th to 7th centuries. The author analyse the role of the city in the Byzantine-Persian wars. The characteristic of the history of the conquest of the Byzantine East is given. Being the capital of the province of Syria, Antioch was a major economic, political and religious center. In addition, Antioch has a rich military history. From the 4th century until the beginning of the Arab conquests, the Syrian Province was one of the centers of the Byzantine-Persian wars. As a rule, the city, in this war, played the role of a supply and coordination center for troops, but history knows examples when Antioch went on to experience direct enemy attacks. With the beginning of the era of Arab conquest, neither Byzantium nor Persia, exhausted by the war with each other, were unable to withstand the new threat. As a result of this, the Persian power ceased to exist, and Byzantium lost its vast territories in the East, including Antioch. It is worth noting that Antoch did not suffer a single major siege, neither in the period of Late Antiquity nor in the Middle Ages.

Setting the Scene for an Environmental History of Late Antiquity

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-13
Author(s):  
Adam Izdebski
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Actual Experience ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
New Framework

Abstract Environmental history is a well-established discipline that until recently focused mainly on the modern era and was dominated by historians. Numerous scholars agree today that this needs to change: a focus on Late Antiquity can help this happen. To make it possible, we should concentrate our efforts on three parallel projects. First, make late antique studies more interdisciplinary, i.e. joining the efforts of historians, archaeologists and natural scientists. Second, look at Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages as a source of case studies that are relevant to the central themes of environmental history. Third, use environmental history as a new framework that has the potential to modify our vision of the 1st millennium AD, by getting us closer to the actual experience of the people who lived this past.

Jesus and the Birds in Medieval Abrahamic Traditions

Traditio ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 66 ◽  
pp. 189-230
Author(s):  
Mary Dzon
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Gospel Of Thomas ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
History Of ◽  
Infancy Gospel Of Thomas ◽  
Complex Transmission ◽  
Locus Classicus

As is well known, the three “Peoples of the Book” have in common versions of the tale of Abraham: the “Father of Faith,” who, in return for his willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac, was promised descendants as numerous as the stars (Exod. 32:13; cf. Qur'an 2:131–33).1It is less well known that, in the Middle Ages, the three religions shared versions of a legend about Jesus dating from late antiquity: the tale that Jesus once brought clay birds to life.2Thelocus classicusfor this legend, which is not found in the New Testament, is theInfancy Gospel of Thomas(hereafter IGT), an apocryphal text that focuses on the childhood of Christ, particularly his amazing deeds and words. This text is believed to have been composed in Greek in the second century, though it circulated in many languages and was variously appropriated in the late-antique and medieval periods.3An examination of the motif of Jesus bringing clay birds to life reveals the complex transmission history of the IGT and its derivatives, in both East and West, over the course of many centuries.4More broadly, this story about the legendary Christ Child (an adult in the Jewish version, actually) and his command over the animal kingdom specifically shows the different faiths' understanding of the source and extent of Jesus's power and suggests a reaction to one or both of the other groups. The appropriation of the legend in each case tells us something about each faith's convictions about the way God's power could work in Jesus, and something about how each group viewed Jesus's childhood.

Nicopolis ad Istrum: Backward and Balkan?

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. WHITTOW
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of

The story of Nicopolis ad Istrum and its citizens exemplifies much that is common to the urban history of the whole Roman Empire. This chapter reviews the history of Nicopolis and its transition into the small fortified site of the fifth to seventh centuries and compares it with the evidence from the Near East and Asia Minor. It argues that Nicopolis may not have experienced a cataclysm as has been suggested, and that, as in the fifth and sixth century west, where landowning elites showed a striking ability to adapt and survive, there was an important element of continuity on the lower Danube, which in turn may account for the distinctive ‘Roman’ element in the early medieval Bulgar state. It also suggests that the term ‘transition to Late Antiquity’ should be applied to what happened at Nicopolis in the third century: what happened there in the fifth was the transition to the middle ages. This chapter also describes late antique urbanism in the Balkans by focusing on the Justiniana Prima site.

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.

Ildar Garipzanov, Caroline Goodson, and Henry Maguire, ed., Graphic Signs of Identity, Faith, and Power in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Cursor Mundi, 27, Turnhout: Brepols, 2017, xviii, 392 p., 141 ill.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 377-379
Author(s):  
Kriszta Kotsis
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Interdisciplinary Research ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Visual Communication ◽  
Group Identity ◽  
Religious Affiliation ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
The Third ◽  
Cursor Mundi ◽  
Definition Of

Late antique and early medieval graphic signs have traditionally been studied by narrowly focused specialists leading to the fragmentation and decontextualization of this important body of material. Therefore, the volume aims “to deepen interdisciplinary research on graphic signs” (7) of the third through tenth centuries, with contributions from archaeologists, historians, art historians, a philologist, and a paleographer. Ildar Garipzanov’s introduction defines the central terms (sign, symbol, graphicacy), calls for supplanting the text-image binary with “the concept of the visual-written continuum” (15), and argues that graphicacy was central to visual communication in this period. He emphasizes the agency of graphic signs and notes that their study can amplify our understanding of the definition of personal and group identity, the articulation of power, authority, and religious affiliation, and communication with the supernatural sphere.

Coinage and the Tributary Mode of Production

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eduardo Manzano Moreno
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Social Role ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
The Social ◽  
Simple Question ◽  
Mode Of Production

This chapter addresses a very simple question: is it possible to frame coinage in the Early Middle Ages? The answer will be certainly yes, but will also acknowledge that we lack considerable amounts of relevant data potentially available through state-of-the-art methodologies. One problem is, though, that many times we do not really know the relevant questions we can pose on coins; another is that we still have not figured out the social role of coinage in the aftermath of the Roman Empire. This chapter shows a number of things that could only be known thanks to the analysis of coins. And as its title suggests it will also include some reflections on greed and generosity.

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.

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