Epilogue

2019 ◽  
pp. 112-116
Author(s):  
Averil Cameron
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
The Subject

This epilogue addresses the question of periodization in relation to Byzantium. Several recent writers prefer to see “Byzantium” proper as beginning from ca. 600 or later, and there are good reasons why. Constantinople was formally inaugurated in AD 330, but there was not yet such an entity as “Byzantium,” distinct from the eastern Roman Empire, and it remains the case that the Byzantines thought of themselves as Romans. Nevertheless, adopting a later periodization risks obscuring the fact that what people call Byzantium had a long earlier history; it was not a new state formed only in the medieval period. The chapter then argues that Byzantium belongs to mainstream history. Moreover, Byzantine studies must be rescued from its continuing association with the competing claims of negativity and exoticism. Recent publications have set an encouraging pattern, but now the subject needs to be opened up further, and Byzantium seen against more “normal” and wider perspectives.

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.

Grattius and Augustus

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven J. Green
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Religious Reform ◽  
The Subject

This chapter argues that, although Grattius’ poem is not ostensibly designed for Augustus—who is nowhere evoked in the poem and showed little interest in the subject of hunting—it remains prudent to think about the Cynegetica as a poem about Augustus, or rather, Augustan Rome. Through extensive use of anthropomorphic language, the craft of hunting is subtly configured to promote Augustan-style leadership, in the figures of the master of hounds, the dog breeder, and the tree cultivator, and to celebrate the expanse of the Roman Empire; this is all set, however, within a divine framework that plays out the implications of Augustus’ (at times radical) programme of religious reform.

Gelehrte Autorität und die Ordnung der Dinge. Über Wissen, Macht und die Vermessung der Wirklichkeit im Mittelalter

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-66
Author(s):  
Marcel Bubert
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Organizing Principles ◽  
The Middle Ages

AbstractAlthough the medieval period was not part of Michel Foucault’s seminal study on ‘The Order of Things’, there are good reasons to believe that the learned cultures of the Middle Ages were to a certain degree based on specific epistemic orders, general organizing principles which were unconsciously presupposed in concepts of reality. Nevertheless, the extent as to which these concepts are in fact committed to the assumption of a metaphysically determined measuring of reality, is not altogether clear. This article aims to discuss this question in general, based on recent views of the role of the ‘subject’ in epistemic orders.

scholarly journals Celestial Spheres

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 168-186
Author(s):  
Austin M. Freeman
Keyword(s):  
Dimensional Space ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Good Evidence ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Higher Dimensional ◽  
Spatial Dimensions ◽  
Modern Physics ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Three Dimensional Space

Angels probably have bodies. There is no good evidence (biblical, philosophical, or historical) to argue against their bodiliness; there is an abundance of evidence (biblical, philosophical, historical) that makes the case for angelic bodies. After surveying biblical texts alleged to demonstrate angelic incorporeality, the discussion moves to examine patristic, medieval, and some modern figures on the subject. In short, before the High Medieval period belief in angelic bodies was the norm, and afterwards it is the exception. A brief foray into modern physics and higher spatial dimensions (termed “hyperspace”), coupled with an analogical use of Edwin Abbott’s Flatland, serves to explain the way in which appealing to higher-dimensional angelic bodies matches the record of angelic activity in the Bible remarkably well. This position also cuts through a historical equivocation on the question of angelic embodiment. Angels do have bodies, but they are bodies very unlike our own. They do not have bodies in any three-dimensional space we can observe, but are nevertheless embodied beings.

Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 126-128
Author(s):  
Ersin Hussein
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Near East ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
Roman Provinces ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Cultural Networks ◽  
Written Sources

The Conclusion revisits the questions that lie at the heart of studies of the Roman provinces and that have driven this study. What is the best way to tell the story of a landscape, and its peoples, that have been the subject of successive conquests throughout history and when the few written sources have been composed by outsiders? What approach should be taken to draw out information from a landscape’s material culture to bring the voices and experiences of those who inhabited its space to the fore? Is it ever possible to ensure that certain evidence types and perspectives are not privileged over others to draw balanced conclusions? The main findings of this work are that the Cypriots were not passive participants in the Roman Empire. They were in fact active and dynamic in negotiating their individual and collective identities. The legacies of deep-rooted connections between mainland Greece, Egypt, Asia Minor, and the Near East were maintained into the Roman period and acknowledged by both locals and outsiders. More importantly, the identity of the island was fluid and situational, its people able to distinguish themselves but also demonstrate that the island was part of multiple cultural networks. Cyprus was not a mere imitator of the influences that passed through it, but distinct. The existence of plural and flexible identities is reflective of its status as an island poised between multiple landscapes

The Cities and their Money

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Weiss Peter
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Central Importance ◽  
The West ◽  
Authority Control ◽  
Central Concern ◽  
Differences Of Opinion ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Provincia Asia ◽  
Narrow Space ◽  
Clear Conception

In their Kind Invitation to Contribute to this book the editors assigned me the topic of ‘Authority/control’. The authors of RPC devoted an intensive discussion to the subject, with many facets and displaying an extraordinary knowledge of the material. This is in many respects a difficult field, and it is obvious how wide and heterogeneous is the material, how different the presuppositions were in the various parts of the Roman empire, and with what a broad timespan one has to deal: some three centuries, in which there were many developments and several changes. Despite its gigantic bulk, the coinage affords far fewer unambiguous indications permitting a clear conception of how minting came about and was controlled than one would wish. Epigraphy, which in other cases provides an enormous fund of information, here by contrast leaves us almost entirely in the lurch. It follows that many differences of opinion exist, and in many matters, even on points of central importance, our vision is still clouded. The topic is too complex to permit a thorough discussion of all the questions before us in this narrow space. For that reason I have undertaken a limited evaluation. In what follows, I am concerned only with coins pertaining to the cities. Attention is therefore not paid, for example, to the cistophori in Asia, the coins of Alexandria in Egypt, or of Caesarea in Cappadocia, or to the provincial coinage of Syria. I shall first consider the question of Roman control, but only in the form of some basic observations and reflections. Much must here remain unresolved. My central concern will therefore be the following set of questions: How did the cities organize their monetary production? How were responsibilities apportioned, and who was directly involved? What range of possibilities was there? How in this context are we to interpret the numerous names and functional titles on the coins of many Roman cities, especially in the west, down to Julio-Claudian times, and above all, in continuity with Hellenistic practice, on very many coins from the Greek poleis in Provincia Asia?

The Conception of Revolution in Persianate Political Thought

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saïd Amir Arjomand
Keyword(s):  
Political Thought ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
Natural Phenomenon ◽  
Political Ethics ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Deterministic Theory ◽  
Secondary Literature ◽  
The Subject

AbstractThe modern Persian term for “revolution,”enqelāb, often used in conjunction withdawlatas the divinely ordained turn in power, stretches way back to the medieval period, and was in fact even used shortly before the revival of literary Persian to describe the Khorasanian uprising against the Umayyads. We find two very different ideas of revolution in the Persianate literature. The first is a deterministic theory of revolution in earthly kingdoms as a natural phenomenon; this has received little or no attention in the secondary literature on the subject. The idea had Indian origins, was developed in the late Sasanian Iran and absorbed in the astronomical theories of the early ʿAbbasid period. The second conception is a normative one, and belongs to the literature on statecraft and political ethics. It explains revolution as a consequence of the moral decay of the ruler and his failure to uphold the principles of statecraft. According to this second theory, revolutionary upheaval and changes of dynasty result from the failure of the rulers to maintain the prosperity of the kingdom through justice. This conception, too, can be traced to the Khorasan uprising. The mutual articulation and reconciliation of the deterministic and the normative conceptions of revolution represents the Persianate understanding of human agency within the framework of cosmic laws.

III.—The Study and Classification of Medieval Mappae Mundi

Archaeologia ◽  
1926 ◽  
Vol 75 ◽  
pp. 61-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael C. Andrews
Keyword(s):  
Medieval Period ◽  
History Of Cartography ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

We all know what maps are. Most of us have occasion to use them frequently. Many of us, no doubt, have spent pleasant hours in our studies, performing, with their help, what have been called ‘armchair travels ‘. But only a few have been led to inquire into the history of maps and mapmaking, and fewer still have interested themselves in that period of the history of cartography which is the subject of this paper—the medieval period.

ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE ‘ARIAN CONTROVERSY’ IN THE FOURTH CENTURY

2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 229-263
Author(s):  
David M. Gwynn
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Material Evidence ◽  
The Church ◽  
Archaeological Approach ◽  
Arian Controversy

The so-called ‘Arian Controversy’ that divided the Christian Church in the 4th c. has been the subject of considerable scholarly debate in recent decades. The literary sources from which the majority of our knowledge of the controversy derives are highly polemical and distorted, written almost exclusively from the perspective of those whose positions would come to be accepted as ‘orthodox’, and this in turn has directly influenced scholarly interpretations of the material evidence from this crucial period in the history of the Church. In this paper I wish to reconsider that material evidence and ask how an archaeological approach independent of the biases of our literary sources might broaden our understanding of the controversy and its impact upon the 4th c. Roman empire.

scholarly journals Roman London

1911 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 141-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Haverfield
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
General Public ◽  
Classical System ◽  
Roman Archaeology ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

Roman London illustrates in more than one way the worst features of English archaeological study. There has been no want of interest in the subject. In England, indeed, Roman archaeology has throughout received a fuller share of general public interest than in any other country. Thanks to our classical system, nearly everyone has read a little Caesar and, it may be, some Tacitus, and though he has forgotten nine-tenths of it, he generally deems himself fitted to enquire into the history of the Roman empire. People who in every other country would give no heed to archaeology at all are in England extremely interested, and it has always been thought right and proper that they should be interested. Unfortunately, it has also been thought needless to do more than to be interested.

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