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.

scholarly journals Piety, Power, or Presence? Strategies of Monumental Visualization of Patronage in Late Antique Ravenna

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 98
Author(s):  
Maria Cristina Carile
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Visual Communication ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Architectural Space ◽  
Visual Objects ◽  
Or Groups ◽  
Church Decoration ◽  
Communicative Power

Between Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, lay and cleric alike felt the need to be remembered in the monuments they sponsored. Accordingly, specific elements of the décor were designed as means capable of bearing the patron’s memory. The late antique churches of Ravenna offer an extraordinary field to understand how patrons left their mark on decorative programs of ancient buildings. There, portraits, inscriptions, and monograms emerge as the primary instruments used in a complex strategy of visual communication. However, each had its own communicative power and peculiar use. Either separately or in connection, they were able to convey strong messages of patronship to the viewer. By focusing on each of these elements in its context and on the ways they all interacted with the surrounding architecture and church decoration, this paper will highlight their value as visual objects capable to immortalize the piety, power, or presence of the patron. Indeed, the silent dialogue enacted into the architectural space with the beholder will allow us to reconstruct the hidden messages that individuals or groups meant to communicate to posterity.

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 POETICS OF LATER GREEK ECPHRASIS: CHRISTODORUS COPTUS, THE PALATINE ANTHOLOGY AND THE PERIOCHAE OF NONNUS’ DIONYSIACA

Ramus ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 216-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fran Middleton
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Latin Poetry ◽  
Latin Literature ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Greek Poetry ◽  
To Receive ◽  
The Middle Ages

There is increasing interest in what might be thought ‘special’ about late antique poetry. Two volumes of recent years have focused on Latin poetry of this time, Classics Renewed: Reception and Innovation in the Latin Poetry of Late Antiquity edited by Scott McGill and Joseph Pucci (2016) as well as The Poetics of Late Latin Literature edited by Jaś Elsner and Jesús Hernández Lobato (2017), while it has become increasingly acceptable to remark on late antiquity as a cultural period in its own right, rather than a point of transition between high antiquity and the middle ages. Greek poetry of late antiquity has yet to receive the level of attention offered to Latin literature of this time, and so it is to help answer the question of what may be thought special about late antique Greek poetry that I here discuss the poetics of later Greek ecphrasis.

Paraphrase and Metaphrase

2019 ◽  
pp. 209-220
Author(s):  
Andrew Faulkner
Keyword(s):  
Late Antique ◽  
Classical Literature ◽  
Gregory Of Nyssa ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The Third ◽  
Definition Of

This chapter explores paraphrase as a common tool for early Christian exegesis. The first section discusses the definition of paraphrase, its parameters in Antiquity, and its broader use in classical literature and education. The second section looks in more detail at prose paraphrase of Scripture, including discussion of a striking instance of exegetical paraphrase in Greek by Gregory of Nyssa and one in Latin by the orator Gaius Marius Victorinus. The third section deals with verse paraphrase of Scripture, with reference to poets such as Juvencus and Nonnus of Panopolis, as well as the Late Antique hexameter paraphrase of the Psalms in Antiquity attributed to Apollinaris of Laodicea.

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.

Übergänge – Ornamente und Diagramme zwischen Text, Buchstabe und Bild in Handschriften des Frühmittelalters

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 408-430 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrizia Carmassi
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Martianus Capella ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Manuscript Page ◽  
Graphic Elements

AbstractStarting from the concept and definition of littera in the Grammar treatises of the Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, the contribution analyzes common graphic elements which were used by the scribes to create initials, ornamental patterns and the layout of the manuscript page. These elements and their functions were partly described in encyclopaedic works, e. g. of Isidor of Sevilla and Martianus Capella in the chapters about Geometry. Not only were these features well known through the study of the Artes, they also represented useful tools for the invention and production of medieval diagrams.

ARCHITECTURE AND CHURCH POWER IN LATE ANTIQUITY: CANOSA AND SAN GIUSTO (APULIA)

2006 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-168
Author(s):  
Giuliano Volpe
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Transitional Period ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Rural Landscapes ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The City ◽  
The Church

Two Early Christian complexes will be presented here: one urban (San Pietro in Canosa), and one rural (San Giusto in the territory of Lucera). Both cases represent clear evidence of the Christianising policy promoted by the Church in the cities and countryside, especially during the 5th and 6th centuries A.D., which led to a new definition of urban and rural landscapes. The Early Christian complex of San Pietro in Canosa—the most important city in Apulia et Calabria in Late Antiquity—and the Early Christian complex of San Giusto, most likely the seat of a rural diocese, are notable expressions of ecclesiastical power in the city and the countryside during the transitional period between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages.

scholarly journals From the Tombs into the City: Grave Robbing and the Reuse of Funerary Spolia in Late Antique Italy

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 115-137
Author(s):  
Cristina Murer
Keyword(s):  
Social Practice ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Third ◽  
Political Transformations ◽  
The Social ◽  
The City

Archaeological evidence demonstrates that funerary spoil (e.g. sarcophagus lids, funerary altars, epitaphs, reliefs, and statues) were frequently reused to decorate the interiors of public and private buildings from the third to the sixth century. Therefore, the marble revetments of high imperial tombs must have been spoliated. Imperial edicts, which tried to stamp part the overly common practice of tomb plundering, confirm that the social practice of tomb plundering must have been far more frequent in late antiquity than in previous periods. This paper discusses the reuse of funerary spoil in privet and public buildings from Latium and Campania and contextualizes them by examining legal sources addressing tomb violation. Furthermore, this study considers the extent to which the social practice of tomb plundering and the reuse of funerary material in late antiquity can be connected with larger urbanist, sociohistorical, and political transformations of Italian cityscapes from the third to the sixth century.

scholarly journals TO THE QUESTION OF SPACE ORGANIZATION OF BOOK ILLUMINATION OF LATE ANTIQUITY AND EARLY MIDDLE AGES (IV – VII CENTURY)

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 29-48
Author(s):  
Mikhail S. Bankov
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Spatial Organization ◽  
Continuous Process ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Medieval Manuscripts ◽  
Space Organization ◽  
Miniature Painting

The article focuses on peculiarities of spatial organization of book miniature paintings of late antique and early medieval manuscripts (IV – VII centuries). The author analyses the problem of conveying illusion of depth in illustration in context of gradual transmission from roll to codex, which took place in antique book culture between the II and the V centuries. By analyzing survived fragments of illuminated rolls author displays characteristic features of their spatial organization and observes influence which had tradition of roll illustration on the development of codex. Nevertheless, precisely the miniatures of the codices that have come down to our time are in focus of the author’s attention. The stages of development of the text page, the peculiarities of interaction of text and images in codices are compared with the principles of space organization in miniatures. The article makes an attempt, relying on the monuments that have survived to our time, to consider the development of spatial constructions in the period of late Antiquity and early Middle Ages as a continuous process of evolution of the language of book painting. The author assumes that the development of spatial constructions in miniature painting does not imply sharp breaks or regression. Each new stage of the evolution arises from the previous one and makes it possible to expand the arsenal of artistic means which are necessary for solving artistic problems of the time. In accordance with this approach, the article concentrates not only on compositions in which a spatial illusion is created, but also miniatures that are in character more plane. As a result, the author reveals the main types of spatial constructions, considering all surviving monuments of miniature painting of that time. For each type of space organization, the author identifies the basic principles and artistic techniques that allow the artist to convey a sense of depth on the plane of page. The author pays special attention to the comparison of illusionistic tendencies in the late antique book miniature and “reverse perspective”, features of which are present in the monuments of the era. The author casts doubt on the need for a sharp contrast between these two approaches to space organization in the monuments of book miniatures of the era. He analyzes the reasons for the appearance of such features of space organization in miniature paintings of late antique and early medieval manuscripts, which are so important for the formation of artistic language of medieval book illumination.

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