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2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 465-498
Author(s):  
Jongkuk NAM

This article aims to critically review de Mussis’s report of the events at Caffa. De Mussi says in his account that Tartars catapulted their dead compatriots infected by the plague into the besieged city of Caffa in order to contaminate the Genoese defending the city and that some Genoese galleys fleeing from the city transported the disease to Western Europe. Some historians interpret his report of Tartars catapulting plague-infected bodies as an act of biological warfare, and others do not trust his account as a reliable historical record, while some works rely on his account, even though they do not interpret it as evidence of biological warfare. This article tries to determine whether his account is true or not, and explain historical contexts in which it was made. De Mussi was not an eye-witness of the war between the Tartars and the Genoese in the years of 1343 to 1437 in Caffa, contrary to some historians’ arguments that he was present there during the war. In addition, he understands and explains the disease from a religious perspective as does most of his contemporary Christians, believing that the disease was God's punishment for the sins of human beings. His account of the Tartars catapulting their compatriot’s bodies may derive from his fear and hostility against the Tartars, thinking that they were devils from hell and pagans to be annihilated. For de Mussi, the Genoese may have been greedy merchants who were providing Muslims with slaves and enforcing their military forces. Therefore, he thought that the Tartars and the Genoese were sinners that spread the disease, and that God punished their arrogance. His pathological knowledge of the disease was not accurate and very limited. His medical explanation was based on humoral theory and Miasma theory that Christians and Muslims in the Mediterranean World shared. De Mussi's account that Caffa was a principal starting point for the disease to spread to Western Europe is not sufficiently supported by other contemporary documents. Byzantine chronicles and Villani's chronicle consider not Caffa but Tana as a starting point. In conclusion, most of his account of the disease are not true. However, we can not say that he did not intentionally lie, and we may draw a conclusion that his explanation was made under scientific limits and religious prejudice or intolerance of the medieval Christian world.


Author(s):  
Divna Manolova

This article is about the interplay between diagrammatic representation, the mediation of mirrors, and visual cognition. It centres on Demetrios Triklinios (fl. ca. 1308–25/30) and his treatise on lunar theory. The latter includes, first, a discussion of the lunar phases and of the Moon's position in relation to the Sun, and second, a narrative and a pictorial description of the lunar surface. Demetrios Triklinios's Selenography is little-known (though edited in 1967 by Wasserstein) and not available in translation into a modern scholarly language. Therefore, one of the main goals of the present article is to introduce its context and contents and to lay down the foundations for their detailed study at a later stage. When discussing the Selenography, I refer to a bricolage consisting of the two earliest versions of the work preserved in Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, graecus 482, ff. 92r–95v (third quarter of the fourteenth century) and Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, graecus 2381, ff. 78r–79v (last quarter of the fourteenth century). I survey the available evidence concerning the role of Demetrios Triklinios (the author), John Astrapas (?) (the grapheus or scribe-painter), and Neophytos Prodromenos and Anonymus (the scribes-editors) in the production of the two manuscript copies. Next, I discuss the diagrams included in the Selenography and their functioning in relation to Triklinios's theory concerning the Moon as a mirror reflecting the geography of the Earth, on the one hand, and to the mirror experiment described by Triklinios, on the other. Finally, I demonstrate how, even though the Selenography is a work on lunar astronomy, it can also be read as a discussion focusing on the Mediterranean world and aiming at elevating its centrality and importance on a cosmic scale.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamar Rotman

Gregory of Tours, the sixth-century Merovingian bishop, composed extensive historiographical and hagiographical corpora during the twenty years of his episcopacy in Tours. These works serve as important sources for the cultural, social, political and religious history of Merovingian Gaul. This book focuses on Gregory’s hagiographical collections, especially the Glory of the Martyrs, Glory of the Confessors, and Life of the Fathers, which contain accounts of saints and their miracles from across the Mediterranean world. It analyses these accounts from literary and historical perspectives, examining them through the lens of relations between the Merovingians and their Mediterranean counterparts, and contextualizing them within the identity crisis that followed the disintegration of the Roman world. This approach leads to groundbreaking conclusions about Gregory’s hagiographies, which this study argues were designed as an “ecclesiastical history” (of the Merovingian Church) that enabled him to craft a specific Gallo-Christian identity for his audience.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamar Rotman

Gregory of Tours, the sixth-century Merovingian bishop, composed extensive historiographical and hagiographical corpora during the twenty years of his episcopacy in Tours. These works serve as important sources for the cultural, social, political and religious history of Merovingian Gaul. This book focuses on Gregory's hagiographical collections, especially the <i>Glory of the Martyrs, Glory of the Confessors, and Life of the Fathers</i>, which contain accounts of saints and their miracles from across the Mediterranean world. It analyses these accounts from literary and historical perspectives, examining them through the lens of relations between the Merovingians and their Mediterranean counterparts, and contextualizing them within the identity crisis that followed the disintegration of the Roman world. This approach leads to groundbreaking conclusions about Gregory's hagiographies, which this study argues were designed as an 'ecclesiastical history' (of the Merovingian Church) that enabled him to craft a specific Gallo-Christian identity for his audience.


2021 ◽  
pp. 139-170
Author(s):  
Donald Senior

The writings of Paul form a major part of the New Testament. This includes not only the so-called undisputed letters of Paul but also other letters attributed to him in antiquity that might have been written by later disciples of Paul citing him as author to evoke his apostolic authority. This chapter describes what we know of Paul’s life, beginning with his strong Jewish identity as well as his roots in the Greco-Roman world. Paul himself cites his inaugural visionary experience of the Risen Jesus as a decisive turning point in his life, leading him ultimately to be an ardent proclaimer of the gospel to the Gentile world. Paul’s letters to various early Christian communities in the Greco-Roman Mediterranean world served as extensions of his missionary efforts. Although fashioned in a different literary form than the gospel narratives, Paul’s letters also portray Jesus’s identity as both rooted in Judaism and exhibiting a unique transcendent character and purpose. Paul’s Christology focuses intensely on the significance of Jesus’s death and resurrection. The so-called deutero-Pauline Letters extend Paul’s theological vision; in the case of Colossians and Ephesians, situating the redemptive and reconciling role of Christ within the cosmos, and, in the case of the Pastoral Letters, bringing Paul’s exhortations about the life of the Christian community to some of the developing challenges of the late first-century church.


Author(s):  
Tara Baldrick-Morrone

Abstract This essay explores issues of identity and power in twentieth-century scholarship on abortion in the ancient Mediterranean world. I consider how two scholars, John T. Noonan, Jr. and Beverly Wildung Harrison, approach the same ancient Christian sources from different theoretical frameworks: narrative historiography and feminist liberation ethics, respectively. While Noonan’s historical narrative on ancient Christian opposition to abortion demonstrates the “moral supremacy” of Christianity, Harrison’s historical counternarrative reads the ancient sources as borne out of the “sex-negativism” of a minority of ancient Christians. In this analysis I focus on the ways in which the production of history manufactures power by means of authority and legitimacy, particularly for each scholar’s own religious identity and views on the morality of abortion in America. In conclusion, I consider the interests of the respective authors in the production of these histories.


Author(s):  
Л.Л. СЕЛИВАНОВА

В статье рассматривается феномен религиозного скопчества, возникший на Древнем Востоке, распространившийся затем в эпоху Античности по всему Средиземноморью и развившийся впоследствии в средневековой Европе. Особое внимание уделяется секте скопцов — ее зарождению, росту, расширению и упадку — в России в период с XVIII по XX вв. Цель статьи — исследовать историческую и психологическую подоплеку этой секты, причины ее возникновения и распада, а также толерантности к ней общества и государства на определенном этапе несмотря на очевидный вред. Автор приходит к выводу, что во всех случаях триггером проявления и преодоления такого рода варварства была репрессивная политика государства. Среди прочего, автор утверждает, что такие эмоционально заряженные проявления варварства оказываются необходимым атрибутом психологической адаптации при переходе на новый уровень общественного развития. Несмотря на то, что о религиозном скопчестве (и, в частности, о русском мистико-экстатическом сектантстве) написано немало, тема все еще недостаточно изучена и открыта для новых подходов, подобных тому, который предлагается в этой статье, без параллелей в российской или мировой науке. The article examines the phenomenon of religious scopchestvo that emerged in the ancient Near East, spread throughout the classical Mediterranean world, and subsequently evolved during the European Middle Ages. The main focus is on the sect of the scoptsy — its inception, growth, expansion, and decline — in Russia during the period from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. The purpose of the article is to examine this sect’s historical and psychological background, the triggers behind its emergence and decay, and why both the state and society happened tolerate it for quite some time in spite of being obviously harmful. The author’s conclusion is that the origin and downfall of this display of barbarism were equally triggered by the repressive policy of the state. Among other issues, the author asserts that such emotionally-charged expressions of barbarism turn out to be a necessary attribute of psychological adjustment when moving to a new level of societal development. While much has been written on the subject of religious scopchestvo — and, specifically on the mystic and ecstatic sectarianism in Russia — the theme appears to be understudied and open to new approaches, like the one advocated in this article with no parallels in Russian or world scholarship.


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