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This collection of essays on religious practice in the Mediterranean Near East and Middle East (ca. 100–800 ce) celebrates the impact that Professor David Brakke has had on the study of late antique religious history. Nineteen scholars celebrate the career of Professor Brakke with essays on a range of subjects on late ancient religion. Some chapters treat monastic texts ascetic practice and ritual performance; others address the roles of magic demons and miracle stories; still others examine Christian violence and martyrdom.

In particular many of these essays explore the kinds of ascetic theory practice identity organization performance and writing found throughout the diverse authors groups and locales of Late Antiquity. Essay topics cross disciplinary boundaries and operate in the overlapping intellectual space of Religious Studies History Classics English Anthropology and Comparative Literature. By treating asceticism as a phenomenon within a relatively confined time period and geography across a variety of religious and literary traditions this volume highlights the ascetic impulse within new areas.

The volume thus stands alone for its multifaceted discussions of religion and asceticism in Late Antiquity and advances scholarly investigation of and discourse about late antique asceticism by expanding conceptual and disciplinary boundaries in new and exciting directions.

This volume brings together an international and interdisciplinary host of scholars to reflect on the complicated legacies of exploration at the archaeological site of Dura-Europos situated on the western bank of the Euphrates River near modern Salihiyeh (Syria). A chance discovery after World War I kicked off a series of excavations that would span the next century and whose finds are today housed in collections worldwide including the Yale University Art Gallery the Louvre and the National Museum in Damascus. Dura-Europos exemplifies a multiethnic frontier town at the crossroads of major trade routes. Its textual remains and remarkably-preserved Christian Jewish and polytheist religious sanctuaries provide key resources for the study of antiquity and attest to the cross-cultural interconnectivity that was demonstrably central to the ancient world but which has been too often obscured by Eurocentric historiographic traditions and siloed disciplinary divisions.

Foreign-run large-scale archaeological campaigns of the early twentieth century like those at Dura-Europos have created narratives of power and privilege that often exclude local communities. The significance of these imbalances is entangled with the destruction the site has experienced since the 2011 outbreak of conflict in Syria. As a step toward making knowledge descendant of early excavations more accessible this volume includes Arabic summaries of each paper following up on the simultaneous Arabic interpretation provided at the 2022 hybrid conference whose proceedings form the core of this publication. The papers address topics connected to essential themes in relation to Dura-Europos: long-distance trade relations and cross-border interactions in antiquity including the exchange of technologies people and materials; Christianity Judaism and other religious practices and their relations to one another; contemporary trafficking of looted artifacts; cultural heritage and the Islamic State; and the evolving role of museum collections technologies and archival materials for research.

Charters and other administrative texts have long had the full attention of medievalists as primary sources in their historiographical work. This also applies to scholars from the Netherlands. Ever since the late Middle Ages they recognised the value of these sources included them as testimony in their historiography and gradually began to realise that charters and other documents required a specific form of textual criticism and a special way of editing. In this Dutch historians usually followed developments abroad. Sometimes as in the early seventeenth century they were ahead methodologically but for long periods they depended for new insights on developments elsewhere. This was especially true in the nineteenth century when scientific diplomatic methods and editing techniques emerged which would only be introduced and applied in the Netherlands in the next century. In the twenty-first century Dutch scholars are fully participating in the ‘digital turn’ that is creating new research tools in diplomatics.

Ultimately the history of diplomatics in the Netherlands is part of the broad development of historiography in the country and therefore a valuable aspect of the history of scholarship in general.

'Desnortar' or disoriented means to lose the north or the sense of direction to disorient. In Disoriented a collective book from a gender perspective we consciously seek to lose both the geographical north and the north of the contemporary art canon. We aim to rethink and disrupt from feminist LGTBQ+ and postcolonial approaches the coordinates that have articulated the discourses on the art history and art system along the 20th and 21st centuries. Coordinates that define how these artistic practices and systems of modernity and the contemporary are understood the cardinal directions and main conceptual issues or which artists are relevant or expendable according to the narratives of avant-garde and contemporary art history. It is crucial to reinterpret and disorientate to disnorth and thereby shatter these references to overcome the gaps that prevent the emergence of alternative knowledges. To address questions or artists often perceived as peripheral to a grand historical narrative we propose an intersection of modern and contemporary art history gender feminist queer and postcolonial approaches and transnational interrelations. This intersectionality allows us to actively lose the north of the canon and to direct our gaze towards subjects outside the usual centres of legitimation. Mostly we attend to women artists to peripheral geographical centres to subaltern collectives or to practices or materials regularly considered of little artistic interest.  All of the above critiques how conventional discourses have excluded some collectives or certain artistic proposals and the resistances that have emerged against them.

Smallpox (known as "variole" or "petite vérole" in French) spread relentlessly across Europe during the eighteenth century gaining an unprecedented and deadly momentum. While there was no cure for this highly infectious and often fatal disease those that recovered from it were immune to future infections. This phenomenon was the origin of a practice of inoculation whereby infectious material was introduced into the body to induce immunity. In Europe this practice was initially experimented with in England and it was subsequently adopted across the continent during the eighteenth century. Inoculation was however not without controversy—not least because the practice originated outside of Europe—and it became the subject of intense debate. This debate this volume argues extended beyond medical circles to include intellectuals and the broader public—a phenomenon driven by a growing periodical press. As books scientific treatises and plays crossed regional and national boundaries debates on inoculation must this volume shows be examined within a European transnational perspective thereby considering how ideas were shaped by adaptation translations and citation. Doing so this volume not only sheds new light on the history inoculation as a practice but also illustrates how cultural history can enrich history of medicine

The Dominican master par excellence of the historical method Pierre Mandonnet (1858-1936) came to Dante as one of the leading Thomists and medievalists of his generation. However his monograph Dante le théologien (1935) was neglected and largely forgotten mainly as a result of the lay historian Étienne Gilson’s book-length refutation in Dante et la philosophie (1939).

This new edition and the first English translation re-presents Mandonnet’s erudite and thought-provoking monograph to contemporary scholars and Dante enthusiasts. It includes a critical introduction that situates Mandonnet’s work in relation to prevailing currents of Dante scholarship in the early twentieth-century and outlines how it might invite a reappraisal of central features of Dante’s thought today. Mandonnet’s historically-informed account of Dante the theologian as a preacher doctrinarian and distinctively medieval poet as well as his sophisticated analysis of the theological purpose method and content of the Commedia will be an invaluable resource for anyone who seeks to understand Dante’s works and their highly contested reception history.

Écrire et penser l’histoire au prisme de la France L’automne du Moyen Âge (1919) est assurément l’un des grands classiques de l’historiographie et le livre comme son auteur Johan Huizinga (1872-1945) connaissent une attention internationale renouvelée. Mais force est de constater que l’historien néerlandais demeure en France une référence marginale en dehors du milieu des médiévistes à la différence de son autre chef d’œuvre Homo ludens (1938).

Or la prise en compte de l’ensemble de ses écrits permet de mesurer combien son approche peut éclairer les débats épistémologiques de notre temps. Pionnier de l’histoire culturelle Huizinga met la force des représentations au premier plan du processus historique ; il pratique et préconise une démarche herméneutique et non causale ou structurelle. Car - et c’est là une divergence majeure avec notamment Lucien Febvre et Marc Bloch - il s’agit moins pour lui d’expliquer le passé à travers ses traces que de comprendre ses acteurs à travers leurs signes. D’où le privilège des sources narratives et iconographiques dans une écriture qui elle-même prend la forme du récit : un récit nourri d’abondantes références françaises.

C’est pourquoi le présent livre s’efforce de retracer à travers les relations de Huizinga avec la France sa conception et son écriture de l’histoire notamment dans L’automne du Moyen Âge dont on propose ici une relecture. Mais aussi de regarder la France son histoire et ses historiens dans le miroir de Johan Huizinga convaincu que l’on est des vertus d’un regard étranger pour éclairer le débat national.

Alors que le champ historiographique touchant les cartulaires s'est renouvelé en profondeur depuis les années 1990 les premières compilations datées du IXe siècle sont restées à l'écart de ce mouvement. Cette monographie entend donner un éclairage nouveau sur la première cartularisation. En considérant tous les témoins conservés elle replace l'apparition d'un nouveau type d'écrit dans son contexte documentaire et spatio-temporel en Francie orientale. Huit ensembles documentaires sont comparés entre eux mais aussi avec d'autres écrits contemporains afin de déterminer les origines les fonctions attribuées à ses premières compilations. Enfin une réflexion sur la matérialité éclaire les choix faits lors de la mise en codex. Un jeu constant sur les échelles est proposé pour comprendre pourquoi huit pôles cartularistes choisissent de produire un cartulaire parmi un arsenal d'écrits possibles pour répondre à des finalités précises.

Le croisement de différentes historiographies sur les cartulaires et les pratiques de l'écrit renouvelle les approches et les perspectives. Cette monographie replace le moment-cartulaire dans un paysage documentaire large et rend compte de la cartularisation comme un phénomène scriptural et culturel global inscrit dans les dynamiques de la société carolingienne.

This volume focuses on the complex and often overlooked topic of crusading activities and the crusade movement on the fringes of Latin Christendom in the time frame from approximately 1300 to the beginning of the sixteenth century. It covers a period widely considered as a time of significant political cultural and religious changes in Europe. A period in which Western Christianity was on the one hand still expanding (vide Lithuania and the western Rus and later the Spanish Portuguese French and English expansion in the Americas Africa and South-East Asia) and on the other hand facing two mighty opponents: the Ottoman Empire and Muscovy. On its eastern and southeastern frontiers Latin Christian expansion came to a gradual halt — here the West was now largely under siege! Alone the political logistical and ultimately also military feasibility of a large-scale crusade to liberate Jerusalem had now receded into a purely theoretical and practically almost unenforceable far distance. Ranging in scope from the Baltic Sea region to the Balkans and Iberia this book’s nineteen papers explore how these developments influenced the continuation and adaptation of crusading ideas and activities during this later period of crusades.

This volume provides a more exhaustive interpretation of René Descartes’ medical views and its reception in the seventeenth century. Filling the gap in the recent scholarship the contributions in the volume follow four axes: exegetical textual philosophical and contextual. Authors in this book deal with Descartes’ physiology anatomy and therapy by reconstructing Cartesian texts detailing possible medical and philosophical sources discussing medical collaborations and oppositions and exploring obscurities and failures in Descartes’ medicine. In laying bare the more promising issues of Cartesian programme and discussing the reception and opposition in the seventeenth century the volume also uncovers the limitations within his interpretation ultimately revealing a more nuanced application of his methodology to a field of natural philosophy. While medical studies play a not secondary role in Descartes’ entire work the volume aims to discuss in detail the importance of medicine as a suitable field to understand Cartesian philosophy from a significant perspective in seventeenth-century Europe.