Brepols

Gesù era Cinico? I suoi discepoli? E Paolo? Queste domande, che rientrano nel più generale tema della possibile influenza del Cinismo sul Cristianesimo delle origini, costituiscono un importante capitolo storiografico, nato in Germania nel primo Novecento e ampiamente sviluppatosi più tardi soprattutto negli Stati Uniti d’America.

A questi problemi è dedicato il presente volume, che, partendo da un’analisi sempre attenta alle evidenze testuali, intende vagliare, da una prospettiva storico-filosofica, la possibilità che Gesù e il Cristianesimo delle origini siano stati influenzati dal Cinismo, e da tale tradizione filosofica abbiano ricevuto sollecitazioni o stimoli. Lo studio è rivolto a testi quali i Vangeli Sinottici e le Lettere Paoline (nello specifico, la Prima Lettera ai Corinzi), in cui i fautori della Cynic Jesus Hypothesis hanno ritenuto di poter rinvenire elementi definibili come ‘cinici’.

Tale analisi si presta in maniera singolare a gettare luce non solo su autori importanti e temi della tradizione cinica particolarmente discussi, ma anche sui rapporti tra la tradizione ellenica e le origini del Cristianesimo.

Tema, quest’ultimo, di interesse non solamente storico-filosofico e teologico ma anche schiettamente teoretico, perché tocca la questione, viva e dibattuta ancora oggi, seppure talvolta sotto forme diverse, delle relazioni tra la riflessione filosofica e il credo religioso, tra fides e ratio.

En 2003, le Centre d’Études supérieures de Civilisation médiévale de Poitiers a célébré ses cinquante années d’existence par la tenue d’une série de manifestations scientifiques et culturelles dont un grand colloque international au titre évocateur, retenu pour la présente publication: Cinquante années d’études médiévales. À la confluence de nos disciplines.

Les Actes de ce colloque, qui a reflété la place prééminente du CESCM au sein des études médiévales internationales ainsi que la diversité et la richesse du travail interdisciplinaire produit par les équipes de recherche et les services documentaires du Centre, constituent donc un ouvrage de référence non seulement pour les domaines abordés mais aussi pour la médiévistique en général.

This book honours the scholarship of English historian Dr. Alan Thacker by exploring the insular, the European and, more broadly, the Mediterranean connections and contexts of the history and culture of Anglo-Saxon England in the age of Bede, and beyond. It brings together original contributions by leading European and North American scholars of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages working across a range of disciplines: history, theology, epigraphy, and art history. Moving from the Irish Sea to the Bosporus, this collection presents a linked world in which saints, scholars, and the city of Rome all played powerful connective roles, creating communities, generating relationships, linking east to west, north to south, and present to past.

As in Thacker’s own work, Bede’s life and thought is a central presence. Bede’s attitudes to historical and contemporaneous conceptions of heresy, to the Irish church, and the evidence for his often complex relationships with his Northumbrian contemporaries all come under scrutiny, together with groundbreaking studies of his exegesis, christology, and historical method. Many of the contributions offer original insights into figures and phenomena that have been the focus of Dr. Thacker’s highly influential scholarship.

During the Ancient Greek and Roman eras, participation in political communities at the local level, and assertion of belonging to these communities, were among the fundamental principles and values on which societies would rely. For that reason, citizenship and democracy are generally considered as concepts typical of the political experience of Classical Antiquity. These concepts of citizenship and democracy are often seen as inconsistent with the political, social, and ideological context of the late and post-Roman world. As a result, scholarship has largely overlooked participation in local political communities when it comes to the period between the disintegration of the Classical model of local citizenship in the later Roman Empire and the emergence of ‘pre-communal’ entities in Northern Italy from the ninth century onwards.

By reassessing the period c. 300-1000 ce through the concepts of civic identity and civic participation, this volume will address both the impact of Classical heritage with regard to civic identities in the political experiences of the late and post-Roman world, and the rephrasing of new forms of social and political partnership according to ethnic or religious criteria in the early Middle Ages. Starting from the earlier imperial background, the fourteen chapters examine the ways in which people shared identity and gave shape to their communal life, as well as the role played by the people in local government in the later Roman Empire, the Germanic kingdoms, Byzantium, the early Islamic world, and the early medieval West. By focusing on the post-Classical, late antique, and early medieval periods, this volume intends to be an innovative contribution to the general history of citizenship and democracy.

Les notions d’urbanité, de politesse et de savoir-vivre connaissent depuis une dizaine d’années un intérêt renouvelé à la fois dans leurs dimensions politique, sociale et culturelle.

Cet ouvrage souhaite envisager le milieu urbain en tant qu’espace de civilité en croisant les regards des historiens et des spécialistes de la littérature de l’âge classique. Il s’agit aussi d’examiner les cérémonies et rituels du XVIIe siècle comme un ensemble de réseaux de pratiques codifiées, dans lequel interagissent notamment des usages collectifs et des préséances individuelles. Ces usages organisent l’espace urbain comme l’espace curial en se déployant en leur sein. La confrontation des archives et des documents littéraires, mais aussi des outils et des méthodologies utilisés par ces différents champs disciplinaires, permet d’étudier à nouveaux frais les relations entre des concepts trop rapidement perçus comme antonymiques : l’incivilité n’est jamais le contraire de la civilité, et il n’existe pas de civilisation, ni de société civilisée, qui puisse se revendiquer comme statique ou achevée. En revenant, dans le sillage des travaux de Norbert Elias, aux origines de la civilité moderne, envisagée à l’échelle européenne, cet ouvrage entreprend d’examiner ce processus, non pas de manière linéaire et téléologique, mais dans la complexité de ses évolutions et mutations, afin de mieux contextualiser les débats contemporains autour de l’incivilité.

The Festschrift volume Classica et Beneventana, presented to Virginia Brown on the occasion of her 65th birthday, brings together eighteen insightful new essays by leading scholars devoted to the fields of classical reception and Latin palaeography. The authors investigate a wide-range of topics such as the development and application of the Beneventan script, comparative codicology, use of early liturgical manuscripts, medieval artes and biblical texts and their readers, and the reception and dissemination of classical texts during the Italian Renaissance.

Since 1970, Virginia Brown has been a Senior Research Fellow at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. She is recognized as one of the world’s leading authorities in classical reception and Latin palaeography. Her numerous publications on the Beneventan script have dramatically altered our knowledge of the dissemination of this southern Italian book hand from 800 to 1600. Her editorial work for the Catalogus translationum et commentariorum, as a member of the Editorial Board and since 1986 as Editor-in-Chief, has resulted in several learned volumes tracing the fortuna and study of classical authors from antiquity to the year 1600. As editor of Mediaeval Studies from 1975 to 1988, she single-handedly produced tomes noted for their scholarly rigor and acumen. This collection of essays serves as fitting tribute to a scholar who, via her scholarly research and editorial work, has done so much to advance the fields of palaeography, codicology, and the history of classical scholarship.

Thirty years in the making, Coins of the Ptolemaic Empire, Part II, by Catharine C. Lorber, is the long-anticipated second half of the Coins of the Ptolemaic Empire (CPE) project, featuring the coins struck by Ptolemy V–Cleopatra VII. As with Part 1, Lorber essentially rewrites the sections on these rulers in J. N. Svoronos’ classic, but now much out-of-date, Ta Nomismata tou Kratous ton Ptolemaion (1904). The body of coinage catalogued by Svoronos is enlarged by hundreds of additional emissions in precious metal and bronze, recorded from subsequent scholarship, from hoards, from commercial sources, and from private collections. Lorber’s attributions, dates, and interpretations rest on numismatic research conducted after Svoronos, or on the latest archaeological and hoard information. She also provides extensive historical and numismatic introductions that give the coins deeper context and meaning.