Brepols

Between 2002 and 2004, archaeological excavations took place on Powroźnicza Street, in the city of Gdańsk, Poland. Twelve burghers’ plots, located in the centre of this former medieval metropolis, were investigated, and yielded a rich collection of archaeological finds, among them ceramics, and items of wood, metal, and glass, from a period stretching from the fourteenth to the twentieth century. These finds are presented here for this first time in this richly illustrated bilingual volume, published in both English and Polish, which lays out a detailed catalogue of all the items, together with a discussion of the site, its settlement phases, and its most significant discoveries.

This volume, the first in a new series dedicated to the archaeological and historical landscapes of central Mediterranean Italy, aims to offer a fresh and dynamic new approach to our understanding of central-southern maritime Tuscany during the Roman period. Drawing on research that was initially presented at the first International Mediterranean Tuscan Conference (MediTo) held in Paganico (Grosseto, Italy) in June 2018, and supported by invited papers from other experts in the field, this collection of essays offers the most up-to-date research into Roman and Late Antique landscapes within Tuscany and its broader Mediterranean context, as well as the political, economic, and social networks that developed in this area during the Classical Period. Ultimately, what emerges from this in-depth study of river valleys, urban centres, and coastal settlements is an understanding of a dynamic Roman territory of cities and villages, villas and sanctuaries, minor sites, and manufacturing districts in which the local population fought to establish and maintain connections with the wider Mediterranean.

From graves to settlements, and from the battlefield to underwater sacrificial sites, weapons dating to the Roman and Migration Period have long been found in an array of contexts throughout the region that forms modern-day Poland. This volume for the first time aims to draw together research into these finds, gathered throughout the author’s career, in a synthetic approach that sees discoveries of swords and other armaments analysed against a broad, comparative background. The work begins with a focus on votive deposits from lakes, here used as a lens for addressing questions about military strategy and war ritual more generally, before moving on to explore the weapons and warriors of the Przeworsk and Wielbark Cultures, as well as shedding light on the lives of the Balts. Finally, an in-depth analysis is made of shields from the protohistoric period, exploring the genesis and variability of the forms taken by this protective weapon. Through this approach, this richly illustrated volume sheds new light not only on the typology and chronology of weaponry from the Roman and Migration Periods, but also on the symbolism and functionality that these arms held.

While archaeology is often considered to focus on the land that lies beneath our feet, significant amounts of material culture have been lost to us beneath water, whether in seas, lakes, rivers, or submerged caves. The world of underwater archaeology, however, is increasingly recognized as a field that is vital to our understanding of the past. The chapters gathered together into this volume draw on research first presented at the Fourth Warsaw Seminar on Underwater Archaeology, held at the University of Warsaw on 18–20 November 2021. From the seas of the Caribbean through to the Mediterranean and Norway, and from Antiquity through to contemporary times, the chapters presented here offer a dazzling array of different approaches to underwater archaeology and outline the potential that changing technology presents in this expanding field.

Il libro raccoglie una serie di contributi che scaturiscono dallo scavo e dallo studio della villa romana di San Marco sull’isola d’Elba, dei suoi reperti e del suo contesto storico ed ambientale. I ritrovamenti archeologici sono pertinenti un periodo molto ristretto di vita dell’insediamento, all’incirca tra il II secolo a.C e il II secolo d.C., quando la villa fu verosimilmente distrutta da un’incendio. Tale drammatico evento ha permesso la conservazione straordinaria di una serie di reperti organici (come la travatura di un solaio), attraverso i quali è stato possibile procedere ad una ricostruzione dettagliata della planimetria e degli elevati dell’edificio. Lo studio poi delle incredibili decorazioni pittoriche, insieme ad i ritrovamenti epigrafici, hanno permesso di attribuire la villa ad una delle proprietà dell’importante famiglia senatoria dei Valerii.

The Decapolis city of Jerash has long attracted attention from travellers and scholars, due both to the longevity of the site and the remarkable finds uncovered during successive phases of excavation that have taken place from 1902 onwards. Between 2011 and 2016, a Danish-German team, led by the universities of Aarhus and Münster, focused their attention on the Northwest Quarter of Jerash - the highest point within the walled city - and this is the fourth in a series of books presenting the team’s final results.

This two-part set offers a comprehensive presentation of Jerash’s rich building heritage from the Late Hellenistic period up to the city’s destruction in the mid-eighth century ad through a discussion of architectural elements, together with analysis of the mosaics, wall paintings, and building ceramics excavated from the Northwest Quarter. As well as providing a general overview of the city’s changing patterns of habitation, the contributions gathered here also include close case- studies and object biographies that shed new light on the intense use, reuse, and recycling of materials that testify to evolving urban practices and optimization of resources across the Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic periods.

This book comprises sixteen essays addressing issues of art and architecture together with archaeology within the context of sacred space, broadly defined. It encompasses a wide range of territories, methodologies, perspectives, and scholarly concerns. Our point of departure is the built environment, with all that this entails, including religious and political ceremony, painted interiors, patronage, contested spaces, structural and environmental concerns, sensory properties, the written word as it pertains to architectural projects, and imagined spaces. In all, the scholars involved in this project find fresh approaches and uncover new meanings and interpretations in the material examined within this volume, including buildings and objects from Europe to Asia, and spanning from Late Antiquity through the end of the Middle Ages.

Through careful analysis of the Romanesque cathedral of Molfetta (in Apulia, southern Italy), Williams demonstrates how the commercial boom of the medieval Mediterranean changed the way churches were funded, designed, and built. The young bishopric of Molfetta, emerging in an economy of long-distance trade, competed with much wealthier institutions in its own diocese. Funding for the cathedral was slow and unpredictable. To adapt, the builders designed toward versatility, embracing multi-functionalism, change over time, specialization, and a heterogeneous style.

Des ethnologues, des hellénistes, un assyriologue, une médiéviste, conscients du risque d'ethnocentrisme que fait peser l'utilisation de la catégorie de la «présence» dans le champ du religieux, ont cependant placé cette abstraction au centre de leurs travaux : ils ont fait de la «présence» un dénominateur commun dans un large spectre de catégories comparatives que l'on a coutume d'étudier séparément, comme la divination, le sacrifice, la possession. La simple approche concrète de ce que l'on pourrait appeler «autel» dans les cultures particulières, a démontré que cet artefact rituel pouvait se réaliser indépendamment de toute procédure spécifique d'aménagement ou de construction, mais plus directement dans la gestuelle de présentation de l'offrande, animée ou inanimée ; et l'instance pouvait elle-même se réaliser sous la forme d'un autel. Simultanément, des corrélations nouvelles, rarement repérées, ont pu émerger entre des composantes du rite, faisant apparaître ici, une articulation étroite entre parole, écriture et ligature, là la récurrence de «bouches» pour faire taire, ingérer, proférer, révéler, maudire, ailleurs encore la grammaire complexe et les gestes à suivre pour les formes variées du dépôt. Les contributions se distribuent entre trois verbes d'action : ouvrir, parce que toute instauration et toute «reprise» d'un culte requièrent l'invention et la mise en place d'un commencement; œuvrer, parce que le rite fait feu de tout bois dans les manipulations qui, par métaphore ou par métonymie, construisent des lieux de mise en présence des acteurs et des instances ; écrire, parce qu'en toute performance rituelle, y compris dans les sociétés réputées sans écriture, surgissent un temps d'inscription et un temps de déchiffrement du signe, sur un support rendu efficace tant par ses qualités propres que par cette inscription même.

Michel Cartry, ethnologue de l'Afrique Noire (École Pratique des Hautes Études), Jean-Louis Durand, helléniste et anthropologue (CNRS, Centre Louis Gernet), Renée Koch Piettre, helléniste et comparatiste (École Pratique des Hautes Études), animent ensemble à Paris un groupe de travail sur les pratiques des polythéismes, en s'inspirant des travaux de Marcel Detienne. Leurs travaux croisés ont exploré les aires sacrificielles, avant de s'orienter vers la question de la «présence» des puissances de l'au-delà.

L’île Saint-Honorat de Lérins accueille des religieux depuis le début du Ve siècle. Il s’agit d’un haut lieu du monachisme, témoin des expériences ascétiques insulaires qui se développent en Occident durant l’Antiquité tardive. Le caractère exceptionnel de Lérins tient aussi à la longue durée d’occupation du site par des religieux. Ce n’est qu’à partir de 2005 qu’ont été entreprises des recherches archéologiques d’envergure sur l’île : fouilles et archéologie du bâti, qui font de Lérins la seule île monastique pour laquelle il existe des vestiges archéologiques remontant de façon assurée aux premières expériences ascétiques occidentales. En présentant ce dossier, l’ouvrage de Yann Codou apporte un éclairage inédit sur la genèse du monachisme en Occident, où des expériences érémitiques cohabitent, au sein de l’espace insulaire, avec des formes de vie plus collectives. Les données restituent également les dynamiques du monachisme au cours du haut Moyen Âge et dans les siècles suivants, en particulier le processus de communautarisation du monachisme. L’architecture est ici un document historique à part entière, qui dialogue avec les sources écrites. Les multiples monuments qui composent le paysage insulaire offrent un terrain de choix pour comprendre des mécanismes de construction identitaire, fondés sur la création et la réinterprétation des espaces sacrés. Les enjeux de la recherche dépassent largement l’histoire de la seule communauté lérinienne pour s’inscrire dans une réflexion sur l’organisation des espaces monastiques et leurs mutations tout au long du Moyen Âge.

The scholarly contributions which form this volume aim at a better understanding of one of the key stages in the transmission of Aristotle’s philosophical message from antiquity to modernity. It’s an established fact that Aristotelianism, because of an encyclopedic vocation for exploring all of the real, is perfectly in accordance with the cognitive universalism of the Greco-Roman Empire. Indeed Aristotle had classified the whole knowledge in a series of well-ordered disciplines, beginning with logic regarded as an essential instrument for learning and based on the philosophy of first principles that is metaphysics. But his investigations had also led him to renew physics, meteorology, grammar, poetics, rhetoric, politics, ethics, and above all to create the life sciences. This research and study wide-ranging program has without fail subsequently first aroused deep interest among the Roman encyclopedists, then among the Greek commentators, anxious to restore the original prestige of Aristotelian philosophy.

The result of a colloquium organized by the Universities of Strasbourg and Naples, Aristoteles Romanus. The survival of Aristotelian science in the Greco-Roman Empire is an ordered, if not complete, approach originating from a varied investigation of the permanence of a phenomenon into modern times.

This volume contains the papers given at the S.I.E.P.M. conference held at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1994 on Aristotle in Britain during the Middle Ages. The subject was chosen so as to bring together a wide variety of different specialists and to illustrate the range of Britain's contribution to medieval philosophy. A number of the discussions throw new light on celebrated British medieval philosophers, such as Robert Grosseteste and John Duns Scotus. Others show the importance of less well-known thinkers, such as Richard Fishacre, Richard Rufus and Thomas Wylton. The subjects of the papers range widely, both chronologically - from Anselm of Canterbury in the eleventh century to the political and ethical writers of fifteenth-century Oxford and Cambridge - and in method - from philosophical analyses to manuscript studies.

This book explores the intersection between the early development of medieval universities and the arrival of Aristotle's works in the Christian West, especially De anima: one of his most famous and obscure writings, straddling the fields of biology and psychology, and devoted to the functions of living beings – including the human being.

The leading figures in this very special meeting of cultures, also involving scientific writings from the Islamic world, are the Masters of Faculties of Arts. From the first half of the 13th century, they embarked on a theoretically very demanding enterprise, namely to restore a complete understanding of De anima; and they accomplished this difficult task by establishing a close – and often polemical – relationship with their more famous colleagues: theologians such as Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas.

By resorting to the research and teaching methods of their time, the Masters of Arts addressed crucial topics such as the soul/body relationship, sense perception, intellectual knowledge and the special status of the human intellect, mediating, as far as possible, between scientific requirements and those of the Christian faith.

Authors such as Adam of Buckfield, Peter of Spain, Siger of Brabant, John of Jandun and John Buridan, together with other, less famous ones and a small crowd of completely anonymous – yet theoretically no less interesting – scholars, gave rise to a choral narrative that disclosed new philosophical perspectives on man. It is in this intellectual context that the roots of Modern philosophical thought lie.

Das mittelalterliche Byzanz erlebte während des „langen“ zwölften Jahrhunderts (1081-1204) eine letzte Phase als mediterrane Großmacht. Nach den Krisen des ausgehenden elften Jahrhunderts führte die Etablierung der komnenischen Herrscherdynastie zu einer Periode innerer und äußerer Stabilität. Erst in den politisch und militärisch turbulenten 1180er Jahren sollte das System erneut unter massiven Druck geraten, bevor die Zäsur des IV. Kreuzzuges (1204) gar das vorläufige Ende der staatlichen Einheit brachte.

Die byzantinischen Streitkräfte spielten in dieser Zeit stets eine zentrale Rolle für Staat und Gesellschaft, nicht nur als Instrument der Gewaltausübung und Herrschaftsdurchsetzung, sondern auch als Arbeitgeber, Konsument von Gütern und Dienstleistungen, Betätigungsfeld der Machtelite, Kanal sozialen Aufstiegs und Ort der Integration ausländischer Eliten. Die kaiserlichen Feldherren und Kommandeure lassen sich nicht als reine Funktionselite betrachten, sondern sie waren eingebunden in den Mikrokosmos des Hofes, in Familien- und Patronagebeziehungen, regionale und ethnische Netzwerke. Ihre Geschichte ist nicht nur Militär- sondern stets auch Sozial-, Politik,- Wirtschafts-, und Kulturgeschichte.

Das vorliegende Werk analysiert zum ersten Mal systematisch die personelle, soziale, ethnische und regionale Zusammensetzung der kaiserlichen Feldherren und Offiziere. Die Dynamik politischer, gesellschaftlicher und militärischer Rahmenbedingungen veränderte immer wieder die Personalstrategien der aufeinanderfolgenden Regierungen wie auch die Praktiken der Auswahl und Selektion sowie den Umgang mit formellen und informellen Hierarchien. Die Strukturen und Praktiken militärischer Führung waren dabei stets in gesellschafts- und zeitspezifische Semantiken und Diskurse eingebettet, die ein spezifisch byzantinisches Bild militärischer Führungskultur erkennen lassen.

Arnobius is a man of one book. A little known author, he was a rhetor and a teacher at Sicca Veneria, a town named after Venus - it is a predestined confluence of rhetoric and religion ! - in the 3rd century AD, and his book, Against the Heathen, has never been the subject of a thoroughgoing study in French. Having converted to Christianity at the end of his life, this African rhetor proves to be, not only a brilliant and spirited writer, but also a man of culture, at home in Greek literature and in Latin. Remaining intellectually very close to the pagan ideas of his contemporaries, he adopts, in the seven books of an apology that he left unfinished at his death, a vehement and insidious tone of controversy - verging upon dishonesty - in order to turn ancestral Roman religion and Greek mythology from their purpose, with the sole aim of magnifying the glory of the Christian God.

En juillet 1665 paraît, en Hollande, le premier traité de l’Éthique d’Arnold Geulincx. Le texte complet n’en paraîtra en 1675, quelques années après la mort de son auteur. Qui aujourd’hui le sait ? De ces lieux, de ces temps, est-ce cette Éthique-là qui a fait date? Certainement non! Et c’est sans doute justice que nombre d’études consacrées à cet auteur, - Geulincx - prennent pour interrogation principale la question de son rapport à Spinoza dont l’Éthique, pense-t-on, dut commencer à être rédigée vers 1665 et achevée vers l675. Geulincx néanmoins connut des tribulations, géographiques et intellectuelles, qui l’amenèrent à formuler, de manière unique et singulière ses vues sur ce que la philosophie de l’époque pouvait affirmer en matière d’éthique. Question peu simple à cette croisée des perspectives, où l’on ne savait trop selon quelles modalités l’homme devait être mis au centre du discours philosophique - centre vide, «égout» pour reprendre une terminologie baroque assumée par Geulincx, ou épicentre d’une raison ou d’une vertu capable de sauver, dans le cadre de religions peu amènes pour les capacités propres de l’homme, la possibilité d’une liberté pensée comme soumission à la Raison.

Le présent travail entend avant tout donner à entendre à la voix d’un homme dont il est aujourd’hui attesté qu’elle fut entendue de son temps et contribua de manière significative, ne serait-ce que par les impasses dont elle a pu témoigner, à l’évolution de la pensée de l’époque. Aussi, dans cette perspective, laisserons-nous de côté la question aussi récurrente qu’implicite, en histoire des idées et de la philosophie, sur les grands et les petits. Inventeur ou créateur, continuateur ou précurseur, Geulincx présente l’intérêt d’une figure originale dans l’histoire des idées, et son Éthique condense des questions qui trouveront dans l’avenir les réponses diversement appréciées, diversement cohérentes : Spinoza, Malebranche, voire Leibniz puis Kant.

Est-il si primordial, d’emblée, de le caractériser - ce qui du reste est peu contestable - comme occasionnaliste ? Cette étiquette ne risque-t-elle pas d’épuiser à tort les potentialités d’une pensée qui trouvera bien d’autres développements ? Avant d’enrôler ce « mineur » dans les grands courants de l’histoire de la philosophie, ce travail de traduction voudrait lui donner la chance d’être lu dans des directions peut-être, sait-on jamais, insoupçonnées.

Starting from a political reality, which is, at the same time, artistic and cultural, the book Ars Hasburgica aims to review the still so common historiographical conception of the Renaissance that conceives this period from a geographically Italocentric, artistically classicist and politically centered the idea of "national" arts and schools.

But Renaissance is a more global and complex phenomenon. What this book aims to offer is an idea of the art of that period that considers the role played by the Habsburg dynasty and its various courts in this period, trying to verify whether, by applying other historiographic models, and having the art of the Casa de Austria as a focus, traditional ideas can continue to be maintained well into the twenty-first century. We refer to the so-called "Vasari paradigm", on which art history of the sixteenth century has largely been built over the last centuries. It is also intended to structure concepts about the art of the period not so much around nationalist considerations and identities of the arts, but to raise these issues throughout ideas such as that of the court as a political, artistic and cultural sphere, in the wake of the classical studies by Norbert Elias, Amedeo Quondam or Carlo Ossola.