Brepols Online Books Other Monographs Collection 2018 - bob2018moot

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.

The elegiac distich was introduced in Rome by Quintus Ennius, in the first half of the 2nd century BC. It became the standard meter of epigram and elegy, its life extending over a very long period, from archaic Latinity to late antiquity (and beyond, to the Middle Ages and the early modern period). This volume provides scholars with a collection of (in good part previously unpublished) first-hand analyses of the elegiac distich, based on the scansion of nearly all Latin poetry in this meter, from Catullus to Venantius Fortunatus. As such, it reconstructs the evolution of the Latin elegiac distich in the first seven hundred years of its history, and it sheds new light on the metrical style of almost all Latin poets who composed verses in it during the period under consideration.

Il commento alla Genesi di Pietro Comestore è parte di un’opera ben più vasta, composta intorno al 1170 e nota in epoca successiva con il titolo, pressoché intraducibile nelle lingue moderne, di Historia Scholastica. Il termine historia ne individua l’oggetto: è la storia sacra - la «storia» per eccellenza secondo la mentalità medievale - che, a partire dal libro della Genesi fino ai Vangeli, è narrata in stretta aderenza alla traccia biblica e, al contempo, puntualmente commentata sotto il profilo esegetico, con privilegio (quasi esclusivo) accordato all’esegesi storico-letterale. L’appellativo scholastica è suggello postumo ad indicare la generale adozione «scolastica» dell’opera, quale imprescindibile manuale di riferimento, almeno per l’intera epoca tardomedievale, nelle facoltà di teologia delle università europee. Un’opera, dunque, di assoluta rilevanza, ma la cui sterminata estensione nonché vastità della tradizione manoscritta sono state, e sono tuttora, di ostacolo a qualsivoglia progetto di edizione critica integrale e di studio analitico d’insieme.

Si propone qui la traduzione italiana con commento della sezione dell’opera corrispondente al libro della Genesi: la versione latina originale del testo è pubblicata nella collana Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis con il titolo Petri Comestoris. Scolastica Historia. Genesis (CC CM 191), a cura di A. Sylwan. I rimandi alle pagine corrispondenti dell’edizione sono forniti a margine di questa traduzione.

The new monographic study of the village of Kafr ʿAqāb is a contribution to broadening the field of research into the western part of the Limestone Massif in Northern Syria which, until now, had been the subject of only limited interest. The ruins of the site are mainly spread out over a vast rocky headland which is strategically situated at the northern extremity of the ğebel Waṣṭāni near the Orontes valley in the inland region of Antioch. These ruins reveal the existence of an ancient village with over 80 homes, various communal constructions, a monastery, two ecclesiastic complexes and a fortified building.

The study is based on a detailed analysis of surface ruins and has enabled the evolution of the village to be precisely determined from its first phase of occupation between the IInd and IIIrd century until it was abandoned during the medieval period. Most of the constructions date from the Roman and Proto-Byzantine periods. Each architectural group (houses, tombs, churches, agricultural buildings, etc.) is studied separately then resituated in the context of the village and the region thus enabling the author to determine this peasant community’s economic, demographic, social and religious history.

Mechanisms linked to the growth of the locality are examined in the light of strategies implemented in the appropriation and enhancement of the surrounding land such as controlling water and the diversification of crops which reveals the inhabitants’ extraordinary capacity to adapt to their natural environment. Discussion also covers the question of the interactions between the villagers and their relationships with other towns. Kafr ʿAqāb also owed its prosperity to the road network which was ingeniously woven between towns as well as to its proximity to major urban areas in Antioche and Apamea. The ruins reveal this highly favourable location for trade and the circulation of various cultural and artistic movements. Finally, numerous archaeological signs allow the study of the occupation of the village after it was invaded by VIIth century Arab conquerors. The author thus aims to reconstruct the history of this ancient site following a long and fascinating field study.

Composti da Giovanni Scoto Eriugena forse verso la fine della sua vita, l’Omelia e il Commento sul vangelo di Giovanni costituiscono una testimonianza preziosa della sua attività di pensatore e di esegeta. Le due opere, di fortuna diversa (diffusissima la poetica Omelia, bozza incompiuta il Commento), a una lettura congiunta permettono di scoprire man mano, lemma dopo lemma, la fisionomia intellettuale di questo maestro irlandese del IX secolo: l’espressività del poeta, l’attenzione del filologo e traduttore dal greco, la sottigliezza speculativa del filosofo e la fantasia dell’esegeta concorrono al fascino multiforme di queste pagine. Vi si ritrovano tutti gli elementi principali della sintesi teologico-filosofica di Eriugena, operata a partire dai Padri della Chiesa sia greci che latini, con le sue tesi a volte ardite, sempre suggestive: la progressione della rivelazione divina, la natura simbolica del cosmo e del testo sacro, il problema della visione di Dio e la divinizzazione dell’uomo

La versione latina originale del testo proposto in traduzione in questo volume è pubblicata nella collana Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaeualis con il titolo Iohannis Scotti seu Eriugenae Homilia super ‘In principio erat verbum’ et Commentarius in Evangelium Iohannis (CC CM 166), a cura di Édouard A. Jeauneau. I rimandi alle pagine corrispondenti dell’edizione sono forniti a margine di questa traduzione.

Le présent livre VIII De phantaisia seu imaginatione se trouve dans la Physique du Syntagma , dans la partie qui concerne les êtres vivants ou animés, dont la rédaction se situe entre la moitié de 1644 et la fin de l’année suivante. Le livre est construit en six chapitres ; la thèse en est résumée à la fin du dernier. Dans l’ensemble, Gassendi articule de façon subtile des passages de doxographie et l’énoncé de sa propre position, qu’il désire situer par rapport à la tradition, procurant une démonstration à la fois historique et théorique. Le livre trouvant sa place à juste titre dans la Physique, c’est en naturaliste que Gassendi explore son objet : le rationalisme et le biologisme y trouvent une place essentielle. L’examen des doctrines antérieures auquel il se livre, comme il le fait presque systématiquement, ne prend en compte que celles qui envisagent l’imagination sous cet angle, excluant toute réflexion littéraire ou métaphysique sur l’imagination, « folle du logis ». Il se montre très soucieux de mettre en place un vocabulaire précis, où la phantaisie est la notion majeure pour une réalité qu’il juge de la plus grande importance pour le fonctionnement cognitif et comportemental de l’homme et des animaux, soit le système psychologique.

Over more than a thousand years since pre-Christian religions were actively practised, European – and later contemporary – society has developed a fascination with the beliefs of northern Europe before the arrival of Christianity, which have been the subject of a huge range of popular and scholarly theories, interpretations, and uses. Indeed, the pre-Christian religions of the North have exerted a phenomenal influence on modern culture, appearing in everything from the names of days of the week to Hollywood blockbusters. Scholarly treatments have been hardly less varied. Theories – from the Middle Ages until today – have depicted these pre-Christian religious systems as dangerous illusions, the works of Satan, representatives of a lost proto-Indo-European religious culture, a form of 'natural' religion, and even as a system non-indigenous in origin, derived from cultures outside Europe.

The Research and Reception strand of the Pre-Christian Religions of the North project establishes a definitive survey of the current and historical uses and interpretations of pre-Christian mythology and religious culture, tracing the many ways in which people both within and outside Scandinavia have understood and been influenced by these religions, from the Christian Middle Ages to contemporary media of all kinds. The previous volume (i) traced the reception down to the early nineteenth century, while the present volume (ii) takes up the story from c. 1830 down to the present day and the burgeoning of interest across a diversity of new as well as old media.

This volume explores the Apophthegmata Patrum in the context of church-monastery dynamics in fifth-century Palestine. Positing that the Apophthegmata Patrum was compiled in response to perceived external interference, Zachary B. Smith provides the first examination of the Apophthegmata Patrum in its Palestinian context, illuminating monastic strategies for resisting episcopal control. Engaging literary and historical methods, this volume weaves a narrative that places the Apophthegmata Patrum squarely in the political and philosophical worlds of the eastern Mediterranean in late antiquity. The Apophthegmata Patrum’s compiler carefully selects stories to highlight problematic interactions between monks and ecclesiastics. He then appeals to classical and late antique philosophical categories of self-care to assert monastic autonomy, making the monks the new philosophers. In the context of contentious theological debates during the fourth and fifth centuries, these selected interactions and assertions tacitly advocate a path of monastic autonomy.