BOB2020MIOT

At a time when we reflect intensively on the issue of social cohesion, on the influence of architecture in lifestyles, and on relationships between neighbourhoods within large modern cities, this book aims to approach the study of "inhabiting modes" in Roman urban dwellings. Drawing on concepts common to historical anthropology and incorporating evidence from multiple lines of research (archaeological, iconographic, textual, and others), this volume aims to contribute to the invigoration of a social history of ancient housing through new research projects, publications, and digital tools from both individual and collaborative efforts. This field of study is currently undergoing a period of disciplinary revitalization and this volume is an opportunity to present the most recent work and to conduct a dialogue in an interdisciplinary perspective.

The walls of early modern convents suggested the existence of absolute conditions that seldom existed in reality. While the built enclosure communicated the convent’s isolation from the world outside, connections between women religious and individuals or groups outside their communities extended into and from these houses, with each constituency exploiting these associations to serve its own aims.Likewise, the walls conveyed the presence of a homogeneous and unified community where, often, differences in status, power, and other interests led to the development of internal alliances and factions.

Building on an upsurge of scholarly interest in convent networks that previously has not been focused in a single volume, this collection of interdisciplinary essays examines how and why such associations existed. The collection examines personal, spatial, and temporal networks that emerged in, among, and beyond convents in Italy during the early modern period. These ties were established, cultivated, or even rejected in a variety of ways that influenced nuns’ devotional lives, their relationships with patrons, and their cultural engagement and production.

These essays cover the time period before and after the Council of Trent, permitting an analysis of convents’ responses to changing power dynamics, both inside and outside the enclosure. The book also engages a broad geographical and cultural range, with chapters focusing on the centres of Florence, Venice, and Rome, the courts of Urbino, Ferrara, and Mantua, and smaller cities across Northern Italy, offering unprecedented insights into early modern Italian convent life and its varied forms and modes of expression.

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 volume is the first in a series of books presenting the team’s final results.

Covering different themes and categories of finds, this volume focuses on the geophysical survey and other remote-sensing work undertaken in and around the Northwest Quarter, and also presents an in-depth discussion of the environmental studies performed at the site. This includes the geoscientific analysis carried out in various contexts, as well as radiocarbon dating, studies of both human and animal bones, and conclusions drawn from the archaeobotanical research.

This volume gathers the papers presented during an interdisciplinary research seminar entitled “The individual and his body in the Ancient Mediterranean Basin.” This seminar was at the crossroads of history of religions and social anthropology, creating a dialogue between philologists, archaeologists, historians of religions and anthropologists. Its main aim consisted in studying self-perceptions of the body in the Ancient Near East, with incursions in other parts of the Mediterranean Basin in a comparatist perspective. In this volume, various themes are examined, such as: 1) the relationship between the body and language; 2) the body, perceptions and society, including a study of the senses as they are described in the texts; 3) the body as a symbol of social belonging; 4) the body as a medium for religious experience.

Over the centuries, historiography - in many different forms - became an important vehicle by which to create, articulate, and express the existence, awareness, and characteristics of Europe’s regions. Be it the histories of noble families that were important stakeholders in a region, urban histories describing the developing urban networks through which regions could function, dynastic histories emphasizing the relationship between ruler and region, or hagiographies describing holy men and women and their veneration as focal points within regions - all of them represented and reflected identities within an understood spatial and or mental sphere. Historiography can therefore help us to understand the way in which regions were seen from within and from without, and to understand the patterns and dynamics of regional cohesion. Moreover, it sheds light on the dialectic between nation and region, and on the relationship between the regional sphere and the wider (inter)national sphere.

The authors of this volume look at individual European regions from different points of view, using historiography as a lens. They analyse the ways in which history as a construct has played a role in establishing regional identity, providing examples of the ways in which recording, interpreting, and recounting the history of regions through the ages has been instrumental in shaping these regions. The first section of the volume explores regional identity in medieval and early modern historiography; the second shows how, in the age of the invention and triumph of the European nation-state (the long nineteenth century), historiography of a new kind was applied for a deliberate creation of regional identity, or at least reflected the need for a historical confirmation of identities.

Social inequality is one of the most pressing global challenges at the start of the 21st century. Meanwhile, across the globe at least half of the world’s population lives in urban agglomerations, and urbanisation is still expanding. This book engages with the complex interplay between urbanisation and inequality. In doing so it concentrates on the Low Countries, one of the oldest and most urbanised societies of Europe. It questions whether the historic poly-nuclear and decentralised urban system of the Low Countries contributed to specific outcomes in social inequality. In doing so, the authors look beyond the most commonly used perspective of economic inequality. They instead expand our knowledge by exploring social inequality from a multidimensional perspective. This book includes essays and case-studies on cultural inequalities, the relationship between social and consumption inequality, the politics of (in)equality, the impact of shocks and crises, as well as the complex social relationships across the urban network and between town and countryside.

La traduction latine de la Bible faite en grande partie par Jérôme à la fin du IVe siècle et au début du Ve et à laquelle on devait donner le nom de Vulgate s’impose en Occident dès le haut moyen âge comme texte autoritatif. Sans cesse recopiée, souvent révisée, elle connaît un essor encore plus prodigieux avec la naissance de l’imprimerie. Les imprimeurs du XVIe siècle s’efforcent d’en donner un texte corrigé et les progrès dans l’étude de l’hébreu et du grec encouragent les travaux critiques savants. Mais ce n’est qu’au concile de Trente (1546) que le texte de la Vulgate est reconnu comme seule traduction biblique faisant autorité. Le même concile demande qu’une édition corrigée soit réalisée ; une commission est mise en place. Le résultat de ses travaux remarquables sera ce qu’on appelle la « Bible clémentine », publiée en 1592 sous le pape Clément VIII, dont le texte a été celui de l’Église catholique jusqu’à Vatican II.

This collection of essays focuses on a crucial aspect of late antique thought and literature that has hitherto largely been neglected: its self-reflexivity, i.e. its unprecedented ability to make language and literature into its main and often its only subject matter. Adopting a variety of perspectives and methodologies, the essays included in this volume approach the notion of self-reflexivity in two main ways. On the one hand (literature as a reflection of literature), it implies a self-conscious reflection of preceding literary models, which are creatively mirrored in new but intrinsically 'derivative' works of art, taking the form of remakes, parodies, homages, commentaries, retellings, centos, paraphrases, allegorizations, and more or less free 're-enactments'. On the other hand (literature as reflection on literature), the term also implies a self-questioning reflection on the literary work and the very concepts of language and literature, thus referring to its own artificiality or contrivance while opening up all sorts of theoretical discussions of the mechanisms, the conventions, and even the relevance of linguistic and literary representation.

La notion d’italianisme est, depuis plus d’un siècle, une étiquette prête à l’emploi sous laquelle la critique a voulu rassembler les phénomènes les plus divers, relevant aussi bien des arts que des lettres, des modèles politiques et des pratiques sociales, ou encore des savoirs philosophiques, scientifiques et techniques. Ce volume porte un regard différent sur cette question, car il a comme point de départ l’étude de l’influence de la culture imprimée en langue italienne dans les aires francophones à la Renaissance, mais aussi la persistance de cette culture tout au long de l’Ancien Régime dans les grandes collections publiques et privées. Fruit des recherches conjointes des chercheurs participants, parfois de façon continue, parfois épisodiquement, au projet de recherche ANR-13-BSH3-0010-01 L’édition italienne dans l'espace francophone à la première modernité (EDITEF), ce volume ouvre des nouvelles perspectives méthodologiques et scientifiques sur des aspects méconnus de l’appropriation de la culture italienne dans le monde francophone, tout en suivant la parabole de la diffusion des textes dès leur impression jusqu’à leur conservation, en passant par leur commercialisation, traduction et appropriation dans les contextes sociaux les plus variés.

The articles in this book encompass a broad historical panorama and consider the presence of litanic prayers and songs in different religions, beginning with written records in the Egyptian, Sumerian and Hebrew languages and finishing with Christian works from diverse denominations. The research presents the litany as an exceptionally long-lasting genre which for several thousand years existed in the Middle-Eastern and European traditions, easily conforming to changes in religious or historical circumstances. An interdisciplinary approach by scholars representing different fields of study, including the history of liturgy, Egyptology, Assyriology, literary studies, musicology and ethnosemiotics, allows the eclectic character of litanies to be revealed, litanies which not only were a form of church prayer but also had an impact on the organization of social rituals as well as being appropriated by all the major fields of art, oetry, the fine arts and music. The musicological articles in the book address the performance of Sumerian prayers, the liturgical songs of the Middle Ages, litanies in Tudor England and polyphonic works of the great composers, such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.