BOB2023MOOT

The formal study of the collection of Jewish and Christian texts transmitted under the name of Sibylline Oracles highlights the continuity of the model of biblical prophecy while underlining the heritage of Greek didactic poetry. The interest of this approach is to situate the Sibylline Oracles as a literary work in the context of contemporary Greek versified literary production, which implies, on the part of their successive editors, a familiarity with Greek poetic forms related to a common scholar background.

The study of the retelling of biblical episodes aims at identifying the passages where the fictitious Sibyl claims to announce the events of the biblical past and confronting these narrative sequences with contemporary rhetorical theories of paraphrase in order to highlight the formal technique that runs through them and the interpretation of the biblical hypotext that it presumes. Most of the rewritings preserved in the corpus are compatible with the prevailing doctrine of the third century ce.

This volume provides the first wide-ranging investigation of the post-fifteenth-century reception of Jean Gerson (1363-1429), chancellor of the University of Paris, guiding light of the Council of Constance, and arguably the most influential of late medieval theologians. His impact on early modern movements and thinkers paved the way for many developments still shaping our existence today. Besides his well-known influence in theology and church history, the chancellor left a significant impact in jurisprudence, human rights, art, music, education, literature, and even medicine; there is hardly an area of the humanities that did not pay at least some tribute to his authority, and there was almost no early modern political or religious movement in the West that neglected his name. Nearly all of the most prominent early modern intellectuals perceived him as an authority and father figure; an illustrious cohort of celebrities, including Thomas More, Martin Luther, King James I, Ignatius of Loyola, Girolamo Savonarola, Christopher Columbus, Bartholomew de Las Casas, and many others, relied on his writings and ideas. The geography of his late-fifteenth- and sixteenth-century reception reflects his pre-eminence, reaching from Spain to Scandinavia.

While the funerary portraiture of Palmyra is rightly world-renowned, up to now, the corpus of sarcophagi from the ancient city has received relatively little attention as a cohesive group in their own right. Comprising sarcophagi, banqueting reliefs and founder reliefs, as well as sarcophagus reliefs, most of these objects share a common iconographic motif, that of the banquet, although other scenes, mostly drawn from the daily life of the city’s caravan leaders and their families, also appear. The emphasis on the banqueting scene in particular reveals the crucial importance of dining in ancient Palmyrene society: for the living, banquets were a marker of social standing and gave hosts a chance to honour the gods and offer an ephemeral benefaction to their fellow citizens, while for the dead, the banquet motif offered the opportunity for the entire family to be depicted together and showcase their wealth and sophistication, as well as their connections outside the city.

This single corpus of material gathered through the Palmyra Portrait Project, is presented in this beautifully illustrated two-volume monograph. Through careful analysis of the portraits, and the costumes and attribute choices that appear in these images, the authors explore how the sarcophagi were used by Palmyrenes to project an image of local pride, while at the same time participating in the visual cultures of the Roman and Parthian Empires between which their city was situated.

This book offers an investigation into the basic structures of St Maximus the Confessor’s thought in the context of ancient and late antique philosophy. The introduction explains what is meant by the term ‘metaphysics of Maximus’, and discusses possible senses of terms like ‘Christian philosophy’ and ‘Byzantine philosophy’. On the background of a definition of ‘Christian philosophy’, the author devotes two chapters to discuss Maximus’ ideas of knowledge of the created world and of God. The chapters that follow are devoted to the doctrine of creation, the function of the so-called logoi (divine Ideas) in the procession and conversion of the totality of beings in relation to God, and the relation between the logoi and the so-called divine activities. The logoi, eternally comprised in God’s knowledge as the divine thoughts in accordance with which everything is created, are then shown to function as principles of a rather complex order of being: the cosmos instituted as a whole-part system. This whole-part system secures the possible communion between all creatures and facilitates the conversion of everything to the divine source as a unity in plurality deified by God. The last chapter treats of the doctrines of Incarnation and deification in order to clarify the exact sense of deification for all beings. In the final part of the book, the author applies Maximian metaphysics to a major ethical challenge in our days: the environmental crisis, thus proving that late antique philosophy still has relevance today.

In the eighteenth through the early twentieth century, French nuns from various orders created miniature simulacra of the cells in which they slept, studied, and performed their devotions. Each diorama contains an effigy of the nun, a prie-Dieu, devotional objects such as a crucifix, handiwork, and artifacts to foster study and contemplation. This book examines the lives of the brides of Christ as depicted in these dioramas, proposing that the material objects found in the chambers trace the contours of the collective and individual identities of the nuns who created these cells. Viewed as a type of memoir, the cells furnish the sisters a stage upon which to rehearse the meaning of their lives. The dioramas create a tension between the private and public presentations of the self, between verisimilitude and self-fashioning, and between reality and representation. The book contextualizes the miniature cells within the larger discourse of gender, identity, self-representation, monastic devotion, and the power wielded by the aesthetics of scale.

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.

The American art historian Bernard Berenson, born in 1865, is famous for his pioneering studies of the Italian Renaissance, but his work on Byzantine art remains less well-known and less studied. Yet his passion for studies of Byzantium - dubbed the ‘Byzantine infection’ - played a major role throughout Berenson’s life, and in the 1920s, he began work on a magnum opus on this topic that was sadly never completed. This volume aims to illuminate and revisit Berenson’s approach to Byzantium and the art of the Christian East through an exploration and analysis of the correspondence, travel notes, and photo archive that Berenson built up over his lifetime, and that taken together, clearly points to an explicit recognition by Berenson of the importance of Byzantine art in the Latin Middle Ages. Drawing together Berenson’s correspondence with art historians, collectors, and scholars from across Europe, the US, and the Near East, together with an overview of his numerous photography campaigns, the book is able to open a new window into Byzantine art historiography from the 1920s to the 1950s. In doing so, it sheds light onto a period in which important discoveries and extensive restoration campaigns were carried out, such as those of the mosaics of Hagia Sophia and Kariye Camii in Istanbul, as well as of the Basilica of San Marco in Venice and its decoration.

In the age of Augustine, within the classical structures of society, nothing was more valued than friends and friendship. Augustine was an innovative thinker and friendship represents a good example of his flair for reconfiguring its framework into an ecclesial setting. He wrote: ‘what greater consolation do we have in this human society, riddled with errors and anxieties, than the unfeigned faith and mutual love of true and good friends?’. Yet, as a Christian Bishop, how would he reconceive this well established and treasured institution? Friendship was certainly something that became recast within the light of his conversion and immersion into the life of the Church. In Augustine’s exchange with the Donatists, we glimpse his most fully developed vision of friendship. Through his preaching on John’s gospel, which comes to us as his In Iohannis Euangelium Tractatus, Augustine reveals this vision of what friendship is. Given that John’s gospel gives such weight to the incarnation and to friendship, we can witness through his hermeneutical strategy of figuration, his notion that friendship with God comes in belonging to the totus Christus, ‘the whole Christ’. For Augustine, the universal nature of the Church as Christ’s body and bride enjoys a continued connection to the head (Christ) and through the Church, its members live within the embrace of the Spirit. With this foundation of friendship, Augustine cried out to those separated by schism: belong-be bound-be friends with God in Christ.

Le lettere del medico fiorentino Alessandro Pini (1653-1717) e il suo trattato De moribus Turcarum fanno emergere un’immagine avvincente del popolo egiziano e della cultura ottomana. Ciò che Pini ha osservato in Egitto e nel mondo ottomano rivela una straordinaria dimensione mediterranea di commistione culturale, fatta di scambi e di incontri scaturiti dalle necessità lavorative e anche dalla semplice quotidianità. Oltre alla missione scientifica ufficiale egli doveva svolgere un’intrigante attività spionistica per Cosimo III, Granduca di Toscana, in cui si rivelò poi fallimentare. Amareggiato e osteggiato per l’insuccesso, passò poi alle dipendenze della Repubblica di Venezia e dimorò per vari anni a Istanbul e in Morea, dove senza pregiudizi e con ampiezza di vedute osservò le tradizioni e i costumi dei popoli che incontrava. Decise dunque consapevolmente di scrivere l’esaltazione di un mondo che l’Occidente vedeva come il suo alter ego negativo. Sebbene fosse stato imprigionato nella sua società di adozione, Pini rimase affascinato, forse anche ipnotizzato, da quello stesso mondo che lo aveva variamente premiato e frustrato sia nel suo lavoro ufficiale che nel suo incarico segreto.

Dans cette monographie, l’auteur propose une réflexion générale sur la métaphysique de l’organisation sacerdotale zoroastrienne à la lumière du contexte indo-iranien et à partir de la préparation du sacrifice et l’installation des sept prêtres assistants dans la liturgie solennelle zoroastrienne sous la direction de leur chef, le zaōtar-. Le rapport entre prêtres et dieux est analysé à la lumière de la symbolique endossée par le collège sacerdotal, qui est « activé » comme un double mimétique du monde divin. On discute ainsi de noms, fonctions et correspondances liturgiques entre les huit prêtres (sept plus le zaōtar-) et le collège des Aməṣ̌a Spəṇtas dirigé par Ahura Mazdā lui-même (en tant que zaōtar-). D’autre part, le livre analyse les correspondances fonctionnelles de l’équipe sacerdotale activée dans le domaine védique. L’auteur développe aussi une discussion concernant la chaîne ininterrompue de la ritualité sacrificielle comme structure de l’ordre cosmique et temporel. Dans ce cadre, il met en évidence l’importance de la désinstallation ou désactivation du collège sacrificiel avant la fin du Yasna dans la liturgie longue, thème qui s’articule à la question de la réinstallation d’un autre collège dans la chaîne ininterrompue de la liturgie cosmique. Cette étude éclaire aussi la question du but du sacrifice et celle du sacrifice sanglant. Enfin, elle propose un retour à Kerdīr par une analyse de la « vision » du Grand Prêtre, expliquée cette fois comme liturgie ésotérique de la rencontre avec le double féminin.