BOB2023MOOT

In this book Claudia Daniotti provides the first comprehensive study of the representation of Alexander the Great in Renaissance Italian art, exploring a fundamental turning point in the tradition: the transition from the medieval imagery of Alexander as a legendary, fairy-tale hero to the new historically grounded portrait of him as an example of moral virtue and military prowess.

During the Middle Ages, Alexander was turned into a fabled creature and fearless explorer, whose Flight to Heaven and other marvellous adventures were tirelessly recounted and illustrated, enjoying huge popularity. With the humanist recovery of the ancient historical texts and the changing taste and expectations of the wider, wealthier and more diverse public of the courts and cities of the Italian peninsula, the fabulous aura that had surrounded Alexander for centuries evaporated. He was recast as the moral exemplum and valorous military commander spoken of by the newly available ancient historians, and became the protagonist of an unprecedently vast iconographic repertoire established in the course of the sixteenth century.

By discussing a body of artworks from 1160s to 1560s spanning several media (from illuminated manuscripts and frescoes to sculptural reliefs, wedding chests and tapestries) and researching this material in constant dialogue with the literary tradition, this book offers a reassessment of the whole visual tradition of Alexander in Renaissance Italy, making sense of a figurative repertoire often perceived as fragmentary and disparate, and casting new light on an overall still neglected chapter in the tradition of the myth of Alexander.

As a prehistory to the Nativity accounts of the gospels of Matthew and Luke the Protevangelium of James, dated to the second half of the second century, aimed to fill in alleged gaps in the canonical accounts of Jesus' and his mother's ancestry and births. Thus, it describes the birth of Mary, the mother of Christ, the Annunciation, the Nativity and the death of Zachariah, the high priest and father of John the Baptist.

The edition of the original Greek text has an English version on its facing pages.

The commentary pays particular attention to the early liturgical use of the Protevangelium and to artistic representations of the scenes it describes as these were the main means by which this highly influential text was transmitted throughout the known world. It also questions the usually accepted genre and purpose of the text and suggests that its author may have had a satirical intention or have intended it as an early Christian novelette, using scriptural scenes and themes as his inspiration. Maybe we have approached the Protevangelium of James with solemn faces and have been prepared to carry out serious theological investigations, whereas the many inconsistencies and glaring contradictions so obvious as to be ridiculous might suggest the author's intentions were not quite so grave or weighty.

This edition presents English translations of the accounts of three important twelfth-century travellers to the Holy Land, the Anglo-Saxon Saewulf and the Germans John of Würzburg and Theoderic, based on the edition of the Latin texts. Saewulf travelled to the Holy Land soon after its capture by the First Crusade in 1099. His travelogue, framed by accounts of his outward sea journeys from southern Italy to Jaffa and back to Constantinople, describes the buildings and holy sites of Jerusalem and its surrounding countryside as they appeared in the early years of the Frankish kingdom, before the major building works that characterized the short century of Christian rule over the city were fully under way. In contrast, the two German descriptions give more detailed accounts of the transformation that the city and surrounding landscape had undergone and of the new churches and monasteries and their artistic programmes that had been created by the 1160s and 1170s. The translated texts are preceded by an introduction placing the texts in their historical context and are accompanied by brief explanatory notes with bibliographical indications for further information.

The source texts of this volume appeared in Corpus Christianorum. Continuatio Mediaeualis as Peregrinationes tres (CC CM, 139), edited by R.B.C. Huygens. References to the corresponding pages of the Corpus Christianorum edition are provided in the margins of this translation.

The experience of time is always momentous and stimulating to Augustine’s theological reflection. This book asserts that even Augustine’s concept of the authority of Scripture was embedded in his awareness of time. This “awareness” was rooted in the tension between the “already” and “not yet” of the “last days” that permeated the entire New Testament theological outlook.

This does not mean that it is reflections on time that is the determining feature of a particular complex debate, or the origin of a particular work in Augustine’s corpus. However, this work argues that “time” is a factor which need to be taken into greater account than scholarship heretofore has done. Accordingly, the author specifically delineates how Augustine’s experience of time as a living, ongoing and creative tension critically determined his theological stances towards scriptural authority.

The book shows how Augustine’s awareness of this temporal tension was roused by the acceptance of his own temporality and creaturehood which brings to the fore the importance of the incarnate Christ. Exploring how Augustine and his contemporaries grappled with the existential implications of this tension in time, this work asserts that the authority of Scripture is not the authority of “the Book” in the modern sense but is related to more complicated sources of authority that are linked to this specific notion of time.