BOB2024MOOT

In the Ambigua to John, the great early Byzantine monastic theologian and philosopher Maximus the Confessor (580–662) is at work in his most creative and expansive mode. Using difficult passages in Gregory Nazianzen as starting points for his thinking, Maximus draws together various strands of the theological and philosophical traditions he inherited and shapes an ever-moving, kaleidoscopic vision of the journey through the world of place, time, and materiality to final dynamic repose in eternity. Throughout the text, Maximus takes his readers along the many paths his own mind traveled to clarify this breathtaking reflection of the teachings of Scripture and the patristic tradition. In this translation of the first fully critical edition of Maximus’s text, the streams of the Confessor’s divine philosophy are revealed in their own right. This translation will be followed with the first full commentary on the Ambigua to John in English, to appear in Corpus Christianorum in Translation.

The source text of this volume will appear in Corpus Christianorum, Series Graeca, vol. 84.

Gesù era Cinico? I suoi discepoli? E Paolo? Queste domande, che rientrano nel più generale tema della possibile influenza del Cinismo sul Cristianesimo delle origini, costituiscono un importante capitolo storiografico, nato in Germania nel primo Novecento e ampiamente sviluppatosi più tardi soprattutto negli Stati Uniti d’America.

A questi problemi è dedicato il presente volume, che, partendo da un’analisi sempre attenta alle evidenze testuali, intende vagliare, da una prospettiva storico-filosofica, la possibilità che Gesù e il Cristianesimo delle origini siano stati influenzati dal Cinismo, e da tale tradizione filosofica abbiano ricevuto sollecitazioni o stimoli. Lo studio è rivolto a testi quali i Vangeli Sinottici e le Lettere Paoline (nello specifico, la Prima Lettera ai Corinzi), in cui i fautori della Cynic Jesus Hypothesis hanno ritenuto di poter rinvenire elementi definibili come ‘cinici’.

Tale analisi si presta in maniera singolare a gettare luce non solo su autori importanti e temi della tradizione cinica particolarmente discussi, ma anche sui rapporti tra la tradizione ellenica e le origini del Cristianesimo.

Tema, quest’ultimo, di interesse non solamente storico-filosofico e teologico ma anche schiettamente teoretico, perché tocca la questione, viva e dibattuta ancora oggi, seppure talvolta sotto forme diverse, delle relazioni tra la riflessione filosofica e il credo religioso, tra fides e ratio.

Le néologisme savant de ≪ prosopographie ≫ apparaît à la Renaissance et désigne, dans un premier temps, une oeuvre littéraire combinant généalogie de princes, éloges de leurs vertus et galerie de portraits. Après les travaux érudits de l’Âge classique sur les dirigeants religieux du passé, il faut attendre le xix e siècle pour que la prosopographie soit érigée en discipline scientifique.

Reposant sur un dépouillement systématique de la documentation conservée, la prosopographie propose une étude sérielle des membres d’un groupe constitué sur une période et une durée déterminées.

En raison de la richesse des sources conservées, l’Empire romain a suscité de manière précoce en Europe des études prosopographiques. La période couverte par les iii e-vii e siècles, communément appelée ≪ Antiquité tardive ≫, offre une richesse documentaire et littéraire exceptionnelle, liée en partie à l’expansion du christianisme et à la conversion du monde antique à la nouvelle religion. Cette abondance de sources explique la réalisation de grandes enquêtes prosopographiques portant d’abord sur l’ensemble des élites civiles, puis sur les milieux ecclésiastiques, monastiques, ascétiques et dévots.

Le présent livre mobilise les résultats obtenus et les recherches en cours pour montrer l’importance de l’apport de la prosopographie à l’histoire du christianisme antique dans des domaines aussi variés que l’histoire des conciles, l’hagiographie, l’onomastique, la hiérarchie ecclésiastique et l’histoire des femmes.

Ce nouveau volume de la collection Apocryphes présente au lecteur une anthologie inédite de six textes éthiopiens consacrés à saint Étienne, premier martyr et premier diacre du christianisme. Étienne, modèle du diacre, est une figure particulièrement vénérée dans l’Église éthiopienne. Dès l’Antiquité tardive, puis tout au long du Moyen Âge, des textes traduits du grec et de l’arabe, mais aussi des compositions originales en guèze (éthiopien classique), furent produits, copiés, puis adaptés à la liturgie de l’Église éthiopienne. La tradition éthiopienne sur Étienne se révèle ainsi, au sein de l’Orient chrétien, singulièrement originale et riche.

Le premier texte présenté est le Gadla ’Esṭifānos (ou Actes d’Étienne), qui relate le combat épique opposant saint Étienne à deux magiciens. Ce récit étonnant, qui s’appuie sur l’épisode biblique du martyre d’Étienne dans les Actes des apôtres, ajoute nombre d’éléments apocryphes et merveilleux. Sont également inclus, dans le présent volume, la version guèze de la Révélation des reliques d’Étienne, qui eut lieu dans les environs de Jérusalem en 415, deux récits tirés du Synaxaire éthiopien (un ouvrage à usage liturgique), puis une homélie médiévale de Retu‘a Hāymānot et, enfin, un salām (court poème) en l’honneur du protomartyr.

Une introduction générale sur l’histoire du culte d’Étienne, un glossaire des termes éthiopiens, une bibliographie exhaustive et plusieurs index complètent le volume.

Si les premières traces de ritualisation musicale (noces, banquets…) remontent au début du xiii e siècle avec les jongleurs, ce n’est vraiment qu’à partir du siècle suivant que les ménétriers ou joueurs d’instruments sont chargés de la représentation des pouvoirs et de l’animation de la vie sociale dans sa totalité (fêtes politiques et religieuses, de métiers, calendaires, votives, familiales, etc.) et qu’ils se regroupent en confréries ou corporations.

S’appuyant sur son « terrain » toulousain premier ainsi que sur le dépouillement systématique de deux siècles de littérature sur les ménétriers des provinces françaises et sur la collaboration de certains chercheurs en régions, l’auteur propose une nouvelle réflexion d’ampleur sur le personnage historique du ménétrier (plus de trois mille musiciens recensés), son genre, son statut social (poids de la marginalité musicienne des aveugles, mendiants, concurrence des musiciens occasionnels comme les maîtres d’école), sa fonction, sa pratique et ses formes d’organisation.

Cette étude d’anthropologie musicale historique est doublée d’une approche territoriale, cette géographie ménétrière étant abordée au niveau des provinces, des villes (notamment des quarante ayant abrité des corporations et confréries ménétrières), des villages et de l’organisation administrative de ce vaste espace de la Ménestrandise (royauté et lieutenances ménétrières). Par ailleurs, cette histoire sensible de l’art des ménétriers est aussi celle de leur rapport aux musiques dites « savantes », d’église, aux cultures musicales autres, comme celle des Bohémiens. 

À l’aide de nombreuses archives, de tableaux, cartes, documents iconographiques, cet ouvrage dépeint la grande fresque d’une musique historique encore méconnue, malgré sa longévité et sa centralité sociale et sociétale, celle des ménestrels et joueurs d’instruments.

For many years, the Septuagint of Ruth (LXX-Ruth) has been considered a literal translation. Several authors have emphasized the similarities between the Greek text and the Masoretic Text, while others have also noted the divergences. In the wake of this second stream, this book seeks to answer the crucial question: How can we nuance the definition of “literalism” for LXX-Ruth, and which innovations and specifics can be detected in this text? A fresh analysis of the Greek rendering of the Hebrew proper names, toponyms, hapax legomena as well as legal aspects makes it possible to develop new perspectives on the translation technique of LXX-Ruth and to highlight several characteristics of this text. This volume, moreover, extends the discussion by including the analysis of the theological accents of LXX-Ruth and an up-to-date presentation of its textual history including the fragments of the book in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Overall, this volume enhances our understanding of the linguistic and literary background of the LXX, as well as its specific features.

The transitions of the title are those in the life and intellectual development of one of the leading historians of late antiquity and Byzantium. Averil Cameron recounts her working-class origins in North Staffordshire and how she came to read Classics at Oxford and start her research at Glasgow University before moving to London and teaching at King’s College London. Later she was the head of Keble College Oxford at a time of change in the University and its colleges. She played a leading role in projects and organisations even as the flow of books and articles continued, in an array of publications that have been fundamental in shaping the disciplines of late antiquity and Byzantine studies in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

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.

Faustus was a Gallic representative of what has been referred to as 'semipelagianism'. In his De Gratia, he fiercely opposed the Augustinian view of Grace and Predestination that had been upheld by Lucidus, a presbyter who possibly misunderstood Augustine's thought. Faustus did not open new ground about these contested doctrines, but put significant roadblocks to their possible extreme trajectories.

Published anonymously in 1733, Memoirs of the Twentieth Century is one of the earliest futuristic novels known in Anglophone and Euro-American literature. It foregrounds an acceleration of history brought about by an increasing degree of global interconnectedness, and the exclusion of prophetism and astrology as credible ways to know the future. The work of Samuel Madden, an Irish writer and philanthropist of Whig sympathies, it consists of a collection of diplomatic letters composed in the 1990s, which the narrator claims were brought to him from the time to come by a supernatural entity. Through these correspondences, twentieth-century world scenarios are spread out before the reader, in which British naval power rules the waves and international commerce, while the transnational scheming of the Jesuits threatens the independence of weaker European courts.

This book — which includes a study followed by an annotated edition of the text — assesses the cultural significance of this literary work, as an apt observatory on how historical time as a cultural construction was shaped, during the eighteenth century, by new forms of transnational circulation of information, and by the dubious space carved out in European culture by seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century debates on the nature of historical knowledge.

Through and by means of the Memoirs case study, this volume aims to contribute to a wider cultural history of the future and speculative fiction. The novel’s ironic distancing of beliefs considered to be superstitious and absurd — such as divination techniques and occult and magical disciplines — offers an exceptional testimony to the negotiation of the boundaries of verisimilitude and credibility within a religious enlightenment.

This catalogue collects Italian biblical works issued from the beginning of print to the middle of the 17th century. The abundant literature had multiple uses: the transmission of the sacred text, its interpretation, preaching, religious education, and devotional uses (meditation and prayer). It was also used as a foundation of learning and general knowledge, ethics, professional practices (i.e. in medecine and politics), domestic piety and everyday life, as well as literary and theatrical entertainment. This catalogue will help to reconstruct the access to the Bible by Italian lay people. It contributes to the historiographical debate on how Italians could read the Bible after the ban of biblical translations. It represents an extremely rich source of information for future research about authorship, readership and the very nature and use of this production, shedding light on forgotten bestsellers of Italian Renaissance.

The Scythians have fascinated investigators since the time of Herodotus. This study examines the bronze and silver coinage of the kingdom of Scythia Minor in Dobruja at the mouth of the Danube River, a Scythian successor state that emerged in the second century bce after the breakup of Scythia Magna. It is based on a corpus of over 1,500 coins, more than ever before, and draws upon scholarship in nine languages, including hard-to-find sources from Bulgaria, Romania, USSR, Ukraine, and Russia. The much-debated chronology of the six kings of Scythia Minor (Kanites, Tanousas, Charaspes, Ailis, Sariakes, and Akrosas) is determined through literary evidence, inscriptions, die linkage, shared monograms, coin hoards, and counterstamps. Metrological analysis distinguishes four denominations, plus the alterations and debasements of the weight standard during the troubled reigns of Ailis and Sariakes. Fifteen counterstamps that appear on Scythian coins are attributed to the local Greek poleis of Callatis, Tomis, Istros, and Dionysopolis. An inventory of four hoards and 47 findspots of single coins identifies the mint site, Dionysopolis. The volume concludes with a catalog of 63 major coin types and 15 counterstamps, plus bibliography and index.

The Liber de ordine creaturarum is an anonymous Latin work with an Irish provenance that dates back to the seventh century. It presents the creation as the divine handiwork and is notable for serving as both a commentary on the Hexaemeron (Six-day Work) in Genesis and as one of the earliest works of systematic theology. Although previously attributed to Isidore of Seville, the Liber de ordine creaturarum is far more than a mere compilation of 'authorities.' Instead, it emphasizes the inherent order that exists within the creation itself.

Prajñāraśmi  (1518-1584), ou « Lumière de Sagesse », est le nom de plume sanskrit d’un auteur tibétain qui vécut durant une période de crise politico-religieuse située entre la pleine assimilation du bouddhisme indien par les Tibétains et l’instauration du régime des Dalaï-Lamas. Dans ce contexte d’instabilité, Prajñāraśmi se distingua par une formation éclectique exceptionnelle et un enseignement qui, centré sur l’idée de sagesse – ou gnose –, chercha à montrer l’unité des différentes traditions du bouddhisme au Tibet.

Ses grands textes sont présentés et traduits dans cet ouvrage, notamment l’Ambroisie de l’étude, de la réflexion et de la méditation, et la Lampe qui illumine les deux vérités, qui traite de la philosophie de la voie du milieu (Madhyamaka). Sa biographie, ainsi que l’étude de son oeuvre et de son héritage, révèlent une filiation entre les renouveaux de l’école des Anciens (Rnying ma pa) durant la réunification du Tibet sous le Ve Dalaï-Lama (xvii e s.), la nouvelle révélation de ’Jigs med gling pa (xviii e s.), et la floraison du mouvement « impartial » (ris med, xix e siècle) avec la collection transsectaire du Trésor des instructions spirituelles.

Il se dessine ici une quête tibétaine de la sagesse qui, conjuguant l’histoire des traditions, le discours philosophique, le yoga et la contemplation, visait à une liberté intérieure conçue au-delà de tout parti pris, « intention unique » de tous les enseignements du Bouddha, ou, selon sa propre lignée de la Grande Perfection (Rdzogs chen), « sphère de la libération ».

Coins of the Ptolemaic Empire, Part 1, Volumes 1 and 2 (Precious Metal and Bronze) by Catharine Lorber, is the massive, long-anticipated catalogue of coins struck by the first four Ptolemaic kings. It essentially rewrites the sections on these rulers in J. N. Svoronos’ classic, but now much out of date,　Ta Nomismata tou Kratous ton Ptolemaion (1904). The body of coinage catalogued by Svoronos is enlarged by more than 300 further emissions in precious metal and more than 180 emissions in bronze, recorded from subsequent scholarship, from hoards, from commercial sources, and from private collections, and constituting about a third of the total catalogue entries. Lorber’s attributions, dates, and interpretations rest on numismatic research since Svoronos, or on the latest archaeological and hoard information. She also provides extensive historical and numismatic introductions that give the coins deeper context and meaning. The coinage of Ptolemies I through IV is supplemented by a few issues possibly attributable to Cleomenes of Naucratis, the predecessor of Ptolemy I in Egypt, as well as by coinages of Ptolemy Ceraunus, Magas, and Ptolemy of Telmessus, members of the Lagid dynasty ruling their own kingdoms outside of Egypt.