Antiquité Tardive - Late Antiquity - Spätantike - Tarda Antichità

Four out of the eleven Greek-Coptic and Greek-Latin-Coptic glossaries listed in the Mertens-Pack³ database of Greek and Latin literary papyri developed at the CEDOPAL (University of Liège: http://web.philo.ulg.ac.be/cedopal/base-de-donnees-mp3/) contain words related to eating practices. In this paper, we will analyse the formal features (writing support, writing, layout, signs) and the content of these four papyri dated to between the end of the 6^th and the 7^th/8^th centuries. We will try to clarify what role the semantic field related to eating practices plays in these texts, and to identify their context of production.

The c. 100 Greek literary medical papyri from the Byzantine period (284-641) are much more numerous than the papyri containing culinary texts. Several of them deal with questions of dietetics and nourishment. They preserve both theoretical treatises and prescriptions of medicaments to be taken per se, often prepared with ingredients also used for cooking. In this paper, the analysis of both the external (provenance, date, format, layout, script) and the internal (language, genre, content) aspects of these papyri is followed by an assessment of the information they provide, not only about the practice and teaching of medicine in Byzantine Egypt, but also about the alimentary and dietary customs of a quick-changing multicultural society.

Le propos principal de cet article concerne les différentes façons dont le discours touchant le domaine alimentaire a été utilisé par les chrétiens syriaques pendant l’Antiquité tardive pour parvenir à construire une identité collective distincte, indépendante du judaïsme, et établir des frontières sociales avec les Juifs. Il examine comment les règles alimentaires bibliques ont été réinterprétées par les exégètes syriaques, comme Aphrahat (IVe siècle) et Jacques de Sarough (VIe siècle), qui se sont efforcés de montrer le caractère inadapté des prescriptions pour les chrétiens. Il examine également la façon dont les hymnes comme les Canons prescrivaient d’éviter les repas entre chrétiens et juifs. Enfin, il aborde la question complexe du rapport entre ce discours discursif du christianisme indépendant des juifs et du judaïsme et la réalité sociale non moins complexe de la Syro-Mésopotamie tardoantique.

Written in the 7^th century between Italy and Gaul, the works of Jonas of Bobbio include the Vita Columbani and Vita Iohannis, and probably also the Vita Vedastis and Regula cuiusdam ad uirgines. Those four works contain many allusions to drink and episodes in which ale, wine and other beverages are consumed. The analysis of that whole corpus, compared when necessary with aspects of the works of Columbanus, shows that Jonas did not merely reproduce the classical discourse, derived from both Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian literature, which condemned ale and condoned a moderate consumption of wine. Conversely, he replaced it with a “new regime of drinks” - an already medieval one which, instead of highlighting one beverage above others, insisted on the conditions of consumption and tried to detect the presence of the devil in wine as well as in ale.

The Romans discovered oriental spices in the first half of the 3th century BC, following the conquest of Magna Grecia. From then on, its consumption gradually increased among the elites and caused, despite the criticism from the most conservative sectors of the society, a growing of strong currency. Spices circulated between the Far East and the eastern Mediterranean along two networks of land and sea routes. Rome tried to increase its control over these routes with variable results. The growing consumption of exotic condiments was reflected in Apicio’s cookbook, literature and imperial customs tarifs. After the fall of Western Empire, the supply of spices, in both Mediterranean basins, was reduced and lost variety, but did not collapse. After bottoming in the second quarter of the 7th century, following the Islamic expansion, trade was reactivated by different circuits to those created by Rome.

La comparaison de restes zooarchéologiques provenant de trois régions du monde méditerranéen - 1/ le centre-ouest de l’Italie ; 2/ l’Afrique du Nord centrale ; 3/ la Grèce et la mer Égée - révèle des aspects de continuité et de changement dans l’introduction d’animaux dans les pratiques alimentaires et économiques au cours de l’Antiquité tardive. Un certain nombre de dispositifs sont manifestement touchés, comme en témoignent les modifications apportées à la taille et à la nature de l’élevage d’ovinés-caprinés dans de nombreuses régions, en particulier dans le centre-ouest de l’Italie. D’autres éléments, tels que la demande constante de porc dans les grands sites urbains jusqu’à la fin de l’Antiquité, ou plus généralement l’apport et la fréquence de divers types d’animaux dans les sites ruraux plus petits, montrent une cohérence temporelle plus marquée entre la période romaine et les phases postérieures de l’Antiquité tardive. Des explications possibles de ces phénomènes sont explorées, notamment la manière dont les grands sites urbains concentrent de multiples demandes de denrées alimentaires (y compris les viandes) et ont pu, à leur tour, exercer une pression sur les pratiques d’élevage locales et distantes selon les besoins, y compris dans des états apparemment « en déclin » lors de la transition entre l’époque romaine et l’Antiquité tardive.

The article discusses all issues related to food and diet in monasteries over the 6^th and 7^th centuries, from the type of food and drink that were permitted, to spiritual as well as broad cultural matters such as fasting and eating during festivities. The article raises these issues and discusses them by analysing the Rule of Benedict and the three Hispanic rules (Leander, Isidore and Fructuosus). The paper thus attempts to provide a broad overview and illustration of these daily-life matters in late Antique monasteries.

Plant storage for food is necessary to ensure a varied diet all year long, and to keep the seedlings. Rural settlements of Late Antiquity store different products: cereals, legumes, fruits, fodder plants, straw, wood, etc. Several ways of conserving plants coexist. The storage of small quantities is realised without specific installation, in ceramics or in chests. The storage of larger volumes requires specialized equipment such as underground silos for conservation in a confined atmosphere and buildings for conservation in a renewed atmosphere.

An inventory of granaries from rural settlements of Late Antiquity shows continuity with the previous centuries. However, several characteristics are specific to the end of Antiquity such as the reuse of domestic rooms as a storage space or the fortification of buildings. Research on storage and conservation modes and equipment will help to better understand the specificities of Late Antiquity and early Middle Ages, such as the resurgence of the confined-atmosphere storage.

Silverware is an essential part of the luxury of the table in the Roman world, especially in Late Antiquity. It belongs to the decor of the reception room just like mosaics or paintings, and is part of the staging that characterizes a banquet. However, its relationship with the food it accompanies is complex. Objects preserved in treasures, texts and images provide some clarification on this subject. They highlight the existence of indissociable groups, often emblematic, but also draw attention to the essential characteristics of silver dishes, especially their increasingly spectacular size, which should be related to the organization of dining rooms. The presence of inscriptions also characterizes this dish: they have an important role, because they often provide a key to understand the decor of the object that carries them.

Among the most unusual and at the same time the most unknown monuments of late antique and early Byzantine art are the four Ciborium columns of San Marco. With 369 figures and 95 scenes in their nine registers with nine arcades, they are the richest monument in figures and scenes of the early Christian and early Byzantine period. They depict scenes from the Apocrypha and the New Testament that begin with the prehistory of the Nativity of Mary and end with the Ascension of Christ and the enthroned Godfather. Although their dating in the 6^th century has been proven conclusively by Thomas Weigel in 1997, most scenes have not been studied in detail. Among these scenes are three little known or unpublished scenes of New Testament meals that deserve in their peculiarities to be presented to a scientific audience: the iconography of the wine miracle at Cana, the sinner at the meal of the Pharisee Simon, which is the first known representation of this scene, and the Last Supper.

Our analysis of the sermo XLVIII of Maximus of Turin led us recently to hold that the author did not use the terms gentilis-gentilitas and paganus-paganismus as synonymous, but resorted to each one of them in order to allude to two entities not only different, but opposed in their fundamental characteristics. The aim of this paper is to support the plausibility of such a hypothesis through the examination of all the references to gentilitas contained in the work of Maximus. We hope to demonstrate that, in effect, his Sermones present a conception of the gentilitas that is not only homogeneous but also completely independent of paganismus.

The aim of this paper is to study the liturgical arrangements realized in the transition space between the choir and the nave of the church, in order to obtain a better understanding of the link between the cathedral and the other monuments of the cult, in particular the baptisteries. The presented data are related to the one published on other sites: the cathedrals of Aosta, Tournai, Cologne, and Trier, and other buildings in western Europe. In the southern cathedral of Geneva, we observe, with a certain precocity, the emergence of a solea and an ambo, as in Aosta (half a century earlier), in Grado and Boppard during the same period, and in Tournai a little later. During the 6^th century, this type of architectural element spreads throughout western Europe, and is in competition (or in complementarity) with more opened arrangements connecting the cathedral to the baptistery, as it is the case in the northern cathedral of Aosta, recently modified. During the 7^th-8^th centuries, the situation became more complex in Geneva, when, on the east of the baptistery, a third church was constructed, whose liturgical arrangements were those of a martyrial church. In the Carolingian period, this building was considerably enlarged on the western side (at exactly the same place where the baptistery was disappearing) and provided with arrangements similar to those of the cathedral of Cologne at the same time. This shows that it was now used as a cathedral, at the detriment of the two ancient churches that disappeared soon after. These constructions can be seen in relation with the application of the Carolingian liturgical reform, which was inspired by the image of Rome, as it can be seen in the Ordo Romanus IV, written in the Frankish kingdom.

In the monastery of Apa Apollô at Bawit, paintings imitating textiles decorate the walls in many of the chapels excavated by Jean Clédat (1901-1902, 1903-1905) and Jean Maspero (1913). These textile imitations, situated below the figural representations, display various stylized floral and vegetal designs arranged in regular lozenge formations (diaper patterns). Some tapestries are laid out as framed panels, giving the impression of wallpaper; others are rendered as curtains (vela) suspended from rods and rings. In addition, there are a few instances of painted friezes with floral ornaments. Such imagery with nonfigural representation is often interpreted as purely ornamental; still, we argue here that the tapestries painted in the chapels at Bawit had religious and theological significance.