Late Antiquity (c. 280-500)
More general subjects:
The Imagery and Aesthetics of Late Antique Cities
While the role of the city in Late Antiquity has often been discussed by archaeologists and historians alike it is only in recent years that scholarship has begun to offer a more nuanced approach in our understanding to how such cities functioned stepping away from the traditional paradigm of their decline and fall with the collapse of the Roman Empire. In line with this approach this deliberately interdisciplinary volume seeks to provide a more multifaceted understanding of urban history by drawing together scholars of literary and material culture to discuss the concepts of imagery and aesthetics of late antique cities.
Gathering together contributions by historians philologists archaeologists literature specialists and art historians the volume aims to explore the imagery and aesthetics of cities in Late Antiquity within a strong theoretical framework. The different chapters explore the aesthetics of cityscape representations in literature and art asking in particular whether literary representations of late antique urban landscapes mirror the urban reality of eclectic ensembles of pre-existing architecture and new buildings as well as questioning both how the ideal of the city evolved in the imagination of the period and if imperial ideology was reflected in literary depictions of cities.
Discipline, Authority, and Text in Late Ancient Religion
Essays in Honour of David Brakke
This collection of essays on religious practice in the Mediterranean Near East and Middle East (ca. 100–800 ce) celebrates the impact that Professor David Brakke has had on the study of late antique religious history. Nineteen scholars celebrate the career of Professor Brakke with essays on a range of subjects on late ancient religion. Some chapters treat monastic texts ascetic practice and ritual performance; others address the roles of magic demons and miracle stories; still others examine Christian violence and martyrdom.
In particular many of these essays explore the kinds of ascetic theory practice identity organization performance and writing found throughout the diverse authors groups and locales of Late Antiquity. Essay topics cross disciplinary boundaries and operate in the overlapping intellectual space of Religious Studies History Classics English Anthropology and Comparative Literature. By treating asceticism as a phenomenon within a relatively confined time period and geography across a variety of religious and literary traditions this volume highlights the ascetic impulse within new areas.
The volume thus stands alone for its multifaceted discussions of religion and asceticism in Late Antiquity and advances scholarly investigation of and discourse about late antique asceticism by expanding conceptual and disciplinary boundaries in new and exciting directions.
Boundaries of Holiness, Frontiers of Sainthood
Negotiating the Image of Christian Holy Figures and Saints in Late Antiquity
Many excellent studies have been published on the phenomenon of holy (wo)men and saints. As a rule however they focus on successful candidates for holiness who played the roles of charismatic leaders and patrons of social and religious life.
This volume offers a new perspective on ancient and medieval holiness — its main focus is holiness as defined by its peripheries and not by its conceptual centre. The contributors explore stories of men and women whose way to sainthood did not follow typical ‘models’ but who engaged with it from its outskirts. Several essays examine the strategies employed by hagiographical authors to tailor the images of candidates for holiness whose lives provided less obvious examples of moral and/or religious ideals. These include attempts to make saints out of emperors heretics and other unlikely or obscure figures. Other case studies focus on concerns with false holiness or unusual cases of holiness being ascribed prior to a saint’s death. Another concept explored in the volume is space. The spatial boundaries of holiness are discussed in relation to the transmission of relics to the opposition between urban and rural spaces holy sites and even imagined space.
Holiness and sainthood have been crucial concepts for Christianity from its inception. By exploring their ‘marginal’ and ‘peripheral’ aspects the essays in this book offer vital new perspectives on the religious world of Late Antiquity.
Front Matter (“Indice”, “Elenco delle Illustrazioni”, “Ringraziamenti”, “Le parcours européen d’Ivan Gargano : histoire et archéologie de la Dacia Ripensis à la fin de l’Antiquité, au cœur de frontières en mouvement”, “A Roma ad Insulam : l’étude de la Dacia Ripensis par Ivan Gargano et les initiatives lilloises sur l’archéologie et l’histoire des Balkans”)
Dacia Ripensis
Topografia e cristianizzazione di una provincia danubiana nella Tarda Antichità
La Dacia Ripensis fu una provincia danubiana la cui esistenza si data fra gli anni ‘80 del III secolo e i primi anni del VII. Il suo territorio funse da cerniera fra il medio ed il basso corso del Danubio e al tempo stesso da raccordo fra il barbaricum e l’entroterra illirico. L’urbanizzazione vi ebbe un modesto successo; cionondimeno essa favorì la romanizzazione della provincia dove la militarizzazione si manifesta invece in modo evidente grazie a quanto noto dalla Notitia dignitatum e dall’archeologia. L’attenzione per la difesa dell’area era del resto giustificata per via della pressione esercitata da popolazioni come Goti Unni Slavi e Avari che condizionarono la storia dell’intera penisola proprio attraversando la Dacia Ripensis.
Dalle fonti letterarie è noto che la provincia fu anche interessata dalla diffusione della religione cristiana le cui prime testimonianze si datano ai primordi del IV secolo. Il processo rese possibile l’ascesa di sedi vescovili assai implicate nelle dispute teologiche e nella lotta a dottrine eretiche localmente diffuse ancora nel VI secolo. L’archeologia ha permesso di riconoscere la graduale formazione di questa rete ecclesiastica che in forme monumentali è riconoscibile sia in ambito urbano che rurale. Nonostante la sua importanza questa provincia è stata finora studiata solo occasionalmente e questo volume vuole ovviare a questo problema proponendo uno studio aggiornato mirato a definire le conoscenze storiche e archeologiche necessarie alla comprensione generale della topografia provinciale così come alla contestualizzazione del processo di cristianizzazione di questa porzione dell’area danubiana.
Small Change in the Early Middle Ages
New Perspectives on Coined Money, c. 400–1100
Coined money is a familiar part of day-to-day life and has been for millennia in many societies. In the early Middle Ages however it worked rather differently. People across the former Roman Empire and beyond continued to think in terms of monetary units of account but the supply and use of actual coin became highly uneven. Access to low-value coinage small change was particularly attenuated in western Europe where gold and silver pieces predominated. This volume explores how people and societies dealt with changes to monetary systems. It looks at the experiences of different groups in society from those who struggled with regimes that used only high value coins to the elites who tended to benefit from those same conditions. The ten contributions to this volume consider diverse geographical areas from Byzantine Egypt to Italy Francia and Britain identifying parallels and divergences among them. The chapters draw on cutting-edge archaeological and historical research to give a panorama of the latest thinking on early medieval money and coinage.
« Aedes Memoriae »
Actes de la Journée d’Études en mémoire du professeur Noël Duval
Le professeur Noël Duval à la forte personnalité a marqué le renouveau des études sur l’antiquité tardive. Se consacrant plus particulièrement à l’Afrique romaine et byzantine il en a étudié l’histoire tardive et l’archéologie en particulier celle des églises paléochrétiennes. Mais ses intérêts se sont portés aussi sur la Gaule à la fin de l’antiquité et plus largement à l’ensemble du bassin méditerranéen. Sa disparition en 2018 a été incontestablement une grande perte. Ses amis et ses élèves ont tenu à honorer sa mémoire en rassemblant un recueil de contributions scientifiques sur des sujets sur lesquels il avait travaillé mais aussi en évoquant sa mémoire et sa personnalité.
Du Christianisme et des hommes dans l’Antiquité Tardive. Essais de prosopographie
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.
Les sermons du manuscrit de Vienne (ÖNB MS LAT. 4147)
Interrogations sur leur unité, leur datation et leur origine
En 1994 François-Joseph Leroy publiait vingt-deux sermons inédits qu’il attribua à un contemporain d’Augustin et dans lesquels il vit une collection non apologétique et non polémique de textes donatistes. C’était là une découverte exceptionnelle. Pourtant depuis l’édition provisoire de Leroy la recherche ne s’est guère penchée sur ce corpus. C’est la raison pour laquelle le Groupe de Recherches sur l’Afrique Antique (GRAA) a entrepris une nouvelle édition critique de ces 22 sermons accompagnée de la première traduction annotée et rassemblé autour de ce corpus les contributions de différents spécialistes historiens et littéraires pour en analyser tant la langue le style et les procédés homilétiques que la portée supposée donatiste la spiritualité et la théologie.
Transitions
A Historian’s Memoir
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.
Essays on Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity in Honour of Oded Irshai
Leading scholars in the study of Late Antiquity discuss the religious landscape of the eastern Roman Empire with expert discussion of the theological political and social issues which confronted Jews and Christians in late Roman Palestine and surrounding regions. Individual chapters analyse in depth the rabbinic patristic and archaeological evidence to produce a sophisticated account of religious lives in provincial societies in which rabbinic Judaism took root within a Roman world increasingly dominated from the early fourth century CE by competing Christian power structures particularly within Palestine. Detailed studies investigate among other topics rabbinic speculation about the origins and nature of the Roman state; the implications of the sharing of urban space by different religious traditions and the sharing of religious iconography; competition both within Judaism and Christianity and between Jews and Christians in light of the political pressures exerted by the Christian Roman state; and both similarities and differences in speculation by Jews and Christians about the nature of the expected end of days.
Interacting with Saints in the Late Antique and Medieval Worlds
The cult of saints is one of the most fascinating religious developments of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Christians admired martyrs already in the second century but for a long time they perceived them only as examples to follow and believed they could pray directly to God whom they addressed as ‘Our Father’. A new attitude toward saints now considered above all as powerful friends of God and efficient intercessors started to emerge in the third century. Once this process gained momentum in the Constantinian era the cult of saints constantly changed and rapidly adapted to new conditions and demands. This evolution highlighted many factors: the popularity of specific saints and the different types of sanctity the spread of cults and customs and the ways in which the saints were described visualised and represented.
This volume seeks to capture the dynamic of these adaptations showing both those aspects of cult which evolved quickly and those which remained stable for a long time. It studies the evolution of the cults in a broad period from the third to the seventh centuries and in various regions from Gaul to Georgia with a particular interest in the two greatest centres of the cult of saints: Rome and Constantinople. In response to changing needs and different circumstances new generations of believers repeatedly modified the cults of established saints even as they introduced new saints.
The Collectio Avellana and the Development of Notarial Practices in Late Antiquity
The essays collected in this volume study the competences and status of late antique notaries who from simple stenographers acquired responsibilities and growing importance within the imperial court and in the papal chancellery being charged with drawing up the acts of the consistorium and the ecclesiastical councils and with preserving and often delivering sensitive documents from Rome to Constantinople. The analysis of their multiple activities and of the functions they occupied in the imperial and episcopal archives as well as in the libraries of the great Roman domus also allows us to verify some new hypotheses on the compiler and on the editing of the Collectio Avellana. Since in the Middle Ages the collection was transcribed into two main manuscripts both preserved in Santa Croce di Fonte Avellana the essays also try to understand what role the founder of the Monastery San Pier Damiani played in preserving this collection.
Constructing Saints in Greek and Latin Hagiography
Heroes and Heroines in Late Antique and Medieval Narrative
This book explores representations of saints in a variety of Latin and Greek late antique hagiographical narratives such as saints’ Lives martyr acts miracle collections and edifying tales. The book examines techniques through which the saints featured in such texts are depicted as heroes and heroines i.e. as extraordinary characters exhibiting both exemplary behaviour and a set of specific qualities that distinguish them from others. The book inscribes itself in a growing body of relatively recent scholarship that approaches hagiographical accounts not just as historical sources but also as narrative constructions. As such it contributes to the development of a scholarly rationale which increasingly values imaginative and fictional aspects of hagiography in their own right with the aim of answering broader questions about narrative creativity and ideology. For instance individual chapters examine how hagiographical accounts mobilize and capitalize on earlier literary and rhetorical traditions or narrative models. These questions are specifically addressed to explore the narrative construction of characters. The chapters thereby encourage us to acknowledge that many hagiographers were more skilful than is often accepted.