‘Instructing readers’ minds in heavenly matters’: Carolingian History Writing and Christian Education

2019 ◽  
Vol 55 ◽  
pp. 56-71
Author(s):  
Robert A. H. Evans
Keyword(s):  
Christian Education ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
History Writing ◽  
The West ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Historia Ecclesiastica ◽  
Late Roman

This article explores the ways in which histories were used in the moral and doctrinal education of Christian elites in the West from the late Roman to the Carolingian periods. In the sixth century, Cassiodorus wrote that histories, whether Christian or not, were useful for ‘instructing the minds of readers in heavenly matters’. How far was this characteristic of the period? Traditionally, scholars have emphasized either the apologetic purpose or the moral of specific histories, such as Orosius'sHistoriaeor Bede'sHistoria Ecclesiastica. Few modern scholars, however, have examined the long-term development of history writing as a vehicle for Christian education during the transformation of the Roman world. Those who have done, such as Karl-Ferdinand Werner and Hans-Werner Goetz, have emphasized continuity rather than change. The article sketches some of the changes and continuities across the period. In particular, it demonstrates that there was a shift from the apologetic concerns of the fifth-century historians, writing to educate Christians from pagan backgrounds, to the doctrinal (as much as moral) concerns of Frankish historians, emerging from the Carolingian Renaissance.

Secular Monograms, Social Status, and Authority in the Late Roman World and Early Byzantium

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ildar Garipzanov
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Imperial Authority ◽  
Christian Culture ◽  
Noble Identity ◽  
Late Roman

This chapter examines the use of monograms as graphic signs of imperial authority in the late Roman and early Byzantine empire, from its appropriation on imperial coinage in the mid-fifth century to its employment in other material media in the following centuries. It also overviews the use of monograms by imperial officials and aristocrats as visible signs of social power and noble identity on mass-produced objects, dress accessories, and luxury items. The concluding section discusses a new social function for late antique monograms as visible tokens of a new Christian paideia and of elevated social status, related to ennobling calligraphic skills. This transformation of monograms into an attribute of visual Christian culture became especially apparent in sixth-century Byzantium, with the cruciform monograms appearing in the second quarter of the sixth century and becoming a default monogrammatic form from the seventh century onwards.

The Rise of the Classical Theory and the Challenge of Christology

2020 ◽  
pp. 72-112
Author(s):  
Johannes Zachhuber
Keyword(s):  
Christian Education ◽  
Classical Theory ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Cyril Of Alexandria ◽  
Unique Position ◽  
Theodoret Of Cyrus ◽  
The Trinity

This chapter traces the initial reception of the Cappadocian philosophy. In a first section, two major early fifth-century thinkers, Cyril of Alexandria and Theodoret of Cyrus, are shown to presuppose all major principles of the Cappadocian theory. A second section argues that this unique position of the three fourth-century thinkers was related to their role as paradigms of Christian education. The remainder of the chapter turns to the Christological controversy. Remarkably, the Cappadocian theory was applied to a wide variety of doctrinal topics but not initially to Christology. Yet this application became universally shared from the early sixth century onwards. The present chapter therefore examines the roots of this later convention. To this end, two distinct phenomena are examined: the Apollinarian controversy of the late fourth century and the emergence of the so-called double homoousion as an increasingly accepted formula suggesting a conceptual parallel between the Trinity and Christology.

SOLDIERS AND SPACES: DAILY LIFE IN LATE ROMAN FORTS

2009 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 655-683
Author(s):  
Andrew Gardner
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Dynamic Environments ◽  
Temporal Scales ◽  
Vital Importance ◽  
Roman World ◽  
The North ◽  
North Western ◽  
Late Roman

Roman forts in the north-western part of the empire were vibrant, dynamic environments through which different groups of people moved, and in which they interacted. They are thus essential contexts for the understanding of broader changes in the Roman world. In Late Antiquity, the forts of Britain and northern Gaul show clear signs of the kinds of changes that overtook these provinces in the 5th c. A.D., at the same time as indicating long-term continuities in daily practices. In this paper, the evidence of both settlement and burial deposits from such sites will be explored to try and capture something of this balance between tradition and transformation. The emphasis will be on the vital importance for archaeologists of understanding the different temporal scales at which various past processes occurred.

Acclamations in the Later Roman Empire: New Evidence from Aphrodisias

1984 ◽  
Vol 74 ◽  
pp. 181-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Roueché
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
The West ◽  
Roman Society ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Function ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Late Roman

This article has been engendered by yet another important discovery made during the current excavations at Aphrodisias in Caria, of a unique series of acclamatory texts in honour of a local benefactor, Albinus. The texts were inscribed, probably in the first half of the sixth century, on the twenty columns of the west portico of the Agora, nineteen of which survive. They provide relatively little information either about Albinus or about the history of Aphrodisias; but they are of outstanding interest as the fullest series of inscribed acclamations which has yet been identified anywhere. The purpose of this article is to consider the status and function of acclamations in late Roman society, and their relationship to earlier practice, in order to assess the full significance of the texts presented here.

scholarly journals Wroxeter and the end of Roman Britain

Antiquity ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 88 (340) ◽  
pp. 501-515 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Lane
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Urban Centre ◽  
The West ◽  
Roman Britain ◽  
Urban Activity ◽  
Late Roman

When and how did urban life in Roman Britain end? The excavations conducted by Philip Barker at Wroxeter from 1966–1990 produced evidence suggesting a post-Roman phase of urban activity that continued into the sixth or seventh century AD, up to 200 years beyond the traditionally accepted chronology. Careful re-examination of the evidence, however, throws doubt on these claims. More recent work on Late Roman Britain coupled with new discoveries in Wales and the west challenges the evidence for the post-Roman survival of Wroxeter as an urban centre and suggests that it may have been largely abandoned, along with other Roman towns, in the late fourth or early fifth century AD.

Economy and Power in Late Roman Britain

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Gerrard
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Roman Britain ◽  
Agricultural Resources ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Surplus Extraction ◽  
Late Roman Period ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Late Roman

This chapter reviews the relationship between power and economics in fourth-century Britain. It argues that the Roman past has often been intuitively understood as rational and that its economics can be easily characterized as ‘proto-capitalist’. The Roman period was, however, both complex and irrational. Agricultural production was the powerhouse of the economy and provided the foundations of both power and status during the late Roman period. The focus on the agricultural economy allows the structures of power – tax, tribute and surplus extraction – and their transformation to be studied. During the fifth century the imperial superstructure collapsed, but the continued local control of agricultural resources provides a mechanism for how the late Roman world was transformed into early medieval societies.

Old Smyrna: the Attic pottery

1959 ◽  
Vol 53 ◽  
pp. 152-181
Author(s):  
John Boardman
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
The West ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
The North ◽  
Made In ◽  
North End

The earliest fine Attic pottery (excluding scraps of Geometric ware) found at the site of Old Smyrna was made in the first quarter of the sixth century (see no. 2 in the Catalogue below), although it is not until the second quarter that it appears on the site in any appreciable volume. One of the earliest, and incidentally most complete vases among otherwise very fragmentary material, is a lebes gamikos (no. 1) from the workshop of Sophilos, and it is accompanied by near-contempory lekanai by known painters. From this time on into the first decade of the fifth century fragments of almost every known variety of Attic cup are found, some of the highest quality, and at the end of this period skyphoi and lekythoi also appear while larger vases are conspicuously few. In the first quarter of the fifth century there is a marked falling off in the import of Attic pottery and it is noteworthy that no vases later than the first decade of that century were found in the main excavated area of the sixth-century houses at the north end of the site, and only isolated fragments from Trench C to the West. The possible historical significance of this is pointed out elsewhere by Mr. Cook. By the middle of the fifth century import is resumed on a small scale, but it is of high quality, including as it does a volute crater by the Niobid Painter (no. 118). The volume increases to the beginning of the fourth century, dying away again by the middle of it, and in this period fine black pottery, some of it with impressed decoration, appears beside the figured vases. The Attic black pottery of the fourth century is intimately associated with its numerous Ionic imitations and the presence of some of the commoner shapes is noted in the publication of the Ionic ware in a later volume of this Annual, to which the reader is referred.

Framing the Early Middle Ages

2011 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Haldon
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Regional Variation ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Vast Array ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Structural Force ◽  
High Level ◽  
Late Roman

AbstractChris Wickham’s important intervention in debates about the transformation of the Roman world from the fifth century onwards presents a vast array of evidence about the nature of social relations, the economy and the late-Roman and early-medieval state across the Mediterranean and Western-European world. Wickham is successful in taking into account both the high level of regional variation and differentiation across the Roman world and, at the same time, the various key unifying elements which bound these regions together. But, in arguing that the nature of the fiscal apparatus and structures of extraction, redistribution and consumption of surpluses of the late-Roman state were formative in the structure and appearance of the late-Roman élites in East and West as well as in the evolution of their early-medieval successors, a number of structural tensions in the model become apparent. This discussion highlights some of the issues at stake, while, at the same time, affirming the critical importance of the book, more especially its emphasis on the structural force of late-Roman institutions and social relations for the successor-states of the early-medieval West.

STUDYING LONG-TERM CHANGE IN THE WEST, A.D. 400-800

2003 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 383-403
Author(s):  
Chris Wickham
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Economic Change ◽  
Land Ownership ◽  
The West ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Structural Integration ◽  
Term Change ◽  
Basic Parameters ◽  
Large Scale Land

Since the 1930s, three principal models (continuity, 5th c. catastrophe and the Pirenne thesis) have been used to interpret socio-economic change in the Late Roman and Early Medieval West. With minor modifications, these models have survived with little sustained attempt to replace them. Using the examples of Tunisia, Italy and northern Gaul, this paper argues that four basic parameters of change can be identified for the period AD 400- 800. These are the occurrence of war, the level of survival of state economic infrastructures, the extent of large-scale land-ownership, and the level of structural integration into the Roman world system. Since the extent to which these four factors affect a given region varies, it is concluded that long-term economic change is dependent on structures that operate at a regional and sub-regional level.

Mafias on the Move

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Federico Varese
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Organized Crime ◽  
The United States ◽  
The West ◽  
Market Expansion ◽  
The North ◽  
Economic Transformations ◽  
At Will

Organized crime is spreading like a global virus as mobs take advantage of open borders to establish local franchises at will. That at least is the fear, inspired by stories of Russian mobsters in New York, Chinese triads in London, and Italian mafias throughout the West. As this book explains, the truth is more complicated. The author has spent years researching mafia groups in Italy, Russia, the United States, and China, and argues that mafiosi often find themselves abroad against their will, rather than through a strategic plan to colonize new territories. Once there, they do not always succeed in establishing themselves. The book spells out the conditions that lead to their long-term success, namely sudden market expansion that is neither exploited by local rivals nor blocked by authorities. Ultimately the inability of the state to govern economic transformations gives mafias their opportunity. In a series of matched comparisons, the book charts the attempts of the Calabrese 'Ndrangheta to move to the north of Italy, and shows how the Sicilian mafia expanded to early twentieth-century New York, but failed around the same time to find a niche in Argentina. The book explains why the Russian mafia failed to penetrate Rome but succeeded in Hungary. A pioneering chapter on China examines the challenges that triads from Taiwan and Hong Kong find in branching out to the mainland. This book is both a compelling read and a sober assessment of the risks posed by globalization and immigration for the spread of mafias.

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