scholarly journals The Water-Supply of Rome from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages

1970 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 165-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Coats-Stephens
Keyword(s):  
Water Supply ◽  
Ground Water ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Scaling Down ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Middle Ages

The article collates the textual and archaeological evidence for Rome’s water-supply in the period c.300-1000. Whilst there is now sufficient archaeological evidence for the rebuilding of the city’s aqueducts after the Gothic Wars, it is clear that the uses to which the water was put in the middle ages were very different from those of Late Antiquity. There was a massive scaling-down of the overall system, with the thermae falling immediately out of use, to be replaced to a certain extent by church baths for the clergy and poor. The Janiculum mills were maintained, and smaller watermills continued to function off the aqueducts, as well as from the Tiber. Baptisteries used both aqueduct and non-aqueduct-supplied water. There was an extensive network of wells and subterranean conduits utilizing ground-water. The system as a whole was organized centrally, by the Church – although the extent of private patronage (wells, smallscale mills and domestic baths) should not be overlooked.

Prudentius Clemens, Aurelius, 348–after 405 CE

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cillian O'Hogan
Keyword(s):  
Public Administration ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Latin Poetry ◽  
Human Soul ◽  
Northern Spain ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Middle Ages

Aurelius Prudentius Clemens was a Christian Latin poet who wrote in a variety of genres and metres. Born in northern Spain, in 348ce, he had a career in public administration before retiring to write poetry. His major works include the Liber Cathemerinon (poems keyed to the liturgy and religious calendar), Psychomachia (an allegorical epic on the battle between Virtues and Vices for the human soul), and the Liber Peristephanon (lyric poems in praise of the early martyrs of the church). Prudentius was particularly influenced by the works of Virgil and Horace, and aimed in his poetry to combine the form and language of classical Latin poetry with the message of Christianity. The most important Christian Latin poet of late antiquity, Prudentius was extremely influential throughout the Middle Ages.

ARCHITECTURE AND CHURCH POWER IN LATE ANTIQUITY: CANOSA AND SAN GIUSTO (APULIA)

2006 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-168
Author(s):  
Giuliano Volpe
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Transitional Period ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Rural Landscapes ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The City ◽  
The Church

Two Early Christian complexes will be presented here: one urban (San Pietro in Canosa), and one rural (San Giusto in the territory of Lucera). Both cases represent clear evidence of the Christianising policy promoted by the Church in the cities and countryside, especially during the 5th and 6th centuries A.D., which led to a new definition of urban and rural landscapes. The Early Christian complex of San Pietro in Canosa—the most important city in Apulia et Calabria in Late Antiquity—and the Early Christian complex of San Giusto, most likely the seat of a rural diocese, are notable expressions of ecclesiastical power in the city and the countryside during the transitional period between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages.

‘Frequenter Legere' The Propagation of Literacy’, Education, and Divine Wisdom in Caesarius of Arles

1992 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-15
Author(s):  
Alberto Ferreiro
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Literacy Education ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Divine Wisdom ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The Church ◽  
Large Corpus ◽  
Personal Viewpoint ◽  
The Middle Ages

Of the literary bequest from the Middle Ages, homilies provide one of the more useful tools in helping us to understand the medieval mind, at least from the perspective of the Church. Homilies provide us with insight on a number of levels, extending well beyond the personal viewpoint of those who wrote and preached them. They also clearly reflect the values, aspirations, and concerns of an era. Homilies are particularly valuable, especially if one has them in large numbers, because they are generally addressed to people of both genders, of all ages, and from every stratum of society. This is especially true of the large corpus of homilies attributed to Bishop Caesarius of Arles who directed his attention to both laity and clergy of all ranks with the aim of encouraging reading in order to promote literacy and divine wisdom. The Caesarian homiliary that survives from the early Middle Ages, is an enviable collection of documents.: one need only consider the scarcity of this type of source for contemporary Visigothic Spain. Homilies did exist in that period in Spain, but the ravages of time and man have caused so much to disappear.

scholarly journals Kościół późnoantyczny i wczesnośredniowieczny wobec problemu niechcianych dzieci w świetle postanowień zachodniorzymskich zgromadzeń biskupich

2020 ◽  
pp. 295-308
Author(s):  
Maciej Wojcieszak
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Small Contribution ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Church Hierarchy ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The Church

The author analyses canon laws about abortion and unwanted children, which were issued by western Roman assemblies of bishops in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages (between the fourth and sixth centuries). Such problems were not mentioned often, but the Church instituted severe penalties for abortion and abandoning unwanted children. Bishops did not discuss reasons for abortion and abandoning children. They only penalized the results, but we can comment on the causes of such behaviours, analysing the contents of canon laws and using other sources from the epoch, like the writings of the Church Fathers and the Codes of Theodosius and Justinian. We can say that problems like abortion or abandoning unwanted children existed in various places and they were a subject of the local bishops’ concern. The church hierarchy did not devote much attention to the issue of unwanted children, considering that imperial and synodal regulations were adequate to deal with those problems. The issues analyzed here constitute a small contribution to our knowledge of the everyday life of the societies of the western part of the Roman Empire in late antiquity and in the early Middle Ages.

Morning salutationes and the Decline of Sympotic Eucharists in the Third Century

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Clemens Leonhard
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Social Institution ◽  
Early Morning ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
Last Supper ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Middle Ages

AbstractIn late antiquity and the middle ages, many expositors compare the liturgy of the Eucharist (or the mass/the Divine Liturgy) with the accounts of Jesus’ Last supper claiming continuity and identity for a tradition in whose early phases diversity and change were abound. This essay departs from five issues regarding aspects of change between the early Christian sympotic celebrations of the Eucharist and the state of affairs in the middle ages: first, the quantity and quality of food to be consumed; second, the combined (as against separate) blessing or consecration of bread and wine; third, the timing of the celebration in the afternoon and evening versus the early morning; fourth, its compulsory combination with a liturgy of the word that is, moreover, performed preceding the Eucharist and not following the meal as it would be customary in ancient Greece and Rome; fifth, the later reservation of the presidency to clerics of the church. At least these five aspects of change in Eucharistic celebrations can be explained with recourse to the Roman custom of patrons receiving their clients almost every morning in the framework of the morning salutatio. Thus, it is indicated how the churches of Carthage moved from Eucharistic celebrations in the style of dinner parties and communal meals towards distributions of gifts to clients at a meeting with their bishop as patron of the church. This thesis explains why the loss of prandial Eucharists began long before Constantine. It explains when and why Christian churches in the Roman Empire abandoned a celebration that lent itself to the spontaneous interpretation as a mimetic celebration of the Last Supper thus creating the need to emphasize-eventually as part of the ritual itself in the form of the recitation of institution narratives-that the Eucharist is still the same, although it lost most of its mimetic allusions to its alleged pattern in the first century. The gradual adoption of the social institution of the morning salutatio also explains the parallel existence of different forms of Eucharistic celebrations: Its adoption and adaptation is an answer to the growth of the churches in certain places which could remain unimportant for others.

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