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"The Making of a Christian Empire is the first full-length book to interpret the Divine Institutes as a historical source. Exploring Lactantius's use of theology, philosophy, and rhetorical techniques, Digeser perceives the Divine Institutes as a sophisticated proposal for a monotheistic state that intimately connected the religious policies of Diocletian and Constantine, both of whom used religion to fortify and unite the Roman Empire."--BOOK JACKET.
This monograph studies the professionalization of History of religions as an academic discipline in late 19th and early 20th century France and Europe. Its common thread is the work of the French Modernist priest and later Professor of History of religions at the Collège de France, Alfred Loisy (1857-1940), who participated in many of the most topical debates among French and international historians of religions. Unlike his well-studied Modernist theology, Loisy’s writings on comparative religion, and his rich interactions with famous scholars like F. Cumont, M. Mauss, or J.G. Frazer, remain largely unknown. This monograph is the first to paint a comprehensive picture of his career as a ...
This volume in political epistemology offers a comprehensive discussion of the multiple applicability of Gramscian concepts and categories to the historical, sociological, and cultural analysis of science. The authors argue that the perspective of hegemony and subalternity allows us critically to assess the political directedness of scientific practices as well as to reflect on the ideological status of disciplines that deal with science at a meta-level – historical, socio-historical, and epistemological. Contributors include: Massimiliano Badino, Javier Balsa, Lino Camprubí, Ana Carneiro, Luís Miguel Carolino, Riccardo Ciavolella, Roger Cooter, Alina-Sandra Cucu, Maria Paula Diogo, Isabel Jiménez Lucena, Annelies Lannoy, Jorge Molero Mesa, Agustí Nieto-Galan, Pietro Daniel Omodeo, Matteo Realdi, Jaume Sastre-Juan, Arne Schirrmacher, Ana Simões, Carlos Tabernero Holgado, and Carlos Ziller Camenietzki.
"This volume presents a series of papers which cover the general theme of the reception of antiquity, a topic which has in recent years become a discipline in itself, or what some might call a 'cross-discipline'. Indeed the Nachleben of the (culture of) classical antiquity, and of antiquity as a whole, manifests in a number of diverse domains, opening up the field of reception studies to scholars from disciplines other than Classics. This collection of papers illustrates this diversity, uniting as it does original research by scholars from a variety of disciplines: classicists, historians, theatre historians, architectural historians, psychologists, archaeologists, artists, and more, all of whom have treated some aspect of the so-called 'classical tradition' by means of their own individual approaches, leading to a volume rich and dense in themes and methodologies. 'Receptions of antiquity' has been written by friends of Freddy Decreus, in honour of his career, and in celebration of his thought."--
A new assessment of the inventive and influential artist Jan van Eyck. Jan van Eyck (1390–1441) was one of the most inventive and influential artists in the entire European tradition. The realism of his paintings continues to astound observers more than six centuries on, even though our world is saturated by high-resolution images. However, viewers today are as like to be absorbed by Van Eyck’s personality as his realism. While he sometimes directly painted himself into his works, he also suggested his presence through an array of inscriptions, signatures, and even a personal motto. Incorporating a wealth of new research and recent discoveries within a fresh exploration of the paintings themselves, this book reveals how profoundly Jan van Eyck transformed the very idea of what an artist could be.
In Race, Nation, History, Oded Y. Steinberg examines the way a series of nineteenth-century scholars in England and Germany first constructed and then questioned the periodization of history into ancient, medieval, and modern eras, shaping the way we continue to think about the past and present of Western civilization at a fundamental level. Steinberg explores this topic by tracing the deep connections between the idea of epochal periodization and concepts of race and nation that were prevalent at the time—especially the role that Germanic or Teutonic tribes were assumed to play in the unfolding of Western history. Steinberg shows how English scholars such as Thomas Arnold, Williams Stubbs...
Worshippers of the Gods shows how fourth-century Latin writers rethought traditional religion during Christianity's rise. Through five interlocking studies of inscriptions, laws, senatorial papers, and Christian polemics, it traces shifting conceptions of paganism from the Tetrarchic persecution, through Constantine's reign, to the 'disestablishment' of the Roman cults in the 380s.
Ancient Christianity had an ambivalent stance toward violence. Jesus had instructed his disciples to love their enemies, and in the first centuries Christians were proud of this lofty teaching and tried to apply it to their persecutors and to competing religious groups. Yet at the same time they testify to their virulent verbal criticism of Jews, heretics and pagans, who could not accept the Christian exclusiveness. After emperor Constantine had turned to Christianity, Christians acquired the opportunity to use violence toward competing groups and pagans, even though they were instructed to love them personally and Jewish-Christian relationships flourished at grass root level. General analyses and case studies demonstrate that the fashionable distinction between intolerant monotheism and tolerant polytheism must be qualified.
The Hagiographical Experiment: Developing Discourses of Sainthood throws fresh light on narratives about Christian holy men and women from Late Antiquity to Byzantium. Rather than focusing on the relationship between story and reality, it asks what literary choices authors made in depicting their heroes and heroines: how they positioned the narrator, how they responded to existing texts, how they utilised or transcended genre conventions for their own purposes, and how they sought to relate to their audiences. The literary focus of the chapters assembled here showcases the diversity of hagiographical texts written in Greek, Latin, Coptic, and Syriac, as well as pointing out the ongoing conversations that connect them. By asking these questions of this diverse group of texts, it illuminates the literary development of hagiography in the late antique, Byzantine, and medieval periods.
The first English translation of this important treatise on providence and fate by the fifth-century Neoplatonist Proclus.