Welcome to our book review site go-pdf.online!
You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
The Material and the Ideal
Reflecting the diverse interests of Jean-Michel Spieser, his colleagues, students and friends contribute papers focused on topics ranging from the changing role of the apse and the layout of late antique basilicas to holy relics said to have been brought from Constantinople. Many of the articles address the nature and impact of specific media - goldsmiths' work, ivory and ceramics - while a group of highly original, broader studies is devoted to such larger issues as ritual display in the tenth century, the metaphorical significance of pottery and an interrogation of the supposed influence of Byzantine icons on Western medieval art. Throughout, the achievement of the authors is to move from concrete observations of particular objects to the larger meaning they held for those who commissioned and made use of them.
Decorating the Lord's Table
Oxbow says: The six essays featured in this study originated as papers given at the 36th International Congress of Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo. The contributors survey the ornate altars produced from the early 8th to 13th century in Europe, with specific examples taken from Italy, Germany and Scandinavia.
Urban and Religious Spaces in Late Antiquity and Early Byzantium
Professor Spieser deals here with a number of the transformations that took place in the world of Late Antiquity - and early Christianity - focusing upon notions of space. The first set of articles, opening with a newly-written introductory essay, addresses the development of urban landscapes from the Roman period up to the iconoclast era in Byzantium. In particular, he looks at the consequences of christianisation, and argues that the changing fortunes of the town cannot be attributed to a few causes, such as war or natural disaster, but resulted from a complex interplay between the economy and ideology, religion and politics. A second group, concerned with the relationship of 'late antique' man with his surroundings, and therefore his perception of space, sets out to explain how the decoration of churches - on apses, for example, or on doors - reflects new senses of how religious spaces should be organised. Six of these studies have been translated into English for this volume, and it ends with an important section of additional notes and comment.
Byzantium
The fall of the Byzantine capital of Constantinople to the Latin West in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade abruptly interrupted nearly nine hundred years of artistic and cultural traditions. In 1261, however, the Byzantine general Michael VIII Palaiologos triumphantly re-entered Constantinople and reclaimed the seat of the empire, initiating a resurgence of art and culture that would continue for nearly three hundred years, not only in the waning empire itself but also among rival Eastern Christian nations eager to assume its legacy. Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261–1557), and the groundbreaking exhibition that it accompanies, explores the artistic and cultural flowering of the last centuries...
A Companion to Byzantine Illustrated Manuscripts
This volume offers an overview of Byzantine manuscript illustration, a central branch of Byzantine art and culture. Just like written texts, illustrations bear witness to Byzantine material culture, imperial ideology and religious beliefs, as well as to the development and spread of Byzantine art. In this sense illustrated books reflect the society that produced and used them. Being portable, they could serve as diplomatic gifts or could be acquired by foreigners. In such cases they became “emissaries” of Byzantine art and culture in Western Europe and the Arabic world. The volume provides for the first time a comprehensive overview of the material, divided by text categories, including ...
Byzantium, Pliska, and the Balkans
MILLENNIUM pursues an interdisciplinary approach transcending historical eras. The editorial board and the advisory board represent a wide range of disciplines - contributions from art and literary studies are just as welcome as historical, theological and philosophical contributions on both the Latin and Greek and the Oriental cultures. The STUDIES present relevant monographs or collections of papers from across the whole range of topics. The YEARBOOK contains authoritative articles. As the links between the various articles are sketched out in a comprehensive editorial, their diversity is intended to encourage dialogue between the disciplines and national research cultures. MILLENNIUM does not publish individual reviews, but does on occasions produce literature surveys. The languages of publication are principally English and German, but articles in French, Italian and Spanish can also be accommodated.
Early Christianity in Athens, Attica, and Adjacent Areas
This volume focuses on Christianity in Attica and its metropolis, Athens, from Paul’s initial visit in the first century up to the closing of the philosophical schools under the reign of Justinian I in the sixth century. Underscoring the relevance of epigraphic resources and the importance of methodological sophistication in analysing especially archaeological evidence, it readdresses many questions on the basis of a larger body of evidence and aims to combine literary, epigraphic, and archaeological evidence in order to create the outlines of a narrative of the rise and development of Christianity in the area. It is the first interdisciplinary study on the local history of Christianity in the area.
Byzantine Materiality
This volume explores the power of matter and materials in the Eastern Roman Empire, also known as Byzantium. Recent attention to matter as dynamic and meaningful constitutes an emerging, interdisciplinary field of inquiry known as materiality, new materialism, or the material turn. Materials can be symbolic, but matter can also act on human subjects. This volume builds on these insights to consider the role of matter, materials, form, and embodied experiences in Byzantium. In many respects, Byzantine materiality represents a continuation of its Greco-Roman inheritance, which was also shared by neighboring peoples such as the Umayyads and Abbasids. But the Byzantines also developed their own,...
Devotional Portraiture and Spiritual Experience in Early Netherlandish Painting
In Devotional Portraiture and Spiritual Experience Ingrid Falque analyses the meditative functions of early Netherlandish paintings including devotional portraits, that is portraits of people kneeling in prayer. Such paintings have been mainly studied in the context of commemorative and social practices, but as Ingrid Falque shows, they also served as devotional instruments. By drawing parallels between the visual strategies of these paintings and texts of the major spiritual writers of the medieval Low Countries, she demonstrates that paintings with devotional portraits functioned as a visualisation of the spiritual process of the sitters. The book is accompanied by the first exhaustive catalogue of paintings with devotional portraits produced in the Low Countries between c. 1400 and 1550. This catalogue is available at no costs in e-format (HERE) and can also be purchased as a printed hardcover book (HERE).
The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity
The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity offers an innovative overview of a period (c. 300-700 CE) that has become increasingly central to scholarly debates over the history of western and Middle Eastern civilizations. This volume covers such pivotal events as the fall of Rome, the rise of Christianity, the origins of Islam, and the early formation of Byzantium and the European Middle Ages. These events are set in the context of widespread literary, artistic, cultural, and religious change during the period. The geographical scope of this Handbook is unparalleled among comparable surveys of Late Antiquity; Arabia, Egypt, Central Asia, and the Balkans all receive dedicated treatments, while the ...
