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This book investigates the long-term continuity of large-scale states and empires, and its effect on the Near East’s social fabric, including the fundamental changes that occurred to major social institutions. Its geographical coverage spans, from east to west, modern-day Libya and Egypt to Central Asia, and from north to south, Anatolia to southern Arabia, incorporating modern-day Oman and Yemen. Its temporal coverage spans from the late eighth century BCE to the seventh century CE during the rise of Islam and collapse of the Sasanian Empire. The authors argue that the persistence of large states and empires starting in the eighth/seventh centuries BCE, which continued for many centuries,...
This collection of studies on Dreams, Memory and Imagination in Byzantium covers four main themes: the place of dreams, imagination and memory in the Byzantine philosophical tradition; the political uses of prophetic dreams and visions in imperial contexts; the appearance and manipulation of dreams and memory in Byzantine poetry and histories, and changing commemorations of the saints over time in art, epigraphy and literature. These studies reveal the distinctive and important roles of memory, imagination and dreams in the Byzantine court, the proto-Orthodox church and broader society from Constantinople to Syria and beyond. This volume of Byzantina Australiensia brings together the work of senior and early career scholars from Australia, Greece, Israel, Italy, Japan, New Zealand and the United States.
In this book, His Grace Bishop Maxim (Vasiljevi) offers us a breath of fresh air. This is not a book of theology in the form we have become accustomed to expect: a systematic examination of the usual topics of theological reflection; it is much more than that. Bishop Maxim draws upon Scripture, the Fathers, and Liturgy to address perennial and yet very contemporary questions: our experience of time and history, our existence as human persons and the complexities of sexuality and gender, our life in the polis and the ekklesia, and the relational presence of an icon in a world saturated with digital images.
The essays which comprise this book aim to identify and discuss aspects of the Byzantium heritage, whose principal beneficiaries were the Greeks, the Slavs and, most prominently, Russia. These 12 studies divide into three groups: the first is concerned with general aspects of Slavo-Byzantine relations; the second deals with the specific features of the acculturation process; and the third, which includes among others Russia's Byzantine Heritage is concerned with the contacts between Byzantium and medieval Russia.
This book describes the role of Byzantine diplomacy in the emergence of Moscow in the fourteenth century.
Homo Patiens - Approaches to the Patient in the Ancient World is a book about the patients of the Graeco-Roman world, their role in the ancient medical encounters and their relationship to the health providers and medical practitioners of their time. This volume makes a strong claim for the relevance of a patient-centred approach to the history of ancient medicine. Attention to the experience of patients deepens our understanding of ancient societies and their medical markets, and enriches our knowledge of the history of ancient cultures. It is a first step towards shaping a history of the ancient patient’s view, which will be of use not only to ancient historians, students of medical humanities, and historians of medicine, but also to any reader interested in medical ethics.
In Individuals and Materials in the Greco-Roman Cults of Isis Valentino Gasparini and Richard Veymiers present a collection of reflections on the individuals and groups which animated one of Antiquity’s most dynamic, significant and popular religious phenomena: the reception of the cults of Isis and other Egyptian gods throughout the Hellenistic and Roman worlds. These communities, whose members seem to share the same religious identity, for a long time have been studied in a monolithic way through the prism of the Cumontian category of the “Oriental religions”. The 26 contributions of this book, divided into three sections devoted to the “agents”, their “images” and their “practices”, shed new light on this religious movement that appears much more heterogeneous and colorful than previously recognized.
"At the turn of the twentieth century, many observers considered suicide to be a worldwide social problem that had reached epidemic proportions. This idea was especially powerful in Mexico City, where tragic and violent deaths in public urban spaces seemed commonplace in a city undergoing rapid modernization. Crime rates mounted, corpses piled up in the morgue, and the media reported on sensational cases of murder and suicide. More troublesome still, a compelling death wish appeared to grip women and youth. Drawing on an extensive range of sources, from judicial records to the popular press, Death in the City examines the cultural meanings of death and self-destruction in modern Mexico. The author examines approaches and responses to suicide and death, disproving the long-held belief that Mexicans possessed a cavalier response to death"--Provided by publisher.
This volume brings together key findings of the long-term research project ‘Religious Individualisation in Historical Perspective’ (Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies, Erfurt University). Combining a wide range of disciplinary approaches, methods and theories, the volume assembles over 50 contributions that explore and compare processes of religious individualisation in different religious environments and historical periods, in particular in Asia, the Mediterranean, and Europe from antiquity to the recent past. Contrary to standard theories of modernisation, which tend to regard religious individualisation as a specifically modern or early modern as well as an ess...