Digenis Akritas nella ceramica bizantina

The role of cats in Viking Age society is little investigated and has been dominated by uncritical adoptions of medieval mythology. Based on literary sources, the domestic cat is often linked to cultic spheres of female sorcery. Yet the archaeological evidence indicates an ambivalent situation. Cat bones from many trading centres show cut marks from skinning and highlight the value of cat fur. In contrast, the occurrence of cats in male burials points rather to a function as exotic and prestigious pets. The influence of Old Norse mythology on the traditional interpretation of cats as cultic companions therefore needs critical reconsideration. For this, a broad range of literary and historical sources – from Old Norse literature to Old Irish law texts – will be analysed and confronted with the archaeological evidence for domestic cats in Viking Age Scandinavia. The results will be discussed on a broader theoretical approach, involving concepts such as agency, and embedded in current research on human-animal-relations in order to achieve a more nuanced perspective on the roles and functions of cats in day-to-day reality as well as in the burial context.

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the role of holy women in traditional Kazakh society, their significance as spiritual and cultural reference points. The purpose of the study is to analyze their functions, including transcendental, educational and social, based on historical and ethnographic sources. The importance of this work lies in the fact that the study of these figures allows us to better understand the cultural and social mechanisms of Kazakh society, as well as the role of women in maintaining public order and traditions. The methodological basis of the work is the historical and ethnographic approach, including the analysis of literary, folklore and historical sources that describe the lives of such holy women as Domalak-ana, Begim-ana, Rabia Sultan Begim, Aisha-bibi and Kyzai-ana. These individuals, revered as saints, acted as intermediaries between the world of people and the divine world, contributed to the formation of moral norms and spiritual guidelines, influencing the upbringing of the younger generation. The theoretical basis is formed by the concepts of gender studies, religious philosophy and cultural anthropology. These approaches allow us to consider holy women as religious leaders and symbols of stability, as well as harmony in society. The figures of holy women transmitted the most important values, such as wisdom, tolerance and spiritual integrity, which helped to maintain social stability. Holy women became an important link in the process of educating moral and cultural norms, personifying ideals that were perceived by society as inviolable. The results of the study confirm the importance of these individuals as symbols of spirituality and moral orientation in Kazakh society. Despite the significance of these figures, the insufficient number of available studies and sources on this topic hinders further in-depth study. The conclusion of the scientific study emphasizes the need to expand the research base in order to fully assess the influence of holy women on the development of cultural and social processes in Kazakhstan.

Remembering the Year of the is a model of historical achievement, moving deftly between the study of historical events - the failed French invasion of the West of Ireland in 1798 - and folkloric representations of those events. Delving into the folk found in Ireland's rich oral traditions, Guy Beiner reveals alternate visions of the Irish past and brings into focus the vernacular histories, folk commemorative practices, and negotiations of memory that have gone largely unnoticed by historians. Beiner analyzes hundreds of hitherto unstudied historical, literary, and ethnographic sources. Though his focus is on 1798, his work is also a comprehensive study of Irish folk and grass-roots social memory in Ireland. Investigating how communities in the West of Ireland remembered, well into the mid-twentieth century, an episode in the late eighteenth century, this is a history from below that gives serious attention to the perspectives of those who have been previously ignored or discounted. Beiner brilliantly captures the stories, ceremonies, and other popular traditions through which local communities narrated, remembered, and commemorated the past. Demonstrating the unique value of folklore as a historical source, Remembering the Year of the offers a fresh perspective on collective memory and modern Irish history.

The article studies the most important paradigm of the existence of entrepreneurship in Russia – the idea of poverty on the basis of analysis of literary and historical sources that contains descriptions of the events of the merchant environment in the Russian North. It is illustrated by the historiographic overview of texts-sources of the XVIII century. In the analysis of the narrative intentions of the Northern Russian historiography we can clearly identify semantic strategy – existential model of life as a debt (responsibility, obligation), love (kindness, mercy, unity, catholicity), faith (trust in a higher principle, faith, hope), and sacrifice (dedication, donations, help, support). All these vital vectors intersect in the semantic space of historical essays and emanate from a single semantic paradigm of “poverty”. These principles have a great influence on the development of the business environment in Russia. From the standpoint of the theory of everyday life it is important to explore historical documents in the framework of the semiotic approach and reveal the specific social actions and communicative acts in them. The literary fact is fixed in culture, while continuing to live in the space of this culture in the form of characters, plots, motives. And this literary sign always points to another sign, leading in turn to a new, hidden sign of the culture. The research intention in this case is directed towards the interpretation of a text sign, opening the code and the comprehension of cultural meaning. In this context, the signs and meanings of historical documentary sources are not just verbal constructions, but the complex cultural forms which keep all strata and sections of past cultural epochs and fixed “nobiological collec- tive memory” (Lotman). In addition, studying historical texts it is necessary to consider the modern anthropological theory of culture, in which the latter is regarded as a value space (C. Geertz).

The impressive ruins, monuments and built heritage spread across the World Heritage Site of Hampi, the capital of Vijayanagara Dynasty of Karnataka enthral scores of visitors in the present day. However, what is also great interest is the wealth of information from various sources including myths, literary sources, historical accounts and epigraphic records which evoke the grandeur of its past and the vigour of its living traditions. This chapter especially touches upon the rich body of writings, records and oral histories such as those by the illustrious poets, Queen Ganga Devi and Harihara. These give insights into a range of aspects of the royal personalities, the religious milieu and social life and the organization of the living spaces, reinforcing the notion that Hampi was in its time indeed a major metropolis rivalling those in Europe as indicated by travalogues.

This study examines the use and evolution of the name Iran in literary, historical, and geographical sources from the rise of Islam in the seventh century AD to the Mongol period in the thirteenth century AD. During the Sāsāniān era, the concept of Īrānshahr was firmly established as a distinct political, geographical, and cultural entity. In Sassanid inscriptions, Īrānshahr referred to the mythical homeland of the Aryans, a notion redefined within the framework of Sasanian statehood. Following the collapse of the Sassanid Empire (651 AD), Īrānshahr lost its political autonomy and distinct identity, and the terms Īrānshahr and Iran declined in usage. The research finds that the name Iran reappears most prominently in literary sources and divāns of poetry as a significant term following the rise of Islam, and it also appears in select geographical texts. However, pre-Mongol historical sources generally do not refer to Iran as a contemporary political entity. When Iran is mentioned in historical narratives, it typically refers to the pre-Islamic past. It is only with the establishment of Mongol rule in the thirteenth century AD that historical texts begin to reference Iran as a contemporary polity, marking a notable shift in its conceptual and political usage.

This bibliography surveys the literature and culture of Jews in the Roman Empire from the first through seventh centuries. Jews lived all over the Roman Empire, from North Africa and Italy in the west to Egypt, Asia Minor, and Palestine in the east. The evidence is wide-ranging and includes literary, archaeological, epigraphic, and documentary sources. Literary evidence includes works by individual named authors (Jewish and non-Jewish) and compilations that developed over several centuries. Although this evidence reflects the diversity among Jews in the Roman Empire, it is not evenly distributed geographically or chronologically, nor is it representative of Jews across status and gender. Women, non-elite, and enslaved persons made up a majority of the population, but their voices are not directly represented in literary sources. The rabbinic corpus is the largest extant literary corpus about Jews, or indeed any Roman local elite, but the early rabbis had a relatively narrow sphere of influence. The sources in this bibliography incorporate rabbinic texts as historical sources without taking the rabbis’ claims—about themselves or other Jews—at face value. Within the Roman Empire, Jews were one of many groups that we might refer to as ethnic or religious minorities. The political history of Jews in the empire is beyond the purview of this bibliography, which concerns itself with strategies Jews employed in response to Roman imperial rule. Other provincial populations must have adopted a similarly diverse range of strategies, although we do not have the same wealth of documentation about them. While Jewish populations thrived around the Mediterranean, their relationship to empire changed during these six centuries, not always in a homogeneous or predictable way. Jews went from being the object of brutal Roman reprisal to victims of discursive and physical violence in a Christianizing empire. The topic of Jewish and Christian relations from the Second Temple period to imperial Christendom, while critically important, is only addressed in broad strokes here. This bibliography instead centers Jewish culture and literary production in the Roman Empire, and aims to introduce ancient historians to dynamic recent scholarly approaches to ancient Judaism. The uneven distribution of sources makes it difficult to sustain an overarching historical narrative about Jews in the Roman Empire. Rather than stitching disparate bodies of evidence together to tell an overarching story, most works in this bibliography reckon with the heterogeneity of our sources and the histories it is possible to write with them.

The church and sexuality in medieval Iceland

Several archaeological black earth (ABE) sites occur in the Amazon region. They contain fragments of ceramic artifacts, which are very important for the archaeological purpose. In order to improve the archaeological study in the region we carried out a detailed mineralogical and chemical study of the fragments of ceramic artifacts found in the two ABE sites of Cachoeira-Porteira, in the Lower Amazon Region. Their ceramics comprise the following tempers: cauixi, cariapé, sand, sand +feldspars, crushed ceramic and so on and are composed of quartz, clay equivalent material (mainly burned kaolinite), feldspars, hematite, goethite, maghemite, phosphates, anatase, and minerals of Mn and Ba. Cauixi and cariapé, siliceous organic compounds, were found too. The mineralogical composition and the morphology of their grains indicate a saprolite (clayey material rich on quartz) derived from fine-grained felsic igneous rocks or sedimentary rocks as source material for ceramic artifacts, where silica-rich components such cauixi, cariapé and/or sand (feldspar and rock fragments) were intentionally added to them. The high content of (Al,Fe)-phosphates, amorphous to low crystalline, must be product of the contact between the clayey matrix of pottery wall and the hot aqueous solution formed during the daily cooking of animal foods (main source of phosphor). The phosphate crystallization took place during the discharge of the potteries put together with waste of organic material from animal and vegetal origin, and leaving to the formation of the ABE-soil profile.

Common interests emerged between religious leaders and rulers according to propagation of Islam and the close relationship between politics and religion in Iran. One of the personalities who had both of the two elements of politics and religion is Khajeh Abu Bakr Hassiri, the great jurisprudent of the Shafei religion in Sistan and the eastern countries of Iran, who entered the court of the Ghaznavids and enjoyed a high position. He was a special counsellor for Sultan in political and religious affairs. Given this issue, this study is in line with the answer to this main question: what political and religious role did Abu Bakr Hasiri, as the counsellor and the great jurisprident of the Shafei religion in eastern Iran, play in the court of the Ghaznavids? We assume that he played a key and influential role in the court of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni and his son, Sultan Massoud. The research method is descriptive-analytical and based on two literary and historical sources (Divan Farrokhi Sistani and Beyhaqi history). Due to the connection between politics and religion and the role of jurisprudents and religious leaders in legitimizing the rulers, Khajeh Abu Bakr Hassiri has greatly contributed to the political strategy of the Ghaznavid rulers to legitimize their political and religious views in public opinion, also, the support of the Ghaznavi rulers from Khajeh Abu Bakr and his religious ideas have played an important role in propagation the Shafi religion and marginalizing his religious rivals.

In this article, I focus on a group of people whose voices in archival materials are especially hard, or very unusual, to find. This group comprises intellectually “abnormal” children. Using the example of German-speaking Switzerland and focusing on the late 19th and early 20th centuries, I will show the types of materials produced on the welfare and education efforts concerning intellectually “abnormal” children, and will analyse those that were preserved and are accessible today. Adopting the closer focus of this special issue, I will then indicate whose voices can be found in the source materials, and whose cannot. This research interest is linked to the concept of agency, which for some time has received increasing attention but also criticism in childhood studies and in childhood history. According to the agency concept, children – akin to adults – are considered competent social agents who have their own voice. I will juxtapose this premise with historical sources on intellectually “abnormal” children and put forward the argument that focussing on agency is not very productive when it comes to writing the history of these children.

During the Civil War, its devastating aftermath, and the decades following, many southern white women turned to writing as a way to make sense of their experiences. Combining varied historical and literary sources, Sarah Gardner argues that women served as guardians of the collective memory of the war and helped define and reshape southern identity. Gardner considers such well-known authors as Caroline Gordon, Ellen Glasgow, and Margaret Mitchell and also recovers works by lesser-known writers such as Mary Ann Cruse, Mary Noailles Murfree, and Varina Davis. In fiction, biographies, private papers, educational texts, historical writings, and through the work of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, southern white women sought to tell and preserve what they considered to be the truth about the war. But this truth varied according to historical circumstance and the course of the conflict. Only in the aftermath of defeat did a more unified vision of the southern cause emerge. Yet Gardner reveals the existence of a strong community of Confederate women who were conscious of their shared effort to define a new and compelling vision of the southern war experience.In demonstrating the influence of this vision, Gardner highlights the role of the written word in defining a new cultural identity for the postbellum South.During the Civil War, its devastating aftermath, and the decades following, many southern white women turned to writing as a way to make sense of their experiences. Combining varied historical and literary sources, Sarah Gardner argues that women served as guardians of the collective memory of the war and helped define and reshape southern identity. She considers such well-known authors as Caroline Gordon, Ellen Glasgow, and Margaret Mitchell and also recovers works by lesser-known writers such as Mary Ann Cruse, Mary Noailles Murfree, and Varina Davis. Gardner reveals the existence of a strong community of Confederate women who were conscious of their shared effort to define a new and compelling vision of the southern war experience. In demonstrating the influence of this vision, Gardner highlights the role of the written word in defining a new cultural identity for the postbellum South.

Reviewed by: Death in Fifteenth-Century Castile: Ideologies of the Elites Simone Pinet Vivanco, Laura . Death in Fifteenth-Century Castile: Ideologies of the Elites. London: Tamesis, 2004. 211 pages. The subject of death and its perception, the rituals both secular and religious surrounding it, and the artistic elaborations on the topic have been the focus of numerous studies, especially in the past few decades. Perhaps such a trend falls within the field of influence of what Paul Freedman and Gabrielle Spiegel saw as a consequence within American medieval historiography of a "postmodern agenda," which determined from the 1970s onward an emphasis on the marginal and particularly on the grotesque (Freedman and Spiegel, 699, see note 73 to same page).1 Laura Vivanco's study is not within American medievalism proper, does not concern herself exclusively with historical sources, and specifically distances itself from the macabre and the grotesque (23). A theoretical framework, which postmodernism has given to most of those other studies referred to by Freedman and Spiegel, would have been here a welcome structuring device for what is otherwise an exhaustive collection of quotations from various sources on different aspects surrounding death in the fifteenth century. The book is divided into three chapters, "Types of Death," "The Afterlife," and "The Bereaved," framed by an introduction and a conclusion. Vivanco's focus is on the differences and possible conflicts arising from views and attitudes of oradores and defensores. Each chapter provides a wealth of materials for each estate. The strength of this book is precisely the number of sources brought together [End Page 220] under specific rubrics, confirmed by the impressive bibliography (particularly for the primary sources). Beyond the extraordinary labor of compilation, for which the author should be commended, the book, however, does not fully justify its being presented as a unified work—aside from suffering from a series of minor problems as well. In the Introduction, Vivanco reviews all the literature produced on the subject of death—with emphasis on the work of historians—for the Middle Ages in general, and for Spain in particular. The author also focuses on particular regions and with different source materials, argued as a response to Johan Huizinga's suturing of the theme of death and the fifteenth century as part of his argument on the waning epoch. Vivanco surveys such literature arguing that it was first produced under the influence of Huizinga, but later took on the task, as numerous historians felt the need to nuance and, at times, to contradict Huzinga—of emphasizing continuity in the practices and attitude towards death both before and after the fifteenth century.Vivanco cites primary and secondary sources that support and contest a particular emphasis on death in the fifteenth-century (1–7), to support these claims. The author goes on to explain that the subject has been the focus of general studies, as well as of specific topics, and cites those devoted to medieval Castile: three different wide-ranging studies on death in late-medieval Castile, along with a series of more specialized works on topics such as the deaths of kings. Beyond these historical approaches, only some of which consider literature as source material, Vivanco provides a review of critical works devoted to death in art and literature, focusing on pieces such as the Danzas de la muerte and the Ars moriendi, along with the privileged focus on a play such as Celestina or even on a particular character, such as Leriano in Cárcel de amor (8–10). After this, it is hard to take Vivanco's word when she claims that "there is still a need for a study that focuses on a single century and uses evidence provided by literary and other written sources" (10). Hence, my first general concern: Vivanco writes that she has "attempted to demonstrate the extent to which literature was indeed informed by contemporary ideas and practice" (a needless demonstration, for who thinks of literature as divorced from its context), and, "in so doing, I have not analysed death in literature in terms of its psychological and plot functions" (22). If Vivanco's original contribution to the study of attitudes concerning death in fifteenth-century...

Magus Trithemius was a copyist and collector of manuscripts for the celebrated library of his first abbey, that of Sponheim in the Palatinate. He was considered to be the founder of literary historical sources, but was denounced and exposed by his own contemporaries as a great forger of historical sources. This habit known to his contemporaries should have brought the historians of magical theory to question Trithemius' magical sources like Pelagius and Libanius Gallus. This chapter speaks about a work written for Maximilian, De septem secundeis. It is very interesting that the Trithemius acted also as a prophet, and was eager to produce such an apocalyptical prognostication written for Maximilian. In his historical writings Trithemius also appears extremely interested in blessings and exorcisms. Trithemius was the first person to have described two great, though very different, figures of Renaissance Germany: Nicholas of Cusa and the 'historical' Doctor Faustus.Keywords: historical sources; Libanius Gallus; Maximilian; Pelagius; Renaissance Germany; Trithemius' manuscripts