Pottery Lamps from the Hellmuth Collection of Egyptian Antiquities

Sven Meeder. The Irish Scholarly Presence at St. Gall: Networks of Knowledge in the Early Middle Ages. Studies in Early Medieval History. London: Bloomsbury Academic. 2018. Pp. 187. $114 (cloth). - Volume 57 Issue 4

Reviews 145 beauty, even while his poems were often inspired by social and political events, with one patriotic poem becoming particularlywell known when set to music by Zhao Yuanren (pp. 171-172). The concluding chapter offers a good summary and puts SnowyMorning back in the context ofpoetic development in the 1920s. A fuller survey ofthe Chinese reception ofthese poets might have gone further in considering anthologies and translations as aspects ofreception. Hockx's book is based on his doctoral thesis, and rather than attempting an exhaustive search through sources, he makes the more valuable contribution oflaying groundwork and raising questions for further study. Hockx's work is a welcome addition to the field ofmodern Chinese poetry, especially since such monographs in English are still rather scarce. Perhaps the recent publication ofA Selective Guide to Chinese Literature, volume 3, Poetry (Leiden: Brill, 1988), and the forthcoming history of modern Chinese literature announced by Bonnie McDougall in the journal Modern Chinese Literature (vol. 8 [Spring 1994]: 127-170) will provide the necessary context and encourage further studies of this type. Gloria Bien Colgate University Gloria Bien is an associateprofessor ofChinese specializing in Chinese-French literary relations. m Charles Holcombe. In the Shadow ofthe Han: Literati Thought and Society at the Beginning ofthe Southern Dynasties. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1994. xi, 238 pp. Hardcover $35.00, isbn 0-8248-1592-0. Charles Holcombe's study ofthe society and thought ofthe Eastern Jin (318-420) elite is a valuable addition to what has, to this point, been a rather thin Englishlanguage literature on early medieval history. In the Shadow ofthe Han makes a compelling case for Holcombe's claim that the "period ofdisunity" between the Han and the Tang has been an unjustly neglected area. Several American scholars© 1996 by University who haye madeimportantcontributions to the studyoftheperiod duringthe last awai ? ress^ decades have shifted the focus oftheir work: Albert Dien has found firmer ground in archaeology and material culture, while Patricia Ebrey and David Johnson have sought greener pastures on the other side ofthe Tang/Song divide. While the 146 China Review International: Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring 1996 problems and pitfalls with which Holcombe's book struggles—sometimes with mixed success—make very plain the difficulties inherent in working on early medieval history, In the Shadow ofthe Han gives us hope that Holcombe and others will maintain the field in the U.S. with as much vitality as it enjoys elsewhere.1 Though it is a relatively briefbook (139 pages, exclusive ofnotes), In the Shadow ofthe Han is comprised of two nearly independent studies. The first part is an excellent synthesis ofthe PRC, Japanese, and Western-language secondary literature on early medieval, and especially Eastern Jin, sociopolitical history—in particular the nature of the ruling elite and the system of selection for office that guaranteed that elite's preeminence. The second part provides a suggestive analysis of the "dark learning" (xuan xue XF, or "Neo-Taoism," as Holcombe calls it) ofthe Wei and Jin and its Buddhist offshoots. The introductory chapter 1, "Reimagining China," sets the Eastern Jin scene. A "new world" emerged in fourth-century southern China, as the elite, many ofthem émigrés from the occupied north, were forced to "reimagine" the Han realm under vastìy changed circumstances— in what previously had been a sparsely inhabited provincial backwater. Following a review in chapter 2 of Eastern Jin political history, chapters 3 and 4 provide perceptive analyses ofthe economic, social, and political background against which Eastern Jin literati culture emerged. Chapter 3, "The Socioeconomic Order," examines the origins of medieval literati power and the high degree ofindependence from the state that the "great families" were able to maintain . Holcombe rejects military might, control over land, and commercial wealth as the principal sources for literati hegemony: "the true foundation ofliterati authority [was] bureaucratic office holding, based on the old Han imperial model" (p. 72). However, following Tanigawa Michio, Kawakatsu Yoshio, and other Kyoto sinologists, Holcombe finds that die medieval elite also drew power from their local bases. The ability of the southern elite to control their local communities stemmed from vertically articulated "patron-client relationships," and adherence to the literati...

This article reflects on the phrase ‘early medieval’ as applied to European history between the end of Roman political rule in the West and some indeterminate point in the tenth or eleventh centuries. It is framed with reference to Michael Wallace-Hadrill’s 1974 lecture entitled ‘Early Medieval History’, which serves as a foil for a discussion of the evolving historiographical landscape from 1974 to 2024. The origins and the chronology of the term’s adoption into English usage are reviewed and, with an eye to discourses of modernity, the elements of middle-ness and early-ness are dissected. Points of comparison and contrast with the notion of ‘early modernity’ are noted, while an emphasis on the entanglement of middle-ness with European-ness leads into a discussion of whether the term has any applicability to extra-European history. The article concludes by highlighting the value of the weak relationship of ‘early medieval’ to modernity.

There is surprisingly little early medieval social history being written. In recent years, more specifically economic history has had a remarkable rebirth, thanks to the (largely unconnected) efforts of archaeologists on the one side and Belgian and German historians on the other; but the study of society in general, outside the restricted spheres of the aristocracy and the church, has been neglected. I speak schematically; obviously, there are notable exceptions. But it is significant that noone, in any country, has thought it worthwhile to attempt a synthesis of early medieval European socio-economic history as a whole that could replace those of Alfons Dopsch or, maybe, André Déléage. It would be hard; but people have tried it for the centuries after 900, with interesting (even if inevitably controversial) results. Why not earlier? Richard Sullivan recently lamented the conservatism of most Carolingian scholarship; in the arena of social history, he could easily have extended his complaints back to 500.

The Modern Origins of the Early Middle Ages

Related Worlds - Studies in Jewish and Arab Ancient and Early Medieval History

This Handbook offers a comprehensive survey of ancient state formation in western Eurasia and North Africa. Eighteen experts introduce readers to a wide variety of systems spanning 4,000 years, from the earliest known states in world history to the Roman Empire and its successors. The book seeks to understand the inner workings of these states by focusing on key issues: political and military power, mechanisms of cooperation, coercion, and exploitation, the impact of ideologies, and the rise and demise of individual polities. This shared emphasis on critical institutions and dynamics invites comparative and cross-cultural perspectives. A detailed introductory review of contemporary approaches to the study of the state puts the historical case studies in context. The book transcends conventional boundaries between ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean history, and between ancient and early medieval history.

Moshe Gil, Related Worlds: Studies in Jewish and Arab Ancient and Early Medieval History. (Variorum Collected Studies Series, 790.) Aldershot, Eng., and Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2004. Pp. x, 340, numbered nonconsecutively; black-and-white frontispiece portrait, black-and-white figures, and tables. $111.95.

This volume brings together a large number of sources with which to illustrate the problem of religious violence in relation to the history of Christianity in the Roman Empire and post-Roman world. The sources are presented in both the original languages and in new English translation and are accompanied by introductions, comments, and short bibliographies. Thematically, Dirk Rohmann focuses on the ways in which Christians were subjected to violence by their pagan surroundings, on the development and scope of the very Christian ideas of martyrdom and of persecution, on how Christians thought about the nature of God and of holy wars, as well as on the problem of violence within the world of early monasticism and asceticism. Drawing on the amount of texts extant from the first to seventh centuries, this book will be of interest to both students and academics in the areas of ancient and early medieval history, classics, and religious studies.

Ethnicity and identity have formed a major focus in late antique and early medieval archaeology and history. Wide-ranging debates between the so-called Vienna and Toronto Schools have had massive impacts beyond early medieval history, as has the famous project, The Transformation of the Roman World.1 Here, a new paradigm emerged, slowly substituting the previous ‘decline-and-fall’ ideas of the antique world with that of ‘transformation’. The study of late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages in the Roman West is thus very much entangled with research on identity, ethnicity, and grand narratives, such as transformation or decline, ‘Germanic’ or barbarian invasions. These influential concepts and ideas should not be underestimated in the study of art and visual culture as they too frame the historical scenes in which art history is set. Since the mid-2000s, there have been new debates, mostly (but not solely) triggered by Heather, Ward-Perkins, and Halsall.2 The question of the extent to which ethnicity has played a significant role in the use of material culture, and to which it can thereby be identified in the archaeological record, has been widely, and often intensely, debated across late antique and medieval archaeology.3 The research on art and visual culture, however, embarked on a different tangent. Largely ignoring recent debates in history and archaeology, most scholars still emphasise the function of early medieval art and images as fostering perceptions of ‘Germanic’ identity, ethnicity, or religion.4 But why does the ‘Germanic’ remain such a pervasive terminology?

This article addresses the ways in which scholars of history who worked in France in the 16 th century attempted to describe and consider early medieval history and how in the course of this process they made slight adaptations to the image of the early medieval Frankish history that corresponded to the needs of the educated community and the emerging French monarchy. Thus, the article compares how the scholars Claude Fauchet, Bernards de Girarnd Sieur Du Haillan and others looked at the process of construction of the Frankish kingdom and how they addressed the relationship between the Mediterranean core of the Late Roman Empire and the diocese of Gaul which had long attracted the attention of the Franks, who became Roman soldiers and foederati. It is suggested that the bifurcation in historical knowledge took place in the 1570s in the works of Claude Fauchet and Bernard Du Haillan, one of which may still be ascribed to the earlier group of humanists who operated within the framework created by Leonardo Bruni and Flavio Biondo, whereas Bernard Du Haillan, on the other hand, sought to overcome the ideas and terms used by them and conceived of Frankish history in different terms. He emphasized the discontinuity between the Roman Empire and the Frankish Gaul, but at the same time sought to avoid the use of the discourse of national self-identification that permeated the works of earlier humanists.

How did the Anglo-Saxons conceptualize the interim between death and Doomsday? In this 2001 book, Ananya Jahanara Kabir presents an investigation into the Anglo-Saxon belief in the 'interim paradise': paradise as a temporary abode for good souls following death and pending the final decisions of Doomsday. She locates the origins of this distinctive sense of paradise within early Christian polemics, establishes its Anglo-Saxon development as a site of contestation and compromise, and argues for its post-Conquest transformation into the doctrine of purgatory. In ranging across Old English prose and poetry as well as Latin apocrypha, exegesis, liturgy, prayers and visions of the otherworld, and combining literary criticism with recent scholarship in early medieval history, early Christian theology and history of ideas, this book is essential reading for scholars of Anglo-Saxon England, historians of Christianity, and all those interested in the impact of the Anglo-Saxon period on the later Middle Ages.

Early medieval history and archaeology (ca. 7th – 11th centuries) is bursting with migrating groups, warfare, Christianization, and polities rising and falling. Many 19th- and 20th-century Europeans turned to early medieval history and archaeology in a search for identity, exclusive characteristics, roots or sentiments about their intrinsic values, a process that continues today. The ascribed task of early medieval archaeology was to create an association between us and the material remains of our direct ancestors and to provide candidates for national and other symbols. Moreover, it also seems that protecting heritage is easier if the heritage is ours, and almost genetically connected with us. In many Slavic-speaking countries, early medieval archaeology became simply the archaeology of the Slavs. However, by doing this we renounce a rich and colourful past and many other reasons to be proud of the heritage within Slovenia. Can we leave aside such requirements and look at the period after the fall of the Western Roman Empire from a wider perspective, including many non-Slavic accents? Can we face the limitations of archaeology when studying the identity of objects, dwellings and graves? Can we look for a way out from the antiquated service to the nation in such efforts?

THE second half of the eleventh century and the first three decades of the twelfth long been regarded as an extremely critical period in the development of Western monasticism. Generally speaking, these eight decades witnessed the ending of the Benedictine centuries, that long period of early medieval history, stretching over half a millenium, in which the fate not only of religion but also of culture and civilization in Western Europe was in large part determined by the work of the black monks. Several great scholars, among them Hauck, Sackut, Knowles, and Hallinger,' made clear this central theme in early medieval history. It has been shown that St. Benedict intended to create a religious institution which would be a refuge for the more devout Latin Christians who have lost faith in civilization but will not give up faith in God, as Dean Inge said of the early medieval mystics.2 In the midst of a falling world, a widespread pessimism encouraged the conviction that the promised salvation could only be attained by withdrawal from society. But in succeeding centuries it became evident that the walls of the monastery could not effectively cut off the monks from the life of the surrounding society, as St. Benedict had intended. Early medieval society, so pitifully lacking in adequate leadership and effective institutions, could not afford to lose the labor and talents of the monks, nor could it fail to enlist in its service an institution that exhibited remarkable powers of survival in the midst of political disorganization. Consequently by the Carolingian period the Benedictine monastery had, as it were, come to be absorbed into society. By the ninth century its mem-

This chapter illuminates the virtually unknown early medieval history of the Carniola in the Upper Sava basin. It draws more attention to the following: the wording Carniola /. . ./ quod vulgo Creina marcha appelantur in the first charter from June 973 perfectly illustrates the double origin of the name. Describing events that probably occurred around 738, Paul the Deacon reports that Ratchis, the Lombard duke of Cividale del Friuli, invaded Carniolam Sclavorum patriam with his army. Two things are important in this report: firstly, Carniola is explicitly referred to as a Slavic homeland, although the territory was indisputably under Avar control until the 790s and was located in Avaria, which extended as far as Italy; secondly, Paul the Deacon clearly distinguishes two Slavic communities in the Eastern Alps, which both bordered on Friuli: The first is Carniola, Sclavorum patria, and the second Sclavorum gens in /?/ Carantanum.Keywords: Carantanum; Carniolam Sclavorum patriam; early medieval history; Upper Sava basin