End Of Late Antiquity Research Articles

Shifting populations in Late Antiquity. Germanic populations, nomads and the transformation of the Pannonianlimes

The inhabitants of the steppes around the Black Sea and the nearby areas of the wooded steppe must be recognised as having played a special role in the events that occurred during the transition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. These populations were known not only by their peculiar living conditions but also various cultural models, even though the pastoral nature of their economy and the continuous movements related to it were of fundamental importance. The steppe was also an extensive link that facilitated contacts with the nomads present beyond the southern course of the Volga and Ural rivers, in the vast territories of the Central Asian zones up to the border with China. Toward the end of Late Antiquity, the ethnic make-up of the inhabitants of those territories changed. The Indo-European nomads were replaced by the groups of Turks-Mongols that arrived in subsequent waves from the Asian steppes. These included the Huns, who in 375 had destroyed the state of the Goths on the Black Sea and, having settled after 420 in the woods and plains crossed by the river Tisza, continued to go beyond the Pannonian limes to strike the areas closer to the border. The intensity of these incursions increased after 434 whenAttila unified the nomadic tribes under his command, creating a vast empire of the steppe whose centre was located between the Tisza and the middle region of the Danube. The Huns also cooperated with the subjugated communities, first and foremost the rest of the Goths, Gepids and other Germans who had remained in their residential areas, but also theAlani and the Jazigs. It was only after the defeat of 451 on the Catalaunian Plains, the failed Italian expedition of 452 and the sudden death of Attila in 453 that the Hun Empire completely fell apart. The final blow was struck on the Nedao River in southern Pannonia by the forces united under the command of the Gepids in 454 or 455. What triggered a new shift of Germanic populations, considered the final phase of the period of the “Great Migrations” of peoples, was the ingress of the Langobards into Italy in 568. This alliance of Germanic tribes had appeared at the beginning of the 6 th century on the shores of the Danube and, taking full advantage of the collapse of that sector of the limes in 526, began to occupy Pannonia. In the face of the danger represented by the Avars, and the new nomads who began to occupy the entire plain crossed by the Tisza, the Langobards decided to abandon Pannonia, leaving it to the Avars on the basis of a peace treaty.

Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages: 500–1250 by Florin Curta (review)

REVIEWS 215 Florin Curta, Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages: 500–1250 (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press 2006) xxvii + 496 pp., maps. Florin Curta’s Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages: 500–1250 presents a new multi-disciplinary approach to understanding the complexity of the medieval period in this broadly defined region, and is a fitting addition to the Cambridge Medieval Textbooks series. Building on the author’s earlier work, which has provided fascinating new methods of envisioning southeastern Europe and the emergence of the various peoples between late antiquity and the Middle Ages, this survey of medieval history presents a cohesive view of the historical issues within the framework of a narrative history while applying innovative research. For example, Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages enlarges the body of sources to include and to rely heavily on recent archaeological findings and the scholarship that it has inspired, as opposed to the traditional presentation of medieval Balkan history primarily conceived through literary sources. The geographic range of the work has also been greatly increased from earlier surveys (which primarily were concerned with narrow definitions of the Balkans ) to include the areas of present day Hungary and Romania. Curta argues that although there is a great diversity in histories in this expanded area, traditional arbitrary models of political histories have been slow to recognize that this broad perspective allows for reevaluation of the interactions between various areas and comparison “across visible and invisible frontiers” (38). This new survey of early medieval southeastern Europe is not only a response to the growing importance of archaeological research for this period, but also a reassessment of the geographic concepts of the “Balkans” and southeastern Europe, which seems to be highly influenced by changes in the modern concept of a unified Europe and the desire to break from “national(ist)” paradigms. Although Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages balances many types of sources and adopts broad perspectives on some of the most contentious issues, the organization of the work is surprisingly conventional, divided into relatively arbitrary chronological periods which are subdivided by historical issues. The periodization tends to be divided into centuries: for example, the first chapter , “The end of late Antiquity or the beginning of the Middle Ages?” covers the sixth century; the second chapter covers the seventh and eighth centuries (“Dark Ages”); and the penultimate chapter focuses on the first half of the thirteenth century (“Between Crusade and the Mongol Invasion”). The subdivisions are less uniform and are primarily focused on either groups or locations (Croats/Croatia, Bulgarians/Bulgaria, Byzantines) or issues (The problem of Greater Moravia, the Byzantine-Hungarian wars and the rise of Serbia). The conclusions presented in the final chapter do not follow the organization of the rest of the work, and are broadly thematic, covering economy, society, and religion over the entire period. The final chapter is also very short, given the range of material and issues present in the rest of the work, and functions more like a location in which these types issues (such as agriculture) can be included rather than a set of conclusions. Curta’s presentation of archaeological evidence, and the weight which he gives it, is one of the greater methodological differences compared with earlier REVIEWS 216 scholarship, for example Fine’s The Early Medieval Balkans.2 A short illustration of this phenomenon can demonstrate the growing authority with which archaeological evidence has come to play in creating the history (or histories) of the people of Southeastern Europe. The location of “Greater Moravia,” both as a political entity and as a pseudo-mythic country where the Slavic conversion was first attempted, has been greatly contested in previous scholarship. After outlining the various theories (primarily that Moravia was located on the Morava river in present day Slovakia and the Czech Republic, which is the traditional view, or that is located south of the Danube in Serbia), Curta turns to the archaeological evidence based on grave goods and the emergence of certain types of settlements which are interpreted as clear indicators that in the period of the ninth century, the region north of the Danube should be considered as Moravia. Curta’s work is not simply an...

Conflicting Anthropologies in the Christological Discourse at the End of Late Antiquity: The Case of Leontius of Jerusalem's Nestorian Adversary

Conflicting Anthropologies in the Christological Discourse at the End of Late Antiquity: The Case of Leontius of Jerusalem's Nestorian Adversary

The Rhetoric of the Babylonian Talmud: Its Social Meaning and Context

Virtually from its redaction about the sixth century A.D., the Babylonian Talmud became the rabbinic document par excellence. Through its lens almost all previous canonical rabbinic tradition was refracted. Study and mastery of the Talmud marked one as a a master. This book examines the character, use and social meaning of the formalized rhetoric which pervades the Babylonian Talmud. It explores, first, how the editors of the Talmud employ a consistent and highly laconic code of formalized linguistic terms and literary patterns to create the Talmud's (renowned) dialectical, analytic essays. Second, the work considers the social meanings implicitly communicated by the use of this rhetoric, which not only provided an authoritative model for modes of thought and for treatment of earlier authoritative Judaic tradition, but also reflected, reinforced or helped engender new social definitions. Through comparison of the Talmud's rhetoric with that of other, earlier rabbinic documents and by placing the editing of the Talmud against the backdrop of the social and political situation of Rabbinism in the Late Persian Empire, the book relates the Talmud's creation and promulgation to a major shift in Rabbinism's understanding of the social role, rabbi, and to the emergence and ascendancy of the talmudic academy (the Yeshiva) as the primary institution of Rabbinism toward the end of Late Antiquity. In its agenda, and methodological and theoretical perspectives, The Rhetoric of the Babylonian Talmud brings together the insights and tools of historical, literary and rhetorical analysis of the New Testament and of early rabbinic literature, on the one hand, and the sociological and anthropological study of religion, on the other.