Modern Scholars Research Articles

The Matter of Personae in Medieval Italy

Abstract This article hunts for the medieval understanding of juridical persona in the courtrooms of communal Italy (c.1250–1450). While corporate personae have been the long-favored subject of inquiry for both medieval and modern scholars, the ontological predecessor of the corporate persona, the juridical persona, remains undertheorized. The gap is surprising given that (i) the concept is central to other formative legal notions of standing, status, and identity and (ii) medieval legal practice’s erstwhile penchant was to gloss and re-gloss every word of its central texts. By considering cases of gestural blasphemy brought before both civic and ecclesiastical courts, this article discovers the multiple and context-specific meanings for persona at law. These shifting definitions hover around a theological impossibility: a material quality to divine persons that could render them subject to injury and defendable in court. I contend that the legal utility of the term persona rested in its ability to bridge conceptual gaps like that created in the prosecution of blasphemy. Persona was left definitionally both one and many for good legal reason.

Utilizing Imperial Knowledge: Japan’s Self-Promotion in Sweden through Its Archeological Work in Colonial Korea

This paper examines Japanese archeological missions during the colonial period and how archeological knowledge was exploited by the imperial authorities both domestically and abroad. The Swedish Crown Prince Gustaf VI Adolf’s visit to Korea is an important case study to examine the connection between Japanese academia and the politics of the Japanese Government-General of Korea and to show why the Japanese government invested in acquiring hegemony in the sphere of knowledge. The history and tensions surrounding Sŏbongch’ong show the characteristics and limitations of archeological research in the colonial era and after the liberation of the country. This paper explores the Swedish Crown Prince’s visit to Japan and Korea in 1926 and its diplomatic background, along with the set-up of the excavation in Kyŏngju. After the excavation, Imperial Japan maintained its connection with the Swedish Crown Prince through scholars. The paper also examines two other events. The first is Hamada Kōsaku’s (1881–1938) and Korean Prince Yi Ŭn’s visit to Sweden in 1927, which shows the tensions between Japan and Korea. The second event is a series of lectures on Japanese archeological missions in Korea by Serge Elisséeff (1889–1975) and Sekino Tadashi (1868–1935). The Japanese used their archeological research and achievements as a propaganda tool to support their imperial power abroad. These propaganda operations were carried out not only by Japanese scholars but also by prominent Western ones who were experts on East Asia. The Japanese government thus established its authoritativeness in the colonies while at the same time displaying its “cultural rule” and imperial power and knowledge to the world. Furthermore, the Japanese repeatedly made contradictory attempts to incorporate the superior culture of the colonies into their own history while, on the domestic level, they sought to highlight the inferiority of the colonies. This paper examines the connection between modern scholarship in imperial universities and social or diplomatic policies in colonial Korea, along with the role and influence of modern scholarship in the country.

How Many Handwritings Does Dostoevsky Have: Typology Tasks

Dostoevsky's handwriting has only recently become the subject of special research. This was facilitated by a number of tasks of studying the manuscript corpus of Dostoevsky's texts. Modern scholars often do not entirely know the grammar and graphics of the writer. A significant volume of Dostoevsky's manuscripts is written in illegible cursive. It is not always possible for researchers to confidently determine who created the handwritten text — the author or the scribe. In many cases, there is no relatively accurate printed reproduction of manuscripts. Some of the complex texts were read mistakenly. The use of digital technologies allows us to solve some of the research tasks. One of the auxiliary tasks is to study the typology of Dostoevsky's handwriting. By the 19th century, such common types of handwriting as cursive, tachygraphic writing and calligraphy had historically developed in Russia. There are different definitions of these concepts, but their meaning is most precisely explained by the semantics of words. The cursive reproduces the outlines of letters and words according to samples. Everyone learned to write properly according to cursive workbooks, but everyone had their own handwriting. In life, a person usually managed with one handwriting, as a rule, cursive. Tachygraphic writing is functional. Its task is to simplify the spelling of letters and speed up the writing process. Regular tachygraphic writing is legible, but rapid tachygraphic writing is not always legible. Calligraphy is often equated with cursive, but it was penmanship that was taught in cursive copybooks — beautiful handwriting according to the prescribed samples is dead. Dostoevsky wrote not by craft, but by inspiration, out of love for art. Patterns are excluded in Dostoevsky's calligraphy — it’s all about personal skill. It is enough to recall the multiplication of calligraphies by Myshkin in the novel "The Idiot". Dostoevsky adds four more original calligraphies to the five famous ones through Myshkin’s words. There is no such analysis in scientific literature. Dostoevsky aspired to a variety of handwritings. In his understanding, the letter expressed the spirit, the national character of a person and people, the meaning of speech and words. It

Peter Bell’s Professions

This article investigates the socioeconomic contexts of Wordsworth’s Peter Bell in relation to Peter’s ‘profession’ – to use Wordsworth’s term, when he wrote that first among the ‘great defects’ of Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner is that the protagonist ‘has no distinct character … in his profession of Mariner’. Peter Bell is a ‘potter’; Wordsworth’s footnote to the 1819 first edition defines this as ‘a hawker of earthenware’. Modern scholarship accepts the northern definition of potter as ‘pedlar’, effacing the connection to pottery. Yet evidence in the poem suggests that Wordsworth understood the socioeconomic contexts of the poem’s Swaledale setting in 1798–1800, with particular knowledge of the area’s role as the heart of Britain’s lead-mining industry. Peter’s presence in Swaledale links him, through his ‘professions’, to lead mining in the Pennines; and through lead mining, to the Staffordshire pottery industry and Wordsworth and Coleridge’s friends and patrons, Tom Wedgwood and Josiah Wedgwood II.

Athanasius’ Life of Antony

Athanasius’ Life of Antony has been researched intensively by modern scholars, but one crucial facet of this text—its style—has yet to receive any focused treatment, an oversight which has resulted in an underappreciation, and uninformed negative assessments, of its overall stylistic merits. This article demonstrates that the Life in fact abounds in the kind of rhetorical ornamentation and accentual rhythm that are hallmarks of artistic late Greek prose, and these findings in turn shed new light on Athanasius’ virtuosity as a prose stylist.

Antilogies in Ancient Athens: An Inventory and Appraisal

Antilogies, or pairs of symmetrically opposed speeches or arguments, were generally ignored by Plato, Isocrates, Aristotle, Cicero, and Diogenes Laertius, and, later, by Eduard Norden, Hermann Diels, and most modern scholars of antiquity. As a consequence, until the end of the twentieth century CE, antilogies have been ignored or, at best, treated as a minor literary device to be mentioned only with reference to individual writings. Nevertheless, during the second half of the fifth century, antilogies were a crucially important form of argument and persuasion in ‘sophistic’ thought, philosophy, historiography, comedy and tragedy, and other fields. In order to redress the historical neglect of the art of antilogy, this essay provides an inventory (doubtless incomplete) of some 30 antilogies composed by playwrights such as Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes, historians such as Herodotus and Thucydides, and, most importantly, ‘sophists’ such as Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicus and Antiphon (in addition to a few other writers of the same period). Building on this inventory, the second part of the essay seeks to establish identifying features of antilogy and assess its cultural significance in the Athenian context (in the second half of the fifth century BCE).

Maulana Azad and his memory of the Islamic past: a study of his early writings

AbstractThe article is concerned primarily with Maulana Azad's early political and theological writings with a view to understanding his positions on Islam and the non-Islamic religions. It opens with a brief description of his discussion of Mughal history and religious culture, and then notes his portrayal of Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi (d. 1624) as an exemplary political figure, who raised his voice against Akbar's heresy. This portrayal has had a significant historiographical afterlife. Several modern scholars followed Azad's reading. The article asks whether Azad was truly the first to have such a view of the saint, and thereby influenced the modern writings on Mughal India. We will notice that Sirhindi was already portrayed as a political figure in the Mughal-era historical accounts devoted to him. Azad only chose to work within a certain memory of Sirhindi—but why did he choose to use an earlier tradition and not a purely religious interpretive framework of his own for analysing and presenting the saint's position? The article examines Azad's rationale for such a portrayal in light of his political concerns. It then discusses in some depth the theological discourses in his Tazkira and the early issues of Al-Hilāl.

Numbers 4:20 and Non-Priestly Viewing of the Holy Vessels in the Second Temple Period

Abstract In discussing the dismantling and transport of the tabernacle and its furnishings, Numbers 4:20 prohibits any viewing of the “holy,” except by Aaron, the priest, and his sons. Philo of Alexandria, as well as several modern scholars, read this as a prohibition on any non-priestly viewing of the sacred, Jewish cultic vessels, including the menorah, the shewbread table and the incense altar. Accordingly, a dominant view in research holds that during the Second Temple period these cultic utensils were concealed from the sight of non-priests. However, this view partly overlooks and partly misinterprets our main source in that respect: Josephus indicates that the Jewish holy vessels were actually displayed to the Jewish crowd gathered in the temple court during the Second Temple period. This is supported by the images on certain Hasmonean coins as well as by later texts, such as P.Oxy. 840 and rabbinic literature.

On the origins and emergence of the Qaŋlï Turks

AbstractThe Qaŋlï (Qangli) Turks were a numerous people, active in Eurasia in the twelfth to thirteenth centuries, but their ultimate origins remain a matter of debate. Often considered by modern scholars to be a part of the Kipchaks (Cumans), others have different opinions. One of these links them to cart-riding early medieval Turkic tribes called Tägräks, known in Chinese sources as Tiele 鐵勒, among other forms. This article examines the earliest possible (eighth-century) references to the Qaŋlïs in the historical sources, and points to the potential links between them and various tribes seen among Turko-Mongol groupings of the ninth to tenth centuries mentioned in the Chinese sources, such as the Black Carts (Heichezi 黑車子). Another aspect that this article focuses on is how both historical and mythological texts of the Mongol period show the Qaŋlïs to be a people distinct from the Kipchaks. Ultimately, this study, which is based on both historical sources and modern research, proposes to locate the origins of the Qaŋlï Turks among Tägräk tribes.

Freedom from the world and freedom in the worlds

Interpretation of the UpaniSads has occupied scholars from ancient times to the present, and ancient interpretations have influenced modern scholars even if they are not committed to any Vedantic school. This article looks at the history of interpretation of Katha Upanisad 6.4, which speaks of embodiment in worlds after death. Because such embodiment seems contrary to received ideas, this verse has been subject to conjectural emendations, or to interpretations which are difficult to reconcile with the text. The article looks at earlier Vedic ideas about existence after death, and some later ideas, and attempts to show that the apparent meaning of the verse is consistent with such ideas.

Achaemenid / Early Zoroastrian Influences on Phoenician Cultic Practices during the Persian Period

ABSTRACT The Achaemenid rule is often perceived by modern scholars as religiously tolerant and nonintrusive, mainly due to the biblical narrative and the Cyrus decree. However, even if the Achaemenids did not impose their beliefs and religious ideology on their subordinates, Achaemenid and Zoroastrian influences seem to have seeped into the religion and cultic practices of peoples under their hegemony. In the southern Levant, dramatic changes to Phoenician cult practices occurred during the Persian period, some of which are consistent with principles of the Zoroastrian faith. Although written sources suggest the Achaemenids did interfere with the cultic practices of various peoples, it seems unlikely that they forced their system of beliefs on the Phoenicians, with whom they maintained good relations. It is, however, more than possible that as part of those warm relations, certain Zoroastrian ideas diffused into Phoenician society bringing about changes to the Phoenicians’ cultic practices.

Monstrous Disembodiment and Ontological Uncertainty in Charybdis

ABSTRACT Charybdis is a well-known sea monster in both the ancient and modern imaginations resulting from her prominent appearance in the Odyssey. Yet, in contrast to her counterpart across the strait, Scylla, she has been overlooked by modern scholars, and few have examined what makes her monstrous in the first place. This article will argue that Charybdis should be understood as monstrous as a result of her lack of corporeality, which, in turn, also results in an ontological uncertainty about whether or not she is even a natural phenomenon or, rather, a supernatural monster. The type of fear and unease that Charybdis’s unique form of monstrosity exerts on humans can, then, be best described with reference to Mark Fisher’s concept of “the eerie” as a failure of presence where we expect it to be.

Chinese Volley Fire and Metanarratives of World History

Abstract: Volley fire with gunpowder weapons is often seen by modern scholars as one of the important innovations which allowed Europe to politically dominate other cultures and societies. Many historiographical theories, of the kind Lyotard termed metarécits , “metanarratives,” have attempted to explain this phenomenon. Recently, compelling evidence has emerged that other civilizations also practiced the technique, most notably China. This article brings together existing and new evidence that volley fire with firearms was developed and practiced in China long before it appeared in Europe and challenges several of the grand narratives of European exceptionalism. This new evidence shows that the volley fire technique arose in China primarily as a reaction to domestic and foreign (semi-)nomadic cavalry threats, belying geographically deterministic accounts, which suggest that sophisticated infantry tactics with firearms would not arise in states bordering the steppe. This article will also challenge the claim that volley fire in Europe benefitted from its emergence in a competitive system of states undergoing a tradition-challenging Renaissance. I call for a reconsideration of the innovative potential of Eurasian land empires bordering the steppe, and stress the importance of studying political contingencies and cultures of innovation in shaping world history.

Ibises and Egypt in the Animal Apocalypse: A new identification

The allegorical quartet of birds which prey upon the sheep in 1 Enoch 90.2 have been variously identified by early-modern and modern scholars, with no solution reaching consensus. This article proposes the “hobay” should be translated as “ibises” and accordingly represent an Egyptian people-group. I first advance this argument with the help of a parallel usage of terminology in the Greek Testament of Judah. I next confirm the utility of this identification with a brief survey of roughly contemporary primary sources (textual and material) which connect ibises and Egypt. Finally, with these cultural discourses in mind, I re-integrate the ibises into the Animal Apocalypse, suggesting that the recasting of a graceful national bird as a carnivorous monster is a deviously clever imperial critique.

Roundtable on Michael J. Hollerich, Making Christian History: Eusebius of Caesarea and His Readers (Oakland: University of California Press, 2021)

Few topics are more germane to this journal than the writing of ecclesiastical history, and no figure has had greater influence on the development of this genre than the bishop and scholar, Eusebius of Caesarea. In his masterful study of Eusebius and his readers from the late ancient to the modern era, Michael Hollerich has done a great service to all historians of Christianity. A work of reception history, the book begins with a chapter on Eusebius's life and work, focusing on his Ecclesiastical History and its relation to his Chronicle as well as other historical and non-historical genres with which he engaged. Subsequent chapters examine the reception of his work in the Christian Roman Empire of late antiquity, the non-Greek East, the medieval Latin West, and Byzantium, before turning to the rediscovery of Eusebius in diverse early modern contexts and his reception in modern scholarship including the implications of his historiographical work for future historians. The essays that comprise this roundtable, followed by the author's response, continue this important conversation about Eusebius and his legacy.

Incest and the Maintenance of Episcopal Consensus in the Vita s. Albini

Abstract: Usually dated among the earliest of Venantius Fortunatus's hagiographical works, the Vita s. Albini describes a dispute between Bishop Albinus of Angers and his episcopal colleagues at an ecclesiastical council. At the council, the saintly bishop was forced to lift an order of excommunication that he had placed upon an unnamed layperson guilty of incest. While modern scholars occasionally have attempted to identify this event with known Gallo-Frankish councils of the mid-sixth century, the information supplied by the Vita does not, in fact, support a secure identification, leaving open the possibility that the confrontation took place at an otherwise-unknown council ca. 536/7–42. Further complicating previous efforts to contextualize the dispute has been a general neglect of the narrative's compositional context. Writing in the aftermath of a case of royal incest that occurred in late 567 c.e., Fortunatus seems to have had this specific case in mind in composing his narrative, utilizing a conflict by then safely in the past as a literary device to address a current and controversial problem: the pressure exerted by secular elites to divert bishops from their corporate moral imperatives. The hagiographer cast Albinus himself in a role analogous to that of Bishop Germanus of Paris, who recently had risked martyrdom in excommunicating King Charibert I, following a failed conciliar effort to convince the king to end his uncanonical marriage. Fortunatus thus explored through Albinus's experiences the real difficulties facing bishops who were expected as a consequence of their membership in a common ordo to serve as spiritual counselors to the powerful.

Theodore of Mopsuestia – an exponential exegete of the Antiochian School in the golden age of Christianity

This paper explores the life and work of Theodore of Mopsuestia, a key exponent of the Antiochene school of biblical interpretation. After providing biographical background situating Theodore as a student of Libanius and Diodore of Tarsus, the article outlines the history of the School of Antioch and Theodore's role as a teacher propagating principles of grammatical-historical exegesis. His prolific writings included commentaries on much of Scripture, though his interpretation emphasized the literal sense while downplaying typological readings. Doctrinally, Theodore combatted contemporary heresies but evidenced questionable Christology himself. He spoke of two subjects or persons in Christ and rejected the communication of attributes between Christ's divinity and humanity. Though initially orthodox, Theodore's theology anticipated Nestorian ideas, leading Cyril of Alexandria to critique his work. Ultimately the Fifth Ecumenical Council condemned Theodore posthumously. Modern scholarship has aimed to rehabilitate his legacy by distinguishing his use of terminology, assessing newly discovered writings, and analysing translation issues, yet his condemnation has not been overturned. Thus, this study presents a complex picture of this exegetical pioneer – a creative, ingenious interpreter who crossed boundaries into heterodoxy.

Problem of the Quranic al-ṣamad


 
 
 Angelika Neuwirth has argued that sura 112 of the Quran is intended as an intertextual corrective commentary on key Jewish and Christian creedal statements. This theory, consonant with recent scholarship considering the Muslim scripture to be a text of late antiquity, would match the enigmatic phrase Allāh al-ṣamad with the Nicene creed’s description of God as “almighty” (pantokrator) and sura 112’s statement that God has no equal (kufuʾ) with the Nicene creed’s homoousia, the term that throughout the seventh century CE remained central to the bitter doctrinal conflict wracking Eastern Christianity. This article surveys the wide debate in the scholarly literature over these quranic verses, and specifically the hapax legomenon of al-ṣamad, and compares the early Muslim exegetical treatment of al-ṣamad with the approach of contemporaneous Christian polemical writing of the late eighth century. It suggests that the key to unlocking the meaning of the sura and al-ṣamad, which has long vexed both premodern and modern scholars, could lie in the concept of Aristotelian substance and its articulation in the trinitarian formula and ensuing christological disputes.
 
 

The Chinshō Yasha-hō 鎮將夜叉法 and the Adaptation of Tendai Esoteric Ritual

This study aims to investigate the ritual of a peculiar scripture entitled Chinshō yasha-hō 鎮將夜叉法 (Ch. Zhenjiang yecha fa. “Tantric Ritual of Chinshō Yakṣa”). The Japanese deity Chinshō Yakṣa is a Tendai variation of Vaiśravaṇa (Ch. Pishamen/Jp. Bishamon 毘沙門), a heavenly king who vowed to protect Buddhism. The ritual of Chinshō Yakṣa is a major ritual in Tendai Esotericism. It has been traditionally accepted that this scripture was transmitted from China. Modern scholarship, however, suspects that this ritual is Saichō’s 最澄 (767–822) invention. This study examines the contents and characters involved in this ritual manual by comparing other ritual manuals of Vaiśravaṇa. In analysing its liturgical aspect, as well as its textual relationship with other ritual manuals, this paper illustrates how the Chinshō yasha-hō deviates from the other ritual manuals and evaluates the possible sources or origins regarding the formation of this ritual. Similar mudrās and mantras that appear in both the Chinshō yasha-hō and other texts were identified, implying that the Chinshō yasha-hō might have drawn from multiple sources. Moreover, judging from its similarity with Chinese Tiantai ritual manuals and other texts that were forged in the Tang dynasty, it is possible that Tang China and Japan saw a period of active ritual invention.

Tracing the Origin and Development of the Black Ink Marks Daubed onto the Upper Edges of Bamboo Slips in Warring States, Qin, and Han Manuscripts: With the Term jiang 江 from Slip 118 of Vol. 5 of the Yuelu Qin Slips Serving as a Guide

Abstract The phrase “make wet its upper part” (jiang qi shang 江其上), which appears in the protocol inscribed on slip nos. 117–118 of Accessory Ordinance C no. 4 卒令丙四 in vol. 5 of the Yuelu shuyuan cang Qin jian 岳麓書院藏秦簡 (“Qin Slips Housed at the Yuelu Academy”) as an instruction for the marking of document label slips, should be read as “[inscribe] a plank-mark onto its upper part” (gang qi shang 杠其上). This phrase in the protocol instructs clerks to mark label slips by inscribing a horizontal “plank” mark (heng gang 橫杠) onto the upper part of a rectangular slip (fang 方). The marks that were produced by this clerical custom are the visually conspicuous markers modern scholars describe as “blackened bamboo slip tops” (jian shou tu hei 簡首塗黑) that frequently appear in caches of early Chinese textual materials. However, rather than using the phrase “blackened bamboo slip tops,” it would be more precise to refer to these as “horizontal oblong black ink marks” (mo heng 墨橫) or “black ink plank marks” (mo gang 墨杠).