scholarly journals Stones of the Saints? Inscribed Stones, Monasticism and the Evangelisation of Western and Northern Britain in the Fifth and Sixth Centuries

Author(s):  
KEN DARK

Despite the paucity of written sources for fifth- and sixth-century Britain, there are many inscriptions containing brief texts in Latin or Irish. This paper reinterprets these inscribed stones, showing that, contrary to the universal current assumption that most represent the memorials of secular notables, a much stronger case can be made for understanding them as ecclesiastical monuments associated with the cult of saints. Read in this way, they offer new insights into the fifth- and sixth-century British Church and the evangelisation of the west and north of Britain during these centuries.

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Vilija Ragaišienė

The article analyses the dialectal material collected in the area of the West Aukštaitian of the Kaunas subdialect in the written sources of the 1950s and 1960s at the Dialect Archive of the Geolinguistic Centre of the Institute of the Lithuanian Language.        Based on the data in written sources the goal is to describe the peculiarities of the accentuation of the West Aukštaitian adjectives of this period and to discuss the tendencies of their accentuation.        The stress of the singular forms of the disyllabic u-stem adjectives of the masculine gender may have come down from old times. Maintaining the root accent of these forms is related to the forms the neuter gender of the stressed stem (suñku, šviẽsu) and the adjectives of the old o-stem (suñkas : suñkus).The pronunciation of polysyllabic adjectives in the West Aukštaitian subdialect of Kaunas is characterized by different accent tendencies. The accentuation of the derivatives with the suffix -inis, -ė varies most of the polysyllabic adjectives analysed in the article. More than a third of them are accented by two accentual paradigms – they have accentual parallel forms of the first and second accent paradigms. The accentuation of the derivatives with the suffixes -inis, -ė is only partly related to the accentuation of the root words. The accentuation of the adjectives discussed in the researched subdialects tends to be generalized by the second accent paradigm. The derivatives with the suffixes -ėtas, -a regardless of the accentuation of the root words, are usually accented by the second accent paradigm, cf. molétas, -a (: mólis 1), pūslétas, -a (: pūslẽ 4). Only the accent of the derivatives with the suffixes -uotas, -a can be linked to the accentuation status of the root words, cf. langúotas, -a (: lángas 3).The author of the article is of the opinion that the accentual variance of parallel derivatives with suffixes could have been determined not by one factor, but by a set of factors. The appearance of accentual variants is linked to semantics, the accentual and semantic model of two plurals and the accentual variance of the root words and is explained by the stress analogy of the same type of word formation.


2010 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-268
Author(s):  
Staša Babić

Modern academic disciplines of anthropology, history and archaeology are founded in the cultural, social, political context of the 18th and 19th centuries, at the times of the colonial expansion of the West European countries. Although demarcated by the objects of their study ("primitive societies", the past according to written sources, or material evidence), all these disciplines are grounded in the need to distinguish and strengthen the modern identity of the Europeans as opposed to the Others in space and time.


Author(s):  
Ross Shepard Kraemer

In the West, Arian Gothic administrations seem less interested in the active anti-Jewish programs of their Nicene counterparts and less susceptible to the pressures of Nicene bishops. Jewish advisors, such as one Symmachus, served in the court of Theoderic. Gregory of Tours recounts how his catholic colleague, Avitus of Clermont, forced Jews in sixth-century Clermont to convert—strikingly reminiscent of the account about events on Minorca. In Gregory’s writings, synagogues are sometimes attacked, yet Jews participate in public life in major towns like Orleans. The late sixth-century letters of Gregory the Great depict a landscape still populated by unconverted Jews, dissident Christians, and recalcitrant practitioners of ancestral religions. They provide glimpses of Christian attacks on synagogues and Jewish rights, complexities of life for often impoverished newly converted Jews, and strategies to evade restrictions on Jewish slaveholding. Gregory advocated kindness and persuasion, rather than violence and coercion, but his relatively irenic stance toward Jews would not prevail.


Author(s):  
Simon Yarrow

The Church’s triumphal collaboration with the Roman Empire had ended by 500 ce. Political authority hung on in the West through the accommodation reached between two new forms of leadership, the holy man bishop and the Christian king. Saints and their relics—venerated at cathedrals, the court chapels of kings, and monasteries—fostered a new civilization, Latin Christendom. ‘Saints in the Middle Ages’ discusses the Carolingian reform of the cult of saints; the roles of saints in religious life in the Byzantine Empire; the changing relationship between church and saints in the later Middle Ages as a result of papal-led reformation; and the vernacularization of saintly patronage from the 13th‒15th centuries.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-98
Author(s):  
Rachid El Hour

Abstract This study presents some results from my fieldwork dealing with the female saints of the north Moroccan city of Alcazarquivir, which has been carried out between 2012 and 2014 in that village. The connections between orality and writing are more frequent as the educational level of the interviewee is higher; some of these informants raised roader issues regarding the evolution of the customs or the cult of saints. At the same time, it has been possible to observe the dissemination of oral traditions existing in other Moroccan regions that were not gathered in the hagiographical literature. In this study, I will offer some reflections concerning the data collected about a concrete example, that of Lallā ʿĀʾisha al-Khaḍrāʾ, one of the most important saints of Alcazarquivir and main character of a large part of the information compiled about the female saints of this city. Both the oral and written sources used in this study will be provided. Narrations related to Lallā ʿĀʾisha will be analyzed together with additional stories from ethnographic and anthropological sources on Moroccan female saints. The studied narrations highlight the problematic and complex character of Lallā ʿĀʾisha’s historicity, among other things. Finally, the symbolism of color green will be studied since al-Khaḍrāʾ (the Green) is the denomination by which Lallā ʿĀʾisha is known.


1967 ◽  
Vol 62 ◽  
pp. 353-371
Author(s):  
J. J. Coulton

About 10 metres south-west of the sixth-century temple of Hera Akraia at Perachora, and nearly due west of the little harbour lies the small courtyard previously known as the ‘Agora’. Since its purpose is not known, it will here be non-committally referred to as the West Court. It was first excavated in 1932, and more fully, under the supervision of J. K. Brock, in 1933, but it was not entirely cleared until 1939, and it was at that time that the Roman house which stood in the middle of the court was demolished. The West Court is discussed briefly (under the name of ‘Agora’) in Perachora 1 and in the preliminary reports of the Perachora excavations. Short supplementary excavations were carried out in 1964 and 1966 to examine certain points of the structure.In shape the West Court is an irregular pentagon, about 24 metres from north to south and the same from east to west (Fig. 1; Plate 91 a, b). It is enclosed on the west, north, and on part, at least, of the east side by a wall of orthostates on an ashlar foundation. For a short distance on either side of the south corner, the court is bounded by a vertically dressed rock face which is extended to the north-east and west by walls of polygonal masonry. At the south-west corner the west orthostate wall butts against the polygonal wall, which continues for about 0·80 m. beyond it and then returns north for about 8 metres behind it.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-39
Author(s):  
Shota Matitashvili

A new step in the history of Christian monasticism in eastern Georgia is associated with thirteen Syrian monks, led by John, who came to Iberia (K‘art‘li) in the mid-sixth century C.E. They were the bearers of a Syrian tradition that implied the combination of an heroic ascetic endeavor and an apostolic mission. They came as spiritual heirs of St. Nino, a Cappadocian virgin who converted Georgia to Christianity in the beginning of the fourth century. Their vitae were first composed by a certain hagiographer named John-Martyrius, but this work does not survive. In the tenth century, the head of the Georgian Church and the distinguished ecclesiastical writer Arsenius II (955–980) depicted their lives and deeds based on different oral and written sources. Later, other unknown authors also wrote additional hagiographical works about these Syrian ascetics. At the beginning of their ascetic and ecclesiastical careers, the thirteen Syrian monks settled on Zedazeni mountain with their spiritual supervisor, John. John later sent them to different corners of the Iberian kingdom in opposition to paganism and Zoroastrianism. They founded monasteries and became influential religious leaders during the second half of the sixth century. Through their vitae, composed by Arsenius and other unknown authors, it is possible to trace the process of transforming the small ascetic communities established by Syrian monks into great feudal organizations. These monasteries had an important impact on the Georgian social and cultural landscape during the Middle Ages.


1985 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 65-72
Author(s):  
C. Magbaily Fyle

This paper attempts to examine specific problems encountered with the collection and interpretation of oral traditions in Sierra Leone and ways in which these were approached. I will suggest with examples that problems facing oral traditions are not always peculiar to them, as the researcher with written sources faces some similar problems.Much has been said about methodology in collecting oral tradition for it to warrant much discussion here. One point that has been, brought out, however, is that methods which work well for one situation might prove disastrous or unproductive in another. It is thus necessary to bring out specific examples of situations encountered so as to improve our knowledge of the possible variety of approaches that could be used, while emphasizing that the researcher, as a detective, should have enough room for initiative.For the past eight years, I have been collecting oral histories from among the Yalunka (Dialonke) and Koranko of Upper Guinea, both southern Mande peoples, and the Limba and Temne, grouped under the ‘West Atlantic.’ Extensive exploration into written sources has indicated that similar problems arise in both cases. In both situations, the human problem was evident. For the oral traditionist this problem is more alive as he is dealing first hand with human beings. A number of factors therefore, like his appearance, approach to his informants, his ability to ‘identify’ with the society in question, may affect the information he receives. These could provide reasons for distortion which are not necessarily present with written sources.


2009 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 41-51
Author(s):  
Matthew J. Dal Santo

On 8 June 1438, the Council of Ferrara-Florence began proceedings aimed at the reunion of the Eastern and Western Churches. One of the first issues discussed was the Latin doctrine of purgatory. This article examines a particular moment in the divergence of eschatological doctrine between the Latin, Greek and Syriac Churches – indeed, representatives of the West Syrian ‘Jacobites’ and East Syrian ‘Nestorians’ were at Ferrara too. It argues that a debate concerning the post mortem activity of the saints proved crucial for the formation of various Christian eschatological orthodoxies. The catalyst for this debate was the sixth-century revival of Aristotelian philosophy, especially Aristotelian psychology which emphasized the soul’s dependence on the body. This threatened the cult of the saints and the Church’s sacramental ‘care of the dead’. Defenders of the hagiological and cultic status quo rejected Aristotle’s claims and asserted the full post mortem activity of the soul after separation from the body by developing a novel doctrine of immediate post mortem judgement. This led to the formulation of eschatological opinions which, if not normative in their day, came to be considered so by later generations. One of these ideas was post mortem purgation.


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