The Book of Kells - The Wonders of Early Medieval Christian Manuscript Illuminations Within a Pagan World

Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-69
Author(s):  
Albrecht Classen
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
General Notion ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Book Of Kells ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Selection Of

For a long time now, we have been misled by the general notion that the fall of the Roman Empire at the end of the fifth century brought about a devastating decline of culture and civilization. The Germanic peoples were allegedly barbaric, and what they created upon the ruins of their predecessors could have been nothing but primitive and little sophisticated. Research has, of course, confirmed already in a variety of approaches and many specialized studies that the situation on the ground was very different,1 but it seems rather difficult to deconstruct this mythical notion even today, as much as it needs to be corrected and extensively qualified. Recently, Deborah Deliyannis, Hendrik Dey, and Paolo Squatriti have published a volume treating an intriguing selection of fifty objects that could represent the early Middle Ages, each one of them proving by itself that the arts and technology to produce those objects continued to be extraordinarily sophisticated and impressive, and this well beyond the Roman period and well before the rise of the Gothic era.2 Those objects include ceremonial regalia, mosaic pavements, medallions, coins, stirrups, buildings, fibula, tunics, oil lamps, ships, and castles. The quality and aesthetic appeal of all of them is stunning, but they make up, of course, only a selection and do not reveal the more common conditions of the ordinary people.

scholarly journals Late Antiquity by Gordon Childe: Sources and Inspirations

2009 ◽  
Vol 12 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 157-165
Author(s):  
Elżbieta Jastrzębowska
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Roman Republic ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
October Revolution ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
Late Roman

In the last chapter of What Happened in History, Childe touched on the problematic of Late Antiquity. His pessimistic view of that period was a variation on the theme of decadence. This theme had existed in the Roman Republic and under the Empire, long before there was any Late Antiquity to be decadent. It then persisted throughout the Middle Ages and found monumental expression in Gibbon's Decline and Fall. Childe, however, took it to excessive lengths in his denunciation of the politics, economy, and culture of the Late Roman Empire. Childe based his arguments largely on the work of Rostovtzeff and Heichelheim. Both these eminent historians were exiles: Rostovtzeff from the Russia of the October Revolution and Heichelheim from National Socialist Germany. It is no belittlement to say that their work was influenced by the insights of their political experiences. Childe, however, did not appreciate this and adopted their thinking somewhat uncritically. He further added parallels between the Roman Period and his own time, which resulted in an unduly dark vision of the last phase of the Roman Empire.

scholarly journals From the Light and into the Dark: the Transformation to the Early Middle Ages

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arrush Choudhary
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Rural Life ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Italian Peninsula ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
Decentralized Governance ◽  
The City ◽  
The Middle Ages

From a historic perspective, the period of Roman rule and the following Middle Ages are polar opposites. For most, the city of Rome and the Western Roman Empire represent a time of advancement for the Mediterranean world while the Middle Ages are viewed as a regression of sorts for Europe. The reasons explaining the underlying cause of this transition from the Western Roman Empire to the Middle Ages are numerous but this paper will specifically focus on the practices started by the Romans themselves and how they contributed to the rise of the Early Middle Ages on the Italian Peninsula. More specifically, economic turmoil and urbanization following the 3rd century crisis in the city of Rome laid the groundwork for social, legislative, and political changes that thread the path to the fundamental characteristics of the Middle Ages. Changing views of the city and the countryside, the construction of latifundia and villas, and the passing of legislation that restricted the rights of laborers, in addition to other transformations in late Rome, all contributed to the decentralized governance, rural life, and serfdom that are characteristic of the Middle Ages. Ultimately, the goal of this paper is to illustrate that despite the major differences that exist between the Roman period and the Middle Ages, the practices of the late Western Roman Empire were often directly carried over into the Middle Ages and, as a result, for one to truly understand the origins of the Middle Ages, it is essential to comprehend the traditions started by the late Romans.

Teaching Teachers, Graduate School

1984 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Britton
Keyword(s):  
Graduate School ◽  
English Department ◽  
Birkbeck College ◽  
Digestive Process ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Social ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Story Writing ◽  
The University ◽  
Selection Of

I’ve been interested in story for a long time. I’m thinking basically of stories about the writers themselves. Telling them is a means of learning, a digestive kind of learning which is so often ignored in schools. It seems to me to be the field of operation of most of the arts. So I want my students to move toward an art-like selection of the elements of their personal experience. The more sharply the form resolves the content, so to speak, the more sharply is it a digestive process. I try to interest students in writing both autobiographical and fictional stories and to find their way between the two. When I was teaching children I discovered that story writing was central to them. They all loved stories at an early age and they liked to write them when they got over the hump, the difficulty, of shaping letters and words in writing. They get over that hump better, I find, by writing stories than by reading them. I think that’s most applicable at a very young age, but it still worked when I was teaching eleven-year-olds. Barbara Hardy—who’s the head of the English Department at Birkbeck College at the University of London—came down to talk to our teachers once at the London Association for the Teaching of English. She said that telling stories is not a way an artist has of manipulating an audience, but something that is transferred from life to art. She says that narrative is a primary act of mind. Her article, with those words as title, was printed in Novel: A Forum on Fiction. She wrote: . . . We dream in narrative, daydream in narrative, remember, anticipate, hope, despair, believe, doubt, plan, revise, criticize, construct, gossip, learn, hate, and love by narrative. In order really to live, we make up stories about ourselves and others, about the personal as well as the social past and future. . . .

Touching Books, Touching Art

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 81-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Ganz
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Sacred Texts ◽  
Visual Objects ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Medieval Christianity

This essay deals with the role of book decoration in a tactile approach to sacred texts in the Western Middle Ages. For a long time, books and artworks have been discussed as visual objects. Taking into account their intrinsic haptic qualities opens new ways to understand the contribution of the arts to the use of sacred texts in medieval Christianity.

Missing Links

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Subrata Dasgupta
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
User Interface ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
History Of Computing ◽  
Modern Computer ◽  
Dark Ages ◽  
History Of ◽  
Design Ideas ◽  
First Time

In Chapter 2, I suggested that Babbage’s place in the history of computing was twofold: first, because his Analytical Engine represented, for the first time, the idea of automatic universal computing and how this idea might be implemented, and second, because some of his design ideas—the store, mill, control, user interface via punched cards—anticipated some fundamental principles of the electronic universal computer that would be created some 75 years after his death. There is a modernity to his idea that makes us pause. Indeed, it led Babbage scholar Allan Bromley to admit that he was “bothered” by the architectural similarity of the Analytical Engine to the modern computer, and he wondered whether there is an inevitability to this architecture: Is this the only way a computer could be organized internally? Thus, Babbage’s creativity lay not only in conceiving a machine that had no antecedent, but also it lay in his envisioning an idea of universal computing that disappeared and then reappeared many decades later, and came to be the dominant architectural principle in computing. This observation is, of course, present-centered; we might be perilously close to what Herbert Butterfield had called the “Whig interpretation of history” (see Prologue, section VII ), for we seem to be extolling Babbage’s achievement because of its resonance with the achievements of our own time. But were there any direct consequences of his idea? What happened after Babbage? Did he have any influence on those who came after? And, if not, what took place in the development of what we have come to call computer science? In fact, there is a view that between Babbage’s mechanical world of computing and the electronic age, nothing really happened—that the time in between represented the Dark Ages in the history of computing. This is, of course, as misguided a view as another held by historians at one time that Europe, between the end of the Roman Empire (circa fifth century) and the Renaissance (the 15th–16th centuries)—the Middle Ages—was in a state of intellectual and creative backwardness.

Introduction: The evolution of territorial identities in the English landscape

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Rippon
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Short Paper ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The North ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The North Sea ◽  
Administrative Units

This is a study of the territorial structures within which past communities managed their landscapes. Today, we live our lives within a complex hierarchy of administrative units that includes parishes, districts, counties, and nations, and while some of these are recent in origin, others are deeply rooted in the past: most parts of England, for example, still have counties that are direct successors to the shires recorded in Domesday and which still form the basis for our local government. These territorial entities are an important part of our history, giving communities a sense of place and identity, and this book will explore where this aspect of our landscape has come from: might county names such as Essex— meaning the ‘East Saxons’—suggest that they originated as early Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, and if so, what was the relationship between these kingdoms and the Romano-British civitates and Iron Age kingdoms that preceded them? The idea that the landscape all around us has a long and complex history is a familiar one. For a long time, however, continuity stretching back to the Roman period and beyond was thought to be rare. Archaeologists and historians have argued that once Britain ceased to be part of the Roman Empire, its economy collapsed, and it was not long before hordes of Angles and Saxons sailed across the North Sea and dispossessed the Britons of their land. This was thought to have marked the onset of the ‘dark ages’ before the flowering of a new era of civilization—the ‘Middle Ages’—a few centuries later. Although this was the view when Hoskins (1955) wrote his Making of the English Landscape, it is noteworthy that in the same year Finberg (1955) published a short paper speculating that there may have been considerable continuitywithin the landscape at Withington in Gloucestershire. Overall, however, while some Romanists saw a degree of overlap and continuity during the Anglo-Saxon colonization, most saw the fifth century as one of dramatic change reflected in the apparent desertion of most towns and villas, the collapse of market-based trade and manufacturing, and the introduction of entirely new forms of architecture, burial practice and material culture (see Esmonde Cleary 2014, 3 for a historiography).

Long-Distance Trade and the Rural Population of Northern Gaul

2020 ◽  
pp. 882-915
Author(s):  
Frans Theuws
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Rural Communities ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Critical Factor ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Long Time

There are good reasons to consider northern Gaul a peripheral area of the Roman Empire in late antiquity (300–450). Its landscape of villas had to a large extent disappeared, and its towns had shrunk to insignificance. The emperor in Trier upheld a façade of well-being for the town and its immediate hinterland, but that façade likewise crumbled when he departed. Toward the mid-fifth century, no one would have believed the prophecy that by the mid-eighth century, all of Gaul would be part of an empire with its center in this northern periphery. What happened? By the mid-sixth century, northern Gaul seems to have experienced astonishing economic development. This change can be deduced from the flourishing vici (rural centers) in the Meuse Valley as well as from the wealth present in rural communities. Their cemeteries, which are now known in the thousands, were filled with objects from regional workshops and workshops at the other end of the former Roman Empire and beyond. The rural population’s demand for nonlocal products must have developed very quickly due to changing ritual repertoires and demographic growth revealed in evidence for the colonization of many areas and the creation of many new cemeteries. While the big question regarding which agents were responsible for this economic growth and recovery has been discussed for a long time, the importance of the rural population’s demand in a quantitative sense has not been considered a critical factor. In this chapter, I suggest that it was indeed critical.

ПИВО У ПОБУТОВІЙ КУЛЬТУРІ Й ФОЛЬКЛОРІ УКРАЇНЦІВ

2020 ◽  
pp. 129-135
Author(s):  
Admink Admink ◽  
Олександр Курочкін
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Historical Evolution ◽  
Oral Poetry ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
Long Time ◽  
History Of ◽  
Beer Production ◽  
First Time ◽  
Selection Of

Мета статті – простежити основні етапи історії пива на українських землях від доби середньовіччя до початку ХХ ст., розкрити помітну участь цього напою як у матеріальному, так і духовному житті етносу, зокрема, святково-обрядовій культурі й усній поетичній творчості. Методологія. Дослідження проведене на основі міждисциплінарного підходу, шляхом системного аналізу документальних, літературних і фольклорних джерел. Наукова новизна дослідження визначається тим, що історія пива на українських землях вперше висвітлюється з позицій етнокультурології. У фокусі уваги автора національні традиції пивоваріння, типові прийоми і стереотипи використання пива у різних святково-ритуальних контекстах. Евристичну цінність становить оригінальна підбірка документальних і фольклорних текстів, які деталізують зміст обраної теми. Висновки. Проаналізовані матеріали дозволяють констатувати, що пиво здавна відігравало важливу роль у житті й побуті українців. Тривалий час його використовували не лише в якості алкогольного напою, а й як необхідну частину раціону харчування. В ході історичної еволюції виділяються такі типи виробництва пива: домашній (громадський), монастирсьький, мануфактурно-ремісничий, приватно-підприємницький, заводський. The purpose of the article is to trace the main stages of beer history in Ukrainian lands from the Middle Ages to the beginning of the 20th century, to reveal the noticeable participation of this drink both in the material and spiritual life of the ethnic group, in particular, in the festive and ceremonial culture and oral poetry. Methodology. The research was conducted on the basis of an interdisciplinary approach, through a systematic analysis of documentary, literary and folklore sources. The scientific novelty of the study is determined by the fact that the history of beer on Ukrainian lands is covered for the first time from the standpoint of ethno-cultural studies. In the focus of the author's attention are national brewing traditions, typical techniques and stereotypes of using beer in various festive ritual contexts. The original selection of documentary and folklore texts detailing the content of the chosen theme is of heuristic value. Conclusions. The analyzed materials allow to state that beer has long played an important role in the life and household of the Ukrainians. For a long time it was used not only as an alcohol drink, but also as a necessary part of the diet. In the course of historical evolution the following types of beer production are distinguished: domestic (communal), monastic, manufacture craft, private entrepreneurial, factory.

scholarly journals The First Contact between the West and China: Sinology´s Origin

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 89
Author(s):  
Gabriel Terol Rojo
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Far East ◽  
Asian Country ◽  
The West ◽  
Depth Study ◽  
The One ◽  
First Contact ◽  
European Renaissance ◽  
Selection Of

In this study the first contact between Western and Asia culture, specifically with China, is reviewed. It begins with a reference to the Roman Empire mentioning the most relevant reference works for a more in-depth study. Next, it focuses on the diaspora of Nestorian Christianity towards the East and specifically its location in Chinese territory, considering also the main reference works and following a historical and lineal story.<br />Then, the trips of Benjamín de Tudela, although<br />they did not go beyond Mesopotamia and the<br />Persian Gulf, served to verify the existence of<br />Jewish communities in the Far East. In that frame<br />of reference, the context of the Silk Road would<br />explain its dedication on the one hand and, on<br />the other, it delimits them curiously outside the<br />Chinese territory, delving into the hermetism of<br />the Asian country. In the Middle Ages and the<br />European Renaissance, and anticipating the trips<br />of Spaniards and Portuguese, the figure of Marco<br />Polo is undoubtedly the most outstanding in the<br />task of spreading the knowledge about China in<br />the West. And in that sense also Ibn Battuta, then,<br />is relevant. Finally, and from the stories written<br />by these three travelers, multiple expeditions to<br />Mongolia and China are evinced. A selection of<br />these concludes the present work.

SISTEM PENDUKUNG KEPUTUSAN PEMILIHAN KEPALA CABANG TERBAIK BANK SUMUT DENGAN MENERAPKAN METODE VIKOR

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Betrik J Hutapea ◽  
Mesran Mesran ◽  
Siti Nurhabibah
Keyword(s):  
Decision Support ◽  
Decision Support System ◽  
Support System ◽  
Development Bank ◽  
Vikor Method ◽  
The North ◽  
Long Time ◽  
North Sumatra ◽  
Regional Development Bank ◽  
Selection Of

SUMUT Bank is one of the Banks in Indonesia with the name of the company PT. Regional Development Bank of North Sumatra. The North Sumatra Bank has branches in each region in North Sumatra both in the district and in the sub-district, and each of these branches is led by a branch leader or branch head. The head of this branch is responsible for the reversal of the Bank being led. The best and most accomplished branch heads deserve more and more awards. The selection of the best branch heads is selected transparently and structured in the hope that it can be a motivation for all branch heads to be able to further improve the quality and service of the Bank they lead. Making the best branch head selection done manually will take a long time and tends to be less transparent and structured. One solution so that the implementation of the selection can be carried out easily and quickly, it requires a Decision Support System that can provide consistency of assessment. In this study the method used is the VIKOR method (Visekriterijumsko Kompromisno Rangiranje). This method makes cracking on alternatives based on criteria that have been determined with an ideal compromise solution or the best solution, so that this system can later be beneficial for the SUMUT Bank to get the title in determining the best branch head.Keywords: Decision Support System, North Sumatra Bank, Branch Head, Vikor

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