The early Church regarded dreams as potential messages from God, private revelations that appear as visions while the soul is undistracted by bodily sensations. Sleep, with its accompanying dreams, was also believed to be the temporary state of the disembodied soul as it awaits the resurrection of its body at the Last Judgment. Not only did…[Read more]

Early medieval literate culture, dominated by Christian monks and clerics, was focused on interpreting biblical texts and correlating them with a theological system devised in patristic times and late antiquity. Central to biblical exegesis was the fourfold method that distinguished the literal (or historical) sense of Old Testament narratives…[Read more]

During the last five decades, public, intellectual, and academic debates have created an increased awareness of so-called transhumanist discourses and social movements accompanied by a diverse body of theoretical works in philosophy, social sciences, and humanities which can broadly be described as posthumanist. Building on a three year long…[Read more]

Tracing an early rabbinic approach to the human, this article analyzes how the Tannaim (early Palestinian Jewish sages) of the Mishnah and Tosefta (redacted ca. early 3rd century CE) set the human side by side with other species, and embedded their account within broader considerations of reproduction, zoology and species crossings. The human here…[Read more]

This article makes several claims. It argues that the genre of “pilgrim’s literature” is present in rabbinic sources, and identifies rabbinic pilgrimage itineraries. Secondly, it shows that aside from the expected melancholic post-Temple itinerary, there exist itineraries for Babylon and for biblical conquest that do a very dif…[Read more]

This article studies the relationship between love and violence in Celestina. It departs from Octavio Paz’s essay La llama doble, in particular, the difference be- tween eroticism and love, and the acknowledgement of a dark and destructive side within sexual desire. It concludes that desire is the main driving force of the plot in Celestina and t…[Read more]

On September 30, 1567, members of the Protestant majority of Nîmes, led by many members of the présidial court, overthrew the Catholic town council. They arrested many leading Catholics, both laity and priests, who they felt perverted the word and will of God, and massacred an estimated one hundred of them; about one-third of the dead can be s…[Read more]

Review Essay on work (2004 to 2014) on French religious history, 1500-1650. The article discusses books including “Une concorde urbaine: Senlis au temps des réformes (vers 1520-vers 1580)” by Thierry Amalou, “Martyrs & Murderers: The Guise Family & the Making of Europe” by Stuart Carroll, and “Calvin” by Bruce Gordon, focusing on the relationship…[Read more]

In “Ending the French Wars of Religion,” Allan A. Tulchin considers why these sixteenth-century sectarian wars—eight of them—recurred over half a century and why they finally ended when they did. The existing literature emphasizes that the French state proved too weak to enforce order, and that each side believed itself favored by God, making…[Read more]

Analysis of medieval and Renaissance era French non-nuclear household systems. Shows that such arrangements were common, and occasionally consisted of same-sex unrelated male couples.

EMoDir Research Group Report 2007-2017

Article on ancient biographical or autobiographical stories regarding journeys in pursuit of wisdom.

This is the complete second, fully revised edition of the book with links to inscriptions on the AGRW website. (First edition was published by Fortress in 2003).

Book that explores processes of identification within various small group situations in the Greco-Roman world.

Article on parental language within small groups in the Greco-Roman world with special attention to fathers or mothers of the synagogue.

Article exploring and challenging the notion of the decline of the city as a preliminary to the study of rivalries among associations.

Essay for the online manual on how to open a pirate kindergarden, commissioned by Soprasotto and WeMake, Milan (IT).

‘Große Heidelberger Liederhandschrift’, ‘Ambrasser Heldenbuch’, ‘Rostocker Liederbuch’, ‘Hausbuch des Michael de Leone’, ‘Heidelberger Schicksalsbuch’, ‘Alsfelder Dirigierrolle’, ‘Bamberger mathematisches Manuskript’ …, there are many established names for medieval German manuscripts. Their proper names consist of nominal phrases and the heads…[Read more]

An interpretation of the rock art appearing in The Shaft at Lascaux and a discussion of Aurignacian Rites of Passage

An interpretation of the Red Mammoth Panel in Chauvet linking Chauvet to Lascaux in a single ritual landscape