Seit der frühen Neuzeit standen geschichtsmächtige Gruppen im Zentrum historischer Meistererzählungen. Vor allem die Umgestaltung der römischen Welt zwischen Antike und Mittelalter erklärte man durch die Wanderungen von Völkern, mit Dekadenzmodellen und konstruierten nationalen Charakteren. Meist wurde eine klare ethnische, kulturelle oder gar r…[Read more]

Some gentes–armed social units or peoples such as the Goths, the Franks, the Burgundians or the Vandals–became an intrinsic part of European history. Others like the Heruli, the Sciri, the Gepids and the Rugians played their somewhat vague role, but disappeared from our sources without having had the opportunity to form any stable regnum on…[Read more]

Studying North Africa poses a variety of problems. Historical as well as archaeological research bears the burden of a colonial view on Africa’s past tending to overemphasize its Roman aspects. Berber (Numidian and Moorish) political entities together with Punic (Carthaginian) cities had a long history when Rome entered the African scene. The h…[Read more]

This dissertation is a study of the usury prohibition in rabbinic literature. It focuses on the usury laws in Tannaitic literature, the first formulation of the usury prohibition as a complex and multifaceted judicial norm. I place the Tannaitic usury laws against the backdrop of the economic and cultural norms of the wider world which the Tannaim…[Read more]

In this article Stephe Harrop combines theatre history and performance analysis with contemporary agonistic theory to re-conceptualize Greek tragedy’s contested spaces as key to the political potentials of the form. She focuses on Athenian tragedy’s competitive and conflictual negotiation of performance space, understood in relation to the…[Read more]

Original Abstract:
The sources for the history of Christianity in the early fourth century in the Persian Empire are notoriously sparse. And the sources that are available, such as the Demonstrations of Aphrahat, are vague and difficult to correlate with other sources. Historians of early Christianity have often incorporated these scant sources…[Read more]

A book review of _Symbol and Icon: Dionysius the Areopagite and the Iconoclastic Crisis_ (Wipf & Stock, 2010), which extensively catalogs the severe lack of proper attribution of other scholars’ work in the book.

“Saints for All Christendom: Naturalizing the Alexandrian Saints Cyrus and John in Seventh- to Thirteenth-Century Rome.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 71 (2017): 337–366

This paper investigates the multiple impulses that contributed to the early medieval interest in Pope Damasus’s inscriptions. In part, Damasus’s verses were read as guides to Rome’s martyrial topography; in part, they served as models of a classicizing Christian style. Above all, the appeal of these verses derived from their association with…[Read more]

“Hagiography as History and the Enigma of the Quattro Coronati,” Rivista di Archeologia Cristiana 93 (2017): 345–409

“Why Remember Ratchis? Medieval Monastic Memory and the Lombard Past,” Archivio Storico Italiano 177.1 (2019): 3–57

The paper deals with the so called griffin lamps. In the group of early Christian bronze lamps, a relatively large number of those with handles in the form of griffin-shaped protome have been preserved. Griffin lamps could be called the prototype of Late Antique production, owing to the manner in which stylistic and iconographic elements of the…[Read more]

Between Continuity and Negation – Reception of the Ancient Spolia in the Christian Tradition in the North of Kosovo The use of spolia has been recorded on numerous sacred objects in the Northern Kosovo, especially in the micro region around the Roman settlement in Sočanica. Spolia were mostly used for construction and paving; however, their use…[Read more]

CERTAIN ASPECTS OF THE CULT OF ANTINOUS IN THE ROMAN SETTLEMENT AT SOČANICA This Roman settlement, located on the territory near Sočanica, was parтly explored around the 1950’s. Systematic excavations, headed by E.Češkov, resulted in quite a large number of mobile and immobile finds, helped to form a clearer picture about the history, econom…[Read more]

Jewish relation to representational art is determined mostly by the Second Commandment: “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them.” As science has observed, the…[Read more]

THE ORIGIN OF ANTINOUS CULT IN ROMAN SETTLEMENT NEAR SOČANICA А Roman settlement, located near the village of Sočanica, was part-ly explored around 1960’s. Systematic excavations headed by archae-ologist E. Čerškov and resulted in quite a large number of mobile andimmobile finds helped form a clearer picture of the history, economyand urban layout…[Read more]

The aim of this research, focusing on representations of light and the symbolism of early Christian lamp decorations, has been to examine and summarise the existing knowledge of the symbolism of light in the Mediterranean region and the models by which this symbolism was manifested in the early Christian visual culture. Lamps with Early Christian…[Read more]

Lamp as a Symbol in Theology and Iconology of Light in the Mediterranean / Light and fire have been a part of the religious experience since the dawn of civilization, its cultic use can be traced back to as early as the Paleolithic. Seen as divine emanations, light and fire were experienced as a symbol of the divine presence. This symbolism can be…[Read more]

This paper studies transmutation theory as found in the texts attributed to Zosimus of Panopolis,“the philosopher Synesius,” and “the philosopher Olym-piodorus of Alexandria.” It shows that transmutation theory (i.e. a theory explain-ing the complete transformation of substances) is mostly absent from the work attributed to these three authors…[Read more]

Many scholars of ancient Greek religion would probably agree that the use of curse tablets in the ancient Mediterranean world ‘cut across all social categories’. From a comparative perspective, it would be surprising if high levels of Greek literacy had been achieved by all social classes in classical and Hellenistic times. Greek literature,…[Read more]