Das vandalische Afrika gilt als Musterbeispiel des „Kirchenkampfs“ zwischen homöischen Barbaren und katholischen Römern. Kronzeugen sind Victor von Vita, Fulgentius von Ruspe und Quodvultdeus von Karthago. Etwa 50 Jahre nach dem Ende der Vandalenkönige in Afrika 533 kam es in Spanien zum Ausgleich zwischen Katholiken und Homöern. Die westgot…[Read more]

The Vandal royal title Rex Vandalorum et Alanorum is known from the reign of king Huneric (477-484) from two decrees preserved in Victor of Vita’s History of the Vandal persecution. This catholic polemic pamphlet itself derives from the eighties or nineties of the fifth century. As traditional diplomatics throughout the 19th and 20th centuries c…[Read more]

This paper offers a re‐examination of some problems regarding the coinage of Vandal North Africa. The coinage of this barbarian successor state is one of the first non‐imperial coinages in the Mediterranean world of the fifth and sixth centuries. Based on the fine collection in the Coin Cabinet of Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, this art…[Read more]

Abstract and introduction for PhD dissertation, defended and deposited in April 2019.

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]

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.

This article argues that the Gospel of Thomas was written in Alexandria, not in Eastern Syria as is the current consensus. The arguments in favor of a Syrian Gospel of Thomas are not as strong as is often assumed, and a stronger case can be made for Alexandria. The Gospel of Thomas has a number of features that suggest it was a product of the…[Read more]

“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

Paper prepared for pre-circulation for the Tenth Enoch Seminar, June 2019 [http://enochseminar.org/10-florence-2019]

“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]

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 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]