This essay traces some of the contexts and media in which “Heracles-Hercules” – as a hero between virtue and hubris – was visible in European societies from the end of the middle ages onwards. It discusses whether this example of the reception, appropriation and transformation of classical myths in the early modern period can be understood as a…[Read more]

For two years, from 1788 to 1790, Duchess Anna Amalia of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach (1739-1807) exchanged her familiar surroundings with Rome and Naples. She undertook her furthest and most ambitious journey at the age of almost 49. For the only time the princely widow left Germany or the German territories of the Reich. During her stay, the Duchess…[Read more]

The period of masonic internationalism in the last third of the 19th and first third of the 20th centuries saw the most visible – and controversial – attempts to organisationally model the “cosmopolitan imperative” of freemasonry. The various freemasonries in Europe saw themselves as links in a world-spanning “chain of brothers” forged by the…[Read more]

Britain’s second-longest early medieval monument – Wat’s Dyke – was a component of an early medieval hydraulic frontier zone rather than primarily serving as a symbol of power, a fixed territorial border or a military stop-line. Wat’s Dyke was not only created to monitor and control mobility over land, but specifically did so through its careful a…[Read more]

Often neglected and misunderstood, there are considerable challenges to digital and real-world public engagement with Britain’s third-longest linear monument, Wat’s Dyke (Williams 2020a). To foster public education and understanding regarding of Wat’s Dyke’s relationship to the broader story of Anglo-Welsh borderlands, but also to encoura…[Read more]

We hope this comic heritage trail for Wrexham helps introduce you to Britain’s third-longest ancient monument

This article introduces the third volume of the Offa’s Dyke Journal (ODJ). As well as reviewing ODJ 3’s contents, I present reviews of the journal received to date, notable new publications on linear monuments, and the Collaboratory’s key activities during 2021. The context and significance of the research network’s ongoing endeavours are present…[Read more]

Introduction to the collected essays of Professor Dai Morgan Evans

In ‘Degeneration’ (1892), Max Nordau included Émile Zola in his theory that fin-de-siècle artists were a danger to society. According to Nordau, the ‘false science’ in Zola’s Naturalist novels would erode social progress in their alleged preoccupation with disease, sexual deviancy and amorality. This article proposes that degeneration is, how…[Read more]

La presencia de la sífilis en La Lozana andaluza, esencial para la comprensión de la obra y de predominante protagonismo en sus tramas, se suele explicar recurriendo no solo a la consciencia individual de su autor, Francisco Delicado1, como representante de otros muchos que al igual que él padecieron el mal francés en la Roma del Quinientos, sin…[Read more]

Haussmann’s re-building of Paris in the 1850s and ’60s had created an ordered city. However, the bourgeoisie used the new urban configurations as a weapon against the lower classes. This article describes the spaces of the underground and the overground: the underground is the metaphorical and literal rubbish heap for those in the lower parts of…[Read more]

Freedom of or from religion. Freemasonry as an international testing ground for fundamental societal issues (c. 1850–1930)
In masonic internationalism, key framework parameters of masonic activity were negotiated. They concerned the fundamental societal issue of how religious freedom (freedom to practise religion) and liberty of conscience (…[Read more]

Several documents from Egypt and Ḫatti (especially the Amarna letters and the Egyptian-Hittite correspondence) mention envoys and messengers in charge of diplomatic contacts between the two countries. Cuneiform and hieroglyphic transcriptions of Egyptian names at Ugarit hint at an actual presence (in Ugarit and Karkemish) of officials coming f…[Read more]

Review of Katell Berthelot, Jews and Their Roman Rivals: Pagan Rome’s Challenge to Israel. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021. Pp. 552. ISBN 9780691199290. $45.00.

El objetivo del presente trabajo investigativo es examinar el discurso teológico en la obra didáctica del prosista medieval y noble castellano Don Juan Manuel, en particular en la quinta parte de El Conde Lucanor, considerar el contexto cultural y sociopolítico en que se produjo, explorar sus pautas discursivas e indagar el texto desde la pe…[Read more]

Espigando el diverso y abigarrado contenido del primer artículo dedicado a la biografía de Mencía de Mendoza, es bastante curioso el hecho de que su humilde y opaco autor, que no se atrevió a firmar la pieza, otorgase veracidad a una supuesta conversación entre la dama y su marido. Según este relato, en una de las ocasiones en que el noble guerr…[Read more]

Espigando el diverso y abigarrado contenido del primer artículo dedicado a la biografía de Mencía de Mendoza, es bastante curioso el hecho de que su humilde y opaco autor, que no se atrevió a firmar la pieza, otorgase veracidad a una supuesta conversación entre la dama y su marido. Según este relato, en una de las ocasiones en que el noble guerr…[Read more]

It is my modest goal in this essay to trace how Nock uses conversion to produce religion(s) and then to explore its similarities to and differences from an analogous construction of religion-through-conversion in late antiquity.

Benjamin Porat’s Justice for the Poor differs from these books not only in that it is written in Hebrew (from the list above, only Wilfand’s 2014 book has been translated into Hebrew), but also because it envisions rabbinic charity as a branch of “law.” Porat is a law professor, and his book is jointly published by a law school, a think tank an…[Read more]

Spanish abstract: Reseño aquí el capítulo “In the Wilderness of Forms: Ideas and Things in Thomas Browne’s Cabinets of Curiosity”, de Claire Preston, publicado en el libro de estudios mediáticos retrofuturistas ‘The Renaissance Computer: Knowledge Technology in the First Age of Print’ (ed. Neil Rhodes y Jonathan Sawday, 2000). Los sabios y est…[Read more]