This article explores three facets of green space within a medieval monastic context: its origin, its effects and properties and the way it was shaped into an expression of power. We learn a great deal about the history of green space through the nuances of monastic thought and vice versa. The term ‘green space’ in a medieval context may ini…[Read more]

This article explores three facets of green space within a medieval monastic context: its origin, its effects and properties and the way it was shaped into an expression of power. We learn a great deal about the history of green space through the nuances of monastic thought and vice versa. The term ‘green space’ in a medieval context may ini…[Read more]

This is a chronological comparative study of five visual artefacts spanning about a millennium in Chinese history and retrieved from various sources included in the mid-fifteenth century collection called in English the Taoist Canon. All five specimens are basically titled “Taiping fu” 太平符 in Chinese, literally “Great Peace Symbol”. By briefly in…[Read more]

This paper deals with the political ideology of late pre-imperial and early imperial China as documented by remnants of an under-explored genre known in English as weft (wei 緯) writings or “Confucian Apocrypha”. It focuses on the transcendence of hierarchy and sovereignty, the transfer of dynastic legitimacy, and the pragmatic vehicle of “tang…[Read more]

This paper deals with the political ideology of late pre-imperial and early imperial China as documented by remnants of an under-explored genre known in English as weft (wei 緯) writings or “Confucian Apocrypha”. It focuses on the transcendence of hierarchy and sovereignty, the transfer of dynastic legitimacy, and the pragmatic vehicle of “tang…[Read more]

“Buddho-Taoism” is a neologism that appeared in Western academic discourse during the late nineteen-forties, was put to various uses without being consensually defined, enjoyed a brief vogue around the turn of the twenty-first century, and began to fall from grace in recent years. This neologism implicitly created new epistemic repertoires der…[Read more]

In the contemporary discourse on migration, it feels peculiarly seamless to discuss “bans and border walls” in a single breath. However, the global preoccupation with travel restriction and border security must not be taken as an inevitability. States arrive at bans and walls as preferred means of migration control as a result of making spe…[Read more]

“Who were the Romans? Shifting Scripts of Romanness in Early Medieval Italy,” in Post-Roman Transitions. Christian and Barbarian Identities in the Early Medieval West, eds. Walter Pohl and Gerda Heydemann, Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages 14

“Foreign Saints at Home in Eighth- and Ninth-century Rome. The Patrocinia of Diaconiae, Xenodochia and Greek Monasteries,” in Cuius patrocinio tota gaudet regio. Saints’ Cults and the Dynamics of Regional Cohesion, eds. S. Kuzmová, A. Marinković and T. Vedriš

“Mobilizing Sanctity: Pius II and the Head of Andrew in Rome,” in Authority and Spectacle in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Essays in Honor of Teofilo F. Ruiz, eds. Yuen-Gen Liang and Jarbel Rodriguez (Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2017): 186-202

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]

This article argues that Ferdinand Gregorovius (1821–91) in his popular but much critiqued Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter challenged the ideals of an objective, dispassionate historiography advocated by the leading German historians of his generation. To do so it focuses on Gregorovius’s treatment of the city of Rome and its urban leg…[Read more]

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

This paper shows how city councils in Swiss Cantons and southern Germany coped with the upcoming Reformation by organizing public disputations in order to decide which faith the community should choose.

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

The altar screen mosaic icons were ordered and installed on a new reconstructed altar screen in the Žiča Monastery in 1993. The sketches made by a painter, Mladen Srbinović were approved by a committee consisting of eminent experts. Furthermore , The Serbian Patriarch Paul gave his blessing to the icons. However, soon after they were put up, th…[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]