Tertullian the African

This work is largely a social history of Tertullian, a Christian from Carthage (c.160� CE), and his ancient African context, which is viewed through a postcolonial lens.Theories from the discipline of social/cultural anthropology, e.g. kinship, class and ethnicity, are applied to selections of Tertullian`s writings.Some of the issues addressed include identity politics, Roman/African relations, martyrdom and the so-called Montanist heresy

L'Estrange His Life: Public and Persona in the Life and Career of Sir Roger L'Estrange, 1616-1704

The subject of this dissertation is the life and career of Roger L'Estrange, who was a licenser of Books and Surveyor of the Press for Charles II, as well as a royalist pamphleteer. It seeks to answer the question of how conceptions of public and private changed in late seventeenth century England be examining the career of L'Estrange, which involved him in many of the major pamphlet campaigns of the Restoration period. It argues that there was no stable "public sphere" in seventeenth century England, one that clearly marked it off from a private sphere of domesticity. It argues that the classical notion of office, in which reciprocal obligation and duty were paramount, was the basic presupposition of public but also private life, and that the very ubiquity of ideals of office holding made it semantically impossible to distinguish a stable public realm from a private one. Furthermore, the dissertation also argues that the presupposition of officium not only provided the basis for understanding relationships between persons but also of individual identity in seventeenth century England. It argues that L'Estrange saw his own identity in terms of the offices he performed, and that his individual identity was shaped by the antique notion of persona--of a mask that one wears, when performing a role--than to modern notions of individual identity. Lastly, it will argue that people in seventeenth century England still understood their world in terms of offices, but that changes in the way they understood office, visible in L'Estrange's writings, helped prepare the way for the reception of more modern ideas about public and private spheres that would eventually come to fruition in the nineteenth century

Tertullian the African

This work is largely a social history of Tertullian, a Christian from Carthage (c.160� CE), and his ancient African context, which is viewed through a postcolonial lens.Theories from the discipline of social/cultural anthropology, e.g. kinship, class and ethnicity, are applied to selections of Tertullian`s writings.Some of the issues addressed include identity politics, Roman/African relations, martyrdom and the so-called Montanist heresy

The Eucharist in Pre-Norman Ireland: Liturgy, Practice, and Society

Many works in the various fields of liturgy and history refer to a Celtic Rite that was supposedly in use in Ireland prior to the arrival of Normans in the twelfth century. The existence of this liturgical rite and its supposed suppression at the hands of the Normans are usually taken for granted in these works. However some modern liturgical scholarship has begun to question the importance (or even the very existence) of the Celtic Rite. This thesis examines the actual evidence for the Eucharist in Pre-Norman Ireland. Unlike the other Celtic regions (Scotland, Wales, Brittany, etc.) it is possible to study the Eucharist in Ireland as there still exists enough textual and historical evidence for such a study. V The main contribution of this thesis is that it provides the first major analysis of Eucharistic practice in pre-Norman Ireland in over one hundred years. Great care has been taken to situate the evidence within both the historical and liturgical contexts that are sometimes ignored in secondary literature. Both the remaining ritual texts and other texts of the period that deal with the Eucharist are studied. In addition archaeological and iconographical elements are analyzed. This provides an up to date picture of the place of the Eucharist in Pre-Norman Ireland. The results of this study seriously cast into doubt the nineteenth and early twentieth century claims of a separate Celtic Rite in Ireland. This, in turn, has its repercussions on the fields of the History of Early Christian Ireland and the study of medieval liturgy. Thus the ground is prepared for further study of medieval liturgy and the religious dimension of the Pre Norman period of Christianity and society in Ireland

Scepticism and belief in English witchcraft drama, 1538–1681

This book situates witchcraft drama within its cultural and intellectual context, highlighting the centrality of scepticism and belief in witchcraft to the genre. It is argued that these categories are most fruitfully understood not as static and mutually exclusive positions within the debate around witchcraft, but as rhetorical tools used within it. In drama, too, scepticism and belief are vital issues. The psychology of the witch character is characterised by a combination of impious scepticism towards God and credulous belief in the tricks of the witch’s master, the devil. Plays which present plausible depictions of witches typically use scepticism as a support: the witch’s power is subject to important limitations which make it easier to believe. Plays that take witchcraft less seriously present witches with unrestrained power, an excess of belief which ultimately induces scepticism. But scepticism towards witchcraft can become a veneer of rationality concealing other beliefs that pass without sceptical examination. The theatrical representation of witchcraft powerfully demonstrates its uncertain status as a historical and intellectual phenomenon; belief and scepticism in witchcraft drama are always found together, in creative tension with one another

Devotion to the Passion in Milanese Confraternities, 1500-1630: Image, Ritual, Performance.

This dissertation examines the visual culture of lay confraternities in Milan dedicated to the Passion of Christ from circa 1500-1630. In three case studies, presented chronologically, I explore how confraternal imagery structured devotees' experiences of the sacred and immersed participants in an intimate and highly sensorial encounter with Christ's suffering body. These case studies provide a lens through which to interpret the “long sixteenth century,” often characterized as politically and culturally disjunctive following Milan's fall to occupying powers in 1499. Beyond alternative channels of artistic patronage, confraternities provided continuity with the religious culture under the Visconti and Sforza regimes and the early Ambrosian church. With their chapels and decorated oratories, processional routes and festive ephemera, and their relics and articulated links with Milanese history, confraternities contributed to the fashioning of a dynamic sacred topography in the city. Through their focus on the body of Christ, these case studies further elucidate Milan's critical role as a "laboratory" for Catholic Reform. The first investigates a Corpus Christi confraternity and its chapel in the church of San Giorgio al Palazzo, decorated with a Passion cycle by Bernardino Luini (1516). Lacking surviving documentation, I reconstruct the sodality's ritual practices and relate Luini's cycle to the Planctus Mariae and affective devotion. I posit Luini's perspectival illusions as figurations of the "spiritual eye" needed to perceive Christ's sacramental presence and contextualize these innovations, and the cycle's iconography, within anxieties about Eucharistic theology on the eve of the Reformation. The second addresses the confraternity of Santa Corona at Santa Maria delle Grazie, dedicated to a relic from the Crown of Thorns. It interprets the chapel's frescoes by Gaudenzio Ferrari and altarpiece by Titian (1540-1542) in relation to the sodality's somatic piety and probes the significance of "sculptural visualizations" to engage the viewer's sense of touch. The third investigates the confraternities of Santa Croce, with their monumental stational crosses that transformed urban space in Carlo Borromeo's "ritual city." This chapter works to recover these monuments and the images and ephemera that surrounded them, mapping the Passion onto the topography of Milan and transforming it into a New Jerusalem.PhDHistory of ArtUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/111425/1/pavs_1.pd

The Power of Urban Water

Water is a global resource for modern societies - and water was a global resource for pre-modern societies. The many different water systems serving processes of urbanisation and urban life in ancient times and the Middle Ages have hardly been researched until now. The numerous contributions to this volume pose questions such as what the basic cultural significance of water was, the power of water, in the town and for the town, from different points of view. Symbolic, aesthetic, and cult aspects are taken up, as is the role of water in politics, society, and economy, in daily life, but also in processes of urban planning or in urban neighbourhoods. Not least, the dangers of polluted water or of flooding presented a challenge to urban society. The contributions in this volume draw attention to the complex, manifold relations between water and human beings. This collection presents the results of an international conference in Kiel in 2018. It is directed towards both scholars in ancient and mediaeval studies and all those interested in the diversity of water systems in urban space in ancient and mediaeval times.