Compitum

Jean-Baptiste Renault (éd.), Originaux et cartulaires dans la Lorraine médiévale (XIIe - XVIe siècles). Recueil d'études, Turnhout, 2016.

Éditeur : Brepols
Collection : Atelier de recherche sur les textes médiévaux (ARTEM 24)
245 pages
ISBN : 978-2-503-56756-3
75 €

Entourés des attentions des médiévistes, les cartulaires sont devenus un objet d'histoire. Ces recueils, résultant de la compilation d'actes par une institution ou une personne juridique, entretiennent des relations complexes avec les originaux, sources directes ou indirectes mises en œuvre par les cartularistes. Qu'il s'agisse de la sélection des matériaux ou du transfert d'informations du modèle à la cible, le travail accompli est affaire de choix, divers et multiples, dont il faut retrouver les logiques pour espérer comprendre les objectifs des hommes qui ont commandités et réalisés ces manuscrits. Même soumis à des contingences matérielles, les copistes conservent une certaine marge de manœuvre dans le traitement de leur documentation. Ils trient, classent ou reclassent les documents qu'ils accueillent et enfin transcrivent les actes en adoptant certains principes. Ce recueil d'études a pour but de renouveler la confrontation originaux-cartulaires, à travers l'analyse d'un recueil et de son chartrier ou grâce à l'exploration d'une question liée à la transcription, à travers plusieurs cartulaires.
La question est ici approchée dans un cadre régional, en l'occurrence la Lorraine médiévale, principalement constituée des diocèses de Metz, Toul et Verdun – et occasionnellement étendue à l'ancienne Lotharingie. La chronologie est délibérément large (XIIe - XVIe siècle), donnant toute leur place aux expériences, parfois négligées, de la fin du Moyen Âge. À défaut d'aborder systématiquement le phénomène de la « mise en cartulaire », les dossiers ici réunis voudraient en enrichir les données et questionnements.

Rosa Rita Marchese, Uno sguardo che vede: L'idea di rispetto in Cicerone e in Seneca , Palerme, 2016.

Éditeur : Palumbo
Collection : Letteratura classica
183 pages
ISBN : 9788868893354
25 €

Il “rispetto” appartiene, senza ombra di dubbio, al sistema degli atteggiamenti che consideriamo necessari alla convivenza pacifica, e d'altro canto la sua mancanza è percepita come una violazione che mette a rischio la pienezza della condizione umana; esso quindi costituisce una tema sensibile del tempo in cui viviamo. Questo libro prova a tracciare una mappa linguistica delle rappresentazioni culturali del rispetto in Roma antica, entro la quale inquadrare lo studio del de officiis di Cicerone e del de beneficiis di Seneca, per scoprire come, e in quale misura, nella tarda repubblica e in età neroniana due intellettuali che erano anche uomini pubblici, esposti in politica e sensibili alla riflessione sul potere, siano arrivati a ripensare lo scambio di prestazioni obbligatorie e volontarie di cui si nutriva la vita sociale e comunitaria in Roma antica introducendo in esse, come deterrente alle frizioni sempre più dolorose e conflittuali tra cittadini prima, e tra sudditi poi, dinamiche di rispetto interpersonale. Mentre prova a riportare alla luce quanto di significativo la cultura romana ha saputo produrre per esprimere il riconoscimento dell'integrità altrui nello spazio di valutazione e di azione di ogni uomo, in un'epoca che era ben lungi dall'approdare a una riflessione sull'eguaglianza dei diritti, l'autrice arriva in conclusione a formulare, in tutta la sua difficoltà, la domanda “Qual è il senso di quelle operazioni per noi, qui e ora?”, nel duplice intento di restituire, per quanto possibile, chiarezza alle voci dei testi antichi studiati, e insieme chiamare in causa le idee e le immagini del rispetto che abitualmente utilizziamo.

Source : Palumbo

Karla Pollmann, The Baptized Muse. Early Christian Poetry as Cultural Authority, Oxford, 2017.

Éditeur : Oxford University Press
288 pages
ISBN : 9780198726487
55 £

With the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire increasing numbers of educated people converted to this new belief. As Christianity did not have its own educational institutions the issue of how to harmonize pagan education and Christian convictions became increasingly pressing. Especially classical poetry, the staple diet of pagan education, was considered to be morally corrupting (due to its deceitful mythological content) and damaging for the salvation of the soul (because of the false gods it advocated). But Christianity recoiled from an unqualified anti-intellectual attitude, while at the same time the experiment of creating an idiosyncratic form of genuinely Christian poetry failed (the sole exception being the poet Commodianus). In The Baptized Muse: Early Christian Poetry as Cultural Authority, Karla Pollmann argues that, instead, Christian poets made creative use of the classical literary tradition, and—in addition to blending it with Judaeo-Christian biblical exegesis—exploited poetry's special ability of enhancing communicative effectiveness and impact through aesthetic means. Pollman explores these strategies through a close analysis of a wide range of Christian, and for comparison partly also pagan, writers mainly from the fourth to sixth centuries. She reveals that early Christianity was not a hermetically sealed uniform body, but displays a rich spectrum of possibilities in dealing with the past and a willingness to engage with and adapt the surrounding culture(s), thereby developing diverse and changing responses to historical challenges. By demonstrating throughout that authority is a key in understanding the long denigrated and misunderstood early Christian poets, this book reaches the ground-breaking conclusion that early Christian poetry is an art form that gains its justification by adding cultural authority to Christianity. Thus, in a wider sense it engages with the recently developed interdisciplinary scholarly interest in aspects of religion as cultural phenomena.

Source : Oxford University Press

Carolyn Higbie, Collectors, Scholars, and Forgers in the Ancient World. Object Lessons, Oxford, 2017.

Éditeur : Oxford University Press
304 pages
ISBN : 9780198759300
65 £

Collectors, Scholars, and Forgers in the Ancient World focuses on the fascination which works of art, texts, and antiquarian objects inspired in Greeks and Romans in antiquity and draws parallels with other cultures and eras to offer contexts for understanding that fascination. Statues, bronze weapons, books, and bones might have been prized for various reasons: because they had religious value, were the work of highly regarded artists and writers, had been possessed by famous mythological figures, or were relics of a long disappeared past. However, attitudes towards these objects also changed over time: sculpture which was originally created for a religious purpose became valuable as art and could be removed from its original setting, while historians discovered value in inscriptions and other texts for supporting historical arguments and literary scholars sought early manuscripts to establish what authors really wrote. As early as the Hellenistic era, some Greeks and Romans began to collect objects and might even display them in palaces, villas, or gardens; as these objects acquired value, a demand was created for more of them, and so copyists and forgers created additional pieces - while copyists imitated existing pieces of art, sometimes adapting to their new settings, forgers created new pieces to complete a collection, fill a gap in historical knowledge, make some money, or to indulge in literary play with knowledgeable readers. The study of forged relics is able to reveal not only what artefacts the Greeks and Romans placed value on, but also what they believed they understood about their past and how they interpreted the evidence for it. Drawing on the latest scholarship on forgery and fakes, as well as a range of examples, this book combines stories about frauds with an analysis of their significance, and illuminates and explores the link between collectors, scholars, and forgers in order to offer us a way to better understand the power that objects held over the ancient Greeks and Romans.

Louise Hogdson, Res Publica and the Roman Republic. "Without Body or Form", Oxford, 2017.

Éditeur : Oxford University Press
336 pages
ISBN : 9780198777380
65 £

Res Publica and the Roman Republic tells the story of an idea - res publica - and shows us what it meant and was made to mean in the particular historical context of the late Roman Republic. Since the term was politically ubiquitous, often used emotively, and as a consequence is hard to define, the temptation to take res publica as a universally understood and relatively uncontroversial given is rarely resisted. A close look at how res publica was perceived and manipulated, however, brings into focus not just the political crises of the late Republic but also the various attempts to clean up these crises through dubiously legal (and often outright illegal) emergency measures. Although this book is at root a philological study of a political concept, it aims to make a historical point about a politically turbulent period by addressing three key questions: What did it mean for Republican politicians to appeal to the res publica? What did the increasing tendency to do so reveal about the dangerous fragmentation of political legitimacy? How did these pressures transform res publica as a concept?
Through a detailed examination of res publica as it appears in the ancient historians, orators, poets, commentaries and letters, inscriptions, and historical episodes of the late Republic and early Principate, this book demonstrates how the rhetoric surrounding res publica mirrored the changes in the Roman political landscape towards the end of the Republic.

Source : Oxford University Press

Donald Lateiner et Dimos Spatharas (éd.), The Ancient Emotion of Disgust, Oxford, 2016.

Éditeur : Oxford University Press
Collection : Emotions of the Past
336 pages
ISBN : 9780190604110
55 £

The study of emotions and emotional displays has achieved a deserved prominence in recent classical scholarship. The emotions of the classical world can be plumbed to provide a valuable heuristic tool. Emotions can help us understand key issues of ancient ethics, ideological assumptions, and normative behaviors, but, more frequently than not, classical scholars have turned their attention to "social emotions" requiring practical decisions and ethical judgments in public and private gatherings. The emotion of disgust has been unwarrantedly neglected, even though it figures saliently in many literary genres, such as iambic poetry and comedy, historiography, and even tragedy and philosophy.