Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2022.6.3.391
Ryan R. Abrecht
This essay explores some possible connections between large scale migrations, conflict, and climate change in Late Antiquity, focusing on the Eurasian steppe as a site of large-scale population movements that affected both Europe and East Asia. Using this subject as a reference point, I make a case for more communication and collaboration among three interrelated groups: historians who work on different times and places, historians and climate scientists, and academics and nonacademics. My goal is not to arrive at definitive conclusions about how worsening climate conditions may have fueled mass migrations and violence in Late Antiquity. Rather, it is to argue that more historians and climate scientists should seriously engage with each other’s work as both researchers and teachers, because doing so prompts all parties to reconsider longstanding narratives about how migrations begin and why they have so often been associated with violence. Academics of many backgrounds should also engage more directly in conversations with the broader public about the relationship between climate change, migration, border policing, and violence in the 21st century. Doing so not only demonstrates the value of specialist knowledge but also raises important questions about the role academics should play in contemporary society and how to continue to bring new perspectives and ideas into the profession.
{"title":"Climate Change, Migration, and Violence in Late Antiquity","authors":"Ryan R. Abrecht","doi":"10.1525/sla.2022.6.3.391","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2022.6.3.391","url":null,"abstract":"This essay explores some possible connections between large scale migrations, conflict, and climate change in Late Antiquity, focusing on the Eurasian steppe as a site of large-scale population movements that affected both Europe and East Asia. Using this subject as a reference point, I make a case for more communication and collaboration among three interrelated groups: historians who work on different times and places, historians and climate scientists, and academics and nonacademics. My goal is not to arrive at definitive conclusions about how worsening climate conditions may have fueled mass migrations and violence in Late Antiquity. Rather, it is to argue that more historians and climate scientists should seriously engage with each other’s work as both researchers and teachers, because doing so prompts all parties to reconsider longstanding narratives about how migrations begin and why they have so often been associated with violence. Academics of many backgrounds should also engage more directly in conversations with the broader public about the relationship between climate change, migration, border policing, and violence in the 21st century. Doing so not only demonstrates the value of specialist knowledge but also raises important questions about the role academics should play in contemporary society and how to continue to bring new perspectives and ideas into the profession.","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66952997","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2022.6.2.335
Michael Motia
Contemporary studies of mysticism pay careful attention to the way words signify—and for good reason. Early Christians debated theories of language and invented new ones to try to speak the impossible. But what if we shift the focus from linguistic signification to chromatic differentiation? What do we notice when we’re looking not for moments when words fail but moments when colors pop? Polychromy and the jeweled style of late ancient aesthetics are now well-known features of late ancient art, and yet these studies are often vague about actual colors. This paper attempts to slow the swirl of late ancient colors to show how early Christians found God in the color blue.
{"title":"Bluets of Late Antiquity","authors":"Michael Motia","doi":"10.1525/sla.2022.6.2.335","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2022.6.2.335","url":null,"abstract":"Contemporary studies of mysticism pay careful attention to the way words signify—and for good reason. Early Christians debated theories of language and invented new ones to try to speak the impossible. But what if we shift the focus from linguistic signification to chromatic differentiation? What do we notice when we’re looking not for moments when words fail but moments when colors pop? Polychromy and the jeweled style of late ancient aesthetics are now well-known features of late ancient art, and yet these studies are often vague about actual colors. This paper attempts to slow the swirl of late ancient colors to show how early Christians found God in the color blue.","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66952215","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2022.6.3.561
Gretel Rodríguez
{"title":"Review: Art of Ancient Greece, Rome, and the Byzantine Empire, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston","authors":"Gretel Rodríguez","doi":"10.1525/sla.2022.6.3.561","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2022.6.3.561","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66953151","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2022.6.4.571
Kristina Sessa
{"title":"Presentism and the Study of Late Antiquity","authors":"Kristina Sessa","doi":"10.1525/sla.2022.6.4.571","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2022.6.4.571","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66953163","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2022.6.1.143
S. Adamiak
{"title":"Clerics in Church and Society in Late Antiquity","authors":"S. Adamiak","doi":"10.1525/sla.2022.6.1.143","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2022.6.1.143","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66952268","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2022.6.1.148
J. Day
Although the functions associated with someone charged with responsibility for the doors of a church—and by extension for the church building as a whole—were required, the development of a specific office that would be institutionally and ritually recognized was not inevitable. The ambiguities attached to the office relate to its name, where and whether it was situated in the clerical cursus, and the range of presumed actual and symbolic duties. Gathering together the scattered evidence for Gaul, Spain, and Italy from the later fourth century until the eighth century merely exacerbates the confused situation. That it became the first step in the clerical cursus is mainly due to the dominant influence of three sources deemed to be authoritative: the Statuta ecclesiae antiqua, the De septem ordinibus ecclesiae, and certain writings of Isidore of Seville.
{"title":"The Status and Role of Doorkeepers in the Early Medieval West","authors":"J. Day","doi":"10.1525/sla.2022.6.1.148","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2022.6.1.148","url":null,"abstract":"Although the functions associated with someone charged with responsibility for the doors of a church—and by extension for the church building as a whole—were required, the development of a specific office that would be institutionally and ritually recognized was not inevitable. The ambiguities attached to the office relate to its name, where and whether it was situated in the clerical cursus, and the range of presumed actual and symbolic duties. Gathering together the scattered evidence for Gaul, Spain, and Italy from the later fourth century until the eighth century merely exacerbates the confused situation. That it became the first step in the clerical cursus is mainly due to the dominant influence of three sources deemed to be authoritative: the Statuta ecclesiae antiqua, the De septem ordinibus ecclesiae, and certain writings of Isidore of Seville.","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66952553","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2022.6.3.457
Joel DowlingSoka
The Life of Theodoros of Sykeon is a remarkable hagiographic text that is well known to contemporary scholarship as a source for information about rural life in Asia Minor in the sixth and seventh centuries. This text represents the saint’s mother, Maria, and the rest of his female family as a group of independent women who ran an inn on the imperial road through Galatia. These women set up a business that the text alternatively calls the “business of a hetaira” and the “business of pornike.” Hetaira, the feminine form of a word meaning “companion,” was in antiquity a word that meant a high-class woman who either worked as a courtesan or was sexually free. Pornike is a slur word that generally is translated as “fornication.” Through its highly gendered and sexually charged depiction, the author makes Maria into a negative foil for Theodoros’ future saintly career. This article examines this depiction of Maria in both the post-641 CE text and a slightly less hostile depiction of her in a shorter version of The Life of Theodoros of Sykeon. It uses these texts to ask the question, “What happens if the representation of sex worker characters in these two texts is read as a mode of making practical/moral and theological points in service of monastic communities?” Building on ideas from Roland Betancourt’s recent Byzantine Intersectionality, the project is an initial foray into acknowledging the ways that representations of sex work are highly gendered and that the subjects are entirely silenced.
{"title":"Refiguring Sex Work in the Life of Theodoros of Sykeon","authors":"Joel DowlingSoka","doi":"10.1525/sla.2022.6.3.457","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2022.6.3.457","url":null,"abstract":"The Life of Theodoros of Sykeon is a remarkable hagiographic text that is well known to contemporary scholarship as a source for information about rural life in Asia Minor in the sixth and seventh centuries. This text represents the saint’s mother, Maria, and the rest of his female family as a group of independent women who ran an inn on the imperial road through Galatia. These women set up a business that the text alternatively calls the “business of a hetaira” and the “business of pornike.” Hetaira, the feminine form of a word meaning “companion,” was in antiquity a word that meant a high-class woman who either worked as a courtesan or was sexually free. Pornike is a slur word that generally is translated as “fornication.” Through its highly gendered and sexually charged depiction, the author makes Maria into a negative foil for Theodoros’ future saintly career. This article examines this depiction of Maria in both the post-641 CE text and a slightly less hostile depiction of her in a shorter version of The Life of Theodoros of Sykeon. It uses these texts to ask the question, “What happens if the representation of sex worker characters in these two texts is read as a mode of making practical/moral and theological points in service of monastic communities?” Building on ideas from Roland Betancourt’s recent Byzantine Intersectionality, the project is an initial foray into acknowledging the ways that representations of sex work are highly gendered and that the subjects are entirely silenced.","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66953010","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2022.6.1.202
S. Anthony
{"title":"Review: Arab Conquests and Early Islamic Historiography: The Futuh al-Buldan of al-Baladhuri, by Ryan J. Lynch","authors":"S. Anthony","doi":"10.1525/sla.2022.6.1.202","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2022.6.1.202","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66952615","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2022.6.2.375
Blake Hartung
{"title":"Review: Preaching Christology in the Roman Near East: A Study of Jacob of Serugh, by Philip Michael Forness","authors":"Blake Hartung","doi":"10.1525/sla.2022.6.2.375","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2022.6.2.375","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66952225","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1525/sla.2022.6.4.575
T. Newfield
Late antique plague has never been more contested. Recent scholarship has repeatedly questioned whether the Justinianic plague caused catastrophic mortality and supporters of the traditional narrative of a vast, depopulating sixth-century pandemic have dug in. Scholars have repeatedly assessed evidence thought to prove traditional narratives about the Justinianic plague, but never to everyone’s liking. Things have gotten ugly and no resolution is in sight. To advance the debate and shift the focus, these pages review the use of the Black Death in accounts of the Justinianic plague. What follows demonstrates that the claim the sixth-century pandemic killed many millions is founded on centuries of uncritical treatment of late antique sources reinforced in recent generations via the overinterpretation of the first pandemic’s plague diagnosis and the neglect of plague’s ecological and epidemiological complexities. That the Justinianic plague was another Black Death underpins research agendas and influences the interpretation of data in diverse fields, but it is an unsubstantiated claim, one stemming from deficient interdisciplinarity and neither proven by current evidence nor provable with current methods. Only by strengthening interdisciplinary collaboration, it is proposed in closing, can we begin to remedy our first-pandemic plague problems.
{"title":"One Plague for Another? Interdisciplinary Shortcomings in Plague Studies and the Place of the Black Death in Histories of the Justinianic Plague","authors":"T. Newfield","doi":"10.1525/sla.2022.6.4.575","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/sla.2022.6.4.575","url":null,"abstract":"Late antique plague has never been more contested. Recent scholarship has repeatedly questioned whether the Justinianic plague caused catastrophic mortality and supporters of the traditional narrative of a vast, depopulating sixth-century pandemic have dug in. Scholars have repeatedly assessed evidence thought to prove traditional narratives about the Justinianic plague, but never to everyone’s liking. Things have gotten ugly and no resolution is in sight. To advance the debate and shift the focus, these pages review the use of the Black Death in accounts of the Justinianic plague. What follows demonstrates that the claim the sixth-century pandemic killed many millions is founded on centuries of uncritical treatment of late antique sources reinforced in recent generations via the overinterpretation of the first pandemic’s plague diagnosis and the neglect of plague’s ecological and epidemiological complexities. That the Justinianic plague was another Black Death underpins research agendas and influences the interpretation of data in diverse fields, but it is an unsubstantiated claim, one stemming from deficient interdisciplinarity and neither proven by current evidence nor provable with current methods. Only by strengthening interdisciplinary collaboration, it is proposed in closing, can we begin to remedy our first-pandemic plague problems.","PeriodicalId":36675,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Late Antiquity","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66952680","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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