Shortly after the Vandals took Carthage in 439, the city's Catholic bishop, Quodvultdeus, and a large number of his clergy were said to have been placed “naked and despoiled on broken ships” and put to sea, banished from Africa. By God's mercy, the exiles made their way safely to Naples, where Quodvultdeus quickly came to be regarded as a saint: a fifth-century mosaic from the catacombs of St. Januarius in Capodimonte seems to depict the African bishop, and by the middle (...) of the ninth century his feast day was celebrated in the local liturgical calendar. A similar story could be told of Gaudiosus of Abitina, another fifth-century African bishop who was said to have fled the Vandals and who also achieved sainthood in Campania. The flight of refugees like Quodvultdeus and Gaudiosus from the political turmoil that wracked North Africa between the fifth and the eighth centuries, however, has long been seen as having a far greater significance than the reinvention of exiled African bishops as southern Italian holy men. In late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, the cults of numerous saints who had been martyred in Africa and whose cults had originally developed there spread beyond the shores of the southern Mediterranean to the rest of the Christian world. In seeking to explain the diffusion of these cults, historians have long focused on the movements of refugees—and, above all, those who fled the Vandals' conquest of Africa and their subsequent persecution of the region's Catholic population—as displaced Africans such as Quodvultdeus are thought to have brought the relics of their local saints with them into foreign exile. (shrink)

This is the first book to describe and explain all of the ancient world's major mystery cults--one of the most intriguing but least understood aspects of Greek and Roman religion. In the nocturnal Mysteries at Eleusis, participants dramatically re-enacted the story of Demeter's loss and recovery of her daughter Persephone; in the Bacchic cult, bands of women ran wild in the Greek countryside to honor Dionysus; and in the mysteries of Mithras, men came to understand the nature of the (...) universe and their place within it through frightening initiation ceremonies and astrological teachings. These cults were an important part of life in the ancient Mediterranean world, but their actual practices were shrouded in secrecy, and many of their features have remained unclear until now. By richly illustrating the evidence from ancient art and archaeology, and drawing on enlightening new work in the anthropology and cognitive science of religion, Mystery Cults of the Ancient World allows readers to imagine as never before what it was like to take part in these ecstatic and life-changing religious rituals--and what they meant to those who participated in them. Stunning images of Greek painted pottery, Roman frescoes, inscribed gold tablets from Greek and South Italian tombs, and excavated remains of religious sanctuaries help show what participants in these initiatory cults actually did and experienced. A fresh and accessible introduction to a fascinating subject, this is a book that will interest general readers, as well as students and scholars of classics and religion. (shrink)

Les deux volumes sont issus d’une conférence organisée en février 2021 dans le cadre de l’ERC Advanced Grant Project « Mapping Ancient Polytheisms. Cult Epithets as an Interface between Religious Systems and Human Agency » (MAP). L’ouvrage qui en résulte prend la forme de 51 contributions, organisées en trois grands axes thématiques : nommer et situer les dieux ; cartographier le divin ; la relation entre divinités et cités. Au sein de chacune des sections, un classement géographique régit, e...

Reconstruction of the basilica that preceded the present abbey church at Conques lends itself to exploring the notion of “sacred space”. Like its successor, the original basilica, probably built around 900, was dedicated to St Foy and held her remains. Textual evidence, augmented with (albeit scarce) archeological data, enables a reconstruction of what emerges as an unusual building containing a “physical” sacred space clearly conceived as a place into which the whole cult of St Foy could be “condensed”. At the (...) same time, textual evidence, mainly in the Liber miraculorum sanctae Fidis, hints at the existence of a “mental” sacred space in which specific movements performed in venerating the saint, as well as the comings and goings of pilgrims and other worshippers, formed a sacred space that was more fluid but no less central to understanding Conques as a place of devotion. Going farther, the analysis here suggests a notion of “sacred space” that includes the terrain surrounding a place of devotion: once worshippers’ senses of hearing, sight, and touch were activated, the natural setting itself became a place of holiness and protection. (shrink)

Most of Europe's indigenous myths are divided into two large traditional currents, one common to all of the conquering peoples who came down from the North during the two millenniums which preceded our era, the other inherited from more or less confused Alpine and Mediterranean substrata. This proposed classification, debatable perhaps because it is too schematic, has become such a classic that we no longer need to show the abundant arguments on which it is based. But it does explain (...) so many contrasts, contradictions, or anachronisms in the history of the West that it is always fitting to return to it. (shrink)

In the last decade we witnessed an impressive output of scholarly publications dealing either with issues of Christianization in various parts of the Roman Empire or exploring the interaction of Christianity with pagan religion and local cults. The book by Samellas with its promising title is a welcome addition to these series of works and will interest specialists in religious studies, historians of Late Antiquity and cultural anthropologists alike. The book derives from a dissertation submitted at Yale University in (...) 1999. It is divided into seven chapters that are, in turn, divided into sections; the volume also comprises a short conclusive chapter as well as indices of ancient and modern authors. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung To Paul Meyer and Les Films de l’Églantine, Belgium Paul Meyer, filmmaker and documentarist, born September 29, 1920, died September 29, 2007 in Belgium. He had his own production company Les films de l´églantine in his hometown Barchon, Belgium. Due to lucky circumstances, I met him during the French Film Festival, Tübingen, in 1995 and am still in possession of a personal hand-written letter from him, dated August, 1995. Our talk is documented in Blickpunkt: Film of 17th July, 1995. (...) Der Beitrag beschreibt am Beispiel von vier Dokumentarfilmen exemplarisch die Arbeit und das Werk von Luigi di Gianni, einem wichtigen Vertreter visueller Anthropologie in Europa, Schüler von Ernesto de Martino und Paul Meyer. Die Arbeiten zeigen therapeutische Riten süditalienischer Volksreligiosität aus der Zeit zwischen den fünfziger Jahren bis in die erste Dekade des 21. Jahrhunderts hinein und würdigen das Werk di Giannis in seiner bisher vernachlässigten Bedeutung für die Religionswissenschaft und die Europäische Religionsgeschichte. (shrink)

This paper concerns a collection of rough-hewn flat stelae excavated from the precinct of Zeus Meilichios in Selinus, Sicily between 1915 and 1926, a majority with two heads or busts, one male and one female, carved at their tops. These crudely fashioned idols are unique in their iconography. They combine the flat inscribed Punic stela with the Greek figural tradition, with some indigenous features. Their meaning is totally obscure – especially since they lack any literary reference. No comparable monuments have (...) been found in ancient Mediterranean cult. The twin stelae were often set up above a collection of burnt rodent and bird bones, ashes, lamps, broken and burnt pottery and terracotta figurines, as a memorial of a sacrifice. The stelae were the objects of a gentilicial cult, similar to that posited for the inscribed “Meilichios stones” with which they shared the Field of Stelae of Zeus Meilichios. The theory advanced here interprets these diminutive stelae as the objects of domestic cult. It was customary in many parts of the ancient Mediterranean, from the Bronze Age down to the Roman period, to venerate household or family gods who protected the health and the wealth of the family. They were thought to embody the spirits of the ancestors and could at times be identified with the gods of the state religion. This divine couple whose effigies were dedicated in the Field of Stelae over a period of four centuries, into the third century, cannot be claimed as Greek or Punic deities. What these nameless protectors of the family were called we cannot say: Meilichios and Meilichia, Father and Mother, or Lord and Lady of the household? As the objects of such a personal domestic cult, their names might have differed with each family. (shrink)

Abstract: It is the aim of this paper to establish a temporal and cultural link between entheogen-use1 in Classical mystery cults and their possible use in a segment of the early Christian Gnostic Church. As early Christianity was heavily influenced by the Classical world in which it first developed, it is essential to examine the evidence of entheogen-use within Classical mystery cults, and explore their possible influence on the development of Christian ritual. We will first present textual evidence (...) from the New Testament and Nag Hammadi Library (NHL) that indicate possible use of ritual entheogens. Next we will examine entheogen-use by some of the main religious sects of the ancient Mediterranean world as part of their liturgical practice between c. fifth century BCE and the third century CE. Then we will show that the different schools of philosophical thought examined were quite fluid, and that there was considerable overlap among schools with respect to several key philosophies and practices. Ultimately the subject of entheogen-use in the Classical world necessarily falls into the realm of plausible speculation mainly due to the lack of primary sources. However, should the entheogenic hypothesis2 prove to be correct, it promises to be quite useful in future research and in the translation of original documents. (shrink)

SummaryThe problem of converting the Amerindian world to Catholicism was given a radically new solution, both at a theoretical and a missionary level, by the Jesuit Acosta: since American societies were of a completely different nature to Mediterranean ones, the preaching of the Gospel, too, had to be different from the classical approach. He gave a new definition to both preaching and American societies, especially the latter's religion and social organisation. Acosta's approach to American sauvagerie was pioneering; he conceptualised (...) ideas that had never been thought of before. There existed societies which were neither barbarous nor political (like the empires of Incan Peru and Aztec Mexico), which nonetheless had social organisation. With regard to their religious life, Acosta maintained that cult and belief without faith was not a sign of atheism, but of an early form of religion. These two reassessments gave rise to a new image of the savage society, which attained enormous success, even outside the missionary world. Fitting the theological structure into the secularised theories of radical enlightenment, both Locke and Hume had recourse to the ethnologic aspects which Acosta had set out. (shrink)

In The Clash of Civilizations Samuel Huntington placed the Persian Wars at the beginning of the long line of clashes between civilizations. To the modern reader the emphasis Huntington puts on the role played by religion in defining Athenian civilization and its conflict with the “barbarians” appears to be consistent with Herodotus’ position on these wars. However, this position overlooks the fact that the ancient polytheistic beliefs and cults implied a particular attitude to religion, unlike that of monotheistic religions. (...) In the ancient Mediterranean world the temples and sacred places were to be universally respected and any violation of this rule was regarded as sacrilege that justified persecution of the wrongdoers, whose ethnicity was of no, or only of secondary, importance. The purpose of this article is to survey the main passages in Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon that treat the wars between the Greeks and Persians and between Greek city-states, and to demonstrate that the line dividing defenders of divine cults from offenders of the gods was not drawn between Greeks and barbarians, but between defenders and offenders. (shrink)

During the era in which the Spanish first encountered public religious practices that they perceived to be idolatrous in the Americas, the study of Hermetic and Platonic texts in Europe was reactivating interest in the power of images and idols, and in the agency of demons. In the Americas, Spanish newcomers encountered idolatry, the cult of deities present to their worshippers in material objects of various kinds, as part of daily religious practice. The resulting battle over idols and the beliefs (...) surrounding them is in one sense only an outcrop of debates over idols and demons in the ancient Mediterranean and in medieval and Renaissance Europe. Yet while ancient beliefs about idols were reiterated in Peru, arguments shifted in this new context. At question is whether these arguments achieved anything beyond imposing European ideas and cognitive models on the Andean world? (shrink)

This article offers a comparative study of the views of Alexis de Tocqueville and those of several Chinese thinkers of the late Ming dynasty (1368–1644)—primarily Gu Yanwu, Huang Zongxi, Wang Fuzhi—on the socio-political processes of centralization. My central claim is that their views of political centralization and of the decentralized polycentric society that preceded it in their respective countries exhibit a remarkable array of analogous structural features. More specifically, both Tocqueville and his Chinese counterparts perceive in centralization an inherent unsustainability (...) driven by its self-destructive nature: since the foundation and strength of statism depends on its social resources, the centralization of power inevitably results in the weakening of its own basis. I conclude that through their nuanced reinterpretation of self-interest, both parties advocate a “small-community-oriented communitarianism” instead of the increasingly centralized modern state. (shrink)

Bioethicists have typically disdained where they did not simply ignore the Hippocratic tradition in medicine. Its exclusivity—an oath of and for physicians—seemed contrary to the perspective that bioethicists have attempted to invoke. Robert M. Veatch recently articulated this rejection of the Hippocratic tradition, and of a professional ethic of medicine in general, in a volume based on his Gifford lectures. Here that argument is critiqued. The strengths of the Hippocratic tradition as a flexible and ethical social doctrine are offered in (...) its stead. (shrink)

The transformation of mathematics from ancient Greece to the medieval Arab-speaking world is here approached by focusing on a single problem proposed by Archimedes and the many solutions offered. In this trajectory Reviel Netz follows the change in the task from solving a geometrical problem to its expression as an equation, still formulated geometrically, and then on to an algebraic problem, now handled by procedures that are more like rules of manipulation. From a practice of mathematics based on the localized (...) solution we see a transition to a practice of mathematics based on the systematic approach. With three chapters ranging chronologically from Hellenistic mathematics, through late Antiquity, to the medieval world, Reviel Netz offers an alternate interpretation of the historical journey of pre-modern mathematics. (shrink)

The co-edited volume under consideration presents the peer-reviewed proceedings of a homonymous conference held at the Free University of Brussels and the Royal Academy of Belgium in 2015. It opens with a general introduction by the editors to the topic of the conference and to its 17 constitutive papers. The contributions deal with ceremonial contexts and rituals of diverse kinds, which antedate, transcend, or develop beneath or independently of the polis and its institutions. The papers are...

Purpose. The research is based on the analysis of the cult of Dionysus: the introspection of the irrational content of the "Dionysian states", in the symbolism of which an alternative scenario of gender relations is codified, based on autonomy and non-destructive interdependence. The achievement of this goal involves, firstly, the "archeology" of telestic madness and orgasm as the liberating states the comprehension of their semantic potential for the outlook of the Dionysian neophyte, and secondly, to identify the features that are (...) likened to the cult community of Dionysus to an autonomous gender and, thirdly, to characterize the metamorphosis of the Dionysian imagery in the postmodern consciousness. Theoretical basis. The study of the symbolism of Dionysus and its Genesis in the processes of the mass consciousness is important to clarify trends in gender distancing as in antiquity and in the modern era. Specific sensory and mental qualities encoded in the images of Dionysian madness, vakhtnag of violence and the eternal alien, the awareness of which is determined by the Dionysian thematizes in the cultural consciousness of post-modernism, the research literature presented in fragments. The phenomenological dimension "exempt States" Dionysian elements, activated the process of social distancing up to the formation of Autonomous gender, are poorly known and basically are reduced to manifestations of marginality and asocial. However, the specifics of the cult of Dionysus, the authors see the origins of ideas about a purely female and male and the dynamics of the transmutations of his imagery is proposed to understand how the successive stages of their formation, not the symptoms of the cultural crisis and deviant behavior. Originality. The article examines the phenomenology of the practice of personality transformation as the psycho-psychological basis of ideas about gender identity. Conclusions. The article highlights the socio-cultural and intrapsychic dimension of the study of the cult of Dionysus. It was established that the perception of a cult alien to ancient consciousness occurred during the crisis of the transition from matriarchy to patriarchy, since its meaning associated with the idea of liberation through personality transformation corresponded to the mental state generated by social isolation of women and had a therapeutic effect. (shrink)

Mediterranean history, and the history of other closed seas, is seen here as the experience of those who traversed the sea and arrived as decentered aliens on the other side. Mainly these have been men, with merchants generally as pioneers who introduced the goods, ideas, and religion of one region to another. From antiquity onwards, port cities such as Carthage, Alexandria, Smyrna, and Livorno acted as links among the three continents facing the Mediterranean, and visitors from other lands (...) were sometimes free to roam, sometimes ghettoized. (shrink)

There’s a certain pleasure in fantasizing about possessing knowledge, especially possessing secret knowledge to which outsiders don’t have access. Such fantasies are typically a source of innocent entertainment. However, under the right conditions, fantasies of knowledge can become epistemically dangerous, because they can generate illusions of genuine knowledge. I argue that this phenomenon helps to explain why some people join and eventually adopt the beliefs of epistemic communities who endorse seemingly bizarre, outlandish claims, such as extreme cults and online (...) conspiracy theory groups. It can be difficult to grasp how members of such groups come to believe the theories they endorse. I argue that one route to such beliefs is via deep absorption in fantasies of knowledge, which can lead entire groups to become collectively detached from reality. (shrink)

This first volume of the new Brill series "Ancient Philosophy & Religion" offers analyses of Platonic philosophy and piety, the emergence of a common religio-philosophical discourse in Antiquity, the place of Jesus among ancient philosophers, and responses of pagan philosophers to Christianity from the second century to Late Antiquity.

Description: The common western understanding of Buddhism today envisions this major world religion as one of compassion and tolerance. But as the author Droit reveals, this view bears little resemblance to one broadly held in the nineteenth-century European philosophical imagination that saw Buddhism as a religion of annihilation calling for the destruction of the self. The Cult of Nothingness traces the history of the western discovery of Buddhism. In so doing, the author shows that such major philosophers as Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, (...) Hegel, Cousin, and Renan imagined Buddhism as a religion that was, as Nietzsche put it, a negation of the world. In fact, says the author, such portrayals were more a reflection of what was happening in Europe at the time-when the collapse of traditional European hierarchies and values, the specter of atheism, and the rise of racism and social revolts were shaking European societies-than an accurate description of Buddhist thought. The author also reflects on how this history continues to echo in contemporary western understanding of Buddhism. The book includes a comprehensive bibliography on books on Buddhism published in the west between 1638 and 1890. (shrink)

The article discusses the corruption of the state administration and clergy as one of the factors of persistence of paganism in Later Roman Empire. The spread of the practice of bribing state officials and clergymen by pagans, coming from different social strata of the Late Roman Society is demonstrated by various examples. It is suggested that this phenomenon was a result of the spread of suffragium.

This statement by the late Franz Rosenthal is, in a sense, the uniting theme of the present volume's 35 articles by renowned scholars of Islamic Studies, Middle ...

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 99 Heft: 1 Seiten: 363-365.