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Leatherbury, Sean Villareal. "Inscribed within the image : the visual character of early Christian mosaic inscriptions." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:9ea6f425-7010-4820-b35d-bed33c658b60.
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Between the fourth and the seventh centuries CE, Christian patrons erected thousands of churches, chapels, and monasteries in cities and villages across the Mediterranean, decorating the apses, walls and floors of many of these structures with figural and geometric mosaics. These late antique Christian mosaics have been studied for their iconography, their Graeco-Roman components, and as evidence for the religious beliefs of newly-Christian patrons. However, art historians largely have ignored the ways that texts, inscribed within the visual field and composed of the same mosaic material, functioned as images in Christian spaces. For the first time, this thesis assembles the foundations of a comprehensive catalogue of early Christian mosaic inscriptions, places them back into the physical spaces in which they were meant to be read, and analyzes how these texts functioned both verbally and visually for the late antique reader/viewer, against the backdrop of Graeco-Roman traditions. I first examine the ekphrastic components of Christian inscriptions and look more closely at the different ways in which texts work with and against images and spaces, encouraging the viewer to react physically and mentally. Second, I study the language of light used by the inscriptions, and argue that this language linked text to the material of mosaic and enabled patrons to make complex statements about their cultural erudition and religious affiliation. Third, I investigate the functions and visual forms of short tituli which label scenes or name figures to simplify, authenticate or transform static images into narratives in motion. Finally, I turn to the frames of the inscriptions and contend that different forms conveyed powerful visual arguments. By writing these texts back into their mosaics, this thesis argues that texts and images were inseparable in the period, and that text written into images performed and played in more complex ways than has been previously thought.
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Jefferson, Lee M. "The image of Christ the miracle worker in early Christian art." Diss., Freely available online, 2008. http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/ETD-db/available/etd-09052008-145010/.
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Friesen, Alysha Brayer. "Etiquette and the Early Roman Christian Basilica: Questions of Authority, Patronage, and Reception." Master's thesis, Temple University Libraries, 2012. http://cdm16002.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p245801coll10/id/197991.
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Art HistoryM.A.
The genesis of the early Roman Christian basilica occurred at a moment of historical transition as the emperor and the empire began the process of converting to the Christian religion. Typically, this era has received scholarly treatment either as the end of a time in which the emperor held supremacy or the beginning of one dominated by bishops. The exact moment of `redefinition,' however, has rarely attracted attention because of the assertive oligarchies that bookended this transitional period, the Roman emperor and the Christian pontificate. Richard Krautheimer, who focused much of his attention on the historical figure of Constantine, promoted the idea that the basilica was Constantine's way of imbuing the Christian church with imperial authority and connotations; effectively, Constantine forever changed the shape of Christian churches. This explanation of the pivotal moment of genesis has been generally accepted and the moment of transition has not received much attention from scholars since. In my thesis I will focus primarily on this moment of transition. I will explore the political climate of the government, the authoritative hierarchy of the church, and the precedents of the very first early Roman Christian basilica, at the Lateran. The method that I will employ is the theory of etiquette, operating under the assumption that in every historical period, there is a general understanding of what is `fitting' and `appropriate.' Because of the paucity of material evidence and the unreliability of surviving primary sources, it is generally impossible to make incontestable statements about who was responsible for the early Roman Christian basilica, what they intended to convey to the Roman population, and how appropriate it would have been given the social decorum of the time. Thus, conclusions of this nature are not the primary focus of this thesis. Instead I will concentrate on reconstructing who the most appropriate agent of authority is, and how suitable the early Roman Christian basilica might have seemed.
Temple University--Theses
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Tatham, Gail Constance, and n/a. "Stories of Moses and visual narration in Jewish and early Christian art (3rd century AD)." University of Otago. Department of Classics, 2008. http://adt.otago.ac.nz./public/adt-NZDU20080318.163116.
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This thesis considers the evolution of narrative art in Judaism and early Christianity, and deals in particular with narrative figure scenes in which Moses is the principal figure. Current theories, espoused by the late Kurt Weitzmann, posit the existence of a Jewish illustrated manuscript tradition dating back to the Hellenistic period, which could have been the source for Old Testament scenes in art. In the light of these proposals and taking into account more recent narrative theory, this study of early Moses scenes in art takes up the suggestion that a large range of visual narrative scenes, closely following a given text and with a tendency for these scenes to be arranged in narrative sequence, might indicate the presence of a lost illustrated manuscript which artists are using as their model.
Stories about Moses originate from within Judaism, and are mentioned also in Christian texts for the first three centuries AD, when Moses is regarded as the forerunner of Christ. While earlier Jewish art largely conformed to the proscription against figural art, narrative figure scenes illustrating Old Testament stories are known from the late second century AD. In the synagogue at Dura Europos (AD c.250), the range of biblical imagery includes five or six scenes illustrating stories from Exodus and Numbers, although Weitzmann�s criteria are only partially fulfilled.
During the third century AD, when the earliest Christian art is found, Christians use Old Testament imagery as well, including a cycle of scenes illustrating the story of Jonah. The decoration in the baptistery in the Christian house at Dura, like that in the synagogue there, shows some interest in visual narrative, although in this case no Moses scenes are involved. At this time there is only one Moses story certainly illustrated in Christian art, The miracle of the spring (based on Exodus 17), which occurs in funerary art in Rome. The iconography for this scene is used "emblematically" to promote ideas rather than stories about Moses. If at this time Christian artists know of a narrative cycle involving Moses, they show very little interest in reflecting this.
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Michael, Georgia. "Imaging divinity : the 'invisible' Godhead in early Christian art c.300-c.730." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2017. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/7318/.
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Representations of the Holy Trinity have increasingly come under scrutiny, exposing two competing paradigms at opposite ends of the theological spectrum: the legitimacy and the illegitimacy of imaging the Triune God with focus on the invisible Father who was imaged as an individual from Late Antiquity and beyond. An overview of these two conflicting views has unveiled a number of inconsistencies in how the Early Christian iconography of God the Father and the Trinity has been interpreted. This thesis provides a unique re-evaluation of the surviving Trinitarian visual material between c.300 to c.730. Primarily, this study collates pictorial evidence preserved in the mediums of sarcophagi, catacomb frescoes, mosaics, illuminated manuscripts and an icon that depicts Divinity. It proceeds to critique modern misconceptions of the identity, form, meaning, function and reception of the depictions. The thesis traces the visual shift amid overt and covert images of Divinity by decoding important artworks such as the Ashburnham Pentateuch and the Codex Amiatinus; Christians visualised explicitly the ' invisibility' of God but created an unprecedented invention, the depiction of the Father through Christ's image. The innovative depiction heralded future visual formulas of Divinity echoing the complexities of Trinitarian material culture of the Mediterranean world.
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Dascal, Elana. "Reading Midrash as graphic artistic activity : the compilation of Midrash Rabbah as possible influences on early Jewish and Christian art." Thesis, McGill University, 1997. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=28257.
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Midrash is a genre of rabbinic Bible exegesis, composed by various authors and compiled in anthologies during the first seven centuries of the Common Era. This thesis explores the reading of Midrash and its possible influence on early artistic activity. Examples of early Jewish and Christian biblical representations that display some degree of midrashic impact, are presented in order to establish the existence of a relationship between Midrash and art. Finally, by a systematic reading of the corpus of midrashic literature found in Midrash Rabbah, Midrashim that suggest graphic representation, but which have not yet to been found among early art forms, are categorized and analyzed.
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Spencer, Justina. "Peeping in, peering out : monocularity and early modern vision." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:b8854565-ce57-4c83-9cdb-64249d171142.
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One of the central theoretical tenets of linear perspective is that it is based upon the idea of a monocular observer. Our lived perception, also referred to in the Renaissance as perspectiva naturalis, is always rooted in binocular vision, however, the guidelines for perspectiva artificialis often imply a single peeping eye as a starting point. In the early modern period, a number of rare art forms and instruments follow the prescriptive character of linear perspective to ludic ends. By focusing on this special class of what I would call 'monocular art forms', I will analyse the extent to which the perspectival method has been successfully applied in material form beyond the classic two-dimensional paintings. This special class of objects include: anamorphosis, peep-boxes, catoptrics, dioptric perspective tubes, and perspective instruments. It is my intention to draw attention to the different ways traditional perspectival paintings, exceptional cases such as perspective boxes and anamorphoses, and optical devices were encountered in the early modern period. In this thesis I will be examining the specific sites of each case study in depth so as to describe the various contexts - aristocratic, intellectual, religious - in which these items circulated. In Chapter 1 I illustrate a special class of perspective and anamorphic designs that confined their illusions to a peepshow. Chapter 2 examines one of the most consummate applications of the monocular principle of perspective: seventeenth-century Dutch perspective boxes. In Chapter 3, monocular catoptric designs are studied in light of the vogue for mirror cabinets in the seventeenth century. Chapter 4 examines the innovative techniques of drawing machines and their collection in early modern courts through close study of the 'perspectograph'.
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Edsall, Benjamin A. "'As I said to you before' : Paul's witness to formative early Christian instruction." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:9f613e23-7197-40d8-836c-d0e478be2636.
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This study addresses the question of formative early Christian preaching and teaching. Unlike previous approaches, I eschew synthesis across a broad range and focus instead on the earliest extant Christian source: the letters of Paul. My method draws on ancient communication practices, primarily represented in ancient rhetoric, wherein communicators rely on knowledge they presume their interlocutors to possess. Passages are analyzed according to the type of appeal to Paul's initial teaching: (1) explicit reminders of previous teaching, (2) direct appeals to knowledge not explicitly linked to previous teaching, and (3) indirect appeals to knowledge about practices, beliefs, conventions, etc. The reconstruction focuses on 1 Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians and Romans. 1 Thessalonians and 1 Corinthians represent neophyte and well-established Pauline communities, respectively, while Romans is of interest because it represents non-Pauline believers. I proceed with a comparative analysis of 1 Thessalonians and 1 Corinthians. Chapter 4 lays out the rhetorical situation for these letters while chapters 5-7 investigate the three types of appeal respectively, each closing with a comparison of similar material in each letter. Chapter 8 summarizes and concludes this discussion, providing the basis for my subsequent analysis of Romans. Finally, I compare the picture from the Thessalonian and Corinthian communities with Paul's letter to the Romans (chapter 9). Topics he expects his Roman audience to know indicate points of expected congruence between Paul's own teaching and that of others. By contrast, topics that receive significant expansion in Romans suggest perceived potential for conflict. In this dissertation I identify consistent elements of early Christian instruction, ranging from Christology to apocalyptic cosmology, while also noting possible conflict. My approach places the reconstruction of early Christian teaching on firmer methodological footing than previous attempts have done and offers a rhetorically sensitive account of the teaching and how it was used.
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Brändli, Adrian. "Inimica amicitia : friendship and the notion of exclusion in early Christian Latin literature." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:39da4c95-9dfe-4d97-9ecf-eed19d0c5c06.
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This thesis discusses the notion of amicitia in early Christian literature. By examining letters and normative texts ranging from the third to the early fifth century, the study illuminates not only how contemporary authors shaped friendship conceptually but also how these concepts relate to the actual social practice. Typically, scholars confine their reading of Christian friendship to the late antique period. In so doing, they approach amicitia either as a particular kind of relationship performing crucial social functions or as a subject for theorization that followed the example of a longstanding ancient philosophical tradition. Particularly influential has been the view that links amicitia with affection and love. Hence, scholars tend to stress the inclusiveness of friendship. By contrast, my own study focuses on the aspect of exclusion as the necessary by-product of social inclusion processes. Along these lines, amicita is described as existing in a dialectical opposition with its antonym, inimicitia. This approach yielded a number of insights. First, as the study moves into uncharted territory, the examination of third century texts highlights a tradition of amicitia-related thought that reached further back than has previously been assumed. From this, a more nuanced picture of friendship emerges that is not constrained by scholarly established boundaries between different fields of study. Second, the principle of inclusion and exclusion, dividing the world into amici and inimici, has been revealed as a powerful tool in church politics and religious controversy that established sharp boundaries between competing Christian factions. This view, which posits the truth of faith as the necessary prerequisite for friendship, is set off against other contemporary voices that did not make amicitia dependent on a particular religious group affiliation. Third, while disentangling friendship from the question of love, the character of Christian amicitia is viewed against the backdrop of the divine household. Though the conceptual overlap between friendship and kinship is not unique to the Christian tradition, such thinking ties in with an idea of community that builds on the paternity of God. These findings have implications for both the study of ancient friendship and the history of the early church. They improve our understanding of the relation between the conceptualization of amicitia and the actual social practice and moreover offer a deep insight into the social dynamics of contemporary religious controversies.
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Ingle, Gabriela Elzbieta. "The significance of dining in Late Roman and Early Christian funerary rites and tomb decoration." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/25949.
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The presented thesis examines dining practices associated with ancient funerary rites, and representations of meals that decorated Roman tombs. Evidence for dining, and its significance in mortuary rites, comes from various sources: from pagan, Christian and Jewish literary examples that describe funerary and commemorative events, and archaeological material of food remains and dining installations at the cemeteries, to pictures of meals depicted on different media: cinerary urns and altars, gravestones, frescoes, mosaics and sarcophagi. The aim of this thesis is to investigate available sources, focusing mainly on pictorial representations of late Roman and early Christian dining in order to assess the purpose of decorating the tombs with convivial images. The thesis begins with a discussion of how the Roman catacombs were used by early Christians, and how they were perceived by the post-sixteenth-century explorers and researchers. As our understanding of the development of the subterranean cemeteries has changed over the past centuries, so has our view of the late ancient societies and their funerary practices. Chapter 1 investigates both written and archaeological evidence for Roman funerary meals (silicernium and novemdiale) and commemorative rites during several festivals for the dead (e.g. parentalia0or0rosalia) performed by families and members of collegia. This Chapter also presents the development of the funerary Eucharist, and discusses evidence for early Christian funerary prayer. Chapter 2 focuses on memorials decorated with diners reclining on klinai, which were intended to represent the status of the deceased. Chapter 3 discusses painted collective meal scenes represented on stibadia, which are differentiated according to their interpretation: Elysian picnic scenes, images representing status of the deceased, or refrigeria (commemorative events) held by family and collegia. This section also includes an investigation into early Christian convivial images, which portray biblical stories and refrigeria. Chapter 4 presents convivial images from the catacomb of SS. Pietro e Marcellino, which provide evidence of a group of foreigners who migrated to Rome. Chapter 5, the final chapter, presents collective meal scenes on sarcophagi, which depict mythological events and picnic scenes reflecting elite villa life style. However, a small group of early Christian examples were also designed to portray honorary meals. In conclusion, the thesis provides evidence for shared funerary practices amongst different religious communities in the Roman world. Additionally, in the majority of cases the dining scenes focus on the representations of the deceased (their status or profession) rather than any particular religious affiliation; while both pagan and Christian images of refrigeria were designed to strengthen, or substituted for, actual commemorative rites.
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Zakarian, David. "The representation of women in early Christian literature : Armenian texts of the fifth century." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:8853f6e0-060d-4366-89ab-945584bf2029.
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In recent decades there has been a growing scholarly interest in the representation of women in early Christian texts, with the works of Greek and Latin authors being the primary focus. This dissertation makes an important contribution to the existing scholarship by examining the representation of Armenian women in the fifth-century Christian narratives, which have been instrumental in forging the Christian identity and worldview of the Armenian people. The texts that are discussed here were written exclusively by clerics whose way of thinking was considerably influenced by the religious teachings of the Greek and Syriac Church Fathers. However, as far as the representation of women is concerned, the Greek Fathers' largely misogynistic discourse did not have discernible effect on the Armenian authors. On the contrary, the approach developed in early Christian Armenian literature was congruous with the more liberal way of thinking of the Syriac clerics, with a marked tendency towards empowering women ideologically and providing them with prominent roles in the male-centred society. I argue that such a representation of women was primarily prompted by the ideology of the pre-Christian religion of the Armenians. This research discusses the main historical and cultural factors that prompted a positive depiction of women, and highlights the rhetorical and moralising strategies that the authors deployed to construct an "ideal woman". It further explores the representation of women's agency, experience, discourse, and identity. In particular, women's pivotal role in Armenia's conversion to Christianity and female asceticism in fourth-fifth century Armenia are extensively investigated. It is also argued that women's status in the extended family determined the social spaces they could enter and the extent of power they could exercise. It appears that Iranian matrimonial practice, including polygyny and consanguineous marriages, was common among the Armenian elite, whereas the lower classes mainly practised marriage by bride purchase or abduction. Special attention is devoted to the institution of queenship in Arsacid Armenia and the position of the queen within the framework of power relationships. Finally, this study examines the instances of violence towards women during wars and how the female body was exploited to achieve desirable political goals.
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Osbourne, Gavin. "Mosaics of power : superstition, magic and Christian power in early Byzantine floor mosaics." Thesis, University of Sussex, 2015. http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/54017/.
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This thesis argues that some Early Byzantine floor mosaics had, in addition to a practical and decorative role, a supernatural function. By this I mean the images and words depicted within the mosaic were perceived as devices to attract powers from a supernatural dimension, for the benefit of those that walked over the mosaic or the building that housed it. The thesis is ultimately a discussion of the Byzantines' beliefs in the power of art and text, and how they were believed to intervene and affect everyday life. My examination is carried out with a focus on the floor mosaics produced between the fourth and seventh centuries in the Byzantine Empire. Using an iconographic methodological approach, the thesis explores how certain images and words incorporated within mosaic designs can be seen in supernatural terms. To do so, comparable material objects with clearer supernatural functions will be examined. Primary sources that indicate how certain motifs were perceived to bring about powers will also be analysed. In this thesis, I analyse the different kinds of devices that were depicted to attract supernatural powers and explore why those devices were believed to have the ability to generate powers. The thesis illustrates how power could be seen as being rooted in Christianity, magic or more unclear sources. Expanding on this discussion, I explore how a single mosaic could incorporate elements from several sources, dispelling scholarship that portrays the Early Byzantine period as predominately influenced by Christianity. The other key function of the thesis is to emphasise the fact that mosaics can be considered in terms of the conscious design process of their construction, placing them within the same category as gemstones and icons in terms of purposeful objects.
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Milson, David. "Aspects of the impact of Christian art and architecture on synagogues in Byzantine Palestine." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2002. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:17261fb5-fbfb-4417-90a3-f0d01673f262.
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This thesis examines the relationship between Jews and Christians in the Holy Land from the age of Constantine the Great to the conquest of the eastern provinces by the Arabs from an archaeological viewpoint. At stake is a better understanding of how Jews adapted to changing times, particularly during the rise of Christianity in Palestine. Whereas earlier scholars have viewed the growth of the Byzantine empire as time of persecution toward the Jews, a re-evaluation of the archaeological evidence indicates that Jews prospered along with their Christian neighbors. In scope, this dissertation aims first to re-evaluate how many ancient building remains can be classified as synagogues, and how many of those can be accurately dated. For only after a solid body of archaeological research is firmly established can further progress be made toward our better understanding of the ancient world. Diversity in contemporaneous synagogue layouts, rather than a linear development throughout this period is the norm. Yet, in the sixth-century, one-third of all known synagogues in Palestine bear similar features to early Byzantine churches: basilical layouts, mosaic floors, apses, and chancel screens. Since no single fourth-century synagogue had an apse or chancel screen in its repertoire of furnishings, a reform must have taken place, which ultimately enhanced the synagogue. It has long been held that this change had originated under the influence of the growing Christian population in the Holy Land. Examining the nature of early Christian liturgical practice throws light on these changes to synagogues. For the focal point of the early Christian basilica, the altar in the sanctuary, separated from the hall by a chancel screen, was adapted by these Jewish communities. By placing the Torah Shrine in the apse of synagogues, the sacred nature of the Five Books of Moses was glorified. In focusing on the apse and niche it is suggested that rather than a positive influence toward the Jews, the deeply-rooted rivalry between Christianity and Judaism was the main implement for change. Jewish leaders built synagogues with apses and chancel screens to amplify and venerate the most important object in the hall - the Torah Scrolls - kept in the Torah Ark. Unlike earlier buildings, the Torah Shrine was set in the same position as the altar in churches, in the apse. Renovating interiors, changes to entrances, and new types of furnishings in synagogues were the physical changes to this institution which reflect the impact of Christian art on synagogues.
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Caswell, Fuad Matthew. "The Qiyan in the early Abbasid period." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2006. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:07aceede-1eff-429b-83e6-2c2d5c60f9d0.
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The thesis deals with the legal status of the qiȳan as slaves in Islam; describes their nationalities, education and training as singers, instrumentalists and versifiers. It considers their place in the cultural life of the host society. A substantial part of their poetry with particular attention to some of the leading figures is reproduced in translation. A review of that poetry is included, showing the bulk of it to consist of clever epigrams exchanged in public or semi-public maj̄alis, bearing the hallmark of virtuosity and social jousting or party games. Another theme is that the introduction of the qiȳan into the Abbasid cultural life led to the development of elegiac-erotic poetry. A parallel review of the musical scene, with special reference to some leading exponents, shows the influence of the qiȳan in the development of new “popular”, unconventional styles of singing. The institution of the qiȳan in all its artistic manifestations is viewed as essentially a business catering for men in pursuit of pleasure: caliphs, aristocrats and, most commonly, the class of cultured well-to-do chancery scribes. The bulk of the poetry which the established men poets composed in praise of the qiȳan is seen as publicity material, and substantially produced to commission. The effect of the qiȳan on the free-born women of their age, as well as historically, is considered; and some comparison is drawn between them as poets and singers. By way of further comparison the geisha and the hetaira of Ancient Greece are alluded to. A chapter is devoted to the decline and fall of the qiȳan institution in the East and its partial transfer to Arab Spain.
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Webster, Andrew. "The Embedded Self-Portrait in Italian Sacred Art of the Cinquecento and Early Seicento." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/13006.
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Cases of Italian embedded self-portraiture appear in the sacred art of some of the most renowned artists of the Cinquecento and early Seicento, artists such as Bronzino, Michelangelo, Titian, Tintoretto, and Caravaggio. This thesis first examines the history of the practice from its origins in Quattrocento Florence and Venice then argues that an important development in the function and presentation of embedded self-portraits can be observed as Cinquecento artists experienced broad shifts in religious and cultural life as a result of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. It also assesses three works by Caravaggio to suggest that embedding self-portraits in religious art was a variable and meaningful convention that allowed artists to inject both their personal and public emotions. This thesis argues that in the Cinquecento and early Seicento, the very gesture of embedding a self-portrait in sacred artworks provided a window into an artist's individuality, personality, and piety.
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Essex, Sandra Mikel. "Metal concepts : the calligraphic image." Virtual Press, 1994. http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/897526.
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This project combines metalsmithing and calligraphy into an expressive art form through which the artist can celebrate and share both her understanding of life and the creative, loving God who motivates her art.The rich, calligraphic imagery of the Hebrew, Uncial (early Christian), and Italic alphabets was chosen as the design source.A solid understanding and skillful implementation of a variety of metalworking techniques and calligraphic skills were necessary to turn concept into form, idea into language.Designed and executed for this project were four liturgical objects, two non-functional forms, three functional forms, and nine pieces of jewelry.Department of Art
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Lic, Agnieszka. "Christian stucco decoration in southern Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf region, sixth to ninth centuries." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2017. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:23636a63-9682-4a2a-b27b-49f2f3df59ac.
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Christian archaeology and art of the region under the jurisdiction of the Church of the East in the Late Antique and early Islamic period is an underresearched field of studies, which exists in between more developed disciplines such as Byzantine and Syriac studies as well as Early Christian, Sasanian and Islamic archaeology and art history. However, archaeological excavations of the last century, especially in southern Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf region, now allow research to be conducted on the most important medium of artistic expression of the region - stucco. Considered from the technological, stylistic and iconographic point of view and within the aforementioned cultural contexts, it reveals that the Christian stucco production of the region was shaped by Sasanian traditions and contemporary Byzantine and Islamic influences, but also that it developed an innovative and highly creative vocabulary of forms and motifs. It was especially among the Gulf communities of Sir Bani Yas, al-Qusur and other sites that this transformative approach towards traditional and contemporary artistic models manifested itself within a short period between the late seventh and the early ninth centuries. Slightly more conservative is the character of Christian art of southern Mesopotamia in the eighth and early ninth centuries. An interesting exception is a relief found at a church in Koke in the region of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, in which the Sasanian technique of deep relief is combined with the Byzantine dress of the person represented. This fusion of culturally divergent elements testifies to the double identity of the Christians living under the Sasanians - and later, in the early Islamic caliphate - who were recognized as a part of society but distinctive for their religion.
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Brooks, Britton. "The restoration of Creation in the early Anglo-Saxon vitae of Cuthbert and Guthlac." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:17b5d20e-446e-4891-90a6-f02a196a7409.
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This thesis explores the relationship between Creation and the saints Cuthbert and Guthlac in their Anglo-Latin and Old English vitae. It argues that this relationship is best understood through received theological exegesis concerning Creation's present state in the postlapsarian world. The exegesis has its foundation in Augustine's interpretations of the Genesis narrative, though it enters the textual tradition of the vitae via an adapted portion of De Genesi contra Manichaeos in Bede's metrical Vita Sancti Cuthberti (VCM). Both Augustine and Bede argue, with slight differences, that fallen Creation can be restored into prelapsarian harmony with humanity by way of sanctity. Each individual vita engages with this understanding of the Fall in distinct, though ultimately interrelated, ways, and the chapters of this thesis will therefore explore each text individually. Chapter 1 argues that the anonymous Vita Sancti Cuthberti (VCA) unites Cuthbert's ability to restore Creation with the theme of monastic obedience, linking the ordering of a monastery to the restoration of prelapsarian harmony. The VCA also seeks to create sites for potential lay pilgrimage in the landscapes of Farne and Lindisfarne by highlighting the present efficacy of Cuthbert's miracles. Chapter 2 argues that Bede's VCM not only reveals his early attempt to fashion Cuthbert into the primary saint for Britain, via a focus on Cuthbert's obedience to the Divine Office, but also that the restoration of Creation functions as a ruminative tool. Chapter 3 argues that Bede transforms the nature of Cuthbert's sanctity in his prose Vita Sancti Cuthberti (VCP) from static to developmental, influenced by the Evagrian Vita Antonii, and that Creation is adapted to function as the impetus for, and evidence of, Cuthbert's progression. Chapter 4 argues that Felix's Vita Sancti Guthlaci (VSG) unites the development of Guthlac with a physically delineated Creation, and that the restoration of Creation is elevated to an even greater degree here than in Bede's hagiography. Chapter 5 argues that the author of the Old English Prose Guthlac (OEPG) grounds his vita by utilizing a landscape lexis shared with contemporary boundary clauses, so that here the relationship between the saint and Creation has greater force; it further argues that Guthlac A uniquely connects Guthlac with the doctrine of replacement, consolidating links between his arrival to the eremitic space and the restoration of prelapsarian Eden.
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Gatty, Fiona K. A. "Ideal beauty in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century French art and art criticism with special reference to the role of drapery and costume." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:9c3f5f9e-0a0c-4c1e-a7c1-62ed972cfd12.
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Scholarly attention to late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century French art has focused on the importance that Johann Joachim Winckelmann attributed to the male nude figure in his definition of ideal beauty, and the impact of his work on debates over the 'beau idéal' in French art and art criticism. In contrast, Winckelmann's extensive interest in the detail of ancient costume, the folds of drapery, and the teleological and aesthetic significance that he ascribed to them, has been underplayed. The role played by costume and drapery as components of the 'beau idéal' in French art and aesthetics has also not been fully explored. This thesis examines the way in which costume and drapery formed an important component and embodiment of ideal beauty in the work of Winckelmann and in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century French artistic circles, providing new insights into the arguments over the meanings of Truth, Beauty and Nature in this period. The thesis proposes that ideal beauty in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth- century France was conveyed in works of art through the accurate rendering of costume and the expressive qualities of drapery in combination with the perfect form and contour of the nude body. The first part of the thesis sets up a proposition that costume and drapery formed part of the definition of ideal beauty in the work of Winckelmann. Highlighting the significance of Winckelmann's work on costume and drapery in French art theory, it demonstrates how the definition of ideal beauty in France also incorporated the accurate rendering of costume and the aesthetic impact of drapery. In demonstrating the significance of costume and drapery to both Winckelmann and French theorists it is proposed that the application of a meta-historical approach of costume and drapery to French art theory can provide new understandings and readings of the definition of ideal beauty, the hierarchy of the genres and the broader aesthetic concerns of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth- century French art. The second part of the thesis applies the proposed hermeneutic of costume and drapery to a small selection of theoretical work on the nature of ideal beauty and on a significant collection of Salon criticism. With this approach to the primary material this thesis demonstrates how French artists were able to express the 'beau idéal' within the traditional academic conventions and hierarchies, and negotiate the sense of public unease over the use of nudity in contemporary art.
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Alphin, Judson Wayne. "The early military thought of Winston S. Churchill." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:be81c453-5166-4e6a-b4ce-c443706e2dd9.
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Winston S. Churchill was a war leader during two world wars, and yet there are few substantive studies of his younger years when he was a practising soldier. This thesis aims to study the early intellectual development of Churchill in those areas which have direct impact on the art of war. The chapters are arranged narratively (Chapters 2-3) and thematically (Chapters 4-8). The introduction covers the scope and methodology of the work. Chapters 2-3 give an account of Churchill's early years, and trace the development of several prominent features of his character that helped form and inform the presuppositions of his later military intellectual development. Chapter 4 addresses Churchill's interactions with late Victorian cavalry doctrine and debate. Chapters 5-7 each address themes of an expanding scope of influence and conceptualization: first, the tactics of war; second, the policy and strategy of war; and finally, Churchill's conceptions of war. The conclusion summarizes the hallmarks and syntheses of Churchill's early military intellectual development, and identifies judgments which can be drawn about his perspicacity as soldier and commander.
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Buchenau, Stefanie. "The art of invention and the invention of art : logic, rhetoric and aesthetics in the early german Enlightenment." Lyon, Ecole normale supérieure, 2004. http://www.theses.fr/2004ENSF0013.
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Ce travail cherche à réévaluer la signification de l'esthétique de la "Frühaufklarung" dans l'histoire de l'esthétique moderne. Contre le discours classique de la littérature secondaire qui le plus souvent réduit cette esthétique à une préfiguration imparfaite de l'esthétique kantienne et postkantienne, il montre que les "Frühaufklärer" ne fondent pas seulement une tradition esthétique moderne, mais qu'ils défendent un projet cohérent et original; il convient en effet de situer leur esthétique dans le contexte du débat moderne sur "l'ars inveniendi" initié par Francis Bacon et développé par ses successeurs à l'Age classique tels que René Descartes, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz et Walter Ehrenfried Tschirnhaus et aussi, à l'aune du XVIIIème siècle, par Christian Wolff. Après avoir examiné les prémisses épistémologiques modernes de ce débat sur l'invention, cette étude analyse les contributions de Wolff et de ses disciples Johann Jacob Breitinger, Johann Christoph Gottsched et Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten. Wolff introduit un tournant dans le débat antérieur en intégrant une philosophie des arts à l'intérieur de l'art d'invention général. Ses disciples transposent le paradigme heuristique moderne de la science et de la philosophie à la poésie et aux arts de représentation. Selon eux, le poète imite la nature en ce sens qu'il découvre une nature inconnue. De ce nouveau paradigme heuristique découle une nouvelle conception de la critique littéraire comme servant à la fois de méthode de jugement et d'invention. Baumgarten introduit une nouvelle perspective rhétorique, en réintroduisant l'idée cicéronienne d'invention (philosophique et rhétorique) au sein d'un contexte "logique" moderne : le vrai philosophe doit inventer des arguments à la fois cohérents et convaincants. Cette idée est au fondement de sa construction d'une seconde méthode d'invention, outre l'analyse logique, qu'il appelle "esthétique". Or cette addition d'une nouvelle discipline au sein de "l'organon" affecte le système philosophique tout entier et la psychologie et la philosophie pratique en particulier. Baumgarten propose une nouvelle division des facultés supérieures et inférieures et réserve un nouvel espace pour l'art et l'esthétique à l'intérieur de la philosophie pratiqueThis work is an attempt to reassess the significance of early German Enlightenment aesthetics in the history of modern aesthetics. Against the common reading that assigns early German Enlightenment aesthetics the status of an imperfect prefiguration of Kantian and post-Kantian aesthetics, I argue that the "Frühaufklärer" not only found a genuinely modern aesthetic tradition, but that they defend a consistent and original project : their aesthetics must be viewed in the context of the modern debate on the "ars inveniendi" initiated by Francis Bacon and developed by his early modern followers, including Christian Wolff. After examining the modern epistemological premises of the debate on invention. I investigate the contributions of Wolff and his pupils, namely Johann Jacob Bodmer and Johann Jacob Breitnger, as well as Johann Christoph Gottsched and Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten. Wolff himself introduces a turn within the earlier debate on invention in that he includes a philosophy of the arts within his general art of invention. His pupils transpose the modern heuristic paradigm from science and philosophy to poetry and the representative arts : the poet imitates nature insofar as he unveils hidden aspects of nature. From the modern view of inventio, they furthermore draw conclusions on the nature of art criticism as both a method of judgment and of invention. Baumgarten introduces a rhetorical shift within the former debate; he reintroduces a Ciceronian idea of invention concerning both logic and rhetoric within the modern logical context : the true philosopher must find arguments that are both consistent and convincing. But while Baumgarten's addition of aesthetics to logic as a second method of invention conforms to the modern paradigm of invention, it deeply changes the nature o f the "organon". These changes in turn affect the system itself, psychology and practical philosophy in particular. Baugmarten proposes a new division of the higher and lower faculties of the soul, and he carves out a space for art and aesthetics in practical philosophy
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Strawbridge, Jennifer Ruth. "'According to the wisdom given to Him' : the use of the Pauline Epistles by early Christian writers before Nicaea." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:81a6546b-95e1-44ad-afca-f32d0b038db1.
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This thesis is a study of the interpretation and reception of the writings attributed to the apostle Paul based on the collation of references to Pauline texts in pre-Nicene Christian writings. The material is analysed utilising a method worked out by Teresa Morgan and Raffaella Cribiore to understand the nature and extent of indebtedness to literary authorities in ancient pedagogy. The application of their method means that the most frequently cited passages from the Pauline corpus become the focus for detailed examination, and a chapter is devoted to the following passages: 1 Corinthians 2.6-16, Ephesians 6.10-17, 1 Corinthians 15.50-58, and Colossians 1.15-20. In each chapter, selections from early Christian texts which use these passages are chosen for in-depth analysis because they are representative in their interpretative approaches of the totality of texts examined. Across many different early Christian writings, images and phrases from these Pauline pericopes were used to support and defend a wide range of theological arguments about the nature of divine wisdom and its contrast with human wisdom, the importance of standing firm in faith, the nature of resurrection and the body, and the nature of Christ. On the basis of the analysis throughout this thesis, conclusions are drawn firstly, about the close connection between scriptural interpretation and theological doctrines; secondly, about early Christian formation, separate from scholarly attempts to recover early Christian catechesis, school teaching, and pedagogy; and finally, about early Christian identity and how it is formed and informed by early Christian use of these four passages.
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Bai, Mengtian. "Yangzhou Latin Tombstones: A Christian Mirror of Yuan China Society." Oberlin College Honors Theses / OhioLINK, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=oberlin1530141020070354.
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Gimbel, David Nelson. "The evolution of visual representation : the elite art of early dynastic Lagas and its antecedents in late Uruk period Sumer and predynastic Egypt." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2002. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:209a8832-9e13-494d-946e-016ba9aa215c.
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The corpus of artifacts from the Lagas state constitutes what is arguably the single largest cohesive body of elite representational display forms thus far discovered to have come from Early Dynastic (ED) Sumer. Unlike the equally extraordinary finds from ED levels of Ur, which consist primarily of grave goods and small finds (Woolley 1934; Woolley 1956), what is unique about the finds from Lagas is that the majority of them are programmatic artifacts that were intended to be displayed to specific audiences. Specifically, many of them are relief carvings or, to a lesser degree, statues that were carefully composed and executed in order to encode and transmit carefully constructed messages on the part of individual rulers, or the religious establishment. As such, the ED Lagas corpus is a particularly important record of how one particular group of Sumerian rulers viewed themselves and how the wished to be viewed by others.
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Bell, Tyler. "The religious reuse of Roman structures in Anglo-Saxon England." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2001. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:f631fee6-5081-4c40-af85-61725776cbf6.
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This thesis examines the post-Roman and Anglo-Saxon religious reuse of Roman structures, particularly burials associated with Roman structures, and churches on or near Roman buildings. Although it is known that the Anglo-Saxons existed in and interacted with the vestigial, physical landscape of Roman Britain, the specific nature and result of this interaction has not been completely understood. The present study examines the Anglo-Saxon religious reuse of Roman structures in an attempt to understand the Anglo-Saxon perception of Roman structures and the impact they had on the developing ecclesiastical landscape. In particular, the study reveals how we may better understand the structural coincidence of Roman buildings and early-medieval religious activity in the light of the apparent discontinuity between many Roman and early-medieval landscapes in Britain. The study begins by providing an overview of the evidence for existing Roman remains in the Anglo-Saxon period. It examines the archaeological and historical evidence, and discusses literary references to Roman structures in an attempt to ascertain how the ruins of Roman villas, towns and forts would have been perceived. Particular attention is paid to The Ruin, a poem in Old English which provides us with our only contemporary description of Roman remains in Britain. The first chapter concludes by examining the evidence for the religious reuse of Roman secular structures in Gaul and Rome, providing a framework into which the evidence in the subsequent chapters is placed. The examination the proceeds to burials on or associated with Roman structures. It shows that the practice of interring the dead into Roman structures occurred between the fifth and eighth centuries, but peaked at the beginning of the seventh, with comparatively few sites at the extreme end of the data range. The discussion is based on the evidence of 115 sites that show this burial rite, but it is very apparent that this number is only a fragment of the whole, as these inhumations are often mistakenly identified as Roman, even when the stratigraphy demonstrates that burial occurred after the ruin of the villa, as is often the case. The placement of the bodies show a conscious reuse of the ruinous architecture, rather then suggesting interment was made haphazardly on the site: frequently the body is placed either centrally within a room, or is in contact with some part of the Roman fabric. Some examples suggest that there may have been a preference for apsidal rooms for this purpose. Churches associated with Roman buildings are then examined, and their significance in the development of the English Christian landscape is discussed. Churches of varying status – from minsters to chapels – can be found on Roman buildings throughout the country. Roman structures were clearly chosen for the sites of churches from the earliest Christian period into the tenth, and probably even the eleventh century. Alternatives to the so-called proprietary model are examined, and their origins and development are discussed, particularly in reference to the continental evidence. The end of the study places the thesis into a wider landscape context, and introduces potential avenues of further exploration using GIS. The study concludes that there are a number of causes underlying the religious reuse of Roman buildings, each not necessarily exclusive of the other, and that the study of these sites can further any investigation into the development of the ecclesiastical topography of England, and the eventual development of the parochial landscape.
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Kirk, Alexander N. "Paul's approach to death in his letters and in early Pauline effective history." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:41c8b162-fbe4-4de3-a26b-cf6138eb8f11.
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This thesis analyzes the Apostle Paul’s approach to his own death. The term “approach” is deliberately vague and is intended to encompass a number of questions: What was Paul’s attitude toward his death? How did he act and what did he say and write in view of it? What hopes did he hold for himself beyond death? These questions are explored through a close reading of three Pauline letters that look forward to Paul’s death and other relevant texts in the first two generations after Paul’s death (A.D. 70–160). Thus, this thesis is a study of Paul’s death in prospect and retrospect. Starting with the latter, the first half of the thesis examines portraits of the departed Paul in Acts 20:17–38; 1 Clem. 5.1–6.1; Ign. Eph. 12.2; Rom. 4.3; Pol. Phil. 9.1–2; and the Martyrdom of Paul. It is argued that these portraits exhibit a complicated network of similarities that may be described using Wittgenstein’s concept of “family resemblances.” Viewed as a part of Paul’s early effective history, these early portraits of Paul offer substantial resources for the interpretation of his letters. The second half of the thesis examines portraits of the departing Paul in 2 Cor 1:8–14; 4:16–5:10; Phil 1:18d–26; 2:16b–18; 3:7–14; and 2 Tim 1:12; 4:6–8, 17–18. The “decision of death” referred to in 2 Cor 1:9 is highlighted as a religious experience and one which goaded Paul to formulate his approach to death. It is argued that his death did not primarily present an existential challenge, but a pastoral one. Although touching upon three areas of recent scholarly interest (Paul’s theology of death and beyond; Paul’s religious experience; and Pauline reception), this thesis sets forth a new research question and fresh interpretations of early Christian and Pauline texts.
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Leyser, Conrad. "The monastic thought and culture of Pope Gregory the Great in their Western context, c.400-604." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1991. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:a8280d1b-1d09-4505-ad0d-2be735badbaf.
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Gregory was the first monk to be pope; proverbially, he would have preferred to have remained a monk; the audience he addressed was almost always made up of monks. However, no sustained attempt has been made to establish the contexts for Gregory as a monastic writer. The thesis represents an initial attempt to do so, and in particular, to question the image of Gregory as a monk unable to cope with the assumption of episcopal power. The sources principally chosen for study are as follows: Augustine's Praeceptum; Cassian's Institutes and Conferences; the writings of the early Lerins circle; the Sermons and Rules of Caesarius of Aries; the Rule of St. Benedict, together with the Rules of the Master and Eugippius of Lucullanum. The thesis has been structured as a series of comparisons between these texts, and the situations in which they were produced, with Gregory's writings and his situation in late sixth century Rome. Gregory's ecclesial and eschatalogical perspectives, to which he adhered before papal election, are seen to set him apart from earlier monastic writers, and into confrontation with contemporary ascetics and clerics, the Roman clerical establishment in particular. These aspects of Gregory's thought are related to his rhetorical performance, and the voice he develops is compared to those of earlier ascetics. It is argued that the central concern of the texts considered is that of language: western ascetic projects are seen to focus on holiness of rhetoric, especially in the sixth century. In choosing to speak and write primarily as an exegete, Gregory signalled that he did not wish to contribute to the Gaulish or Italian monastic cultures developing around written Rules. He was concerned instead to articulate a personal holy authority.
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Farguson, Julie Anne. "Art, ceremony and the British monarchy, 1689-1714." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:e63509b1-425c-4308-bfc7-d991d46aa693.
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This thesis investigates the ceremonial and artistic strategies of the British monarchy in the years following the Glorious Revolution. By adopting a range of methodologies used in the study of visual culture, the thesis considers royal ceremonies as channels for conveying political messages non-verbally. These could affect attitudes to the monarchy, and inform artistic output. By paying particular attention to the way royal participants performed ceremonially in relation to the various formal and informal architectural settings for the court, the thesis highlights the process of seeing as a communicative act. Being alert to the impact of royal ceremonial and artistic activities on contemporary audiences, the thesis also considers the dissemination of royal imagery in England by commercial means. The thesis surveys paintings, prints and medals produced in England, and places the intended audiences at the centre of the analysis. It also pays keen attention to the impact of war on royal image making, and highlights the political context of continental Europe, especially in relation to William’s role as Stadholder-King but also the exiled Stuart court at St Germain near Paris. The evidence presented here supports a number of conclusions. Firstly, war had a profound impact on all aspects of royal image making. Secondly, royal behaviour and involvement in ceremony were vital elements in the visual presentation of monarchy. Kings and queens were of paramount importance, but their consorts were highly significant. Art was also taken seriously by the monarchy and the Crown tightened controls on royal image making during the period in question. The thesis also concludes that the nationalities of the incumbent monarchs and their consorts, along with their previous experiences and personalities, influenced their individual approach to visual representation. These approaches could shift depending on political circumstances and the personal inclinations of the person concerned.
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Image, Isabella Christine. "The anthropology of Hilary of Poitiers." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:4ccc22e2-5831-47b6-9413-9dac5b77ca3f.
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This thesis examines the theology of the fourth-century bishop, Hilary of Poitiers, concentrating particularly on two commentaries written at different times in his life. The thesis starts by examining the texts, and demonstrates that Hilary's commentary on Psalm 118 is loosely speaking a translation of Origen; by comparing both authors with Ambrose, the relationship between Origen and Hilary appears much closer than previously thought. The main body of the thesis examines Hilary's anthropological theology. Three chapters look at created human nature, looking at the relationship between body and soul, human nature as imago dei, and the extent to which human nature can be treated as a platonic universal. The general conclusion is that Hilary is not particularly platonic, and at this stage is not particularly stoic either, but rather is eclectic in his choice of philosophical ideas. The influence of Origen is clear but Hilary only uses Origen's theology critically. There follow four chapters on the Fall and its impact, focussing particularly on its effects on human nature. In particular it is shown that Hilary presages Augustine's teaching of the fallen will; in Hilary the Will is described as being in thrall to her mother-in-law Disobedience. Another human malady is the effect of the passions or emotions, where Hilary is influenced by Stoic ideas of the process of human action; nevertheless, concepts such as apatheia or the propatheiai do not appear in his work. These constraints on human action point towards Hilary's theology of original sin; indeed he appears to be the first author to use the phrase peccata originis in this sense. In the concluding chapter, Hilary's place in the continuum between Origen and Augustine is demonstrated; at very least, original sin cannot be called an African doctrine, since it first is named by Hilary, a Gaul.
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O'Meadhra, Uaininn. "Early Christian, Viking and Romanesque art : motif-pieces from Ireland. 2, A discussion on aspects of find-context and function." Doctoral thesis, Stockholms universitet, Humanistiska fakulteten, 1987. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-84363.
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Dascal, Elana. "Reading midrash as graphic artistic activity, the compilations of Midrash Rabbah as possible influences on early Jewish and Christian art." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1998. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape11/PQDD_0005/MQ43850.pdf.
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Martone, Thomas. "The theme of the conversion of Paul in Italian paintings from the early Christian period to the high Renaissance." New York : Garland Pub, 1985. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/api/volumes/oclc/11970051.html.
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Billot, Bertrand. "Le Christ thaumaturge et magicien : les miracles dans l'art paléochrétien (IIIe - VIème siècle)." Thesis, Paris 1, 2017. http://www.theses.fr/2017PA01H028.
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Cette thèse propose une nouvelle approche des images des miracles du Christ, entre le IIIe et le VIe siècle, basée sur un corpus aspirant à l'exhaustivité. Les images sont dans un premier temps étudiées de manière analytique et structurale : chacun des trente-quatre miracles de Jésus fait l'objet d'une analyse détaillée en ce qui concerne le texte biblique, les représentations paléochrétiennes et les commentaires patristiques contemporains. Les images sont ensuite replacées dans leur contexte historique, social, spatial et théologique, dans une perspective sérielle et statistique, dans le but de reconsidérer leurs fonctions diversifiées. Enfin, un essai d'interprétation synthétique explore au moyen du corpus des miracles la question, très discutée dans l'historiographie, du rapport entre l'activité thaumaturgique du Christ et celle des magiciens et faiseurs de prodiges dans l'Antiquité tardiveThis thesis proposes a new approach of the images of Christ as a miracle worker, between the 3rd and the 6th century, based on a corpus which aims for exhaustivity. In a first time, images are both analyzed in an analytical and structural way : each of the thirty-four miracles of Jesus is the subject of a detailed analysis of the biblical tex t; early Christian representations and contemporary patristic commentaries. Images are then replaced in their historical, social, spatial and theological context, from a serial and statistical perspective, in order to reconsider their diversified functions. Finally, this work explores, through the corpus of miracles, the question often debated in historiography, of the relationships between the thaumaturgical activity of Christ and that of magicians and prodigies makers in Late Antiquity
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Sutherland, Reita J. "Prayer and Piety: The Orans-Figure in the Christian Catacombs of Rome." Thèse, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/24259.
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The orans, although a gesture with a long ‘pagan’ past, was easily adopted by Christians for its symbolic meanings of prayer and piety and quickly attained a number of other more nuanced meanings as it was refined and reused. By restricting the scope of this thesis to the orans in the Christian catacombs of Rome, it becomes possible to approach the figure from a multi-directional perspective, not merely concerned with what the gesture meant to the Christian, but with its literary and material pedigrees, its transition to Christian art, and its cultural significance.
To this end, chapter one examines ‘pagan’ precursors of the Christian orans through an examination of coins, sculptures, inscriptions, and reliefs, as well as by looking at the two figures whose appearance most influences that of the orans – the goddess Pietas, and the Artemisia-Adorans funerary portrait type. Chapter two addresses the importance of the orans in the Christian literary community, and examines not only the actual usage of prayer with raised hands by the Christian faithful, but also examines the aesthetic and theological reasons for the popularity of the gesture – the parallel between the spread arms of the orans and the posture of the crucified Christ. Finally, chapter three presents a spatial-thematic analysis of the usage of the orans in the Roman Christian catacombs, using a corpus of 158 orantes. This chapter enables the reader to draw conclusions about the veracity of the academic theories presented in the previous chapters, as it compares the usage of the orans against its scholarly interpretation.
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Blidstein, Moshe. "'All is pure for the pure' : redefining purity and defilement in early Greek Christianity, from Paul to Origen." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:28de3859-1f90-4227-832d-4830653e198d.
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This thesis examines the meanings of purification practices and purity concepts in early Christian culture, as they were articulated and formed by Greek Christian authors of the first three centuries, from Paul to Origen. As purity and defilement are especially suited for articulating difference, hierarchy and change, these concepts were essential for early Christians, shaping their understanding of human nature, sin, history, and ritual. In parallel, the major Christian practices embodying difference and change, baptism, abstinence from food or sexual activity, were all understood, emoted and shaped as instances of purification. Two broad motivations, at some tension with each other, were at the basis of Christian purity discourse. The first was a substantive motivation: the creation and maintenance of anthropologies and ritual theories coherent with the theological principles of the new religion, and the integration of purity traditions and concepts into these worldviews and theories. The second was a polemic motivation: construction of Christian identity by laying claim to true purity while marking the purity practices and beliefs of others (Jews, pagan or “heretics”) as false. I trace the interplay of these factors through a close reading of second- and third-century Christian Greek authors discussing food abstentions, death defilement, sexuality and baptism, on the background of Greco-Roman and Jewish purity discourses. This thesis demonstrates three central arguments. First, purity and defilement are central concepts for understanding Christian cultures of the second and third centuries. Second, Christianities developed their own conceptions and practices of purity and purification, distinct from those current in contemporary and earlier Jewish and pagan cultures, though decisively influenced by them. Third, concepts and practices of purity and defilement were shifting and contentious, an arena for boundary-marking between Christians and others and between different Christian groups.
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Kopsacheili, Maria. "Palaces and elite residences in the Hellenistic East, late fourth to early first century BC : formation and purpose." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:bc2f6cca-dde4-4d98-9981-16cc3deb4c8e.
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This thesis investigates the morphology and the purpose of palaces in major and minor kingdoms of the Hellenistic World. Elements of architecture, spatial organisation and decoration are analysed in the attempt to clarify issues of chronology and in order to identify function. The analysis places the material into its social and ideological context by taking into consideration the role of kingship ideologies in the formation of space used by royal courts. Comparison with residences of the elite demonstrates the reception of palaces not only as architectural models, but also as mechanisms of power manifestation. Macedonia is the starting point of the discussion as the homeland of the first Hellenistic kings. In the light of evidence recovered in the last twenty years and not comparatively studied before, the chapter brings together various chronological phases of the buildings. Questions of definition and on sources of inspiration are clarified further in the following chapters. The third chapter uses textual evidence and finds from the royal district of Alexandria to understand the meaning of palace architecture for the Ptolemies, while the seat of a local official in Transjordania reveals mechanisms of emulation. In chapter four the case of Pergamene palaces and their relationship with residences in the city demonstrates that formation of these royal seats corresponded to ideals of Attalid kingship. Seats of officials in the Seleukid Empire and palaces in Bactria and Kommagene, the subject of the fifth chapter, provide an insight into the position of palace architecture in processes of hybridisation in material culture. The last chapter is a synthesis of patterns of form and function and unifies the conclusions for each separate region. It emerges that shifts in power relations and the structure of the royal court, especially towards the end of the third century BC, were a crucial factor in shaping palace forms. The concluding chapter also provides a view from the West: examples from the late Roman Republic indicate that the role of Hellenistic palaces as models for power display went beyond the limits of royal courts.
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Schwartzman, Lauren J. "Contest and community : wonder-working in Christian popular literature from the second to the fifth centuries CE." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:a3de02f7-18a9-4363-8bbf-cea5a73eb223.
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In this thesis, I hope to demonstrate that what I call the magic contest tradition, that is the episodes of competitive wonder-working that appear in a wide variety of apocryphal and non-canonical Christian texts, made an important contribution to the development of Christian thought during the second to the fifth centuries CE. This contribution was to articulate ‘the way’ to be a Christian in a world which was not isolated from the secular, and not insulated from the reality of the Roman empire. First, I demonstrate that a tradition of texts which feature magic contests exists within the broader scope of non-canonical Christian literature (looking at this literature across communities, regions and time periods). Second, I identify what the major features of the traditions are, e.g. what form the narratives take, what the form for a magic contest is, and what the principles used to build the magic contests are, and how these principles feature in the texts. The principles I identify are power, authority, ritual, and conversion, as well as their use as historical exempla. Third, I discuss what the texts did in the context of the time period, and for the communities that produced and read them: in other words, how did the this tradition work? I show that they served multiple purposes: as tests of faith, religious truth and ways to proclaim such; as constructors and markers of group identity (and the perilous task of identifying the insiders and those who should be outsiders); as calls to unity within the overarching diversity of the times and places, and a unified front for the ‘battle’ against evil. I suggest that the texts present a model for how one could decide what the ‘true faith’ was and how one could practice it in the turbulent environment that early Christians faced both before and after Constantine.
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Behr, John. "Godly lives : asceticism and anthropology, with special reference to sexuality in the writings of St. Irenaeus of Lyons and St. Clement of Alexandria." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1995. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:cf34ec7b-4b0c-4f4c-ba86-89e438f84db5.
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This thesis aims to restore the balance of modern investigations into Christian asceticism and anthropology by reading the texts of Sts. Irenaeus and Clement within their theological perspectives, and thereby examine the presuppositions determining how we think about sexual difference. In the Introduction I examine the projects of M. Foucault and P. Brown, arguing that they do not remain faithful to the concerns of the texts which they treat. In Part One, I show how asceticism, for Irenaeus, is the expression of the human living the life of God in the body, that which is most characteristically human and the image of God. Sexuality is fundamental to human existence, forming a permanent part of the framework within which humans grow towards God. This growth results from humans acting responsively to the creative activity of God. That God is the source of the life which is lived by humans, demands an openness on their part towards God. Any attempt to avoid the reality of their created nature, for instance, through a self-imposed continence, overturns the basic structure of this relationship. In Part Two, I consider the asceticism proposed by Clement, which strives, through human effort, to achieve a godlike life, buttressing the rational mind, that which is properly human and in the image of God, by the exercise of virtues, so protecting it from disturbances, especially those arising from the body and the vulnerability of dependency. Whilst Clement has a vivid sense of the new life granted in baptism, and praises marriage, this desire for a divine life leads inexorably to the restriction of human sexuality to the function of procreation and its redundancy thereafter. After summarizing, I indicate possible lines for further investigation, and suggest that only within the Irenaean perspective can the issue of sexual difference be raised meaningfully.
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Barush, Kathryn R. ""Every age is a Canterbury pilgrimage" : art and the sacred journey in Britain, c. 1790-1850." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:63e1545c-1362-4bc3-bbc3-b950eecf7c70.
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This thesis examines the intersections of the concept of pilgrimage and the visual imagination in Britain from the years 1790 to 1850. Historically, distinctions between understandings of pilgrimage as motif, metaphor, artistic process, and actual journey have been blurred to varying degrees, resulting in the creation of images that were at once narratives, memorials, and stimuli for contemplative journeys from pictorial space to imagination. In the first half of the nineteenth century, religious architecture, sacred landscapes, and the emblematic figure of the pilgrim with coat, hat, and scrip functioned as temporal reminders of a promised land to come, as mediated through artistic practice. Through a close analysis of a range of interrelated visual sources, I contend that pilgrimage, both in practice and as a form of mental contemplation, helped to shape the religious, literary, and artistic imagination of the period and beyond. This study draws out the various levels at which pilgrimage engaged the visual imagination. In doing so it offers a detailed perspective on the conjunction of content, form, meaning, and process for artists and theorists, as notions of the transfer of ‘spirit’ from sacred space to represented space re-emerged as a key aspect of the theological and artistic discourse of the period. Chapter 1 outlines the antiquarian dissemination of medieval pilgrimage texts and images. I suggest that an awareness of pilgrimage as embodying the real and imagined emerged with the recovery of allegorical texts, histories of actual pilgrimages, and an interest in pilgrimage souvenirs. The discussion moves on to intersections between pilgrimage and religious art in Chapters 2 - 4, including the idea of painting as pilgrimage, as demonstrated through specific case studies, and the refashioning of relics and religious ruins as contemporary sites of pilgrimage (Chapter 5).
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Levine, Adam. "The image of Christ in Late Antiquity : a case study in religious interaction." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:bf630377-9f51-4e53-bb6f-d60d750745d3.
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This dissertation focuses on images of Christ that date from the first half of Late Antiquity, defined as the three centuries between AD 200 and 500. The cultural dynamics of this period left a distinct impression on Christian art, and this dissertation traces that impact. Unlike other studies that attempt to resolve ambiguity within the corpus of Christ images, the argument here maintains that ambiguity was a key component in the creation and subsequent interpretation of the Late Antique Christian iconography. The dissertation proceeds in three parts, each comprising two chapters. In the first section, the history and historiography of the image of Christ is explored, and a methodology capable of accommodating the diverse meanings assigned to the Christ’s discrepant and ambiguous iconographies is developed. In order to better understand the socio-religious environment in which the first images of Christ were produced and interpreted, the second section of the dissertation moves away from material culture and towards method and theory. The notion that interpretation is a group level phenomenon is critiqued, and a model explaining how individuals in Late Antiquity could have made sense of ambiguous images of Christ is advanced. The final section turns back to the material culture and applies the framework developed in the second section to two artworks: (1) the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus and (2) the floor mosaic from the Hinton St. Mary Roman Villa now in the British Museum. By complementing the standard analyses of Christian art with interpretations grounded in the diverse interactions viewers had with artworks, new perspectives will emerge that provide a fuller picture of Late Antique Christianity and the iconography of its godhead alike.
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Jacobs, Philip Walker. "The reception history and interpretation of the New Testament portrayals of Joseph the carpenter in nativity and infancy portrayals in early Christian and early medieval narratives and art from the second-cenury to the ninth century CE." Thesis, Bangor University, 2013. https://research.bangor.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/the-reception-history-and-interpretation-of-the-new-testament-portrayals-of-joseph-the-carpenter-in-nativity-and-infancy-portrayals-in-early-christian-and-early-medieval-narratives-and-art-from-the-second-century-to-the-ninth-century-ce(ce638107-800d-44d0-9405-56f3f763ccc9).html.
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This thesis undertakes the task of tracing and documenting the development of the Wirkungsgeschichte of the portrayals of Joseph in the canonic gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John, within early Christian and early medieval narratives and art between the period of approximately 150 CE and 800 CE. After providing an initial review of the current state of scholarly research into the subject of the development of the Wirkungsgeschichte of the canonical portrayals of Joseph in Part I, this study then provides a detailed reading, by means of literary and narrative analysis, of the portrayals of Joseph in Matthew, Luke, and John in Part 11. The thesis then traces and documents the development of these earlier portrayals of Joseph in four non-canonic narratives, the Infancy Gospel of James, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, the History of Joseph the Carpenter, and the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and in eighteen works of art, in Parts III and IV . IIJ the process of this analysis several different concerns are addressed. These include: the date, provenance, purpose, and content of the various narratives and compositions; the characterization of Joseph they portray; the independence and distinctiveness these later literary and artistic representations of Joseph exhibit from earlier canonic and non-canonic literary referents and prior artistic creations of Joseph; and the different perceptions and beliefs narrators and artists and their respective ecclesiastical communities held with regard to Joseph. At the same time, consideration is given to the prospect of patterns or trajectories that might emerge as the review occurs. Attention to the development of this in the four non-canonic narratives leads to the discovery of the presence of two trajectories - one that affirms, enhances, and continues the positive narrative portrayals of Joseph found in the canonic literature (and is found to be present in two of these texts); the other that diminishes these portrayals (and is found to be present in the other two texts).
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Cichy, Andrew Stefan. "'How shall we sing the song of the Lord in a strange land?' : English Catholic music after the Reformation to 1700 : a study of institutions in Continental Europe." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:0bdfe9b2-b5c6-48fe-a565-ddb699b72312.
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Research on English Catholic Music after the Reformation has focused almost entirely on a small number of Catholic composers and households in England. The music of the English Catholic colleges, convents, monasteries and seminaries that were established in Continental Europe, however, has been almost entirely overlooked. The chief aim of this thesis is to reconstruct the musical practices of these institutions from the Reformation until 1700, in order to arrive at a clearer understanding of the nature of music in the post-Reformation English Catholic community. To this end, four institutions have been selected to serve as case studies: 1. The Secular English College, Douai. 2. St Alban’s College, Valladolid. 3. The Benedictine Monastery of Our Lady of the Assumption, Brussels. 4. The Augustinian Monastery of Our Lady of Nazareth, Bruges. The music of these institutions is evaluated in two ways: firstly, as a means of constructing, reflecting and forming English Catholic identity, and secondly, in terms of the range of influences (both English and Continental) that shaped its stylistic development. The thesis concludes that as a result of the peculiarly domestic nature of religious practice among Catholics in England, and interactions with Continental Catholicism, the aesthetic and ideological bases for English Catholic music were markedly different from those of its Protestant counterpart. The marked influence of Italianate styles on the sacred music of English Catholic composers and institutions in exile demonstrates a simultaneous process of cultural alignment with the aesthetic and theological principles of the Counter-Reformation, and dissociation from those of English Protestantism. Finally, it is clear that music was an important formational tool in both the seminaries and convents, where it shaped both community and self-identity, and created affinities with the locales in which these institutions were situated – although it is also clear that these uses of music had the potential to conflict.
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Lee, Adam S. "The Platonism of Walter Pater." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:5a0d6f60-85cf-4835-8212-0e7ad1561dcc.
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After graduating from the Literae Humaniores course, which after the mid-nineteenth century came to revolve around Plato’s Republic, Walter Pater’s (1839-1894) professional duties spanning thirty years at Oxford were those of a philosophy teacher and lecturer of Plato. This thesis examines Pater’s deep engagement with Platonism in his work, from his earliest known piece, “Diaphaneitè” (1864), to his final book, Plato and Platonism (1893), treating both his criticism and fiction, including his studies on myth. Plato is an ideal philosopher, critic, and artist to Pater, exemplifying a literary craftsman who blends genres with the highest authority. Platonism is a point of contact with several of Pater’s contemporaries, such as Arnold and Wilde, from which we can take new measure of their critical relationships regarding aestheticism and Decadence. Pater’s idea of aesthetic education takes Platonism for its model, which heightens one’s awareness of reality in the recognition of form and matter. Platonism also provides a framework for critical encounters with figures across history, such as Wordsworth, Michelangelo and Pico della Mirandola in The Renaissance (1873), Marcus Aurelius and Apuleius in Marius the Epicurean (1885), and Montaigne and Giordano Bruno in Gaston de Latour (1896). In the manner Platonism holds that soul or mind is the essence of a person, Pater’s criticism, evident even in his fiction, seeks the mind of the author, so that his writing enacts Platonic love. Through close reading, we highlight his many references to Plato, identify Platonic subjects and themes, and explore etymological nuances in the very selection of his words, which often reveals a Platonic tendency of refinement towards immateriality, from seen to unseen beauty. As a teacher and an author Pater helped shape Oxonian Platonism, and through his writing we examine how Platonism informs his philosophy of aesthetics, history, myth, epistemology, ethics, language, and style.
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Körber, Ulrike. "The journey of artifacts: The study and characterization of a nucleus of lacquered Luso-Asian objects from the 16th and 17th centuries." Doctoral thesis, Universidade de Évora, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10174/25788.
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This thesis examines a group of objects produced for Catholic Europeans in the scope of the Portuguese maritime explorations and Catholic missions in Asia in the 16th and 17th centuries. Embellished with Asian lacquer coatings, their heterogeneous character and complex mix of decorative elements, artistic and craft traditions has led to various attributions regarding their production, including classification as Indo- Portuguese, Sino-Portuguese, Japanese nanban or Ryūkyūan. This study arose over discrepancies between these presumed identifications and their actual physical features. Taking a multi-disciplinary approach, it combined formal and esthetic examination with material analysis, while also considering the cultural and geo-political context, contemporary Asian lacquer traditions, and similar decorative techniques. In addition to refining the fundamentals of lacquer conservation it also led to a reconsideration of the accepted attributions of these objects. As a result, the study sheds new light on our understanding of European and Asian relations in a period critical to the shaping of our modern world; RESUMO: A Viagem dos Artefactos: O Estudo e a Caracterização de um Núcleo de Objetos Lacados Luso-Asiáticos dos Séculos XVI e XVII
Esta tese examina um conjunto de objetos produzidos para europeus católicos no âmbito das explorações marítimas portuguesas e missões católicas na Ásia nos séculos XVI e XVII. Embelezados com revestimentos de laca asiática, o seu carácter heterogéneo e a mistura complexa de elementos decorativos, tradições artísticas e artesanais levaram a várias atribuições em relação à sua produção, incluindo classificações como indo- português, sino-português, japonês nanban ou Ryūkyū. Este estudo surgiu devido a discrepâncias entre essas presumidas identificações e as suas características físicas reais. Ao adoptar uma abordagem multidisciplinar, esta investigação combinou o exame formal e estético com a análise dos materiais, considerando também o contexto cultural e geopolítico, as tradições contemporâneas de laca asiática e as suas técnicas decorativas similares. Além de refinar os fundamentos da conservação da laca, também levou a uma reconsideração das atribuições aceites relativamente a esses objetos. Como resultado, esse estudo lança nova luz sobre a nossa compreensão das relações europeias e asiáticas num período crítico para a formação de nosso mundo moderno.
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Moore, Nicholas J. ""Not to offer himself again and again" : an exegetical and theological study of repetition in the Letter to the Hebrews." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:7402e9b1-28f1-4075-b407-dd02c30c1d20.
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Repetition has received a bad press in certain streams of theological tradition; this reception has in part been caused by, and has in turn affected, readings of the Letter to the Hebrews, which speaks about repetition in ways unique in the New Testament. The present study addresses the insufficient critical attention paid to repetition in Hebrews, challenging the assumption that it functions uniformly and negatively throughout the letter, and exploring the variety of ways in which Hebrews presents repetition. The plurality of prophetic speech displays God’s manifold kindness in the old covenant; such speech is not opposed to but is fulfilled in Christ’s coming, and its ongoing repetition in the new covenant through citation and exposition serves to promote and explicate that event. Repeated mutual encouragement is essential to persevering in the Christian life and avoiding apostasy. And the regular entry of the Levitical priests into the outer sanctuary of the tabernacle in Heb 9.6 foreshadows the continual access to God achieved through Christ. Where repetition has a negative or contrastive role in the author’s argumentation, it does not cause inefficacy but rather indicates a weakness whose source is elsewhere – and which, moreover, is revealed fully only in the light of the Christ event. The uniqueness of Christ and of his death construed as a sacrifice, developed from concepts of singularity in Day of Atonement and early Christian crucifixion traditions, forms a unifying strand in the letter’s Christology. Rather than functioning in simple opposition to repetition, this singularity corresponds to continuity and eternity, and is developed at times in contrast to, and at times in correspondence with, repetition. The study thus offers a reappraisal of repetition in Hebrews, laying the foundations for renewed appreciation of the importance of repetition for theological discourse and religious life.
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Merlin, Monica. "The late Ming courtesan Ma Shouzhen (1548-1604) : visual culture, gender and self-fashioning in the Nanjing pleasure quarter." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:0da584bf-16fc-4372-8a1b-b97afd3bcf8a.
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Ma Shouzhen (1548-1604) was a cultured courtesan who lived in the famous pleasure quarter along the Qinhuai River in Nanjing, the southern capital of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). She was talented in dance and music, painting and poetry, and surprisingly for her time, she was also a playwright. Although she was a celebrity of the prolific Nanjing cultural milieu and there is a good corpus of extant material by and about her, the particular contribution of Ma Shouzhen - her character and her work - have been marginalised, or even neglected, by the previous scholarship. This thesis is a cross-disciplinary study of Ma Shouzhen and is the first in-depth scholarly investigation into the entirety of her activities. It employs material and methods traditionally pertaining to the disciplines of sinology, history, art history, literary and drama studies. The thesis has a dual aim: first, to provide a nuanced understanding of the courtesan, her cultural production and social practice; second, to reclaim the agency and legacy of her character within the cultural milieu of late Ming Nanjing and beyond. These aims will be achieved through two main research objectives: (1) recovering and re-evaluating visual and written sources by and about the courtesan; (2) investigating those sources in order to comprehend her modes of self-representation and strategies of self-fashioning, analysed especially through the lens of gender. The main body of the thesis is composed of an introduction, five core chapters, and an epilogue; the chapters are structured so as to provide as complete a picture of Ma Shouzhen as possible. Chapter Two explores the space of the pleasure quarter, Ma’s biography and its entwinement within the complexities of the historical moment. Chapter Three focuses on her painting, Chapter Four considers her poetry, and Chapter Five explores her theatre practice; Chapter Six extends the investigation to focus on the construction of Ma’s historical character in later decades. In its content and aims, this thesis contributes to women’s and gender history, as well as to studies in visual culture and literature.
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Stuart-Buttle, Tim. "Classicism, Christianity and Ciceronian academic scepticism from Locke to Hume, c.1660-c.1760." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:a181f810-9637-4b70-a147-ea9444a54cd5.
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This study explores the rediscovery and development of a tradition of Ciceronian academic scepticism in British philosophy between c.1660-c.1760. It considers this tradition alongside two others, recently recovered by scholars, which were recognised by contemporaries to offer opposing visions of man, God and the origins of society: the Augustinian-Epicurean, and the neo-Stoic. It presents John Locke, Conyers Middleton and David Hume as the leading figures in the revival of the tradition of academic scepticism. It considers their works in relation to those of Anthony Ashley Cooper, third earl of Shaftesbury, and Bernard Mandeville, whose writings refashioned respectively the neo-Stoic and Augustinian-Epicurean traditions in influential ways. These five individuals explicitly identified themselves with these late Hellenistic philosophical traditions, and sought to contest and redefine conventional estimations of their meaning and significance. This thesis recovers this debate, which illuminates our understanding of the development of the ‘science of man’ in Britain. Cicero was a central figure in Locke’s attempt to explain, against Hobbes, the origins of society and moral consensus independent of political authority. Locke was a theorist of societies, religious and civil. He provided a naturalistic explanation of moral motivation and sociability which, drawing heavily from Cicero, emphasised the importance of men’s concern for the opinions of others. Locke set this within a Christian divine teleology. It was Locke’s theologically-grounded treatment of moral obligation, and his attack on Stoic moral philosophy, that led to Shaftesbury’s attempt to vindicate Stoicism. This was met by Mandeville’s profoundly Epicurean response. The consequences of the neo-Epicurean and neo-Stoic traditions for Christianity were explored by Middleton, who argued that only academic scepticism was consistent with Christian belief. Hume explored the relationship between morality and religion with continual reference to Cicero. He did so, in contrast to Locke or Middleton, to banish entirely moral theology from philosophy.
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Tycz, Katherine Marie. "Material prayers : the use of text in early modern Italian domestic devotions." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2018. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/276240.
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While scholarship often focuses on how early modern Italians used images in their devotions, particularly in the post-Tridentine era, little attention has been placed upon how laypeople engaged with devotional text during times of prayer and in their everyday lives. Studies of early modern devotional texts have explored their literary content, investigated their censorship by the Church, or concentrated upon an elite readership. This thesis, instead, investigates how ordinary devotees interacted with holy words in their material form, which I have termed ‘material prayers’. Since this thesis developed under the aegis of the interdisciplinary research project, Domestic Devotions: The Place of Piety in the Italian Renaissance Home, 1400-1600, it focuses primarily on engagement with these material prayers in domestic spaces. Using an interdisciplinary approach drawing from material culture studies, literary history, social and cultural history, and art history, it brings together objects, images and archival sources to illuminate how devotees from across the socio-economic and literacy spectrums accessed and employed devotional text in their prayers and daily life. From holy words, Biblical excerpts, and prayers to textual symbols like the Sacred Monogram of the Name of Jesus, this thesis explores how and why these material prayers were employed for spiritual, apotropaic and intercessory purposes. It analyses material prayers not only in traditional textual formats (printed books and manuscripts), but also those that were printed on single-sheets of paper, inscribed on jewellery, or etched into the structure of the home. To convey how devotees engaged with and relied upon these material prayers, it considers a variety of inscribed objects, including those sanctioned by the Church as well as those which might be questioned or deemed ‘superstitious’ by ecclesiastical authorities. Sermons, Inquisition trial records, and other archival documents have been consulted to further illuminate the material evidence. The first part of the thesis, ‘On the Body’, considers the how devotees came into personal contact with texts by wearing prayers on their bodies. It examines a range of objects including prayers with protective properties, known as brevi, that were meant to be sealed in a pouch and worn around the neck, and more luxurious items of physical adornment inscribed with devotional and apotropaic text, such as necklaces and rings. The second part of the thesis enters the home to explore how the spaces people inhabited and the objects that populated their homes were decorated with material prayers. ‘In the Home’ begins with texts inscribed over the entryways of early modern Italian homes, and then considers how devotees decorated their walls with holy words and how the objects of devotion and household life were imbued with religious significance through the addition of pious inscriptions. By analysing these personal objects and the textual domestic sphere, this thesis argues that these material prayers cut across socio-economic classes, genders, and ages to embody quotidian moments of domestic devotion as well as moments of fear, anxiety and change.
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Kiracofe, James Bartholomay. "Architectural fusion and indigenous ideology in early colonial Mexico : a case study of Teposcolula, Oaxaca, 1535-1580, demonstrating cultural transmission and transformation through negotiation and consent in planning a new urban environment /." Diss., This resource online, 1996. http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-11082006-133633/.
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Rochard, Héléna. "Les peintures murales des "chapelles" de Baouît (VIe-IXe siècles) : images d’une communauté monastique en Égypte byzantine et arabe." Thesis, Paris Sciences et Lettres (ComUE), 2017. http://www.theses.fr/2017PSLEP012.
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Les peintures murales de Baouît ont suscité dès leur découverte l’intérêt des historiens de l’art et en particulier des spécialistes de l’Orient chrétien. Devenues un corpus emblématique de l’art copte, à la charnière de l’Antiquité tardive et du haut Moyen Âge, elles représentent une manne iconographique d’autant plus exceptionnelle que les décors de cette période sont rares autour du bassin méditerranéen. Tout en se faisant l’écho des édifices protobyzantins en grande partie disparus, elles rendent compte d’une communauté monastique florissante au début de l’époque arabe. Elles constituent également une source précieuse, complémentaire des textes, sur la vie spirituelle des moines d’Égypte. La présente étude est le fruit d’une synthèse opérée entre la relecture de la documentation ancienne et les données apportées par les investigations récentes. La reprise des travaux archéologiques sur le site invitait à reconsidérer l’ensemble du matériel pictural mis au jour au début du XXe siècle, en vue notamment de préciser, à la lumière des programmes iconographiques et des nouvelles découvertes, la fonction et la datation desdites chapelles. Enfin, elle apporte un éclairage unique sur les peintres qui ont œuvré à Baouît et qui ont transmis, par l’intermédiaire de leur travail pictural, une image de leur communauté et une part de la spiritualité égyptienneSince their discovery, the wall paintings from Bawit aroused art historians’ interest, especially among scholars of the Christian East. They are an emblematic corpus of Coptic art, in the transition period between the Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Their significance is even more exceptional, considering the fact that they are very few around the Mediterranean basin. While echoing the largely extinct early byzantine buildings, they reflect a flourishing monastic community at the beginning of the Arab era. They are also a valuable source of information, complementary to the texts, about the spiritual life of the Egyptian monks. This study is the result of a synthesis between the proofreading of the archives and the data provided by the recent investigations. The new start of excavations on the site invited us to reconsider all the pictorial material discovered at the beginning of the 20th century, in order to clarify the function and the date of the said “chapels”, in the light of the iconographic programs and new discoveries. Finally, it gives a unique insight of the painters who have worked at Bawit and who have transmitted, through their pictorial work, an image of their community and a part of the Egyptian spirituality