This thesis examines Pieter Bruegel the Elder's Fortitude, 1560, a print from the Seven Virtues series. Fortitude stands out as an anomaly within the cycle because it contains several allusions to the Book of Revelation. The linkage of Fortitude to the writings of St. John is important because it challenges previous iconographic and iconological analyses of the composition. Analysis of Fortitude's compositional elements is provided, along with an examination of the virtue tradition. Additionally, an exploration of sixteenth-century apocalypticism is included, as well as an examination of the artistic influences that may have inspired Bruegel. This thesis concludes that Fortitude's apocalyptic allusions do not seem unusual for an artist familiar with St. John's prophecies, influenced by Hieronymus Bosch, and living in an age of apocalypticism.

No description available.

The political career of Gaius Marius (ca. 157-86 BC}, which spans the years between 120 and 86 BC, was memorable not only for its unprecedented personal and public triumphs, but was also of momentous significance in the whole history of the Roman Republic. At precisely the time that Marius achieved a supreme position in the state, the military might of the Romans, hitherto invincible at least in fairly recent times (second century}, had been dealt a series of humiliating setbacks abroad. Firstly, in North Africa by a rather minor despot, Jugurtha the king of Numidia. Secondly, much closer to home in Illyria and in southern Gaul by the migrating Germanic tribes, the Cimbri and the Teutones. Against this background of quite unremitting disaster, Marius obtained a place in republican political life which had not been witnessed before. In his pursuit of senatorial offices, Marius initially experienced both victories and disappointments (success in the tribunician elections but failure in elections for the aedileship) before finally winning the prestigious consulship in the elections held in 108. Thereafter, he was consul a further six times, and five of these consulships were held in successive years between 104 and 100. Just as he was dominant on the field of battle against the Numidians and the Germanic tribes, so, too, did he control the politics of the city during the decade from 108 to 99: The chapters which follow below set out to trace Marius' long rise to preeminence, his contribution to the intricate tribunician legislation of the period in which he flourished and, moreover, his involvement with other senior political figures who were his contemporaries. Furthermore, this biographical study seeks to fully expose the fact that, as a result of his participation in the politics of the time, Marius' career became an obvious example which other equally ambitious politicians (for instance, Sulla, Pompey, Crassus, Caesar and Octavian) sought to emulate or even to surpass. Consequently, Marius may not have realised the extent of the dangers which he bequeathed to the res publica but, inadvertently or not, he caused the beginning of the fall of the Roman Republic. / D. Litt. et Phil. (Ancient History) / History

Current pentecostal scholarship is attempting to articulate pentecostal theological distinctives. For hermeneutics, this involves both a descriptive and a prescriptive approach to the use of the Bible. The descriptive approach appraises the historical roots of pentecostalism, which include the Wesleyan I Holiness movement, the radical Reformation, Tertullian and Montanism, and earliest charismatic communities. These understood Christian Scripture as guidelines to a Way of behaviour and testimony, rather than a source-book of doctrine. This 'alternative history' experienced the Enlightenment on a different level to protestantism and fundamentalism. Many of the concerns of historical church theology and hermeneutics during the last centuries are thus not always shared by pentecostals. The choice is: articulate a distinctive pentecostal hermeneutic, or 'borrow' from non-pentecostal theology. The prescriptive approach first investigates some of the latter options: some identify closely with conservative evangelical hermeneutics. Others prefer the political hermeneutic of the socio-political contextual theologies. The burgeoning Faith Movement has influenced many pentecostals. Some pentecostal scholars show interest in 'post-modern' literary theory. A viable pentecostal hermeneutic might be prescribed as follows: It respects the demands of scientific method, not ignoring the concerns of contemporary hermeneutical philosophy and literary theory. It highlights specifically pentecostal concerns: the teleology of any encounter with the text; historical continuity with the early church groups; implementation, demonstration and realisation of the literal intent of the text; the role of biblical narrative in defining experience of God; and the authority granted ongoing revelation via the charismata in the light of the canon. Application of a pentecostal hermeneutic would emphasise an holistic understanding of Scripture, the crucial role of the charismatic community, awareness of issues in the ongoing hermeneutical debate, and the need for the interpreter's personal ongoing charismatic experience. In a distinctively pentecostal exegesis of 1 Corinthians 14 prophecy is discussed as normal liturgical activity, as a confrontation of outsiders and unbelievers, in terms of its regulation, and in the light of spiritual discernment / Biblical and Ancient Studies / Th. D. (New Testament)

In 896 Pope Stephen VI put the corpse of his predecessor, Pope Formosus, on trial in a Church synod in Rome, known since as the Cadaver Synod. The pontificate and the ordinations of Formosus were annulled and he was reburied in a pilgrims' cemetery from which his body was quickly removed and thrown into the Tiber. It still is generally assumed that Formosus was tried as revenge for his having betrayed Lambert of Spoleto by inviting Arnulf of Carinthia to become emperor, and that Pope Stephen VI was carrying out the wishes of Lambert and his mother. This dissertation, by examining the entire career of Formosus as well as the manuscript evidence for the Cadaver Synod and the 898 Synod of Ravenna, which overturned it, will present a new view of what happened in this neglected period of European history. In so doing, it has reached very different conclusions about the trial and its purpose.

This dissertation provides a model for understanding the relation between shifting imperial and post-imperial geopolitics and cultural change in diverse local communities. Specifically, I offer a new perspective on the debate in ancient history regarding “Hellenization,” i.e., the adoption and adaptation of Greek cultural idioms by non-Greek communities. Despite recent advances in emphasizing local communities’ agency in the “Hellenization” process, scholars tend to maintain a rigid dichotomy of monolithic “Greek” vs. “local” culture, and do not offer a comprehensive model accounting for variations in changes, and continuity, by region or time. I propose such a model for the late- and post-Seleucid Levant, and offer significant insights into Hellenistic, Phoenician and Jewish history. I argue that following the Seleucid conquest in the early second century BCE, diverse local communities began competing against each other for imperial favor by often resorting to a form of particularistic ethnic discourse, which emphasized claims to ancestral, pre-Hellenistic identities. In a paradoxical process, however, competing communities often adopted Greek cultural idioms to support these particularistic claims. While it is shown how the specific Greek cultural idioms adapted, varied according to sub-region and period, leadership, and geopolitical situation, it is argued that the idiosyncratic competitive dynamic, fostered by Seleucid power, incentivizing both particularistic discourse and the adoption of new Greek cultural idioms, proved pivotal in allowing diverse communities to develop a Greek cultural “infrastructure.” The political-cultural analysis allows us to broaden and nuance our understanding of subsequent Seleucid disintegration. By better integrating the literary and epigraphical sources with a fresh approach to the numismatic evidence (including the study of some unpublished collections) and taking into account the dramatic archaeological advances of the past two decades, I propose a new model for Seleucid decline. The “concessionist” dynamic outlined by recent scholarship, according to which local elites exploited Seleucid dynastic rivalries to extract privileges, needs to be qualified. While describing well the situation in some communities, such as Hasmonaean Judaea, it is not adequate for cities on the Phoenician coast. Rather, I propose an alternative “loyalist-secessionist” model, stressing the greater importance of external actors, especially the underappreciated role of the Ptolemies and a new understanding of Rome’s indirect involvement. The cultural implications for this novel political-historical model come to the fore following a watershed in Seleucid political history, the death of King Antiochus VII in 129 BCE. In an anarchic late-Hellenistic world, smaller cities, such as Tyre and Sidon, upon becoming independent, sought new alliances by re-utilizing their Greek cultural “infrastructure” towards greater institutional and cultic homology with Greek peer polities. In the absence of Seleucid pressure towards particularism, by contrast, traditional elements were rendered obsolete or even counterproductive to these new efforts. Thus, only at this stage of independence from Hellenistic empire non-Greek cultural elements atrophied, explaining the loss of Phoenician language in this period and the decline in sites of native cult. In other words, it was not a long, linear process of “Hellenization” but concrete, largely contingent, historical factors that explain this development in the specific time and place. In the neighboring Hasmonaean kingdom, by contrast, a series of contingent events (e.g., the “Judaization” of the Idumaeans) created a power-multiplier that put the kingdom onto a different trajectory. Prioritizing imperialistic ambitions, and shifting their own Greek “infrastructure” accordingly, they were not incentivized to similarly abandon traditional language and cult. Rather, by adopting a new ethos of a Hellenistic court, the kingdom facilitated the coalescing of newly-Judaized elites around the Hasmonaean dynasty and Jerusalem, fostering a metrocentric imperialistic outlook which paradoxically complemented and cemented rather than replaced the Yahwistic cult and a sense of Jewish particularism. This, I argue, is a key, hitherto overlooked, factor in the continuity of particularistic Jewish identity, which may help historicize and elucidate the seeming Jewish “exceptionalism” in the region. Put differently, the observed cultural divergence between Levantine communities, clearly apparent by the Roman period, can, in fact, be traced to, and elucidated by a specific historical moment, the common experiences of Seleucid imperial domination and the contingent effects of it collapse in the course of the 2nd century BCE.

Over the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, canvas substituted panel or wall as the preferred support for painting in Venice, moving from the periphery to the core of artmaking. As it did so, canvas became key to the artistic processes and novel pictorial language developed by painters like Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese. Sixteenth-century critics associated canvas with painting in Venice, a connection that has persisted to become a veritable trope of Venetian art history. Despite this, we have hitherto lacked a convincing account of Venetian canvas supports and their impact. This dissertation, by examining the adoption, development, and significance of canvas in Venetian art over the period 1400 to 1600, attempts to provide one. Approaching canvas from multiple perspectives, this project offers a deeper understanding of what early modern canvas was at a material level, how it was made and supplied to painters, and its catalyzing role in early modern Venetian art. By tracing precisely how canvas operates within paintings, focusing on lodestar examples whilst drawing on extensive and intensive object-based research carried out on a large corpus, this thesis demonstrates how actively canvas participated in the elaboration of the pictorial poetics of mature Cinquecento art in Venice. It argues that we owe the existence of this distinctive artistic idiom in no small part to the twist of a yarn, the roughness of a thread, the thickness of a stitch. Canvas was critical to both the making and the meaning of these pictures. The wider aims of the project are twofold: on the one hand, to model a methodology that integrates approaches such as visual, textual, and sociocultural analysis with technical art history and conservation-informed comprehension of the materially altered nature of art objects; on the other, to contribute to an account of the history of an art form—the canvas picture—that still occupies a central role in the global art world today.

No description available.

This thesis traces the revival of Senecan tragedy from 1570 to the end of the sixteenth century through some of the earlier translations, adaptations, and imitations, and to evaluate the significance of the final evolution of such works into the Elizabethan tragedy of revenge.

My project examines the pictorial and theoretical dimensions of the concept of melancholy as they were understood, expressed, and, most importantly, figured by Renaissance artists. By focusing on the figural pose traditionally associated with the melancholic state and humor, it presents a hitherto unexplored connection between Northern and Southern Europe, considering the different ways in which artists self-identified as melancholics and expressed this understanding in their art. In both Italy and the North, the basic figural structure is appropriated for somewhat different ends. The relationship of the isolated figure to its cultural context varies, either declaring a special creative status, responsive to a higher inspiration, or setting the figure apart as an outsider with special insight into the follies of this lower world. Chapter One serves as an introduction to the pose of melancholy, its historical weight and the visual meaning carried by the isolated, brooding figure, generally wth lowered head supported by a hand and often with legs crossed. This is the figure epitomized in Dürer's Melancolia I. Chapter Two considers Michelangelo as the exemplar of a melancholic and addresses the cultural and personal identification of him as such. The relevance of the melancholy pose to the identification of the artist in sixteenth-century Italy is demonstrated by Raphael's depiction of the melancholy Heraclitus in The School of Athens, which I accept as portrait of Michelangelo; articulated in his poetry, the artist's self-identification as melancholic is visually declared in his Last Judgment. Chapter Three addresses the works of Hieronymus Bosch, in whose art the figure of melancholy runs as something of a leitmotif, although it has remained generally unobserved; the figure serves as a running comment on the thematic concerns of the paintings--such as The Garden of Earthly Delights and Death and the Miser--at once participant and outsider. Chapter Four explores the role of melancholics in specific paintings by Bruegel, especially The Triumph of Death, and the relationship between melancholics and fools in the artist's oeuvre. Chapter Five has at its focus Titian's Flaying of Marsyas and the artist's self-inclusion in the guise of the melancholy Midas. As a conclusion, this chapter reflects on the personal significance of melancholy for Renaissance artists.