Download or read book Civic Priests written by Marietta Horster and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2011-11-30 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Images and inscriptions on monuments can show us how priests and cult personnel saw themselves and were viewed by others, illuminating the social and political identity of these figures within their polis. Dedications and donations by cult personnel, and the honours that they earned, demonstrate their claim on the city’s attention and their financial power. The cityscape itself came to be shaped, in varying intensities and forms, by statues in honour of cult personnel, set up by relatives, fellow citizens and other groups. This set of cultural records, analysed in the studies presented here, is central to understanding how the roles of priests and priestesses were constructed in social and political terms in post-classical Athens. The approaches are both historical and archaeological, and elucidate the religious functions that the cult personnel fulfilled for the city, and their perception, by themselves and by others, as citizens of the polis.
Download or read book The Civic World of Professional Associations in the Roman East written by Onno M. van Nijf and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-01-16 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nijf, Onno M. van The Civic World of Profesional Associations in the Roman East 1997 This study examines the mentalité of craftsmen and traders in the Greek cities of the Roman empire through the epigraphic evidence for their membership of private associations based on shared profession. It places these associations firmly in the context of the civic world of the cities in which they were active. The author argues that such inscriptions are not straightforward and unproblematic records of reality, but rather were important elements in the strategies of self-definition practised by these associations. Epigraphic commemoration was used to transform private activities into public events; epitaphs and honorific inscriptions spoke a public language which aimed to present the associations of craftsmen and traders as status groups alongside other, well-established groups. The author investigates how successful the members of professional associations were in this form of epigraphic self-fashioning, through a discussion of their role in public ceremonial. The associations were present in public banquets and distributions, they took part in public processions, and they had reserved seats in theatres and stadia of the cities. Professional associations can thus be seen as taking their place in the hierarchy of status groups which made up the Greek city under Roman rule. This book makes an important contribution to the study of private sociability in the ancient world; it sheds new light on the nature of civic life in the Greek cities of the Roman empire; and it proposes a new approach to reading epigraphy.
Download or read book Civic Rites written by Nancy Evans and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Civic Rites clearly demonstrates the complete interdependence of religion and democracy in Athens, illustrating just how much the ancient Athenians' view of the relationship between these powerful forces differs from that in twenty-first century, Western democracies. Evans has provided a systematic, thorough, and lively treatment, liberating readers from modern expectations and offering a new window onto Athenian society."_Loren J. Samons, author of What's Wrong with Democracy? From Athenian Practice to American Worship "It is a double task the author has undertaken: to demonstrate the interdependence, nay, integration of politics and religion in the high days of 'democratic' Athens and to bring this special form of 'democracy' home to a contemporary non-specialist public. She brilliantly succeeds in both, presenting a clear and poignant narrative with graphic details. Civic Rites is a novel and fascinating course through a seemingly well-known field."_Walter Burkert, author of Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth "In equal measures intelligent, accessible, and well-informed, this book provides a contemporary introduction to classical Athenian religious practices and their manifold cultural significance. Evans interweaves overviews of political, economic, and social history with engaging descriptions of several major Attic rites. This book will interest specialists while providing students with an illuminating pathway into the familiar yet alien world of ancient Greek religion."_Deborah Boedeker, Brown University "With vivid, elegant writing and compelling imagination, Nancy Evans recreates the complex interaction of religion and politics in the ancient Athenian Democracy. Deftly interweaving chapters on cult and on political developments, she shows the general reader an Athens that is stranger to modern sensibilities than we often realize, and yet one from which we can learn many things about democratic life. A wonderful achievement."_Martha Nussbaum, author of The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy
Download or read book Political Religions in the Greco Roman World written by Charlotte Dunn and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2019-06-04 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Until the 1980s, historical treatments of ancient religion focused mainly on myth, cult and ritual as a way to interpret the mental structures or primary emotions of ancient peoples, but, in the last few decades, a “political turn” in the study of religion has taken hold. This volume serves to diversify our understanding of the political conceptualizations and implementations of religious practice in the ancient Mediterranean region from the 7th Century BCE to the 4th Century CE, in both Greek and Roman contexts. The underlying question taken up here is: in what situations was Greco-Roman religious practice articulated, communicated, and perceived in political contexts, both real and imagined? Written by experts in the fields of archaeology, linguistics, art history, historiography, political science and religion, the chapters of this volume engage the plurality and the diversity of the Greco-Roman religious experience as it receives and negotiates power relations.
Download or read book Cities and Priests written by Marietta Horster and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-10-29 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cultural records such as dedications, honorific statues and decrees are keys to understanding the manifold and diverse social roles and religious functions of priesthoods in the cities of Asia Minor and the Aegean islands from the classical period to late antiquity. These texts and images indicate how the priests and priestesses saw themselves and were viewed by others. The approaches in this volume are historical, religious, and archaeological, and they elucidate the religious functions that the cult personnel fulfilled for the city, and the perception of priests and priestesses as citizens of the polis. The volume focuses on developments from the Hellenistic period into Imperial times. Subjects include: gendered priesthoods and family traditions, the topography of honorary statues and the presentation of funerary monuments, federal and civic priesthoods as well as priests of private cult-foundations, benefactions and social pressure, and the religious, social and political functions of priests and priestesses within cities.
Download or read book Private Worship Public Values and Religious Change in Late Antiquity written by Kimberly Diane Bowes and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2008-07-28 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conventional histories of late antique Christianity tell the story of a public institution - the Christian church. In this book, Kim Bowes relates another history, that of the Christian private. Using textual and archaeological evidence, she examines the Christian rituals of home and rural estate, which took place outside the supervision of bishops and their agents. These domestic rituals and the spaces in which they were performed were rooted in age-old religious habits. They formed a major, heretofore unrecognized force in late ancient Christian practice. The religion of home and family, however, was not easily reconciled with that of the bishop's church. Domestic Christian practices presented challenges to episcopal authority and posed thorny questions about the relationship between individuals and the Christian collective. As Bowes suggests, the story of private Christianity reveals a watershed in changing conceptions of "public" and "private," one whose repercussions echo through contemporary political and religious debate.
Download or read book Beyond Priesthood written by Richard L. Gordon and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2017-08-21 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The last decade has seen a surge of scholarly interest in these religious professionals and a good number of high quality publications. Our volume, however, with its unique intercultural character and its explicit focus on appropriation and contestation of religious expertise in the Imperial Era is substantially different. Unlike the rather narrow focus of earlier studies of civic priests, the papers presented here examine a wider range of religious professionals, their dynamic interaction with established religious authorities and institutions, and their contributions to religious innovation in the ancient Mediterranean world, from the late Hellenistic period through to Late Antiquity, from the City of Rome to mainland Greece, Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt, from Greek civic practice to ancient Judaism. A further advantage of our volume is the wide range of media of transmission taken into account. Our contributors look at both old and new materials, which derive not only from literary sources but also from papyri, inscriptions, and material culture. Above all, this volume assesses critically convenient terminological usage and offers a unique insight into a rich gamut of ancient Mediterranean religious specialists.
Download or read book York Clergy Wills 1520 1600 written by Claire Cross and published by Borthwick Publications. This book was released on 1989 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Early Church at Work and Worship Vol I written by Everett Ferguson and published by James Clarke & Company. This book was released on 2014-08-28 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many recognise Everett Ferguson as the definitive voice on early Christianity, patristic writing and ecclesiology. The Early Church at Work and Worship is a challenging collection, broad in scope and formidable in depth. This is the first volume ofFerguson's collected essays, and includes some of his most memorable work, especially on laying on of hands. Practices of Ordination and attitudes to religious schism in antiquity are analysed by the scholar in this collection, which not only includes articles and publications from various sources, but also previously unpublished material.
Download or read book Shinto and the State 1868 1988 written by Helen Hardacre and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Helen Hardacre, a leading scholar of religious life in modern Japan, examines the Japanese state's involvement in and manipulation of shinto from the Meiji Restoration to the present. Nowhere else in modern history do we find so pronounced an example of government sponsorship of a religion as in Japan's support of shinto. How did that sponsorship come about and how was it maintained? How was it dismantled after World War II? What attempts are being made today to reconstruct it? In answering these questions, Hardacre shows why State shinto symbols, such as the Yasukuni Shrine and its prefectural branches, are still the focus for bitter struggles over who will have the right to articulate their significance. Where previous studies have emphasized the state bureaucracy responsible for the administration of shinto, Hardacre goes to the periphery of Japanese society. She demonstrates that leaders and adherents of popular religious movements, independent religious entrepreneurs, women seeking to raise the prestige of their households, and men with political ambitions all found an association with shinto useful for self-promotion; local-level civil administrations and parish organizations have consistently patronized shinto as a way to raise the prospects of provincial communities. A conduit for access to the prestige of the state, shinto has increased not only the power of the center of society over the periphery but also the power of the periphery over the center.
Download or read book Empire and Religion written by Elena Muñiz Grijalvo and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2017-07-10 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores the nature of religious change in the Greek-speaking cities of the Roman Empire. Emphasis is put on those developments that apparently were not the direct result of Roman actions: the intensification of idiosyncratically Greek features in the religious life of the cities (Heller, Muñiz, Camia); the active role of a new kind of Hellenism in the design of imperial religious policies (Gordillo, Galimberti, Rosillo-López); or the locally different responses to central religious initiatives, and the influence of those local responses in other imperial contexts (Cortés, Melfi, Lozano, Rizakis). All the chapters try to suggest that religion in the Greek cities of the empire was both conservative and innovative, and that the ‘Roman factor’ helps to explain this apparent paradox.
Download or read book Hidden Lives Public Personae written by Emily Ann Hemelrijk and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 649 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By its in-depth discussion of women's civic roles in the towns outside Rome, this study offers a compelling new vision of Roman women's integration into their communities and contributes to a more comprehensive view of civic life under the Roman Empire.
Download or read book Hidden Lives Public Personae written by Emily Hemelrijk and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-10-01 with total page 649 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Roman cities have rarely been studied from the perspective of women, and studies of Roman women mainly focus on the city of Rome. Studying the civic participation of women in the towns of Italy outside Rome and in the numerous cities of the Latin-speaking provinces of the Roman Empire, this books offers a new view on Roman women and urban society in the Roman Principate. Drawing on epigraphy and archaeology, and to a lesser extent on legal and literary texts, women's civic roles as priestesses, benefactresses and patronesses or 'mothers' of cities and associations (collegia and the Augustales) are brought to the fore. In contrast to the city of Rome, which was dominated by the imperial family, wealthy women in the local Italian and provincial towns had ample opportunity to leave their mark on the city. Their motives to spend their money, time and energy for the benefit of their cities and the rewards their contributions earned them take centre stage. Assessing the meaning and significance of their contributions for themselves and their families and for the cities that enjoyed them, the book presents a new and detailed view of the role of women and gender in Roman urban life.
Download or read book Pestilence in Medieval and Early Modern English Literature written by Byron Lee Grigsby and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-08-02 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pestilence in Medieval and Early Modern English Literature examines three diseases--leprosy, bubonic plague, and syphilis--to show how doctors, priests, and literary authors from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance interpreted certain illnesses through a moral filter. Lacking knowledge about the transmission of contagious diseases, doctors and priests saw epidemic diseases as a punishment sent by God for human transgression. Accordingly, their job was to properly read sickness in relation to the sin. By examining different readings of specific illnesses, this book shows how the social construction of epidemic diseases formed a kind of narrative wherein man attempts to take the control of the disease out of God's hands by connecting epidemic diseases to the sins of carnality.
Download or read book Women and Religion in the First Christian Centuries written by Deborah F. Sawyer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-11-01 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women and Religion in the First Christian Centuries focuses on religion during the period of Roman imperial rule and its significance in women's lives. It discusses the rich variety of religious expression, from pagan cults and classical mythology to ancient Judaism and early Christianity, and the wide array of religious functions fulfilled by women. The author analyses key examples from each context, creating a vivid image of this crucial period which laid the foundations of western civilization. The study challenges the concepts of religion and of women in the light of post-modern critique. As such, it is an important contribution to contemporary gender theory. In its broad and interdisciplinary approach, this book will be of interest to students of early religion as well as those involved in cultural theory.
Download or read book City and Empire in the Age of the Successors written by Ryan Boehm and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2018-02-09 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the chaotic decades after the death of Alexander the Great, the world of the Greek city-state became deeply embroiled in the political struggles and unremitting violence of his successors’ contest for supremacy. As these presumptive rulers turned to the practical reality of administering the disparate territories under their control, they increasingly developed new cities by merging smaller settlements into large urban agglomerations. This practice of synoikism gave rise to many of the most important cities of the age, initiated major shifts in patterns of settlement, and consolidated numerous previously independent polities. The result was the increasing transformation of the fragmented world of the small Greek polis into an urbanized network of cities. Drawing on a wide array of archaeological, epigraphic, and textual evidence, City and Empire in the Age of the Successors reinterprets the role of urbanization in the creation of the Hellenistic kingdoms and argues for the agency of local actors in the formation of these new imperial cities.
Download or read book Plato s Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts written by Russell E. Gmirkin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-05-03 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plato’s Timaeus and the Biblical Creation Accounts argues that the creation of the world in Genesis 1 and the story of the first humans in Genesis 2-3 both draw directly on Plato’s famous account of the origins of the universe, mortal life and evil containing equal parts science, theology and myth. This book is the first to systematically compare biblical, Ancient Near Eastern and Greek creation accounts and to show that Genesis 1-3 is heavily indebted to Plato’s Timaeus and other cosmogonies by Greek natural philosophers. It argues that the idea of a monotheistic cosmic god was first introduced in Genesis 1 under the influence of Plato’s philosophy, and that this cosmic Creator was originally distinct from the lesser terrestrial gods, including Yahweh, who appear elsewhere in Genesis. It shows the use of Plato’s Critias, the sequel to Timaeus, in the stories about the Garden of Eden, the intermarriage of "the sons of God" and the daughters of men, and the biblical flood. This book confirms the late date and Hellenistic background of Genesis 1-11, drawing on Plato’s writings and other Greek sources found at the Great Library of Alexandria. This study provides a fascinating approach to Genesis that will interest students and scholars in both biblical and classical studies, philosophy and creation narratives. .
