Bøger udgivet af Steiner Franz Verlag

Ancient religion is traditionally understood in terms of myths, rituals and institutions, as transmitted in ancient texts. The studies gathered here focus instead on the lived experience of ancient cult and the places in which that experience was formed. They build on recent explorations of Lived Ancient Religion and also on new approaches to Material Ancient Religion. All ancient societies constructed elaborate sanctuaries. Their architecture and the collective rituals that took place there shaped collective experiences. Through case studies drawn from Ancient Egypt, the Greek World and the Roman Empire these themes are explored and elaborated. Together they indicate new ways of approaching ancient religious experience, collective and individual.

The 'Gesta et Passio' is a Latin hagiographic text written around 1112 by Ælnoth of Canterbury about the Danish king Cnut who was killed in 1086 and later venerated as St Cnut.Due to its textual complexity Ælnoth's work has been considered heterogeneous and strangely structured. With her study Fiona Fritz aims to show that this complexity reflects the systematic multifunctionality of the text and that the text's construction afforded Ælnoth the opportunity to express his perception of contemporaneous ecclesiastical and secular political matters. Relevant textual functions include the construction of Cnut as a royal saint, propagating the cult of St Cnut, furthering ecclesiastical interests, presenting an ideology of kingship, and enhancing the legitimacy of the ruling dynasty.The analysis of the text considers both the historical context of its production and various textual moves and strategies employed by the author. Over and above the results attained in relation to the 'Gesta et Passio' as an individual text, the present study can be taken as a general exploration of methods for the analysis of the potential of hagiographical texts for various functions and for multifunctionality.

Experts of ancient sport have long treated "money" and "honor" as opposites. Up to the 1970s, the idea of Greek gentlemen's sport prevailed. It is one of the most exciting challenges for sport historians to overcome this opposition and to develop a concept that integrates the economic and symbolic motivations of ancient athletes. From the very beginning, economic aspects played a role in Greek sport, and honor remained important until the end of ancient athletics. But despite these continuities there are obvious developments in favor of economic factors: Cash prizes grew in importance since the Hellenistic period, and symbolical honors awarded to victorious athletes by their hometowns were transformed into financial ones. The studies collected in this volume aim at exploring the relationship of money and honor with regard to athletes, festivals and poleis.

What is the role of religious aspects in legitimizing or delegitimizing violence? The articles of this volume provide an important contribution to this crucial social and scholarly debate. Analysing a broad spectrum of case studies from antiquity, they focus on religious justifications or evaluations of recommended, performed, or forbidden acts of violence - regardless of the question of their historicity. Not only late antiquity and Christianity are considered, but also pre-Christian Greek and Roman civilizations, Judaism, literary myth, and atheism. The case studies cover the period from the fifth century BCE to the fifth century CE and a broad geographical scope extending from Gaul to Israel and Egypt. This volume offers new insights into a highly topical issue.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) launched a new science dedicated to the theory of force. His "dynamics" is an important episode in the history of the scientific revolution. Its starting point has been a particular theory of the combination of motions placed within the framework of a mechanistic natural philosophy. Its turning point was Leibniz's discovery in 1678 of a new principle later known as principle of conservation of live force, which he proposed in 1686 as replacement for Descartes' principle of conservation of quantity of motion. In Dynamica de potentia (1689-90), Specimen dynamicum (1695), Essay de dynamique (ca. 1700), and various pieces of correspondence, Leibniz applied his creative methodology, fostered original scientific models and hypotheses, and refined demonstrative arguments in support of his theory. As a result, the dynamics would comprise the conceptual and architectonic fundamental elements for a revised "system of nature". Our endeavor has been to unveil the genesis and explain the makeup of this Leibnizian scientific and philosophical achievement.

This volume examines the way the Belgian historian of religions Franz Cumont (1868-1947) and his contemporaries conceived of early Christianity's relation to the ancient mystery cults. As the comparative study of religion rose to academic prominence in late 19th century Europe, this question provoked fiery debates, fuelling methodological, ideological, and religious divides between scholars of different scientific and personal backgrounds. Cumont was a worldwide authority in the scientific study of the religions orientales, but he expressed his opinion on their relation to Christianity only ambiguously. Yet, his publications deeply impacted the debates of his time because of the numerous similarities they revealed between Christian and pagan traditions. Written by specialists from various academic disciplines (e.g., history of religions, theology, New Testament studies), this collection of papers offers a much-needed study of how Cumont and other leading 19th century scholars discussed this theme. It also offers critical reflections on what is left of their ideas in present-day research on this most fascinating subject matter in the study of ancient religion.

Warfare was a common occurrence in the Ancient World, and the Roman Republic was no exception in this regard. Rome was exceptionally successful in its military endeavours, which led to the conquest of the Italian Peninsula and the historically unique creation of a Mediterranean empire. The origins and motifs for this were complex and many-faceted, but there can be little doubt that the material rewards of military aggression played a central role in driving and maintaining annual warfare. Scholarship tends to interpret spoils in the context of a positive-sum game that allowed for the diffusion of social problems and the stabilisation of the Roman political system through the distribution of surplus resources. However, spoils regularly caused unrest and dissatisfaction, which suggests a more complex impact on Roman politics and society. This volume therefore investigates the socio-political, economic, and cultural impacts of spoils on the city of Rome and Roman Italy in order to gain a better understanding of the crucial role that externally acquired resources played in the context of Roman Republican expansion in the Mediterranean.

The civil wars of the first century BCE disrupted Roman society, which in turn was a major cause of the destabilisation of the political system. While this has of course long been recognised, the cultural dimension of the disintegration of the res publica demands equal attention. The present volume aims for an analysis of the more implicit, yet fundamental effects which the increasingly militarised conflict had on Roman society, starting with the assumption that the radical dynamics and intrinsic brutality constituted a completely new experience for contemporaries. To solve this problem, Romans of the late Republican period devised multiple strategies for coping with the phenomenon of civil war. While some turned to narrative patterns deployed by the Greeks who had been accustomed to civil conflict for centuries, the bella civilia also influenced many other aspects of cultural life. The latent fear of permanent civil strife thus became a source of innovation on multiple levels which (re-)shaped Roman collective imaginary. The resulting structures and developments constituted a highly elaborate and comprehensive "culture of civil war".

Seleukid Perspectives explore the largest successor kingdom to Alexander the Great's empire. Seleukid kings established their power on the battlefield but did not rely on coercion alone. They constructed an ideal of kingship to render their authority morally and religiously acceptable. For this, they considered the traditions and sensitivities of their soldiers, subjects, and neighbours, while facing the pretensions of their rivals. What was beneficial or tolerable varied dramatically from one polity to the next. This book examines local influence on and reactions to Seleukid claims by focusing on rituals, discourse, and creative moments in which ideological themes were shaped. Seleukos I (320-281 BCE) closely engaged with the imagery of Alexander and Macedonian rivals, borrowed from Near Eastern traditions, and courted sanctuaries of Apollo. Case studies for his descendants are drawn from Anatolia, Syria, Judaea, Babylonia, and Persia. Praise of the dynasty was more than flattery but part of a process in which subjects actively contributed to perpetuating, modifying, or undermining the royal image. The volume encourages new debates on the complexity and efficacy of Seleukid Ideology.

In 2018, after a century of bilateral relations, Poland and Denmark finally delineated their borders in the middle of the Baltic Sea. After the reestablishment of the Polish state in 1918, its ties to Denmark had been quite turbulent. The great powers established the conditions of the playing field. As small and intermediate European states, the two partners tried to keep their relationship as amicable as possible. Danish investors were active early in the establishment of the Port of Gdynia as well as road infrastructure during the interwar years.Though WW2 dramatically reduced the number of relations, Polish Intelligence was still active in Danish anti-Nazi resistance. During the Cold War, the so-called Polish People's Republic and the Kingdom of Denmark found themselves in opposing camps. The Polish armed forces played a decisive role in planning wartime operations against Denmark and Schleswig-Holstein. After the Cold War, the former opponents became close allies and partners in the European integration process. This book brings together prominent scholars from Denmark, Poland, and Germany to analyze diplomatic, military, intelligence, and cultural relations across the Baltic Sea from the end of WW1 to the days of NATO cooperation.

Broadening the global perspective is high on the agenda for the current study of urban history. It is widely accepted in contemporary Japanese urban history that the prototype of the modern city was formed in the decades between the 1900s and the 1930s, when, against the background of accelerating urbanisation, the ideas of modernity in terms of regularity, functionality and rationality contributed to the establishment of mass culture and ultimately to social mobilisation for 'total war'. These views coincide with those of European urban history.In order to understand this coincidence, the volume is divided into three parts: 1. Surveys of mutual historiographical perceptions, 2. Case studies of urban architecture, the garden city concept, concepts of urban disaster prevention, infrastructure building and organised urban leisure, 3. Observations from the perspective of European urban history. The combination will not only elucidate the process of making the 20th century Japanese city, but also help the reader to rethink the modern European city in a global context.

The historical memory of the principate is for obvious reasons dominated by the emperors, with one exception: Germanicus Caesar, who, though not a ruler, appears in the sources as if he had been one. Chosen by Augustus as his ultimate heir, the embodiment of the dynastic principle, yet never the emperor; put at the head of one third of the Roman army to reconquer Germania, but recalled before the task's completion; the last to hold an imperium which made him almost a co-regent of the emperor, cut short by his sudden death - he reflects like no one the transition of the principate from the Augustan phase to its mature form. Equally significant is the longevity of the memory of his person and the variety of ways in which it was expressed: the only non-emperor commemorated in the Feriale Duranum, he figures on coins struck long after the end of the Julio-Claudians and an edict of his, quoted in a legal text of the 3rd century, appears in the Digesta. To give justice to his memorability, our contributions approach him in the perspective of not only history, classical philology, art history/archaeology and numismatics, but also Egyptology and Roman law.

This book deals with the intersection between religion, philosophy, and politics in the Graeco-Roman world, and especially in Late Antiquity, with special reference to the figure alluded to in ancient sources with the expression "theios aner". Charisma and leadership are basic elements of this notion: its literary, historical, and ideological context and the different interpretations of holiness and sanctity in a sociopolitical or educative community are researched in this collective endeavour. The scholarly contributions are organized along three sections - 'Holiness', 'Charisma and Leadership', and 'Transmission and Reception' - aiming at an overall analysis of the patterns involving charismatic leadership of the intellectual and spiritual figures in the sources and its socio-political context, with the central axis of Late Antiquity. Thus, together with some methodological considerations, this book examines some well-known figures of holiness and attempts to offer a panoramic, transdisciplinary, and comparative view of their cultural and intellectual context, and to determine what socio-political role they had.

The 'Tetrarchy', the modern name assigned to the period of Roman history that started with the emperor Diocletian and ended with Constantine I, has been a much-studied and much-debated field of the Roman Empire. Debate, however, has focused primarily on whether it was a true 'system' of government, or rather a collection of ad-hoc measures undertaken to stabilise the empire after the troubled period of the 3rd century CE. The papers collected here aim to go beyond this question and to present an innovative approach to a fascinating period of Roman history by understanding the Tetrarchy not as a system of government, but primarily as a political language. Their focus thus lies on the language and ideology of the imperial college and court, on the performance of power in imperial ceremonies, the representation of the emperors and their enemies in the provinces of the Roman world, as well as on the afterlife of Tetrarchic power in the Constantinian period.

The reformation of the Western Church was a series of momentous events that uprooted many things previously taken for granted. In the wake of these dramatic changes, adherents to the various emerging confessional cultures in the sixteenth century sought assurance with the help of historiography. They created specific narratives of the events surrounding the Reformation and a historical continuity from early Christianity to legitimize their own religious teaching and practice. Subsequently, the Reformation, as a process of reform, renewal, or upheaval of church and society, shaped the way contemporary actors and the following generations dealt with history in the pre-modern era. The authors of the present volume pursue inquiries into these and other related developments, taking a wide range of denominational perspectives in various European contexts into account, until well into the eighteenth century.

Ethnicity is a social construct within an ideological framework, ancient or modern. This wisdom has penetrated most scholarly disciplines, but its reception is delayed in Black Sea studies, where essentialist views still prevail. Nationalism, Rostovtzeff's culture-history and Marxist-Leninist materialism have cast longer shadows on this part of the ancient world. Likewise, the balance between documentary sources and ancient literature needs redressing. The latter has often been either accepted in a positivist manner or rejected due to perceived inconsistencies. More rewarding is to try to understand what exactly the ancient authors knew or intended. In this light, the contributors discuss the concept of Sarmatization, the implications of rural versus urban cults, ethnic hierarchies, interaction patterns in colonial settings, inversions of barbarian stereotypes, cultural affiliations of Bosporan kings, imperial policies of Pharnakes I and II, foreign princes on the Ara Pacis Augustae, the reorganization of Pontos under Pompey and Deiotaros, the sanctuary of Leukothea in Kolchis, Christian urbanism in Scythia Minor and crop selections of Anatolian farmers. Though selective, the book covers the four coastlines of the Black Sea, ranging from the archaic to the Byzantine periods.

An international team of scholars from different academic disciplines address some of the most important issues, texts, and objects in the study of ancient magic. The volume is divided into three primary sections. The first part offers new approaches to some of the major theoretical and methodological questions in the study of ancient magic. Most importantly, the authors offer a defense of the term "magic" as a scholarly rubric in the study of antiquity. The contributors to the second part provide novel interpretations of some of the most significant defixiones, amulets, recipes and rituals from the ancient world. The essays also engage with questions of gender, materiality, visuality, and scribal practice. The final section examines the transmission of magical practice, both in antiquity and in later periods. Accordingly, the chapters in this final section allow scholars to approach the study of magic over the longue durée. By placing into dialogue the interests, concerns, and methods of scholars from diverse academic fields, this volume provides an interdisciplinary perspective to the study of premodern magic.

The study of royal women has been one of the most dynamic fields of inquiry into the Hellenistic world (ca. 336-30 BC) and has dramatically shifted our perceptions of gender, status, and influence in the ancient world. Amid numerous works on the Ptolemies, Antigonids, and Argeads, this volume is the first to examine the roles and representations of the women of the Seleukid dynasty and its clients. These royal women were born or married into a dynasty that ruled an empire spanning dozens of cultures and languages, encompassing territory from western Asia Minor to modern-day Afghanistan. As representatives of their family's prestige, they were highly influential in shaping the culture and legacy of this Empire that spanned East and West. The contributions of this volume offer a systematic scrutiny of the representation of female Seleukids in visual and textual media. Avoiding Eurocentric perspectives in favour of embracing the diversity of the Empire, these scholars examine the interaction of Seleukid women with royal traditions ranging from Persia, Bactria, and Judaea to their Hellenistic contemporaries. The result is a landmark achievement in the study of ancient women.

Wie kann Forschung in den Dienst einer innovativen didaktischen Praxis gestellt werden? Dieser Band diskutiert mit "Design-Based Research" (DBR) eine Forschungskonzeption, die hierzu neue Antworten vorschlägt. Grundlegend für DBR ist das Ziel, die Entwicklung innovativer Lösungen für praktische Bildungsprobleme mit der Gewinnung wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnisse zu verzahnen. Als Ausgangspunkt der Forschung wird daher nicht gefragt, ob eine bestehende Praxis wirksam ist, sondern wie ein angestrebtes Bildungsziel in einem gegebenen Kontext durch eine schrittweise zu verfeinernde Innovation am besten erreicht werden könnte. So geht es nicht nur um die Untersuchung von bereits bestehenden Wirklichkeiten, sondern zudem um die Entwicklung von zukünftigen Möglichkeiten.DBR entstand als Reaktion auf die Kritik an der mangelnden praktischen Anwendung von Befunden aus der empirisch-analytischen Lehr-Lernforschung. DBR nimmt diese Kritik auf und versucht sie konstruktiv zu wenden. Obwohl sich viele der forschungstheoretischen Vorschläge auf Vorläufer stützen, lässt sich DBR aktuell noch nicht durch ein einheitliches Regelwerk kennzeichnen - es ist vielmehr ein "Paradigma in Entwicklung".Dieser Band reflektiert den Stand der Diskussionen um DBR, systematisiert sie und schafft insbesondere für die Berufs- und Wirtschaftspädagogik neue Grundlagen für die Umsetzung in der Forschungspraxis.