Seeing the Invisible in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages

Giselle de Nie, Professor Karl F Morrison, Marco Mostert

ISBN 10: 2503517595 / ISBN 13: 9782503517599

Published by Brepols N.V., BE, 2005

Seller Inventory # LU-9782503517599

Synopsis:

Limiting itself to the vital centuries when the late Roman West reshaped itself into a first "Europe," the conference explored the dominant conception of human nature in that era: that human existence was both body (in the visible world of material things) and soul (in the invisible world of spirit). This was a legacy of pre-Christian elements handed down from Greek philosophy and Hebrew Scriptures. Assimilating it to indigenous cultures in the Roman West, many alien to the ancient Mediterranean world, precipitated sea-changes in the understanding of human psychology. Ensuing frictions sparked extraordinary expressions of creativity in words and visual images. It also created dangerously subversive disequilibriums in the collective mentality within elites and between them and majority cultures. The papers in this volume investigate numerous configurations of a new culture taking shape in that volatile environment. They contribute to continuing debates about the cognitive co-ordination of words and pictorial images, and to cross-disciplinary dialogues in such disparate fields as art history, religious literature, mysticism, and cultural anthropology.

About the Author: Giselle de Nie is a research associate at the Centre for Patristic Research, the Netherlands.

Bibliographic Details

Title: Seeing the Invisible in Late Antiquity and ...
Publisher: Brepols N.V., BE
Publication Date: 2005
Binding: Hardback
Condition: New