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Graphic Signs of Authority in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages presents a cultural history of graphic signs and examines how they were employed to communicate secular and divine authority in the late antique Mediterranean and early medieval Europe. Visual materials such as the sign of the cross, christograms, monograms, and other such devices, are examined against the backdrop of the cultural, religious, and socio-political transition from the late Graeco-Roman world to that of medieval Europe.
This monograph is a synthetic study of graphic visual evidence from a wide range of material media that have rarely been studied collectively, including various mass-produced items and unique objects of art, architectural monuments and epigraphic inscriptions, as well as manuscripts and charters. This study promises to provide a timely reference tool for historians, art historians, archaeologists, epigraphists, manuscript scholars, and numismatists.
List of contents
- Introduction
- Part One: Graphic Signs of Divine Authority in Late Antiquity
- 1: The Origins of Early Christian Graphic Signs
- 2: Christograms as Signs of Authority in the Late Roman Empire
- 3: The Sign of the Cross in Late Antiquity
- Part Two: Monogrammatic Culture in Late Antique Culture
- 4: Monograms, Early Christians, and Late Antique Culture
- 5: Secular Monograms, Social Status, and Authority in the Late Roman World and Early Byzantium
- 6: Public Monuments and the Monogrammatic Display of Authority in the Post-Roman World
- Part Three: Graphic Signs of Authority in Early Medieval Europe
- 7: Monogrammatic Culture in Pre-Carolingian Europe
- 8: Monogrammatic Revival in the Carolingian World
- 9: The Power of the Cross and Cruciform Devices in the Carolingian World
- Conclusion
- Bibliography and Index of Manuscripts
About the author
Ildar Garipzanov is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Oslo. He received a PhD in classical history from Kazan State University (1991) and a PhD in medieval history from Fordham University, New York (2004). He was an Oliver Smithies Lecturer at Balliol College, Oxford (2012), a visiting fellow at Clare Hall College, Cambridge (2015/16), and a visiting member at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (2016). He has authored and edited a number of books in late antique and medieval history, including the monograph The Symbolic Language of Authority in the Carolingian World (2008).
Summary
Graphic Signs of Authority in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages offers a cultural history of the graphic monogrammatic tools from antiquity to the Middle Ages. It examines the sign of the cross, christograms, monograms, and other similar devices, and how they were used during a time of great socio-political and religious change.
Additional text
Despite the narrow focus that the book's title may seem to imply, this is a work of prodigious scholarship. Historians interested in many facets of late antique and early medieval religion, culture, and politics will find much of value in Garipzanov's compelling study.
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Provides a rich, dense account of graphic signs and monograms in the Roman world from the fourth to ninth centuries ... Highly recommended. CHOICE
