The first of five volumes that will offer the entire corpus of extraordinary illuminations from 26 codices spanning the 9th to the 13th century, which contain portions of the Commentary on the Apocalypse, the Book of Revelation, compiled by the Asturian monk Beatus around the year 776. These illustrations represent the greatest single tradition of Apocalyptic imagery in the Middle Ages. The present introductory volume provides a general overview of the textual and visual tradition of all manuscripts containing Beatus' commentary. Includes 41 color plates and 100 monochrome illustrations. Distributed by Oxford U. Press. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Professor Norton's concise history of all the presses known to have been working in Spain in the period 1501-1520.

This book is a pioneering work on a key iconographic motif, that of the dragon. It examines the perception of this complex, multifaceted motif within the overall intellectual and visual universe of the medieval Irano-Turkish world. Using a broadly comparative approach, the author explores the ever-shifting semantics of the dragon motif as it emerges in neighbouring Muslim and non-Muslim cultures. The book will be of particular interest to those concerned with the relationship between the pre-Islamic, Islamic and Eastern Christian (especially Armenian) world. The study is fully illustrated, with 209 (b/w and full colour) plates, many of previously unpublished material. Illustrations include photographs of architectural structures visited by the author, as well as a vast collection of artefacts, all of which are described and discussed in detail with inscription readings, historical data and textual sources.

In India, Astrology Is Not Merely A Method Of Divination, But An Integral Part Of Its Religious And Cultural Traditions. The Book Explores The Interrelatedness Of Astrology, Art And Religion. In The Beginning It Deals With The Foundations Of Hindu Astrology And Its Rich Symbolism. It Then Goes On To Describe The Various Representations Of Astral Symbols In The Traditional Arts Of Sculpture And Painting. Finally, The Book Shows How Artistic Representations Of Astral Deities Such As Planets And Stars Are Used In Ritual And Worship.

People in the Middle Ages and the early modern age more often suffered from imprisonment and enslavement than we might have assumed. Incarceration and Slavery in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age approaches these topics from a wide variety of perspectives and demonstrates collectively the great relevance of the issues involved. Both incarceration and slavery were (and continue to be) most painful experiences, and no one was guaranteed exemption from it. High-ranking nobles and royalties were often the victims of imprisonment and, at times, had to wait many years until their ransom was paid. Similarly, slavery existed throughout Christian Europe and in the Arab world. However, while imprisonment occasionally proved to be the catalyst for major writings and creativity, slaves in the Ottoman empire and in Egypt succeeded in rising to the highest position in society (Janissaries, Mamluks, and others).

For decades specialists in the history of Romanesque art questioned the usefulness of traditional stylistic terminology. It has been regarded as being of limited relevance insofar as it fails to reflect the complexity and plurality of the times and events that it refers to. Neither is it useful for alluding to the functional, formal or iconographic specificities circumscribed within a given time period because, in reality, the visual features and statements under scrutiny flourished across two or more stylistic periods. Despite these deficiencies and limitations, we still have no better way of referring to the art of the period other than a lengthy phrase which is often made yet more cumbersome by the addition of a geographical or political term. Of the various media that were used for and made possible these artistic innovations, particular attention has been paid to stained glass, miniatures or enamel. Nevertheless, monumental sculpture underwent certain developments that were comparable to the aforementioned media but also other changes that were completely distinct from them. As a result, because late Romanesque sculpture covers a period extending from 1150 to 1220, it is still impossible to state with any certainty what this complex network represented. We propose a panoramic scientific analysis of a singular artistic landscape, focused on the intersections and challenges posed by this central issue in medieval European artistic production. To narrow down this field of study, this book will focus preferentially on the innovations and solutions adopted in the cathedral workshops of Atlantic, Continental and Mediterranean Europe.

This book traces the long-term genesis of the sixth-century Roman legal penalty of forced monastic penance. The late antique evidence on this penal institution runs counter to a scholarly consensus that Roman legal principle did not acknowledge the use of corrective punitive confinement. Dr Hillner argues that forced monastic penance was a product of a late Roman penal landscape that was more complex than previous models of Roman punishment have allowed. She focuses on invigoration of classical normative discourses around punishment as education through Christian concepts of penance, on social uses of corrective confinement that can be found in a vast range of public and private scenarios and spaces, as well as on a literary Christian tradition that gave the experience of punitive imprisonment a new meaning. The book makes an important contribution to recent debates about the interplay between penal strategies and penal practices in the late Roman world.