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"The author focuses on one of the most fascinating texts of the 17th and 18th century China mission - the Tianxue benyi (The Original Meaning of the Heavenly Teachings) and the more elaborate Gujin jingtian jian (Mirror on the Worship of Heaven in Ancient Times and Nowadays), both written and compiled by the Jesuit Joachim Bouvet (1656-1730) with the assistance of Chinese converts. The two works were even translated into Latin in order to support the Jesuit position in the Chinese Rites Controversy in the Roman Curia. Through them, Bouvet presented the Jesuit missionary strategy of accommodation in a nutshell: He aimed at introducing Christianity in the terms of Chinese traditional culture. Thus, Bouvet's approach can be characterised as an early attempt at a contextualized theology which is meaningful even for contemporary discussions. The present study offers an introduction to Bouvet's thoughts and works and their respective historical and theological context, a transcription of the Latin texts - the Cœlestis Disciplinæ vera notitia and the De cultu cœlesti Sinarum veterum & modernorum - with an annotated German translation"--

Lisbeth S. Fried's insightful study investigates the impact of Achaemenid rule on the political power of local priesthoods during the 6th-4th centuries B.C.E. Scholars typically assume that, as long as tribute was sent to Susa, the capital of the Achaemenid Empire, subject peoples remained autonomous. Fried's work challenges this assumption. She examines the inscriptions, coins, temple archives, and literary texts from Babylon, Egypt, Asia Minor, and Judah and concludes that there was no local autonomy. The only people with power in the Empire were Persians and their appointees, and this was true for Judah as well. The Judean priesthood achieved its longed-for independence only much later, under the Maccabees

The concept of fontes has shown its ever decreasing suitability to reflect the richness and complexity of humanistic literature. In the fontes printed as footnotes is reflected, mechanically and almost physically, the idea of a subaltern and gregarious modernity with regard to classical thought. This article presents a different approach to the study of the humanistic text, based on the identification of cultural genealogies which display all the elements of doctrine that make up a written work at various levels. The work examined is the De republica by Lauro Quirini, a fifteenth-century political treatise in which the author consciously inserts elements of the political thought of the Latin, classical and medieval traditions to an Aristotelian base, adapting such an ensemble to the ideological circumstances of his era.

The Tobin tax is a solution proposed by many economists for limiting the speculation in foreign exchange and stock markets and for making these markets stabler. In this paper we present a study on the effects of a transaction tax on one and on two related markets, using an artificial financial market based on heterogeneous agents. The microstructure of the market is composed of four kinds of traders: random traders, fundamentalists, momentum traders and contrarians, and the resources allocated to them are limited. In each market it is possible to levy a transaction tax. In the case of two markets, each trader can choose in which market to trade, and an attraction function is defined that drives their choice based on perceived profitability. We performed extensive simulations and found that the tax actually increases volatility and decreases trading volumes. These findings are discussed in the paper.

This book, first published in 2000, presents an edition of seventeen ad status model sermons for the preaching of the crusades from the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. The majority of these texts had never been printed before publication of this book. They are unique sources for the content of crusade propaganda in the later Middle Ages, giving a rare insight into the way in which propaganda shaped the public's view of crusading during that period. Accompanying the Latin texts is an English translation which is aimed at making these sources accessible to a wider circle of students and scholars. The first part of the book consists of a study of these model sermons which focuses on their place in the pastoral reform movement of the thirteenth century, their specific character as models for the use of crusade propagandists, their internal structure, and the image of the crusade conveyed in the texts

The century following Duke Humphrey's death has transmitted an image of "the Good Duke" that modern historiography may find misleading. Contemporary scholarship is interested in his role as the promoter of humanism in fifteenth-century England; yet, though in the course of his life there were acknowledgements of his patronage, the years immediately following his death saw his image undergo a metamorphosis. His role as a proto-humanist was quickly forgotten, while the political resonance of his death made later scholars overlook his unsuccessful career as a politician. Humphrey's death created a major sensation, and after the fall of the Lancasters it was quickly exploited for propaganda purposes by the York faction first, and by the Tudors afterwards. Humphrey haunts Elizabethan drama and Ovidian epistles, appears as an improbable Wycliffite in Foxe's "Acts" and as a wise man of the world in More's "Dialogue Concerning Heresies". The present article takes Duke Humphrey and his afterlives as a case study for the examination of the role of propaganda in literary/political biography.

The database Cretan Institutional Inscriptions was created as part of the PhD research project in Ancient Heritage Studies Kretikai Politeiai: Cretan Institutions from VII to I century BC, carried out at the University of Venice Ca' Foscari by Irene Vagionakis from 2016 to 2019, under the supervision of Claudia Antonetti and Gabriel Bodard. The research project aimed at collecting the epigraphic sources related to the institutional elements of the many political entities of Crete, with a view to highlighting the specificity of each context in the period between the rise of the poleis and the Roman conquest of the island. The main component of the database consists of the epigraphic collection of the 600 inscriptions constituting the core of the documentary base of the study, for each of which an XML edition compliant with the TEI EpiDoc international standard was created. Each EpiDoc edition includes a descriptive and a bibliographic lemma, the text of the inscription, a selective apparatus criticus and a commentary focused on the institutional data offered by the document. In addition to the epigraphic collection, the database includes a collection of the main related literary sources, a catalogue of the attested Cretan institutions (assemblies, boards, officials, associations, civic subdivisions, social statuses, age classes, months, festivities and other celebrations, institutional practices, institutional instruments, public spaces) and a catalogue of the political entities of Crete (poleis, koina, dependent communities, extra-urban sanctuaries, hegemonic alliances). Data and SW available at https://github.com/IreneVagionakis/CretanInscriptions