Based on the encyclopaedia "Liber de natura rerum" by the Dominican Thomas of Cantimpré, the so-called 'Thomas III' version was produced by an anonymous editor in the 13th century. Out of interest in natural things themselves, he excerpted the found material, reprocessed it and rearranged it into 20 books with an idiosyncratic sequence. The abundance of surviving manuscripts of his editing documents the extraordinarily great medieval interest in this form of natural history, which was no longer predominantly spiritually oriented. This volume offers the New High German translation of the original Latin text published in vol. 54-1. With the help of the enclosed indexes, the Mhd. reception text can also be made accessible.

The contributions in this anthology shed light on the thematic and poetic diversity of lyrical speech in the German late Middle Ages. The focus is on the productive engagement with genre and discourse traditions, the play with language, religious semantics and aesthetic conventions, transitions and modulations in the mirror of tradition, and finally also forms of self-thematisation and the staging of authorship.

As a supplement to the studies mentioned above and in response to the persistent desideratum of the few pictorial sources that have been analysed, this work focuses on the significance of purple fabric and purple colour in pictorial works and other art objects from Byzantium. For this purpose, evidence from the spheres of empire and church is consulted and questions are raised about their interpretation. The focus is on pictorial representations whose purple motifs can also be clearly identified in other sources, such as written sources. In addition, the project aims to draw conclusions about political-social, identity-forming and form-aesthetic structures and to trace their changes.

This book contains the first study of the text transmission of the Kniga palomnik by Anthony of Novgorod. From the philological perspective, the edition offers a new text basis for further research into the characteristics, the transmission and reception of Russian pilgrim literature; and from the historical and archaeological perspective, it provides access to a textual source which is crucial for the reconstruction of the sacred topography of the former Byzantine capital.

The Textbook Modern Persian contains thirty selected readings about contemporary Iran from various disciplinary perspectives. Each chapter of the book includes an introduction to the topic, a rating of the complexity of the text, the philological acquisition of lexical fields within the chapter, and a selected bibliography of additional material on the subject matter. The text also includes a concise Persian-German-English glossary, a conjugation sample, a detailed list of all common infinitives in Modern Persian, and English abstracts for each of the thirty textbook units.

Der Band umfasst 185 Editionen der Inschriften des Landkreises Passau, die sich in den ehemaligen Bezirksämtern Passau und Wegscheid befinden. Erfasst sind alle Inschriften vom hohen Mittelalter bis zum Jahre 1650, von denen der Großteil noch im Original erhalten ist. Der Band schließt sich an die bereits erschienene Edition der Inschriften der Stadt Passau an. Das hier behandelte Gebiet grenzt sowohl im Norden als auch im Süden direkt an die Bischofsstadt an und umfasst einen Teil des ehemaligen Hochstiftes sowie einen Teil der ehemaligen Grafschaft Neuburg am Inn, aber auch angrenzende Abschnitte der bayerischen Landgerichte Vilshofen und Griesbach. Somit liefert die Edition ein breites Spektrum an verschiedensten, mehr oder weniger von der Stadt beeinflussten Bereichen. Neben Denkmälern für im Hochstift tätige Amtsträger des Bischofs finden sich Marktrichter von Untergriesbach und Obernzell oder Verwaltungsbeamte der Grafschaft Neuburg am Inn. Eine ganze Reihe an Grabmälern stammt von lokalen Adelsfamilien. Sie wählten die ihren Sitzen nahegelegenen Pfarrkirche zu ihren Grablegen und ließen oftmals ihre Denkmäler in Passauer Werkstätten fertigen. Ebenso ist der Klerus in den Inschriften vertreten: neben der Pfarrgeistlichkeit treten besonders die Abtsgrabmäler in den Klöstern Fürstenzell und Vornbach am Inn hervor. Die Abteien bergen darüber hinaus auch bemerkenswerte Monumente ihrer Stifter, namentlich der Grafen von Vornbach. Einen großen Teil des vorliegenden Katalogs nimmt der Inschriftenzyklus im Schloss Obernzell ein. Bischof Urban von Trenbach hat zu Beginn der achtziger Jahre des 16. Jahrhunderts den Festsaal mit einem umfangreichen Päpstewappenfries - beginnend beim Heiligen Petrus bis hin zu Papst Clemens VIII. - und einem Zyklus lateinischer Sinnsprüche, der sich in der ehemaligen Kapelle fortsetzte, mit Lebensweisheiten und diversen Zitaten - darunter auch solche in griechisch, altsyrisch und (pseudo-)hebräisch - ausstatten lassen.

The book relies on a 15months field research in an Azerbaijan village and treats gender spe-cific ideologies in the two domains of kinship and religion. It is shown, that the native classi-fication of kins in “bone” and “milk” is based on the sibling group of brother and sister, that milk kinship is independent from agnatic groups and that it refers to the general process of life. It is this topic of the general life process which is constituted in tension to “orthodox” Islamic concepts in the predominantly female religious practice of dreams, fortune telling, pilgrimage and during life cycle rituals.

The relations between Greek and Roman culture constituted a continuous exchange since the Roman expansion into the Eastern Mediterranean area in the second century BC. One aspect of this phenomenon is the reception of Greek education and its visual presence in Roman world, which moved between contentual integration and amateurish dabbling. The main focus of this study is on depictions en miniature, among which carved stones play a pre-eminent role. They are analyzed under iconographic and typological as well as historico-cultural aspects. In this context, the question of their qualities as a cultural expression of certain notions of Greek education in a graphic transformation of the discourse around paideia is of central importance.