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1. Between the Man’s Hands and God’s Eyes: The Psalter of 1437 from the Collection of the Vernadskyi National Library of Ukraine

Author:
Oleksandr Okhrimenko and Stanislav Voloshchenko
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Hiperboreea
Institution:
Balkan History Association
Abstract:
The Gavril Uric’s Psalter, created in 1437, remains one of the important manuscripts from the Neamț Monastery and South Slavic Cyrillic heritage. Involving the late medieval religious source into research, especially then it is a common text as Psalter, inspires to see this codex as the material object that was used by several generations. The system how the scribe organized the page, how he solved the mistakes, how he decorated the text is the way of interacts with his readers; behind the sacred text he put eyes of God, shown by his calligraphy. The Psalter of 1437 became a memorial of the scribe Gavril Uric, Leon the monk, and other people, who signed the codex with their names at different times. Until the 19th century, this Psalter remained the physical mediator between the person and God. From the end of the 19th century, the book was an object for scientific research and closed to the public. Nowadays, the digital version gives a new breath for the Psalter and new opportunity to revise our perception and the way in which we study medieval manuscripts.
Topic:
Religion, Science and Technology, and Medieval History
Political Geography:
Europe, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe

2. Iconography of Power of the Pagan Bulgarian Ruler: Images, Symbolism and Tradition

Author:
Oksana Minaeva
Publication Date:
07-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Hiperboreea
Institution:
Balkan History Association
Abstract:
The ideas of ruler’s power of the pagan Bulgarians and their expression are a question of debates concerning different fields of humanities such as history, archaeology, epigraphy, religious studies, and art history. The discussion proposed tends to seek the ideological basis of the ruler’s power as seen through cosmogonic, religious and political notions preserved in written historical sources, traces of rites and beliefs in mythology and folklore and in the arts. Thus, the three levels of the ruler’s ideology are considered: the written/verbal texts, ritual texts and visual texts in order to find out a set of iconographic formulae of expressing the power of the pagan Bulgarian ruler.
Topic:
Religion, History, Power Politics, and Ideology
Political Geography:
Europe, Bulgaria, and Balkans

3. Byzantine Satire: The Background in the Timarion

Author:
Iakovos Menelaou
Publication Date:
07-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Hiperboreea
Institution:
Balkan History Association
Abstract:
In this paper, I examine the twelfth century Byzantine satire Timarion. I seek to analyse the background of the work, through a focus on the plot and characters, the classical sources that influenced the Byzantine author and the issues of date and authorship which should be seen in relation to the targets of his attack. While there is no certainty about the identity of the author, the Timarion was written, probably, by a learned author who had knowledge of classical authors and medical theories of his era. This is obvious in the way he embodies these traditions in his satire. Similarly to satires of the classical period, the Timarion’s attack is directed at several directions.
Topic:
Literature and Byzantine Empire
Political Geography:
Europe, Asia, and North Africa

4. Brăila at the End of the Nineteenth Century: The Report of Vice-Consul William J. Norcop on the Year 1899

Author:
Cristian Constantin
Publication Date:
07-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Hiperboreea
Institution:
Balkan History Association
Abstract:
The text proper is preceded by a short historical comment on the activity of the International Trade in the Lower Danube region. The exports and imports of Romania, and her commercial relations with the different European countries had been, from their very beginning, organised on a highly individual basis owing to the initiative and according to the interests of private citizens. The report is an extremely important source for all social aspects related to the Brăila harbour, from statistic dates about export and import, agriculture, navigation, and economic realities in the towns. This document is an alternative to the statistical sources published by the European Commission of the Danube and by the Romanian authorities.
Topic:
Agriculture, Economics, History, Exports, Trade, and Imports
Political Geography:
Europe and Romania

5. Party Education, Propaganda Instrument for the Collectivization in Romania. Case Study: Argeș Region (1950–1952)

Author:
Antonio Manuel Tudorache
Publication Date:
07-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Hiperboreea
Institution:
Balkan History Association
Abstract:
Party education had an important role in the dynamics of the collectivization process in Romania. The enrolment and “education” of a large number of officers, who were willing to implement by any means necessary the policy of the party, were an essential factor in the success of the collectivization campaign. In the meantime, the progress of party education in the rural areas was used in many communities. As such, they were compelled to reorganise their own social and economic mechanisms so that they would correspond to the ones that the communist regime would accept.
Topic:
Communism, History, Medieval History, and Political Parties
Political Geography:
Europe and Romania

6. The Domestication of an Itinerant Object: The True Cross Reliquary from the Louvre Museum

Author:
Zina Uzdenskaya
Publication Date:
01-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Hiperboreea
Institution:
Balkan History Association
Abstract:
The Reliquary of the True Cross from the Louvre Museum serves as a good illustration of some key ideas which are of high interest for modern art historians studying medieval art. These ideas are: hybridity (syncretism, compositeness), portability (mobility), circulation, and transparency (crossing borders). The Reliquary is a product of a complicated cross-cultural exchange with more than one participant. First of all, it is a composite, or hybrid, object. The cross-shaped reliquary was produced in the Holy Land in the twelfth century, most likely in Jerusalem, while the casket, in which the cross is housed, was produced later, probably in a South Italian or Sicilian workshop of the late twelfth or early thirteenth century. Furthermore, the reliquary belongs to a big family of portable objects, which are defined by the feature of portability, and which add to its material value significant symbolical value when they are transported beyond the borders – geographical, cultural, or political – of the region of their production. In order to better understand the reliquary and its value, I answer two sets of questions. First is the set of “traditional” questions of Western European art history, namely authorship, style, date, and periodization. Then I consider this reliquary as an “object without borders,” in terms of Jennifer Purtle, and find answers to the kinds of questions related to the specificity of portable objects: What is the object within the context in which it exists? How and why does an object move beyond borders? What meaning and what cultural and economic value accrue to an object when it exists without borders? Answering these questions, I show how the reliquary moved from one cultural and political context to another, being re-shaped and re-considered on the course of its travels
Topic:
Religion, History, Arts, and Museums
Political Geography:
Europe

7. Perspectives for Researching British Appeasement of Nazi Germany in the Inter-War Years Using the Digitized Newspaper Collections of the British Library

Author:
Andrei Vasiliu
Publication Date:
01-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Hiperboreea
Institution:
Balkan History Association
Abstract:
This paper aims to verify that the methods for researching the British appeasement policy towards Germany in the inter-war years can include the new method of studying the digitized collections of newspapers of the British Library. The policy of appeasement led by Great Britain during the inter-war years still represents a very attractive subject of research. The challenge lies not only in the new data harvested from primary sources such as documents and newspapers but also in the new methods of researching that may be applied, and that may increase the interest of scholars. Today, researching the digitized collections of archives are not even a futuristic resource, but a growing necessity. Accessing the British Library's digitized collections through the British Newspaper Archive website is often easier and more efficient than going to the archives. The site has more than 40 million digitized newspapers, mainly local periodicals, which can be accessed by searching for keywords, establishing filters and saving results to retrieve them later. The electronic resources of the digitized collections provide valuable help in my doctoral research on the Anglo-French appeasement reflected in the newspapers, which proves to be a great challenge, given the fact that the subject was widely covered in many of the central newspapers. But, of course, this method immediately poses multiple questions: is this method of research as rigorous as the traditional research conducted in the archives? Does this method provide the intercoder reliability framework required for such works? These are the research questions that remain at the center of this article. Previous research on the subject of digitized collections and also the analysis of the resources of the British Newspaper Archive in comparison with the traditional British Library resources can provide an answer.
Topic:
History, World War I, and World War II
Political Geography:
Britain, Europe, and Germany

8. Global Politics, Regional Competition: Great Power Politics in Central Asia

Author:
Artur Lakatos and András Kosztur
Publication Date:
01-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Hiperboreea
Institution:
Balkan History Association
Abstract:
This paper deals with the issue of competing great power interests in Central Asia, known for specialists in international relations as the New Great Game. The focus is in first hand on interests of the “Big Four” global powers and secondly, on the interests of a series of regional powers which can bring decisive contributions to the New Great Game. The analysis has two directions: one concentrated on strategic analysis, and the second focused on economic interests.
Topic:
Power Politics, Military Affairs, and Strategic Competition
Political Geography:
Europe and Central Asia

9. Romanian–British Commercial Exchanges at the Lower Danube: The Consular Report of Percy Sanderson on the Year 1883

Author:
Cristian Constantin
Publication Date:
07-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Hiperboreea
Institution:
Balkan History Association
Abstract:
Researchers consider that the slight increase in commerce through Brăila and Galaţi after 1883 was mainly due to the reorientation of Romanian foreign trade by the dualist monarchy towards other European states. The Danube route-way regained some of its importance, although the port of Galaţi still suffered after the loss of the rich region of Southern Bessarabia and because of the inconvenient manner by which the town was linked to the Romanian railway system. Thus, the paper insists on the quantity and value of commercial exchanges (exports, imports), the grains, the main economic partners and the specific character of Brăila, Galaţi and Sulina in the Romanian economy. This study analyses the results of this fact upon the foreign commerce of the ports, as there are opinions that it had positive consequences for development of commerce and navigation at the Maritime Danube. The text proper is preceded by a short historical comment on the activity of the International Trade in the Lower Danube region.
Topic:
Regional Cooperation, Maritime Commerce, and Trade
Political Geography:
Britain, Europe, Balkans, and Romania