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One of the most distinctive rituals of Roman imperial accession was the adlocutio , the speech delivered by the new emperor to a military assembly, which can be documented from the first to the fifth centuries a.d. This article seeks to explain the extraordinary endurance of this neglected genre of speech by examining its origins, setting and content. After outlining the unusual nature of the accession adlocutio when set against both earlier and contemporary Mediterranean practice, the first half of this article traces its origins to the military culture of the late Roman Republic. In particular, the adlocutio is related to two other rituals which rose to new prominence in the era of the Civil Wars: the acclamation of the victorious general as imperator and the granting of military gifts. In the second part of this article, the setting for the typical adlocutio of the Imperial era is discussed using the often-problematic evidence of our ancient historical sources. The content of the speech itself is then reconstructed primarily through a close reading of our one surviving example, the brief address of Leo I preserved by Peter the Patrician. Finally, the evidence for the origins and content of the speech are brought together in an argument for the speech's survival as a useful tool for emperors seeking to establish a permanent bond with the soldiers they commanded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dual character of acclamations, religious and political, makes of acclamations a perfect place to explore theological-political transferences. Acclamations were central in ancient times in order to constitute a community and to show its acceptance, whether they took place in a republic while deciding in assemblies or during the accession of an emperor. The Christian-Church adopted this imperial ceremonial style with the introduction of imperial laudes into the Church and accommodated it to its own needs. Modern times recovered the magic of acclamations in order to give space to the vox populi in the constitution of the political community. The aim of the present article is to explore the centrality of acclamations in religious and political life through three key texts: Kantorowicz's Laudes regiae, Peterson's Heis Theos and Schmitt's Volksentscheid und Volksbegehren. These texts are interrelated and could be considered a particular case of a broad hidden dialogue between these three authors. The theological-political character and evolution of the practice of acclamations in the West coming from the East shows that the line that divided the sacred from the secular has been always far from fixed, and was instead subject to fluctuation, pressures from every side, and constant renegotiation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article approaches social media from the theory of the religio-political practice of acclamation revived by Agamben and following twentieth-century social and political thought and theology (of Weber, Peterson, Schmitt, Kantorowicz). It supplements that theory by more recent political-theoretical, historical and sociological investigations and regards acclamation as a ‘social institution’ following Mauss. Acclamation is a practice that forms publics, whether as the direct presence of the ‘people’, mass-mediated ‘public opinion’, or a ‘public mood’ decipherable through countless social media postings. The article surveys issues of differential geographies of access, weighting of posts, value-creation, orality and gesture, algorithmic governmentality, and Big Data and knowledge production. It argues that social media constitute a public from a mass of individualized, private postings. It concludes that they make possible forms of political calculability and action, yet are continuous with ritual and liturgical elements of political life. This study contributes to an analytics of publicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the fourteenth century, Venetian chronicles, art, and ceremony fostered provocative analogies between angelic annunc ia tion and the political voice of the Venetian populace. Such analogies imagined a city whose civic and heavenly members were united through the sound of unanimity. At the intersection of the state's civic and celestial bodies stood the doge, considered to be the image of the Republic and of its patron, Saint Mark. A complex of sung ceremonies and musical compositions addressed to the doge dramatized the notion that the voice, as a ritual instrument, could en gender real political or spiritual change in the state and its leaders. Performances of acclamations to the doge positioned him within Venice's sacred and civic hierarchies, while state art and ceremony forged symbolic resemblances between ducal acclamation and angelic annunciation. A repertory of occasional motets evidences polyphonic play with the notion that vocal rituals c entered on the doge could activate the spiritual ideals of the state: the anonymous Marce, Marcum imitaris (c. 1365) draws a sonic analogy between spiritual likeness and musical imitation in order to dramatize the concept of the doge as Mark's image, whereas Johannes Ciconia's Venecie mundi splendor/Michael qui Stena domus elides a text dedicated to the Annunciate Virgin with one addressed to the doge, creating musical echoes and simultaneities in its praises of Venice's temporal and celestial leaders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While this ‘extraordinary’ book appears as an intermezzo within the Homo Sacer series (Negri, 2008), it supports two fundamental theses with its own philological, epigraphic, liturgical and religious-historical research, and a close reading of figures such as Ernst Kantorowicz and Marcel Mauss. These theses concern political power first as an articulation of sovereign reign and economic government and, secondly, as constituted by acclamations and glorification. These can be approached theoretically through its author’s engagement with Michel Foucault’s genealogy of governmentality and with the Erik Peterson/Carl Schmitt debate on the closure of political theology. Agamben’s reformulation of power and his derivation of liberal governmentality from the theological oikonomia prove convincing. A renewed analytics of power and politics of resistance should be possible, however, without recourse to a project seeking to deactivate all profane powers including those of public bureaucracies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract So far, scholarship on early Christian liturgical prayer to Christ has neglected two relevant texts of Tertullian: De Spect. 25.5 and Apol. 2.6. This article points out that both texts reflect Tertullian's awareness and approval of the liturgical practice of addressing Christ in prayer. It is suggested that in the pre-Arian period, liturgical prayer to Christ was more accepted, prevalent, and established than is commonly held in scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with a surprising practice of placing a Torah scroll on a funeral bier and crying out: "This one fulfilled what is written in that one." An allusion to this custom already appears in a Tannaitic haggadah that tells about the bringing of Joseph's bones to burial in the Land of Israel. This practice seems to run counter to the tendency to distance the corpse from the realm of the sacred. I seek to examine it through literary motifs from eulogies and depictions of the death of various individuals, and through artistic findings from the realm of funerary art. This examination leads to conclusions about the significance of the presence of the Torah scroll in the context of funerals and burial rituals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In pursuing the goal of a political theater, Bertolt Brecht's Lehrstücke such as Der Jasager and Der Neinsager neither efface nor exalt the individual, but provide insight into how the representational aspect of political power in the modern world is linked to the individual's aesthetic experience of sacrifice. In a move that distinguishes his idea of Einverständnis from Ernst Jünger's notion of individual sacrifice on the one hand and links it to Carl Schmitt's notion of acclamation on the other hand, these plays revolve around the individual's decision to make a self-sacrifice, an act that most clearly embodies the aesthetic component of politics at its most basic level of an affective mobilization of individual consciousness for a collective cause that goes beyond the individual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a tradition of making a solemn oath and taking the pledge in Dîvânu Lugâti't-Turk, that continue in Dede Korkut and other Turkic epic stories. Making a vow, taking a solemn oath, exhortation and acclamation have an important place in Turkmen societies. They occur in school ceremonies in Turkey as the part of the tradition as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Daniel arap Moi ruled Kenya using a strategic mixture of ethnic favouritism, state repression and marginalisation of opposition forces, utilising violence, detention and torture. State predation featured, with looting of finances, land grabbing and property seizure. Moi saw his rule coming to an end in 2002, given a ‘two-term limit’ under political liberalisation. From 1998 on, Moi engaged in a carefully calculated strategy to manage the presidential succession in his and his party's favour. In this article, Moi's strategy, the reasons for its ultimate failure, and the short-lived triumph of a new popularly elected regime are analysed in relation to three pillars of Kenyan politics: ethnic representation, resource accumulation and distribution, and a system of unbounded politics that ensures that party loyalty is transient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]