Search

This article examines a small group of artefacts of the Viking Age that may have been perceived as animated objects. These specific weapons and pieces of jewellery appear in narratives in the Old Norse sources as named, as having a will of their own, as possessing personhood. In archaeological contexts the same types of artefact are handled categorically differently than the rest of the material culture. Further, the possible links between these perspectives and the role of animated objects in early medieval Christianity of the Carolingian Empire are examined through studies of the reopening of Reihengräber and the phenomenon of furta sacra. By linking studies of the social biographies of objects with studies of animism, the article aims to identify aspects of Viking Age ontology and its similarities to Carolingian Christianity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Saxons were conquered by Charlemagne in 804, after 33 years of intermittent campaigning; they were converted to Christianity and incorporated into the Carolingian political order. Yet despite this history of conquest and incorporation, historians have largely viewed Carolingian Saxony as distinct from the Frankish world. To a large extent, this may be seen as a result of the politicization of Saxon history in the early 20th century. Early Nazi propaganda drew upon the Saxon wars as an example of German heroism and resistance, with particular attention paid to the history of conflict and warfare; unsurprisingly, there was little interest in such circles in delineating subsequent cooperation and coexistence. The postwar period, by contrast, saw a resurgence of local history, which, while serving as a corrective to earlier nationalistic approaches, did not seek to situate the history of individual Saxon Christian centres, whether monasteries or bishoprics, in their wider context. Only recently has an interest in Saxon regional history resurfaced, but even still, the connection of the region to the Frankish world remains relatively unexplored with a few notable exceptions. Recent work on the Carolingian empire has stressed its regionalism and variety, arguing for less top-down control and more 'grassroots' politics. In such a context, Carolingian Saxony need not stand as an outlier: rather, it should be analyzed both alongside, and as part of, the wider Carolingian world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nithard's Histories, a remarkable first-hand account of how the Carolingian Empire built by Charlemagne was ripped asunder by his feuding grandsons, provides more than simply a lens through which to view the events relevant to the political maelstrom battering the Carolingian world in the 840s. The work's basic structure, particular language, and principal concepts reveal a coherent, consistent, and poignant worldview and offer modern scholars a window into the values and perspectives common to the mid-ninth century. This article concentrates on Nithard's analytical tools and brings into sharp focus the work's deep continuity, its internal reasoning, its sophistication, and its audience. Nithard analyzed his world as working according to a sacramental logic and identified lapses in fidelity as the fundamental problem. Basic Christian catechetical ideas profoundly inform Nithard's analysis. The basic consistency of his sacramental logic combined with omnipresent religious concepts illumines a broader elite discourse common to the mid-ninth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In public worships of the middle ages the communicative structures come into closer consideration when a ritual act is of relevance to the theology of the sacraments or to juridical implications. In these cases the spoken language seems to be of eminent importance, because the ritual initializes, strengthens or blesses (or cancels) a canonical status. Both a sacral language and a metaphorical text can create misunderstandings or errors. So interests and intentions have to be investigated in an examination or in the form of a dialogue, when 'Amen' as a simply answer is not sufficient. The dialogue during the ritual of baptism here is used as an example. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are very few studies on the creation of batik clothing that explore the themes of power and peace. So far the creation of batik clothing is still limited to the art of decorating, but has little to do with power - peace. Many power conflicts lead to war, the purpose of this research was to create batik with a philosophy that power leads to the goal of peace. Expressions of power and peace are represented through form and strengthened by the creation of written batik techniques on a piece of cotton cloth. To achieve this goal, we apply a creative approach to the creation process, namely: (a) formulating the concept of written batik creation; (b) creative exploration of written batik; (c) the process of making batik using cotton cloth; (d) the creation of batik works using the written batik technique using canting, coloring, drying and cutting into a piece of batik clothing. This approach describes the representation of power and peace in the form of written batik clothes worn by a king, namely King Hamengku Buwana X from the Yogyakarta palace, Java, Indonesia. This research produced special batik for King Hamengku Buwana X. The batik that was made depicts a motif that symbolizes the authority of power but also brings peace to mankind, i.e. the creation of batik for King Hamengku Buwana X. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper advocates for a reading of John Scottus Eriugena's Carmina that situates his collection of poems within the genre of devotional poetry. Although the Carmina has recently benefited from scholarship on Eriugena's theology, typologies of his poems consistently overlook the significance of their theological themes. Most instead attribute more significance to their political themes, since Charles the Bald commissioned many of Eriugena's poems for special occasions at his royal court. This paper argues that a textual analysis which compares the significance of theological and political themes in the Carmina reveals several reasons why Eriugena's poems should be read as devotional poetry. First, it explains how typologies of Eriugena's poems overlook the significance of their theological themes by overstating the significance of Charles and his royal court. Then, it offers a close reading of three poems in the Carmina to show how Eriugena uses theological themes to frame political ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, it is thought that there are only two approaches to political economy: public finance and public choice; however, this research aims to introduce a new insight by investigating scholastic sources. We study the relevant classic books from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries and reevaluate the scholastic literature based on public finance and public choice doctrines. The findings confirm that the government is the institution for realizing the common good according to a scholastic attitude. Therefore, scholastic thinkers saw a typical government mission based on their essentialist attitude toward human happiness. Social conflicts and lack of social consent are the product of diversification in ends and desires; hence, if the ends of humans were unified, there would be no conflict of interest. Accordingly, if the government acts according to its assigned mission, the lack of public consent is not significant. Based on the scholastic point of view, this study introduces the third approach to political economy, which can be considered an analytical synthesis of classical doctrines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alcuin’sRhetoricpossesses a singular relationship to the history of rhetoric and to its own unique historical period. The puzzlingly diverse evaluations of theRhetoric’spurpose and “importance” are often clouded by the question of its subsequent historical influence. The purpose of the present argument is to present contextualizing information based on newly emerging historical data surrounding the mid-790s, the date of theRhetoric’scomposition, and its Augustinian influence. Alcuin’sRhetoricis an early example of consular rhetoric to “advise the prince” that forms, in itself, a deliberative argument regarding a very specific set of historical exigencies that relate to legal policies toward unconverted subjects in the Carolingian empire. Alcuin’s motivation for the composition of theRhetoriccan be understood in the historically imminent adoption of the Saxon Code and its contradiction of the rhetorical counsel found in Augustine’sDe Catechizandis Rudibus. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Jesus's body was visualised in strikingly gendered ways in the Carolingian world. The Jesus of the Carolingian Empire could move deftly between gendered styles, from feminised victim to hyper-masculinised victor; at the same time, he could delicately dance between these two modes of gendered existence and do so within the space of one manuscript page. Three manuscripts produced in the ninth century contain bold images of a fleshly Jesus: the Stuttgart Psalter ( c.820s), the Sacramentary of Gellone ( c.800) and the acrostic poem produced at the abbey of Fulda, In Honour of the Holy Cross ( c.810/830s). These codices are associated with a period of cultural flourishing known as the Carolingian renovatio, or the renewal of classical and patristic culture within the reforming agenda of the Frankish church. Each manuscript presents a Dark Age Jesus within distinct, interpretative backdrops - tortured, fecund and imperial - a divergence in style underscoring how the evangelical portrait of Jesus's body and its fluctuating gender were staged in the pastoral North for different audiences. The Carolingians did impart a series of images that defy the stereotypes of early medieval Christianity, including the idea that intimacy with a human saviour is the spiritual legacy of subsequent eras. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the Old English Orosius, a work traditionally viewed as a product of the educational reforms of King Alfred of Wessex (r. 871-899), can be constructively read in relation to developments in Anglo-Saxon political thought in the early tenth as well as in the late ninth centuries. The earliest extant manuscript of the Orosius was probably copied at Winchester in the early tenth century by the same scribe responsible for the entries for the late ninth and early tenth century in MS A of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. This section of the Chronicle charts both the break-up of the Carolingian Empire and the conquests of Alfred and his successors, Edward the Elder and Æthelstan, over various kings and peoples of Britain. Treating the reports of Ohthere and Wulfstan contained in the geographical preface to the Orosius as an integral part of the text as it was read in the early tenth century, rather than as an extraneous interpolation, I suggest that this passage invites readers to consider the rapidly expanding West Saxon kingdom in relation to the great empires which preceded it. I then outline how the translator refashioned Orosius's 'universal history' into a work of imperial history which is more directly concerned with Rome's long and difficult rise than with its fall to the Goths in 410. I conclude that the Orosius might have encouraged early tenth-century Anglo-Saxon readers to interpret the recent rise of Wessex to overlordship in Britain as part of an ongoing process of translatio imperii, the transference or succession of empires, contingent on the Christian virtue of its rulers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The late twelfth-century epic Raoul de Cambrai forges a relationship with some version of the Chanson de Roland and criticism seems to privilege the rapport between Raoul and Roland. Nevertheless, allusions to Roland in the first part of Raoul de Cambrai are fraught with misrepresentations of Roland's legend and misappropriations of the Chanson de Roland. This article argues that the nexus of legitimacy and illegitimacy, which is prevalent in studies of Raoul de Cambrai, functions as a rejection of the absolute values and paradigms characteristic of the Chanson de Roland. Ultimately, this study posits that Raoul de Cambrai contributes to the supremacy of the Roland story which it then undermines in order to highlight its own illegitimacy and even failure in this narrative tradition. By fashioning itself as imperfect, incomplete, and inauthentic in relation to the legend of Roland, Raoul de Cambrai exposes its own short-comings as well as those of its era. References to Roland also recall the height of the Carolingian empire, which stands in contrast to the allegedly illegitimate Capetian monarchy in power during the composition of Raoul de Cambrai. The appropriation of the Roland legend, then, functions as a metaphor by which the poet of Raoul de Cambrai comments on the illegitimacy of the Capetians in relation to the Carolingians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eastern Europe continuously holds a precarious position in the Anglophone study of the Middle Ages. Although technically a part of Europe, it fell outside of the Carolingian world that has been at the center of traditional medieval studies. At the same time, the critique of the field's traditional Eurocentrism and the growing emphasis on the Mediterranean basin and the global Middle Ages have further marginalized this region. As a result, the defining characteristic of Eastern Europe becomes its emptiness—a place where dragons may live. Yet given its unique positionality, Eastern Europe promises valuable contributions to the study of the Middle Ages. In addition to demonstrating the connectedness of Europe to surrounding regions, it would also expand the area of collaboration with scholars of Byzantium, evaluate traditional models, and foreground the diversity of European population. The inclusion of Eastern Europe will further repudiate the myth of a medieval Europe that is uniformly white and Christian. When viewed from its orient, this was a geographical space filled with followers of different religious traditions, claiming diverse ethnic identities, who interacted with each other and with the surrounding world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The starting point for many analyses of European state development is the historical fragmentation of territorial authority. The dominant bellicist explanation for state formation argues that this fragmentation was an unintended consequence of imperial collapse, and that warfare in the early modern era overcame fragmentation by winnowing out small polities and consolidating strong states. Using new data on papal conflict and religious institutions, I show instead that political fragmentation was the outcome of deliberate choices, that it is closely associated with papal conflict, and that political fragmentation persisted for longer than the bellicist explanations would predict. The medieval Catholic Church deliberately and effectively splintered political power in Europe by forming temporal alliances, funding proxy wars, launching crusades, and advancing ideology to ensure its autonomy and power. The roots of European state formation are thus more religious, older, and intentional than often assumed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the impact of tax policy on income inequality in the European Union (EU). Each EU member-state has adopted a distinct set of fiscal policies. Although most member-states have coordinated their tax systems to promote economic growth, EU countries hold politically divergent views about income inequality and the power of taxation to redress inequality. This research applies linear regressionmethods incorporating regularization as well as fixed and random effects. Stacking generalization produces a composite model that dramatically improves predictive accuracy while aggregating causal inferences from simpler models. Social contributions, income taxes, and consumption taxes ameliorate inequality. Government spending, however, exacerbates inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Constitutional History / Giornale di Storia Costituzionale is the property of Giornale di Storia Costituzionale (Journal of Constitutional History) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The word 'Székely' or 'Szekler' was formed from the Hungarian verb szökik (jump, move fast, escape, run away) using the suffix '-l/ly' creating deverbal nouns. The original meaning of the word is fast-moving (person), fugitive, or runaway. The formation of the social group began in the eleventh century. The process was brought about the establishment of the landlord system and frequent wars which led to the escapes and 'wanderings' of slaves and free people coerced into bondage. The refugees mainly settled in the sparsely populated border region, where the institutional vacuum offered them favourable conditions to avoid the control of the feudal state. Here, the groups of different ethnic origins acquired a unified identity. We can understand the process of the formation of the community by using the conceptual frameworks of 'unintended consequences, self-organization, spontaneous order, and exaptation.' The spontaneous process may have been replaced by the conscious organizational efforts of the Hungarian kings only around 1100. This was followed by the first mention of the Székelys in the Battle of Olšava in 1116. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the selected examples of early medieval texts written in the Carolingian Empire by Catholic clerics Agobard of Lyon, Amolo of Lyon and Prudentius of Troyes to answer questions concerning the knowledge of the Jewish religion. The questions include Christians' knowledge, comprehension and assessment about the other religion. Christian authors' knowledge about Judaism and Jewish faith are discussed.

In the tenth century, when the earliest chant books were being compiled in the heart of the Carolingian Empire and polyphonic music was entering the realm of theoretical speculation in the anonymous writings of Musica enchiriadis and Scolica enchiriadis, organa were also being notated for performance outside music treatises. We would not know this, were it not for a two-voice organum on an antiphon for Saint Boniface written in the first decades of the tenth century on the last page of a long-neglected manuscript, now in the British Library. A second notated antiphon, Rex caelestium terrestrium, provides elements for a reconstruction of a further, ‘hidden’, organum. These newly identified organa shed light on a significant phase in Western music history, being the sole evidence from the tenth century of a polyphonic practice before the great eleventh-century collection of organa from Winchester. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Catalonia is an autonomous community within modern Spain with a distinct history. In the Middle Ages the region became a key component of the Crown of Aragon, and it has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention for its wealth, power, and 'feudal revolution'. Most historians recognize but do not emphasize the earlier history of the later principality, with roots in the Carolingian period. This article draws attention to the conclusions reached by historians who have built our understanding of Catalonia's early medieval history. The nucleus of the later Catalonia was the Carolingian Spanish March, established as the Franks conquered the territory in the period around 800 CE. The Spanish March functioned as an integral province of the Carolingian Empire, and its leaders, both Franks and locals, played important roles in the dynamics of monarchy in the ninth century. In the tenth century, as Carolingian royal power faded, the locally based leaders of the Spanish March had to find their own ways through trying times. By the beginning of the 11th century, the Carolingian legacy remained intact, even as Frankish royal authority was a thing of the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lost realm of Lotharingia presents an excellent case-study with which to explore the last years of the Carolingian Empire in the ninth century and the emergence of its successor kingdoms in the tenth. Following the political history of the kingdom from its creation in the reign of King Lothar II (855-69) through the end of the empire in 888 and across the conflict-ridden map of tenth-century Europe reveals some of the key dynamics of the post-Carolingian world. These dynamics have long been the subject of debates between scholars and have also played a part in the grand narratives of modern European nations whose roots have been located in the ninth and tenth centuries. Lotharingia represents an interesting and unusual case, since its independent existence was fleeting, but it somehow left behind a distinctive shadow that continually resurfaced in between the proto-French and -German kingdoms on either side. A discussion of questions of authority and identity in Lotharingia, which was an obviously artificial creation of Carolingian politics, and which had no long-term future as a nation-state, allows us to strip away some of the baggage carried by modern national historiographies and ask what was specific about this important phase in the history of European state-formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The passage of Halley's Comet through the skies above the Earth in the spring of 837 was a spectacular event, with written records surviving from T'ang China, Heian Japan, the Abbasid Caliphate and the Carolingian empire. This article integrates all of these sources, together with the findings of modern historical astronomy, to revise the famous account from the Vita Hludowici imperatoris of the emperor Louis the Pious and the ' Astronomer' observing the comet from the rooftops of Aachen. It assesses how reliable early medieval witnesses were when describing the natural world and demonstrates that the Astronomer was able to produce a coherent description of the night sky. However, despite the claims of the text, close analysis and comparison with Chinese observations reveals the two men could not have been watching Halley's Comet that evening. Nevertheless, the Astronomer's account is sufficiently accurate and effective that two alternative suggestions can be derived from it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The structure, function(s) and symbolism of early medieval (9th-10th centuries ad) fortified settlements from central Europe, in particular today's Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia, are examined in this paper. It offers an overview of the current state of research together with new insights based on analysis of the site of Gars-Thunau in Lower Austria. Special emphasis is given to the position of the fortified sites in the landscape, to the elements of the built environment and their spatial organisation, as well as to graves within the fortified area. The region under study was situated on the SE border of the Carolingian (and later the Ottonian) Empire, with some of the discussed sites lying in the territory of the 'Great Moravian Empire' in the 9th and 10th centuries. These sites can therefore provide important comparative data for researchers working in other parts of the Carolingian Empire and neighbouring regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers some overlooked evidence for royal legislation in the dying days of the Carolingian empire, a series of charters known as the Ravenna constitutions. These documents, which deal with the status of Italian freemen, are often analysed as sources for social history but rarely as texts in their own right. Reconstructing the context in which the charters were issued enables us to cast light on political events and royal self-representation in early 880s Italy; and by drawing attention to the peculiarities of their form, we can use them to reflect more broadly on the nature of Carolingian capitulary legislation and the meaning of its disappearance at the end of the ninth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tenth century, once dismissed as an unpleasant 'Age of Iron', now receives increased attention as an important age of transition. Historians are attempting to understand how it fits into the broader narrative of Western Civilization. Although some scholars have identified it as the last act of the post-Roman world, others see it as a new age. Perhaps the High Middle Ages with its agricultural and demographic revolution, its new villages and parishes, its revived cities, its reformed churches and schools, and its medieval monarchs began in the tenth century? Or were those changes not novelties of the tenth century but rather manifestations of a 'take off' that had already begun back in the Carolingian Empire, and which, despite the problems posed by late Carolingian wars and invasions, was able to continue, spread, and blossom into the growth and prosperity of the High Middle Ages? New scholarly interest in the tenth century has made it much less of a 'dark age', but scholars still are not quite certain how to conceptualize its historical significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the role and development of the "laubia," a porch-like architectural feature in the Carolingian Empire of 8th- and 9th-century Europe, especially Italy, that appeared historically between the Roman portico and the late medieval loggia. The appearance of laubiae is associated with Carolingian legal reforms that involved trials, judgments, and other judicial activity taking place publicly, with laubiae offering shelter and open spaces through which judicial proceedings could be viewed. Because no example of laubiae survive, they are studied through contemporary texts and images, with attention to regional variations based on ethnic influences.

Regino of Prüm's Chronicle, completed in the year 908, is one of the most important narrative sources for the history of the later Carolingian Empire, and contains the best contemporary account of its collapse in 888. Regino was not a detached observer of events, but a political actor whose career was profoundly affected by the turbulence of post-imperial politics. This article seeks to demonstrate how the text and its author's own career cannot be understood independently of one another. Through an analysis of Regino's rhetorical strategies (particularly insinuation, juxtaposition and self-censorship) I attempt to cast new light on the construction of the later sections of this important chronicle. At the same time, by interrogating the work as a source for its author's own life (and in particular his forcible ejection from Prüm in 899) I use it to draw out broader conclusions about the conduct of politics during the scramble for the Carolingian heartland of Lotharingia at the end of the ninth century. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article seeks to develop a theoretical framework for interpreting social rituals and the notion of social and cultural imitation, specifically concerning the connections between religion, religious rituals and liturgy, and society. It draws on theories and scholarship from the fields of evolutionary biology, cognitive science, anthropology, social theory, and history. The model is developed with illustrative examples of Europe in the Middle Ages, especially reforms of religious practice and liturgy in the Carolingian Empire and the religious movement of the Cathars, and Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries, especially the Zulu-Christian syncretistic religious groups of the Nazareth Baptist Church of South Africa and the Church of Saints.

This essay aims to show that in England and on the Continent, ninth-century individuals and groups in a wide variety of social milieux from peasants to substantial landowners, and including women, had a strong sense of rights to status and property that were rational in something like the modern sense while surrounded by rituals that seem very un-modern. Un-modern, too, seem the terms on which rights were held, and the forms and contexts in which rights were negotiated and renegotiated between local holders, lords and kings. With reference to material from Wessex and from various parts of the Carolingian Empire, it is suggested that the linkage of rights and rituals was symptomatic of sophisticated cultures with apt ways of managing conflict and creating consensus in localities and in kingdoms. The so-called decimation of King Æthelwulf is discussed as a meaningful case in point. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Charlemagne is known, among other things, for his emphasis on education and the liberal arts in the Carolingian empire. The text Opus Caroli regis contra synodum from the 790s, traditionally called Libri Carolini, is written in opposition to the Byzantine empire and its rulers Irene and Constantine, who organized the Second Nicene Council in 787, regarding the question of images. The Opus Caroli regis, however, does not just deal with questions concerning the theology on images and worship; while the work concludes that images play no part whatsoever in the Christian revelation or salvation, attention is turned towards the word and correct interpretation of scripture, thus making an extensive knowledge of the liberal arts a condition for Christian leadership. The purpose of the present paper is to investigate the role of the liberal arts in the Opus Caroli regis, and highlight a polemic construction representing the Carolingians and the Byzantines as opposites; the Carolingians characterized as truthful, humble and educated, the Byzantines as lying, arrogant and ignorant of the liberal arts, a view partly built on the bad Latin of the Nicene Acts. The Carolingians were under the impression that their Latin version originated in Constantinople, a notion which had a devastating effect on the authority of the Opus Caroli regis, because as it turned out the responsible party for the weak Latin translation of the Acts was in fact the Pope in Rome, Charlemagne's spiritual superior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decade leading up to the disintegration of the Carolingian Empire in 887–8 is traditionally characterised by historians as a period when royal authority was in terminal decline, crippled by the deaths of three great rulers in the mid-870s and by the attempt of the non-Carolingian rebel Boso of Vienne to seize a throne in 879. This article challenges the conventional view, and argues that Boso's revolt actually inspired the four surviving Carolingian kings to enter into a period of successful and effective cooperation. They came to a sworn agreement which sealed a new mutually guaranteed succession plan and resolved several outstanding territorial disputes. The end of the empire was brought about neither by internal conflict nor by loss of faith in the royal house, but rather by the premature deaths of a series of heirless rulers and the failure of the last emperor Charles the Fat to organize his succession in 887. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on the argument of the previous article, this article presents a focused case-study of theology among the barbarians. It looks at how theologians at the court of Charlemagne, king of the Franks (768--814) wrote about divine providence and applied it to contemporary concerns in the 790s. It demonstrates that these authors proved capable of orthodox, scriptural, and pastorally relevant reflections on this rich area of doctrine and that -- contrary to the opinion of many scholars -- they warrant the title of 'theologians'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is Christendom in international relations? We argue that Christendom does not equate to a long-lost historical empire but an enduring imaginary of a political order where government secures the church and the church ministers to government. Such imaginaries have taken a diverse range of historical and geographical forms, which have barely been explored in International Relations (IR). They may be state-centric or decentered. As intellectual historians of the discipline have demonstrated, international relations was founded on a Christendom ontology and theology, and then rapidly forgot that fact. One major feature of this forgetting is a narrow historical conception of Christendom—its equation with Latin Christendom—in contrast with the wealth of scholarship in the humanities, which has revealed various conceptual forms and discursive practices of Christendom from at least the fourth century CE to the present. The effect of this narrowness has been to confirm IR's historical Eurocentrism and prevent it from exploring the international politics of Eurasian, Eastern Orthodox forms of Christendom, and signs of new imaginaries of Christendom emerging in the Global South. But such neo-Christendoms—which imagine government as re-centered on the church—raise the possibility of the emergence of modern variations of the legitimized violence associated with Latin Christendom. Alternative theologies of post-Christendom—imagining the church as politically active but decentered from government—indicate that such an imaginary is contested not just beyond but within Christian theology. The paper provides a new definition of Christendom and re-evaluation of its afterlives for the study of religion and theology in international relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 256 AH/869 CE, the rank-and-file of the Turkic-Central Asian military in Samarra, the Abbasid imperial centre, rose against their commanders and the caliphal court. This is according to al-Ṭabarī's third/ ninth-century Taʾrīkh (History). The present article discusses two related elements of the mutiny: the rise to influence and authority of members of the Samarran military command, and the resentment of the rank-and-file troops. The main topic, however, is collective action on the part of the troops. The issue is social (re)formation and solidarity on the part of enslaved and freed persons brought together by the circumstances of enslavement in a particular time and place, in this case third/ninth-century Abbasid Iraq. In treating the rebellion, the article draws briefly, in a comparative manner, on the work of scholars of imperial Rome, early medieval Europe, and the antebellum U.S. South. Drawing on what al-Ṭabarī tells us of the mutiny, the article also considers the history of enslavement and unfreedom in early Islamic-era society more broadly. The mutiny serves in this sense as a case study in the history of slavery in early Islamic society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]