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The 14th-century Dominican theologian and philosopher Durand of Saint-Pourçain was among the intellectuals who took part in the medieval debate on virginity, especially on the relationship between virginity and marriage. This paper discusses a question of his Sentences Commentary (Super Sent., II, d. 20, q. 2), in which Durand poses the question of “whether or not there would have been a loss of virginity in marriage” (utrum in actu matrimoniali fuisset amissio virginitatis) both in statu innocentiae and in statu post peccatum. This paper shows how Durand’s solution to the problem is in opposition to Augustine’s and Thomas Aquinas’s views, based on formal and material aspects of virginity.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: The article discusses the interplay between language, cognition and culture from a cognitive diachronic perspective, focusing on the relation between religion and metaphorical thought. It investigates the role of the conceptual metaphor UNDERSTANDING IS LIGHT in religious discourse, using the example of The Revelations of Divine Love, written by Julian of Norwich, a late medieval anchoress. THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METODS: The paper draws on the Extended Conceptual Metaphor approach, Zoltán Kövecses’s elaboration of the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT). The universalist bias of CMT means that the theory tends to ignore the sociocultural context of historical data, prioritising the influence of universal human embodiment on metaphorical thought. Using Kövecses’s approach, the paper shows how the gap in CMT methodology may be bridged to yield more reliable results. THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: The present study connects Kövecses’s approach to Cognitive Linguistic research into sociocultural situatedness. To exemplify the problem, the analysis examines the cognitive‑cultural underpinnings of Julian’s use of the metaphor UNDERSTAND‑ ING IS LIGHT. RESEARCH RESULTS: The analysis shows that the metaphorical conceptualisation pattern may well derive from Julian’s sociocultural situatedness. The paper indicates that the anchoress’s metaphorical thought should be seen as embedded in the late medieval sociocultural context, rather than being considered solely in terms of universal aspects of embodiment. CONCLUSIONS, RECOMMENDATIONS AND THE APPLICATIVE VALUE OF RESEARCH: The study concludes that the idea of sociocultural situatedness may be pivotal in the analyses of historical texts. It seems important to incorporate this idea into Kövecses’s approach, which may inform the methodology of cognitive diachronic research into metaphorical conceptualisations. Furthermore, the results may be applied to teaching students how to approach historical texts, helping them gain a better understanding of the relation between metaphorical thought and culture.

In this paper, I attempt to explore a recent hypothesis about what the main mss. are for establishing the text of Aristotle’s Ethica Nicomachea (henceforth EN). This hypothesis was recently advanced on the basis of evidence coming from EN I-II. In exploring this hypothesis, I confine myself to the text of EN X.6-9 [=Bywater X.6-8], and, as a result, I propose a new text for EN X.6-9 [=Bywater X.6-8] based on a fresh collation of nine mss—four of which were not taken into account in previous editions of the EN—and based on readings that can be gathered from the Arabic translation of the EN that was preserved in the Fez ms. The text proposed in this paper is accompanied by textual notes that justify my decisions regarding some difficult passages.

The horrific scenes of the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990), which left the country in ruins, had a traumatic effect on the entire nation particularly the Lebanese author, Hanan al-Shaykh who was haunted by the nightmarish war memories until she managed to overcome them by reliving the whole experience through the events of her remarkable novel The Story of Zahra. Disillusioned by the political scene during the war and exasperated with the traditional artistic themes advocated by previous generations of war writers, al-Shaykh rejected the linear development of character, the sense of order and progression integral to the war literature in the Arab world. Instead, she captures the atrocities of war by creating a unique novel, giving the Lebanese tragedy mythic proportions and turning it into more than a historical event. In light of this background and within the context of contemporary war fiction studies, the paper critically examines al-Shaykh’s novel in order to explore the deadly impact of war, which uproots the foundations of a civilized country turning it into a wasteland. The paper argues that the author creates a multi-layered narrative, which reflects the collapse of the moral and political structure of a patriarchal society paralyzed by coercive masculinity and devastated by sectarian violence. Navigating the protagonist’s journey of suffering and pain during the brutal civil conflict, the paper uncovers the underpinnings of war interpreting the novel as a gendered reflection of a divided country. The paper also emphasizes that the author presents a counter-narrative exposing the ugly side of war and revealing how war catastrophically damages the social fabric of the nation.

The paper focuses on a reexamination and reassessment of the textual evidence of Enoch’s Vision of the Heavenly Temple and of its classical interpretation as a heavenly temple complex. In line with the common scholarly opinion, 1 En. 14:8–25 has so far been interpreted in the sense of a bipartite or even tripartite temple which resembles the earthly temple in Jerusalem not only in structure but also in appearance. In contrast, this paper claims that this passage of the Book of the Watchers provides a twofold vision of two different temples, namely the inferior earthly temple and the ideal heavenly sanctuary. In this way, it articulates one of the most radical temple critiques of ancient Judaism. This interpretation is based on a careful textual analysis and a meticulous discussion of the individual elements of, in particular, the first house, taking into account other ancient Jewish sources such as Ezekiel, Haggai and the Animal Apocalypse which partially have been ignored so far but provide a helpful and illuminating background for the interpretation of Enoch’s Heavenly Vision.

Casualties of nuclear technologies are not immediate, and the populations that bear the most significant burden are too sparse to be noteworthy, especially in the case of uranium mining industries. Shaped by forms of settler colonialism – the US and Canada mine on Indigenous and First Nation reservations – effects of radioactive exposure produce slow, recursive forms of nuclear suffering as illness may take up to thirty years to manifest. This article zooms in on the case of uranium mining and the violence of the temporal lag between uranium exposure and the appearance of symptoms. It explores how this lag is critically interrogated by two contemporary artists that approach uranium mining histories as unresolved; as a series of situations whose unfolding goes on, thus going against the closure of narratives of uranium mining. Two artworks that critically engage with the slow temporality of uranium and its violent effects, and that this paper closely reads, are Bonnie Devine’s drawing series The Book of Radiance (1999) and video Rooster Rock, the Story of Serpent River and Eve Andrée Laramée’s installation Halfway to Invisible (2009). Both artists lay bare the temporal possibilities of turning our gaze away from obvious nuclear symbols, such as bombs and reactors, or what technology historian Gabrielle Hecht calls our fetishes of nuclear histories (Being Nuclear. Africans and the Global Uranium Trade), to rather engage with less obvious nuclear histories. Drawing on theoretical insights from recent scholarship in science and technology studies and art history around time, the paper emphasizes the affordances of contemporary art in redressing uranium mining as a slow and latent modality of the nuclear complex.

How did the exhibition in the Chinese pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale entitled Continuum – Generation by Generation (buxi 不息) mobilize the concept of buxi, which translates literally as “endlessness” or “never ceasing”? What does it mean to conceive of art, the world, and oneself through the lens of buxi, as endlessly intrarelated? This paper delves into this question from a multi-pronged perspective. First, it explains the meaning of buxi and analyzes how the show engages with aesthetic, epistemological, social and political implications of art and the world conceived through a contemporary perspective on the concept of “endlessness”. Second, the paper explores how a reading of the show and the artworks – their adopted aesthetic strategies, media, techniques, and materialities – through the lens of buxi complicates the critical and aesthetic framework for contemporary art in the global context. Finally, the paper evaluates the engagement with buxi – and the respective alternative processual ontology and temporality of art and world – as a useful mode of decolonizing the discipline of art history, even as it emphasizes the importance of adopting a dynamic pluriversal approach that attends to the transcultural relations that shape and reshape the multiplicity of meanings of art in a global framework, its multiple and entangled critical and aesthetic discourses, and the complexity of power structures, and avoids obscuring significant contexts and experiences.

This paper aims to present observations on the pragmaticalized use as well as the concomitant functions of the demonstrative este in Mexican Spanish. Este seems to serve an additional range of functions in Mexican Spanish in particular, but also in other Hispanic American varieties, as it has turned into a quite productive discourse marker that can be considered, among other things, as a hesitation element, an outline signal, and probably also as an evidentiality marker. The specific functional domains (especially with regard to possible evidential functions) will be illustrated in more detail in the paper using oral language data from the speaker community of the southern Mexican city of Oaxaca de Juárez. The study also includes a sociolinguistically oriented quantitative analysis, the results of which will also be discussed in the context of language ideological attitudes towards este.

This paper, taking into account previous partial studies, formulates the methodology, aspects, and aims of a pioneering study of emotions in all the major literary genres of the Old Testament books. Special attention is given to the literary representation of the emotional state of female characters in Old Testament narratives and poems. In light of previous representations of emotions in the Old Testament, the study proposes an integrated analysis of the selected texts that combines linguistic-literary, historical-anthropological, and ethical-moral aspects. The focus is on the study of emotions in the relationships between male and female persons and between humans and God. The analysis of the selected texts takes into account the broader textual and intertextual relationships in relation to similar texts in the Old Testament. The paper focuses on how partial, often abstractly cognitive and allegorical methods can be complemented by a more holistic approach at both the diachronic and synchronic levels in assessing the authenticity of the emotions of the acting subjects. From a methodological point of view, it is also important to pay attention to the relationships between the explicit and implicit representation of the emotions of the main and secondary characters.

This paper presents the pre-Islamic Jews’ and Christians’ conception of Jerusalem, the Temple Mount and the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre. The first part of the paper presents Jewish views of the Temple Mount, pointing out that Jews hoped, and still do, to rebuild the Temple, and that there was a widespread belief in rabbinic Judaism that in the centre of the Temple stood a stone called the šǝtiyyâ, which marked the centre of the world, and from which the world was created. The second part of the paper analyses the notion of the eternal desolation of the Temple Mount among Syriac Christians, which developed in close contact with rabbinic Judaism. The article shows that the Christian thesis on the eternal destruction of the Jewish Temple is closely related to the Christian critique of rabbinic Judaism as such and of religious practices of Jews. In the course of the development and construction of the Christian earthly Jerusalem, Christians developed a distinctive system of beliefs that integrated some of the characteristics that Jews ascribed to the Temple, including the belief in the Temple as the centre of the world. In the conclusion, the article sketches the basic tensions between Judaism and Christianity regarding the future of the Temple Mount at the beginning of the 7th century. When Muslims conquered Jerusalem and entered into the world of these tensions, they forever changed it through the deliberate use and refutation of Christian and Jewish belief in accordance with their own religious teachings.

The paper outlines the historical background of the phenomena of starets (starchestvo) in monasticism, which has its roots in the early days of monastic life in Egypt and is primarily linked to the education of young monks under the guide of an experienced teacher. Particular attention is paid to the development of the phenomena in Russia, which, although with a time lag, initially imitated the Byzantine tradition, but nevertheless in the 18th and 19th centuries developed original traits, especially around the monastery of Optina Pustyn and the figure of the starets Macarius, who opened the monasticism ≫outwards≪ and became a spiritual guide of the laity – the intelligentsia and the common people. The monastery's connection with the world later led to specific forms of elderhood in which also diocesan priests and even lay people, men and women, were recognised as starets. Of course, this was largely connected with the historical situation in Russia, with the communist persecution of monks and the closure of monasteries. Particularly outstanding are the so-called ≫yurodiviy≪ (fools for Christ), who are an unique embodiment of God's wisdom and its redemptive power. The paper attempts to present the basic traits of the spirituality of the starets and the relationship with his spiritual sons and daughters from the perspective of Russian scholars. We can see a deeply Trinitarian and Christologically rooted spirituality, which presupposes a kenotic attitude of the starets in order that the person who is led by him reach God through him. Far from any spiritual manipulation and domination, the unique aim of the starets is to lead the spiritual son or daughter to theosis, divinisation, i.e., to freely accept the grace of salvation.

(The ancient tradition concerning Pythagoras of Samos’ role as the founder of physiognomy): This paper collects and analyzes ancient sources that refer to Pythagoras of Samos as the founder of physiognomy. Interest in physiognomy, which deals with the relationship between the body and the spirit, has become more popular over the last few years; however, many aspects of research into the topic are still obscure and worthy of further study. Physiognomy was assumed by ancient authors to be the method by which candidates were selected to enter the Pythagorean community, used by the Greek philosopher and his followers. Information about Pythagoras, who – by simply looking at somebody – could recognize their character appears, in the works of Aulus Gellius, Hippolytus, Porphyry, Iamblichos, Proclos and Olympiodorus. Apart from discussing testimonia about Pythagoras and his physiognomic examinations, the text explores the role of physiognomy during the selection process for the Pythagorean community in order to provide a better understanding of elite traditions within society. The paper also supplies further insight with regards to the methodology behind physiognomical surveys, which were popular during antiquity.

The paper focuses on the first volume of Emanuele Cutinelli-Rendina’s biography of Benedetto Croce, entitled Benedetto Croce. Una vita per la nuova Italia and published by Aragno in 2022. More specifically, the paper is divided into three main sections. The first section sheds light on the methodological choices and assumptions underlying the volume, entitled Genesi di una vocazione civile (1866- 1918). The second section concerns Cutinelli-Rendina’s remarks on both Croce’s relationship to Italian socialism and his interpretation of historical materialism and Marxist theory. The third section is about Cutinelli-Rendina’s view of Croce’s neutralist position toward World War One.

In the paper, the author presents the theoretical starting point of the discussion on cyborgization. The phenomenon of cyborgization can be regarded from different angles of view – technical, medical, legal, ethical, etc. In the article, the author approaches the phenomenon of cyborgization from a philosophical point of view. Cyborgization means the process of connection artificial systems with the human body. In the article, the author displays the origin of the term cyborg, the areas of development and different interpretations of the term. The term cyborg originated in astronautics in the 1960s, soon entered American popular culture through comics, novels, and film, and underwent a theoretical transformation. The term entered philosophy at the end of the 20th century, and today it attracts attention due to the modern possibilities of connecting artificial systems with the human body. In the paper, author suggest clarification of cyborgization and cyborg and points to the existing transhumanist interpretation of the terms.

In this article, we focus on Biblical stories and, within them, on the connection between emotions and bodily sensations. We use a cognitive theory of emotions, which understands emotions as based on value judgments. The focus is on stories involving conflict in which emotions, including bodily sensations, are key to conflict resolution and to the orientation toward moral action. In the Bible, emotions play a multifaceted role. They are a natural and essential part of the human experience and of the relationship between man and God. This paper argues that bodily sensations are the building blocks of emotions or play an important role in the formation of emotions. A theology of emotions contributes to an understanding of this aspect of the body that is related to our emotions. The paper shows the hermeneutical potential of these stories for understanding emotions as embodied cognition and their relevance for morality.

The author examines how the Oberammergau Passion Play, which the Slovenian writer Ksaver Meško (1874–1964) attended in 1910, influenced his 1936 drama The Passion Play. In the first part of the paper, the author introduces the genre of the Passion play, places Meško’s Passion Play in his literary oeuvre, explains the broader cultural-historical background of its creation, and presents the centuries-old tradition of the Oberammergau Passion Play. In the second part of the paper, the author analyses and compares Meško’s Passion Play with the so-called official text of the Oberammergau Passion Play, which was published especially for the performances in 1910. The author identifies possible influences that manifest themselves throughout Meško’s text both on a formal level and on a content level: in the prologue, in the prefiguration scenes, in the central plot and also at the end of his Passion Play.

Pope Francis focuses on essential topics for the Church and society in his pontificate. To describe the relationships between different social subjects, he often uses the metaphor of the polyhedron to highlight the importance of each individual and each social group for the equitable development of the entire society. Nowhere does it systematically describe this metaphor, but it uses it in different contexts: societal, ecclesial, ecumenical, and theological. The literature also lacks papers that systematically and critically question this metaphor, presenting possible consequences for the Church’s life, i.e., pastoral care, liturgical practices, morality, doctrine, etc. This paper aims to describe this metaphor of the Church as a polyhedron. The metaphor of the polyhedron that he uses in his documents will be described first. Then, the key features, advantages, and disadvantages of the metaphor of the Church as a polyhedron will be brought out. According to this metaphor, the Church can be understood through her main characteristics: as synodal Church, unity in diversity, missionary Church, and charity.

In a world increasingly marked by ideological and theological divisions, this paper aims to foster intercultural and interfaith dialogue by examining the resonances and dissonances between Charles Taylor’s communitarianism and Confucian philosophy. Focusing particularly on their theological and spiritual dimensions, the paper explores how both traditions conceptualize selfhood in terms of authenticity, community, and transcendence. Employing a multi-disciplinary approach, the study incorporates Warren G. Frisina’s critique of Taylor, shedding light on the interconnections among value, identity, and theological beliefs. Ultimately, this paper contributes to a more nuanced understanding of selfhood across different cultural and theological contexts and offers constructive insights for bridging the existing epistemological and ethical divides that separate Eastern and Western religious and philosophical thought.

This paper aims to serve as a review article investigating the phenomenon of auditory hallucinations from two different perspectives: neurobiological and phenomenological. Neurobiology investigates brain mechanisms related to auditory hallucinations by focusing on the presence of abnormal neural activations. Phenomenology pays attention to psychic processes, demonstrating that patients have difficulty distinguishing sensations caused by their own actions from those derived from external influences. These two perspectives are not mutually exclusive. This paper aims at gaining a broad perspective that can provide an explanation and understanding of symptoms that will promote more effective future treatments for patients with auditory hallucinations.

Although Anglicisms1 have been the subject of research for quite some time now, their definition in the literature sometimes tends to be somewhat inexplicit, and there are points of disagreement, especially regarding their classification and the distinction between their types. This paper advocates a uniform, consistent approach to defining loans (Anglicisms) and their typology in terms of an interplay between three criterial features which are transferred in, and thereby constitute, (lexical) borrowing: concept, model, and form. Their combination results in seven feature patterns or loan types (both mono- and bilingual), which the paper correlates and compares with standard categories of Anglicisms found in the literature and illustrates using examples from Czech

The paper examines the guidelines dedicated to Italian teaching and, above all, to the ideal thematic, language and stylistic features of school reading books in the programmes for primary school and in the related instructions for teachers issued by the Ministry of Education from 1860 to 1905: a decisive period for the arrangement of the Italian school system, the literacy processes and the spread of the national language. It can be seen how these official documents significantly shaped the writing of school books. The paper also explores the complex relationship between the institutional attempts to regulate textbook production, as evidenced by relevant ministerial documentation parallel to the programmes, and the rich publishing activity in this field. To complete the overview of the dialectic between school-educational publishing and the regulatory will of the Ministry and of the boards connected to it, responsible for the evaluation of textbooks, the witnesses of two prominent school female authors of the 2nd half of the 19th century are commented on: Ida Baccini and Felicita Morandi.

Prior to the advent of digital film technology, analogue film was not analogue, it was simply film. The introduction of digital, thus also marks the introduction of the analogue version. The idea of old media persisting – is dependent on celluloid film being transformed into “analogue” and being classed as an old form of media. In this paper, using the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia and Wake in Fright as case studies, I introduce the concept of the film-version. Moreover, my paper challenges the relegation of celluloid film as old media, and instead argues that the creation of a distinction between digital and analogue versions gives rise to a new kind of mediatised coexistence. I argue that rather than forming a hierarchy, the analogue and digital form a parallel and dialogical relationship allowing both the new restored version, and the older celluloid version to not only persist, but evolve into the present.

This paper aims to analyze former Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s thirty speeches on COVID-19 delivered between February 2, 2020 and April 27, 2020. We apply Laclau and Mouffe’s theory of discourse analysis to investigate and analyze Rouhani’s rhetorical and discursive strategies in making meaning of COVID-19. Findings showed that COVID-19 discourse in Rouhani’s speeches has mainly revolved around three nodal points: “the country”, “the enemy”, and “the state of exception”. Thus, the structural articulation of COVID-19 discourse resembles the hegemonic discourse in Iran. Our results also explain how Rouhani used COVID-19 as an empty signifier to reinforce the hegemonic discourse in Iran while trying to redefine his relations with the state-leaning organizations. Furthermore, we analyzed the rhetorical practices that Rouhani employed to articulate the COVID-19 discourse. This paper contributes to a growing body of literature into discursive aspects and implications of a global pandemic by providing empirical evidence form an understudied context: Iran.

This paper intends to analyze how the crisis produced by the Covid-19 infection has influenced the employees, respectively the employers. Thus, we try to see if they still approach the workplace, working hours, etc. in the same way or if their perception has been decisively influenced by this crisis. Certainly, there is an impact on the business environment around the world, respectively in Romania. Thus, employers and employees, like the whole world, had to adapt and reorganize in the given conditions. Some views support the theory that, for employers and employees respectively, nothing will be the same, and the approach and expectations of both parties will be different. Other views argue that this crisis will not cause major changes in perception on the subject. Be that as it may, through this paper we try to analyze in what way and above all, what changes this crisis has produced on the employees, respectively the employers. For the most part, for the employee, the workplace is the place from where he procures an important part or even all of his financial resources. Besides, the workplace is also the place where he can prove his skills acquired in school, the place where he socialises, the place where he develops professionally and not only that. The employer, in general, wants a competent and efficient employee. Both regarding employees and employers, the crisis caused by the Covid-19 infection has produced important changes that we will study in the analysis below. The business environment around the world has seen changes with the situation caused by this crisis that has faced all of humanity. Also, before analyzing, in broad terms, the impact on the business environment, we must observe how people saw the involvement, from a diplomatic point of view, in Romania’s economic development. Economic development must also be supported at the diplomatic level, not only through the other available levers.

Inflationary pressures, but also the uncertainty regarding the duration and severity of the Covid-19 pandemic, have significantly increased in the last year. Moreover, the start of Russia’s war against Ukraine on February 24, 2022, further called into question the upward trend in the inflation rate. In this sense, the sudden and continuous increase in energy, fuel, and food prices constitute new challenges for decision-makers. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the evolution of inflation in Romania from the period 1990-2022 because this constitutes a topical macroeconomic challenge. Compared to the way of presenting the information from the bibliography used and found at the end of the paper, in this paper only the essential aspects, the particularities of the chosen research topic, which finally provide an overview, can be found.

This paper seeks to examine the impact of academician Eugen Simion on the literary landscape in Serbia, focusing on his contributions to fostering cultural exchange between the two neighbouring countries. Additionally, it explores his efforts to promote Romanian creativity and his perspectives on Serbian artistic expression. Furthermore, this paper will analyse the reception of Simion’s works in Serbia it will delve into the collaborations and partnerships he established with Serbian literary institutions, highlighting the lasting legacy of his efforts to strengthen cultural ties between Romania and Serbia.

In the second half of the 1980s, Tine Hribar developed a distinctive interpretation of Sophocles’s Antigone, which he presented in 1991 in the monograph Tragična etika svetosti (The tragical ethics of sacredness). Here he developed an original concept of the sacred, on which he built an ethical system that has become – particularly through its determined defense of the so-called sanctity of the dead – a cornerstone of the Slovene reconciliation project. This paper deals with some of the fundamental problems that stem from Hribar’s enigmatic definition of the sacred as “the world itself in itself,” showing that, in the conclusions Hribar draws from that definition, the clear distinction between being and life is lost. The central aporia of the Tragična etika svetosti is also closely intertwined with other problematic dimensions of the work that are analysed in the paper: the unfounded appropriation of the ethical characteristics of traditions from which he distances himself in principle; the unreflecting distinction between being and action in relation to the sacred; and not least, the unexplained oscillation between vitalism and Antigone’s ideal of self sacrifice.

The paper introduces a close reading of Eco’s article “Generazione di messaggi estetici in una lingua edenica” (1971), in which he fictionalized the biblical story from Gen 2 to show that the aesthetic use of language generates internal contradictions (self-contradictions), as well as that any such contradiction at the level of expression/form also entails a contradiction at the level of content. Furthermore, the basic postulates of Eco’s semiotic theory revolving around the sign-function are discussed, followed by outlining certain theological-semiotics of language based on the text from the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles (descent of the Spirit). It is based on an original sign – which is not, as with Eco, a sign associated with another sign (interpretant) within a sign system (code) nor a “dynamic object,” but it is the Mystical Body. The paper concludes by arguing that it is this very Body, and not the poetic invention, that generates “other languages” (ἑτέραις γλώσσαις) and consequently a communion, which is not multiethnic nor multilingual, but a Catholic community.

Radiocarbon dating by AMS accelerated ion mass spectrometry method, used from 2012 at IFIN-HH-Măgurele, offered recently the scientific frame for an interdisciplinary approach, from archaeologic and archaeometric perspectives, applied to wood samples. The first AMS results, issued in 2021 on six samples from Măguricea Branului archaeological site, have suggested a chronology around the 13th century AD, the differences being explained on terms detailed in this paper. The latter four samples, collected in the next archaeological campaign, gave very different dates. The difficulties experienced with these four samples driven us to develop new lab treatment, aiming carbonization of wood. Even so, the samples from 2022 could not be dated in a helpful manner, with parameters as terminus post quem, time-width, apparent ages. The paper could be of interest to archaeologists taking wood samples for AMS dating.

At the center of Trstenjak's life and work is man. This is why anthropology has a special place in his scientific interest, not as a specific discipline, but as a search for an answer to the question who a human being is and how to live together in interpersonal relationships, in society and in culture. In the paper, we discuss Trstenjak's scientific and human-experiential ≫reflections≪ of society and culture. We are particularly attentive to his understanding of man as a person and as a being of symbol, not of reason. His approach has a strong and a weak side. The strong one seems to be his fundamental intuition about the person and the symbol that enabled him to have a deep insight into the soul of man, nation, and culture. The weakness of the approach, however, is some of its limitations and ambiguities, so we critically confront Trstenjak's thought with authors who have deepened the theme of the person and the symbol. In the next part of the paper, we discuss his thoughts on the Slovenian man, family and nation. We believe that his thoughts are still relevant and worthy of attention. The paper concludes with a reflection on the importance of Trstenjak's thoughts for our times. This, we believe, cannot be shown without taking into account his reflection on the five great thinkers who for him were a key mental reference and the challenge of how to face the choices of life.

The subject of research in this paper is the relationship between religion and politics in the current Bosnian moment. The research sample is limited to the appearance and analysis of cases/examples of the relationship between religion and politics in a period of one month of the current year. More precisely, from the end of January to the end of February 2023. The paper follows and analyzes the dynamics of three characteristic phenomena of the relationship between religion and politics in the public space, with an emphasis on the relationship between religious themes and political actors.

In this paper, we present the influence of religion on the revolutionary movement that led India to political independence in the last century. The most credit for the changes has Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who achieved political changes through satyagraha without violence. After introducing the term satyagraha, the authors outline Gandhi's life and his spiritual development, which enabled him to think and act nonviolently. The sources of his spirituality are highlighted as the Bhagavad-gita, the Bible and Leo Tolstoy's prose. He was also influenced by Jain religious practice, especially the principle of ahimsa practiced by Mohandas' mother. The paper concludes with an outline of the influence of satyagraha in India and beyond after Gandhi's death.

The dynamic secularisation of Polish young people and the fact that many of them are opt­ing out of religious classes prompts a critical analysis of the current model of Religious Education and the development of proposals that respond to contemporary socio-cultural challenges. In others words this article will seek to outline potential directions for modifying the current Religious Education model intended for secondary school students in Poland. This paper attempts to provide a synthetic answer to the following questions: Why is Religious Education in secondary schools today not leading to the expected results? What elements of it are inadequate for contemporary conditions? What should the model of Religious Education for young people look like in the context of a decline in religiousness? Where and how should catechesis be provided? This paper contributes to the discussion on the shape of Religious Education for young people in a changing society.

Tourism communication, especially since the digital turn, has registered several attempts to open to new forms of multilingualism. For instance, the traditional multilingual experience offered by guided tours and audio guides has now been enhanced by social networking tools. Recent research points to the need of interdisciplinary work at the crossroads of linguistics, media sciences and museum studies to investigate communication strategies and linguistic devices by means of which an international audience of tourists can be addressed and get involved in museums in the digital age. The present paper illustrates the first findings of the project “Museo poliglotta”, a project run by two universities in the Italian towns of Bergamo and Brescia in cooperation with local museums with the goal of producing digital multilingual contents for international museum visitors. The empirical part of the paper describes a workshop activity in which students developed Instagram reels in Italian, German and English on the figure of the well-known Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti. A number of observations lead to the conclusion that synergies between language research and foreign language teaching on the one hand and museum institutions on the other can bring about important benefits for all parties involved, in particular the possibility to offer professionalising training in the academic world and stimuli to innovate and improve multilingual communication in the museum sector.

In the introductory article to this special issue, the two editors first provide a brief insight into how it arose and then give an overview of the contents of the individual papers, all of which are dedicated to phraseography or metaphraseography. These two fields of linguistic research belong to both phraseology and (meta-)lexicography and deal with the inclusion of phrasemes in dictionaries and the corresponding practical and theoretical issues. The articles also have in common that they focus on various diatopic Romance varieties spoken in Italy (Genoese, Trentino, Piedmontese, Tuscan, regional Italian of Rome, Sardinian, Catalan of Alghero), Croatia (Istriot), Spain and Latin America (regional varieties of Spanish). Since the term phraseme is used in a broad sense in this publication, numerous different phraseological categories are discussed in the papers, including, for example, syntagmatic verbs and partially lexically filled constructions, in addition to more classical categories such as idioms, proverbs and collocations. Finally, it will be briefly argued why this special issue, which is inspired by the two research projects GEPHRAS and GEPHRAS2, can be regarded as particularly innovative.

Digression is a discourse function that is identifiable and distinct from other similar functional strategies, and varies cross-linguistically. This paper investigates the way speakers of Spanish and English digress from their main discourse topics and how these transitions are marked. Once digression is defined by the proposal of four features considered to be inherent in this concept, the paper focuses on so-called 'digression formulating phrases', recurrent expressions which make explicit reference to the digression and signal that a new direction with respect to topic is proposed. The paper thus adopts a less common than the usual approach to discourse coherence and digression, whose literature has largely focused on discourse markers. The dataset, extracted from a corpus of parliamentary discourse, is analysed in an attempt to address two research questions. I investigate, first, the frequency and distribution of the selected digression formulating phrases in the two languages, and discern which of the two contexts of digression (i.e. beginnings and ends) is more highly marked, and, second, their use in connection to aspects such as syntactic configuration and position, and co-occurring features of semantic and pragmatic meaning. The contrastive perspective adds precision and richness to the treatment of digression.

This paper investigates the impact of source text readability on the effort of post-editing English-Chinese Neural Machine Translation (NMT) output. Six readability formulas, including both traditional and newer ones, were employed to measure readability, and their predictive power towards post-editing effort was evaluated. Keystroke logging, self-report questionnaires, and retrospective protocols were applied to collect the data of post-editing for general text type from thirty-four student translators. The results reveal that: 1) readability has a significant yet weak effect on cognitive effort, while its impact on temporal and technical effort is less pronounced; 2) high NMT quality may alleviate the effect of readability; 3) readability formulas have the ability to predict post-editing effort to a certain extent, and newer formulas such as the Crowdsourced Algorithm of Reading Comprehension (CAREC) outperformed traditional formulas in most cases. Apart from readability formulas, the study shows that some fine-grained reading-related linguistic features are good predictors of post-editing time. Finally, this paper provides implications for automatic effort estimation in the translation industry.

Abstract This paper provides the «Cronaca» of the XXVIth International Conference of the Accademia Romanistica Costantiniana, held in Spello from 15 to 17 June 2023. The event marked an important milestone: the 50th anniversary of the Research Centre of the University of Perugia. In consideration of this special anniversary, the inaugural session was intended to recompose the historiographical lines drawn by the «Accademia» in this fifty-year period and to outline new research perspectives. In the subsequent sessions, the more than twenty-five papers that followed dealt with relations between East and West in a multiform perspective: in particular, the mobility of people, the circulation of legal knowledge and the comparison of divergent legislative choices between the partes Imperii were explored.

Abstract - This paper firstly describes, though very briefly, the state of the studies and essays on general aspects of daily life in Roman age; among such studies, specific attention is given to how urban areas conceptually near to what we call nowadays “public parks” were conceived and enjoyed. To this regard, this paper explains the notion of “parco pubblico” (public park) that can be inferred both from the Italian (also in relation to the juridical usage) and from the Latin vocabulary (till Middle Age language), mostly in connection to specific uses of ‘hortus’. Then, the Roman notion is examined for what concerns its juridical relevance. Thus, the paper goes on by investigating the juridical regulations and a parallel defence that could be called administrative (concerning mainly penalties given by non-jurisdictional authorities) and judiciary in reference to such areas, and by showing how these aspects were at the origin entangled with divine law (in particular with the defence of sacred woods). Quite soon, namely already in the middle of the Republican age, as the conclusion of this paper shows, specific ways of defence in reference to the above mentioned areas can be found firstly inside the municipal body and then also in more general rules included in the Pretorian edict (mostly through interdicts), by such letting a specific town planning policy emerge, mostly from the middle of the Imperial age.

The issues of conjugal communio amoris and the implications of this relationship in Christian marriage, i.e., the path to holiness, are the subject of this paper. Communio amoris in relation to marriage and family comes from the theological thought of John Paul II, from the “Familiaris Consortio” exhortation. In three parts of the paper, there are presented in turn: conjugal communion of love, conjugal love as the fruit of that communion, and communio sanctorum - holiness in marriage as the realization of the communion of love. The history of the Church shows that the holiness of spouses was practiced “despite” marriage, “in” marriage and “thanks to” marriage. However, a special emphasis in this paper is placed on the third model. Communio amoris is the principle of sanctification for spouses entering into a sacramental union; it is the path to communio sanctorum.

„German Theory“ is a theory that has not yet been written, but could have been. „Theory“ is here understood as a “territory of thought” that transcends the boundaries of its origins, and travels to other sites. „French Theory“, for example, is the label for the travel of French poststructuralism to Anglophone humanities. In this sense, „German Theory“ does not exist (yet), but as this paper will argue, it exists as a potentiality that has not (yet) actualized. To show this potential, this paper turns to the work of Friedrich A. Kittler. To illustrate why Kittler did not become a cornerstone of „German Theory“, and to discuss how it could have been, this paper proceeds in two steps: first, it traces the recent history of the reception of Foucault in German language geography and the humanities. This analysis shows that Kittler and German language geography morphed Foucault's discourse theory into two distinct thought styles – the „discourse school“ in German language geography into a „textual“ one; Kittler into a „materialist“ one. This incompatibility of thought styles, this paper asserts, obstructed the travel of Kittler to Anglophone geography, although Kittler's notion of „materiality of communication“ resonates with the „material turn“ in Anglophone geography. Nor did the Foucault of the „discourse school“ travel to Anglophone geography. Kittler's „German Foucault“ travelled to Anglophone media studies as „German School“, though. In the last part of the paper, I ask the question how Kittler's „German Foucault“ could have travelled to (anglophone) geography and what could have been gained theoretically through this travel.

The mobility of factors of production from the very beginnings of the theory of the optimal currency area (OCA) stands out as one of the primary mechanisms for achieving a balance of payments, i.e. sustainability of the monetary union (Mundell criterion). However, there is a significant qualitative difference between the monetary union of countries with similar income levels and the one with different development stages Namely, in the first case, labor mobility, as a rule, has short-term economic effects, while it has a longer-term (more negative) impact – especially on the long-run aggregate supply (LRAS). Many Eastern European countries, which expressed a desire to become part of European integration and the monetary union after the communist ruin, experienced this. In a previous paper, the authors set the thesis about “Impossible Trinity of Developing Countries”. In this paper, the aspiration is to confirm the validity of this theory by analyzing Greece within the period 1999-2020, specifically observing the impact of three variables (fiscal policy, social development level, and level of economic freedom) on the emigration of the population under conditions of monetary union and labor force mobility. The results obtained in this research indicate that the fiscal policy in the observed period was the most significant factor in explaining migration trends. The implications for developing countries that are currently entering (such as Croatia) or intend to enter the monetary union with more developed countries in the future are particularly significant.

This paper aims to analyze the effects on German literature of the renewed interest in Nazi past. In order to do that, it considers Adorno’s and Mitscherlichs’ studies, in which they try – from a psychoanalytic point of view – to understand the mechanisms which made Germans support the leader and then made them remove their guilt. Then, the article focuses on some author of the early Sixties, in order to verify how they try to begin the Germans’ Vergangenheitsbewältigung. As far as possible, the paper examines the reception of these texts, trying to understand how and to what extent they give a contribution to overcome this collective amnesia.

Urban political ecology (UPE) has recently turned its attention to the embodied dimension of human–nature relations. In particular, within urban hydrological systems across the globe, the need to consider the emotional and bodily ways in which we connect to the ecologies of the city has been acknowledged. This paper joins such efforts and explores the flood experiences of a diverse group of Bangkokians during the 2011 inundation by drawing on three interconnected concepts: materiality, affect and emotion. Together they help us explore the intense experiences of Bangkokians during the flood and serve as theoretical tools to unpack the uncanny encounters between Bangkokians and the materiality of the flood. Thus, the paper attends to the socio-material forces that shaped the flooding event and contributes nuanced insights about the embodied experiences of floods within the delta city.

This paper discusses the opportunities and challenges of integrating science and technology studies (STS), especially the variant based on actor–network theory (ANT), into fields of human geography with a critical research tradition. Drawing on the experiences of political ecology and empirical research on carbon markets, it uses the example of reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) to show how the turn towards such STS impacts has changed the “framing” of REDD+: from analysing REDD+ as an example of the “neoliberalization of nature” and a focus on the impacts on human forest users to detailed accounts of infrastructures and practices of making markets. Discussing the consequences of these observations and different proposals brought forward to combine ANT with political ecology, the paper argues for a conscious and reflective use of ANT-inspired STS approaches to benefit from the additional insights this approach allows while keeping the critical potential of geography alive.

This paper deals with the so-called “Brothers poem”, fr. 10 Voigt = Neri, which is up to now the most recent papyrological discovery attributed to Sappho. In its first part, the paper investigates the identities, the actions, and the mutual relationships of the characters featuring in this new poem. In its second one, it will be discussed how the Sapphic lines deal with themes such as power relations, oppression, social hierarchy, and behavioral expectations in relation to genre.

This paper aims to show how a teleological model of reality and knowledge can be of aid in order to understand the connection between objective knowledge and subjective experience. The separation between them seems indeed to have been established by an opposite deterministic ontological and epistemological model within modern philosophy, which does not allow to explain the subjective relevance of objective knowledge and the objective relevance of subjective experience. In order to overcome this aporetic dichotomy, the paper will underline the actuality of the Aristotelian teleological conception of knowledge and experience and its heritage especially in contemporary philosophy.

In his 2013 monograph on Structure and Method in Aristotle’s Meteorologica, Malcolm Wilson has shown both that Aristotle conceived of meteorological phenomena as analogous to the bodily processes of animals, and that for the Stagirite the sublunar world should not be seen as a single body, but rather as composed of many different individuals. However, Wilson did not articulate the relationship between these two theories—that is, he did not answer the following question: how is it possible for the Earth to behave like an animal if it is not a single body? This paper argues that the answer to this question lies in the Aristotelian statement about the different paschein of the Earth and animals. In fact, in the chapter of Meteorology dedicated to climatic changes (1.14), Aristotle, after comparing such changes to the maturing and ageing of living organisms, states that ‘only, in the case of the bodies of plants and animals being affected does not occur in each part separately, but it is necessary for the being to mature and decay all at once, whereas in the case of the Earth this occurs in each part separately, due to cooling and warming’ (351a.28-31). In his commentary, Alexander of Aphrodisias reiterates that the difference between the changes of the Earth and those of living organisms concern the way in which these different subjects undergo affections (pathê). The concept of paschein/pathos is thus fundamental to understanding how Aristotle conceives of biological analogies, which play a key role in his meteorology: as the affections of maturing and corruption show, parallels with organic processes can be found in meteorological phenomena, but always at the level of the individual parts of the Earth. Although the sublunary world can be understood in organic terms, this world is not a ‘cosmic animal’, but rather a multiplicity of ‘regional animals’. To corroborate this thesis, this paper addresses several related questions, including: the mechanics ofenvironmental changes according to Aristotle; the differences between the regions of the Earth; the lexicon used in Meteorology to refer to the transformations of the Earth; the personal notes that Alexander adds to Aristotle’s discussion. Finally, the first modern translation of the relevant section of Alexander’s commentary is also provided here.

This paper considers Early Modern English urban administration in light of the developing supralocal/standard variety. Previously, research scrutinising the language of administration has focused on Middle English rather than on Early Modern English, where studies have thus far mostly focused on private correspondence and printed texts. To shed more light on the language of this under-investigated text type for this period, in this paper I investigate a collection of indentured texts written in Coventry between 1499 and 1600 and explore its language. More specifically, I analyse the use of periphrastic DO, which I subsequently contextualise both in Coventry’s local civic history – focusing on the people involved in creating the documents, e.g. the town clerk and his team of scribes – as well as in the general development of periphrastic DO with regard to the emerging supralocal/standard variety of English. The analysis reveals that periphrastic DO was used to a different extent compared to other text types from the period, most notably that it did not show a decline in the second half of the sixteenth century after what can be described as a ‘slow start’ in the first half. This change in use can be tentatively attributed to a variety of factors in Coventry’s civic history, particularly in the 1570s, but more data from other urban centres is needed to better contextualise this.

In this paper, we discuss the remarkable decrease in the use of French-origin loanwords and loan suffixes in Late Modern Dutch. We consider both changes to be lexical changes since the decrease in loan suffixes such as the verbal suffix -eren appears to result from a shift in certain lexical choices as well (Rutten/Vosters/van der Wal 2015). Our data come from the newly compiled Language of Leiden Corpus (LOL Corpus), developed at Leiden University in the context of a project on the historical Dutch-French contact situation. The main aim of the project is to assess empirically the supposed ‘Frenchification’ of Dutch in the Early Modern period (Frijhoff 2015). The LOL Corpus comprises data from seven social domains (Academy, Charity, Economy, Literature, Private life, Public opinion, Religion) significant in the history of the city Leiden from 1500 to 1899. Leiden was chosen as it was one of the important urban centers in Holland, attracting many migrants, including French-speaking labor migrants and Huguenots. The results for both words and suffixes borrowed from French show a gradual increase from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, and a remarkable decrease from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. The results partially confirm the ongoing and intensifying influence of French on Dutch in the Early Modern period, depending strongly however on the social domain involved (Assendelft/Rutten/van der Wal 2023a). At the same time, the results also show an unanticipated ‘Dutchification’ in more recent times. We relate these ‘Dutchifying’ lexical changes to the national language planning efforts emerging in the eighteenth century, following the rise of the standard language ideology from the middle of the eighteenth century onwards. These language planning efforts led to the official codification of Dutch in 1804/1805, which targeted spelling and grammar. Previous research has shown the significant influence of the officialization of Dutch, both on the field of education and on language use (Rutten 2019). In this paper, we argue that the successful language policy had the surprising side effect of inspiring language users to exchange sometimes long-established loans for originally Dutch words.