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The wealth of source material produced by Roman notaries has long been neglected. Only in recent decades has it been systematically evaluated by researchers. Given the fragmentary source situation in general, these atti notarili add considerable detail to our knowledge of everyday life. They provide insights not only into the Rome of the popes, which has received considerable attention, but above all into the Rome of the Roman people, much less studied. This paper focuses not on another notary, but on the question of the potential contribution of this genre of sources to the history of late medieval Rome. We see how clients belonging to different social groups approach different notaries. We understand the typical concerns and problems of Roman society, ranging from the debtor imprisoned in a dungeon to the Colonna family in their palazzo. We find confident Florentines with their business dealings, German bakers and their partnership contracts, impoverished monasteries with their growing debts. We see the building boom of the Renaissance and how Piazza Navona is transformed from a campus into a platea, as well as rural Rome within the walls and its countless vineyards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the first patents of nobility (Adelsbriefe) in the Holy Roman Empire were granted as early as the 14th and 15th centuries, they are essentially an early modern genre of charter that has been insufficiently studied until now. The aim of this paper is to analyse both the patents of nobility themselves as well as the process of creation and authentication. This process was one of cooperation between the person seeking to have a title of nobility conferred on themselves, the emperor and the territorial lord (Landesherr). In many cases, it is not possible to clearly distinguish between the acts of ennoblement (Nobilitierung) and of elevation to a higher rank (Standeserhöhung). Both were initially requested from and approved by the emperor, but subsequently had to be confirmed by the respective territorial lord. During the 17th century, a structured procedure of recognition emerged, which is examined in this study using the Principality of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel as an example. The approval of both the emperor and the territorial lord were usually granted, but did not guarantee that the newly ennobled person's would be accepted by their peers. Of course, the initiative almost invariably came from those wishing to be ennobled. Over the course of the early modern period, the forms used for patents of nobility underwent marked changes. The narratio, in particular, was progressively tailored to fit each individual applicant, although it must be noted that these phrases which, however, only reflected the image the applicant wished to convey. After 1806, the German princes were able to issue patents of nobility independently and the forms used in these documents became increasingly abbreviated and less specific to the applicant in question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to examine the philosophical update of Late Antique Graeco-Roman Religion in the attitudes, theories and proposals of Neoplatonic thinkers such as Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus and Proclus. In the framework of the Late Roman state and society two main aspects of this Neoplatonic redefinition of „paganism”are studied here: mysticism and magic, through the religious reading of the Platonic „ascent to the Good”and the practice of theurgy. Moreover, the emphasis of some Neoplatonists such as Porphyry upon the mantic tradition is also analysed, with special regard to the oracular poetry. To sum up, this contribution shows in brief how Neoplatonism represents a renewal of Late Antique Roman Religion upon the basis of tradition - both religious and philosophical - but also as a response and reaction to the new Christian ideas and milieu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

„Not without merit“. This is how Theodor Mommsen described the most important historical work by Ferdinand Gregorovius, the „History of Rome in the Middle Ages“ before going on to add critically „but he has too much imagination“. This paper reflects on the historian Gregorovius’s openly declared relationship with the imagination, the close affinity between history and poetry. It describes the peculiar role, which we could perhaps describe as that of an outsider, of an author forced to write his books as an independent scholar, funding them mainly with his work as a journalist. Using Gregorovius‘s direct experience of the enchanted gardens at Ninfa, which attracted him as an author of lyric poetry and as an explorer of the historical landscape, we examine some case studies of the genesis of the narrative form that he developed and discuss it as a challenge to historicism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the summary of a symposium during which several history and archaeology students from the Universität Bochum, a university in Bochum, Germany, presented their academic papers from June 8-9, 2011. Academic papers presented at the conference included a paper on historical and archaeological sources on roman political and military history, a paper on Matilda of England, the wife of Holy Roman Emperor Henry V, and a paper on antisemitism in the history of the German Empire.

The decline and fall of the Roman Empire and the dramatic change of the Mediterranean world in late antiquity have ever been discussed in history. The present paper outlines, from the point of view of medical history, some recent tendencies of research, including those which bring in scientific evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]