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The casket of St Simeon the God-Receiver is the most representative work in the applied arts of the Croatian Trecento and, at the same time, one which displays great iconographic complexity. Although it was the subject of two monographs and a large number of individual articles, a whole set of questions remains open and awaits plausible interpretations. Particularly great problems are connected to the interpretation of a number of scenes which were understood differently by different scholars. At the same time, it can be noted that the discussion about the casket’s complex iconographic programme lacks a study which would address it as a unique a coherent whole in which every single scene is viewed as its irreplaceable constituent part. This article aims to demonstrate that the casket’s iconographic programme, especially that of the eight panels on its main body, was selected and arranged according to a carefully developed programme the creators of which were five noblemen of Zadar to whom Queen Elizabeth, the wife of the powerful King Louis I the Great of Hungary (1342-1382), entrusted not only the silver for the making of the casket but other important details connected to the commission such as the choice of the artist and, even more importantly, the selection of the scenes through which the casket communicated with its spectators. There is no doubt that the queen had her own demands with regard to what was depicted as can be seen in the opulent dedicatory inscription which records that she was the patron of the casket but also in the donation scene where she appears together with her daughters. It can also be said with certainty that she gave instructions for the somewhat unusual panel which depicts her standing by the catafalque of her father, Ban Stephen of Bosnia (+1354) who is being sent off to the next world by St Simeon the Righteous. It should mentioned that Ban Stephen was considered a heretic – a Bogomil – which means that being a Catholic queen, his daughter attempted to rectify the past with this panel. All these scenes are at the back of the casket. The queen undoubtedly also had a say in the selection of scenes which were depicted on the front. Those relate to the life of St Simeon which, considering that we know of only one event in his life, was done in a very skilful way: the central panel shows the saint receiving the Christ Child in the scene of the Presentation in the Temple while the panels to its left and right depict the translation of the saint’s relics which have not been identified as such in the scholarly literature. The translation consists of three scenes which are always present in the cases of translation: the finding of the body (inventio corporis), the transport of the body to a new place (translatio corporis) and, finally, the placing of the body to a new site where it would remain in the future (colocatio corporis). These three scenes were interpreted by the noblemen of Zadar in an idiosyncratic way in order to affirm the medieval Zadar and its nobility on the casket itself. The scene of the inventio corporis depicts the rectors of Zadar intervening at the last moment before a group of monks from the outskirts of town get hold of the body and place it in their monastery. In the scene of the colocatio corporis, the body of St Simeon is being carried into the Church of St Mary Major in the presence of King Louis and the grateful citizens who are led by the Bishop Nicholas Matafar. This scene depicts the return of the saint’s body from Venice where, according to the author of this article, it had been taken during the local uprising against the Venetian rule (1346-1358). At the same time, the visual message of the two scenes which flank the central one was to show that the exclusive ownership of the relics belonged to the citizens of Zadar. The conflict with the monks which erupted on a local level is being resolved by the local authorities, that is, the rectors of Zadar. When the problem becomes ‘bilateral’, that is, when it involves Venice, the dispute is settled (to the benefit of the citizens of Zadar) by their sovereign, the king of Hungary and Croatia. The visual interpretation of the translation depicted on the casket relies greatly on the scenes from the cycle of the translation of the body of St Mark from the facade of St Mark’s basilica at Venice (the discovery and exhumation of the body, the transport of the body on a ship, the placing of the body in a new shrine). The author of the article, therefore, frequently compares the scenes on the Zadar casket to those from Venice.

Diazzi, Alessandra and Federico Pianzola. Interview with Francesco Orlando, 2009. Print and Video..

In unserem Alltag werden wir ständig mit Reden in verschiedensten Formen konfrontiert. Sei es im Fernsehen, im Radio oder live. Es fängt bereits in unserer Kindheit an, wenn wir von unseren Lehrern Reden über diverse Schulthemen vorgetragen bekommen. Infolge dessen kommen uns die meisten sehr alltäglich vor. Nur selten imponiert uns eine Rede so sehr, dass wir sie erneut hören wollen oder tiefer über sie nachdenken. Aber erst durch das längere Betrachten einer Rede werden uns die tieferen Inhalte vor Augen geführt. Meistens sind die Wörter, die wir als erstes wahrnehmen, nur die Oberfläche einer Rede und sagen uns nur das, was der Vortragende uns wissen lassen will. Mögliche Vertuschungen, das eigentliche Ziel des Sprechers und andere versteckte Informationen werden erst durch eine konkrete Stilanalyse sichtbar. So habe ich es mir zur Aufgabe gemacht, eine Stilanalyse der Rede von Adolf Hitler auf dem Maifeld in Berlin aus dem Jahre 1937 durchzuführen. Mein Ziel war es, herauszufinden, warum seine Reden eine solch große Wirkung auf die Rezipienten ausübten und welche Hintergedanken er bei der Verfassung seiner Rede hatte bzw. zu haben vermochte. Die Methode der Stilanalyse richtet sich nach dem interaktiven bzw. parallelen Textverarbeitungsmodell und geht holistisch bzw. parallel vor. Der Text wird dabei als eine Ganzheit gesehen und die Analyse orientiert sich (semantisch wie auch „syntaktisch“) an der Oberflächenstruktur mit Einblick in die Tiefenstruktur des Textes. V vsakdanjem življenju se pogosto srečujemo z govori različnih oblik. Bodisi, ko gledamo televizijo, poslušamo radio ali pa v živo. Ta proces se začne že v otroških letih, ko poslušamo prva predavanja naših učiteljev in učiteljic. Tako smo, tudi če se tega ne zavedamo, vsi že bili priča veliko govorom. Posledica tega je, da se nam govori zdijo kot nekaj običajnega. Le redko nam govor tako močno imponira, da se ga odločimo poslušati še drugič, ali pa da bi globlje razmišljali o njem. Ampak komaj skozi postopek ponovnega poslušanja oz. branja lahko razberemo globlji pomen nekega govora. V večini primerov so namreč besede, ki jih slišimo, le površina govora in nam povedo le to, kaj govornik želi, da slišimo. Morebitna prikrivanja, resničen namen govorca ter ostale informacije nam bodo postale vidne šele na drugi ali tretji pogled. Z namenom, da razkrijem nekaj le teh, sem si zadal nalogo, da stilno analiziram govor Adolfa Hitlerja na Maifeldu v Berlinu iz leta 1937. Zanimalo me je, kaj je tisto, kar je naredilo tako močen vtis na njegove poslušalce ter kaj so bili njegovi skriti nameni pri sestavljanju govora. Metoda stilne analize, ki jo bom uporabil, bazira na interaktivnem, dinamičnem pojmu sloga in se besedilu približa holistično oziroma paralelno. Besedilo dojema kot celoto in se pri tem orientira (tako semantično kot „sintaktično“) po zunanji strukturi z vpogledom v globinsko strukturo besedila.

Varias fuentes mozárabes incluyen leyendas sobre el primer emperador cristiano, Constantino el Grande, la más importante de las cuales es sin duda alguna “Hurusiyus”, versión árabe interpolada de las Historiae adversus paganos de Orosio. En este artículo ofrezco la traducción alemana de este pasaje de “Hurusiyus”, proponiendo una reconstrucción de las lagunas a partir, por un lado, de las citas que de él hacen al-Maqrizi e Ibn Haldun y, por otro, de la versión paralela de la denominada Historia universal de Qayrawan. El hecho de que “Hurusiyus” afirme que el pasaje dedicado a Constantino deriva en última instancia del historiador de la Iglesia Eusebio de Cesarea encuentra explicación en la tradición latina: en un Martirologio de Silos fechado en la segunda mitad del s. X (actualmente Paris, BnF mss. latins [nouvelles acquisitions] 2178-2180) tanto Actus Silvestri como Inventio Sanctae Crucis aparecen vinculados al nombre de Eusebio. Legends about the first Christian emperor, Constantine the Great, are preserved in various Mozarabic sources. The most important is, without any doubt, “Hurusiyus”, the interpolated Arabic version of Orosius’ Historiae adversus paganos, whose lacunous text is proposed to be completed in the German rendering of the present article, on the one hand, by means of comparison with the borrowings that both al-Maqrizi and Ibn Haldun made of this section, and, on the other hand, by the parallel version of the socalled Historia universal de Qayrawan. Hurusiyus’ claim that the material dealing with Constantine ultimately derives from the Church historian Eusebius of Cesarea can be explained from the Latin tradition: in a Martyrology of Silos dating from the second half ot the 10th century (now Paris, BnF mss. latins [nouvelles acquisitions] 2178-2180) both Actus Silvestri and Inventio Sanctae Crucis are linked to Eusebius’ name.