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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture Thanks, Rochelle. Is _Absent Voices_ out yet? The last I had heard, it was being announced for this July. I look forward to finding the time for it when it does appear. In the interim, here's a question for you. On Sat, 26 Jun 2004 19:59:17 -0300 "Rochelle I. Altman" <[log in to unmask]> wrote: >The shape of the "statuary niche" is specifically from the Eastern side of >the ANE. I take it from this that there is but one basic shape of statuary niche and that all its manifestations (or, at least, all its European and Near Eastern manifestations) are somehow "from" (conceptually descended from?) those evidenced on the Eastern side of the ANE. Please correct me if I have misunderstood you. Assuming my understanding to be correct, what permits the adoption of this cultural diffusion model to the complete exclusion of independent invention? Ancient Roman family dwellings invariably featured a shrine to the household gods (collectively, the Lares) called a _lararium_. We lack specimens prior to the second or first centuries BCE, but written sources from the second century BCE onward make it plain that Romans of the late republic and of the empire believed this to be an ancestral feature of their household arrangements from earliest times. Lararia contained statuettes of one's Lares and other divinities and typically took the form of small temples (edicules); these were often pedimented rectangular structures "in the round". In modest homes, though, the edicular lararium was often a rectangular pedimented niche. An example of the latter is this one from Stabiae: http://www.artehistoria.com/frames.htm?http://www.artehistoria.com/tienda/banco/cuadros/8680.htm If that URL doesn't work, there's a thumbnail for the image here (fairly far down the page): http://www.artehistoria.com/frames.htm?http://www.artehistoria.com/tienda/banco/indices/gal-119.htm Another example is this one from the House of the Vettii in Pompeii: http://crdp.ac-besancon.fr/ressourc/flore/Italie/domus1_2001/laraire.htm And here it is again, in reproduction at the museum at Kaiseraugst and outfitted with statuettes of the sort we know were customarily placed in lararia: http://romanhistorybooksandmore.freeservers.com/p_ka_b.htm For a brief discussion of such statuettes, see: http://www.khm.at/system2E.html?/staticE/page1577.html That to me is a statuary niche. The form of the edicule is Hellenistic and surely has ANE antecedents. But were its earliest Roman predecessors necessarily also ANE-derived? If so, how do we know this? Roman lararia could also be arched. See the second of the two Pompeian examples shown here: http://history.smsu.edu/jchuchiak/HST%20101--Theme%2010--Religion_in_daily_life_in_rome.htm (watch the wrap!) The arched statuary niches of Roman nymphaea are pretty clearly Hellenistic in inspiration. See, e.g., http://www.cib.na.cnr.it/Castellodibaia/rnpe.html and its "reconstruction" here: http://www.icampiflegrei.it/Azienda%20Turismo/pozzuoli/articoli2003/aprile_eng.htm But I'm not so sure about the ancestry of smaller domestic instances such as the arched lararium just indicated. How do we know that this is not also an endemic early Italian form? Best, John Dillon ********************************************************************** To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME to: [log in to unmask] To send a message to the list, address it to: [log in to unmask] To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion to: [log in to unmask] In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to: [log in to unmask] For further information, visit our web site: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html