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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture Dear Cate, First, two small corrections: A. There's a typo in Tom's bibliographic citation. FOR cristianizzazzione READ cristianizzazione. B. While there is an administrative unit of Croatia called, for short, "Istria" (it's really the county of Istria or the Istarska ¸upanija), "Istria" unmodified usually means, in English at least, the entire peninsula so called and not just the Croatian part of it -- though that part is certainly the largest. Part of Istria (the peninsula) belongs to Slovenia and a very small part, next to Trieste, belongs to Italy. In late antiquity Istria was considered part of Italy and was included in Regio X (Venetia et Histria), whose chief city was Aquileia. In addition, coastal towns in Istria and their churches had significant cross-Adriatic connections with Ravenna (in Regio VIII [Aemilia]). So a good place to start looking for scholarly, English-language discussions of the Christianization of the upper Adriatic, both for general discussions and for references to such more specialized English-language scholarship as exists, would be in the scholarly literature on the Christianization of Italy. I would go first to Michele Salzman's chapter "Christianity and Paganism III: Italy" in Augustine Casiday and Frederick W. Norris, eds., _From Constantine to c. 600_, The Cambridge History of Christianity, vol. 2 (Cambridge University Press, 2007). This covers Aquileia in some depth and is likely to have material on, or at least references to discussions of, Christianity and paganism elsewhere in Adriatic Italy. For an archeological perspective, have a look at Neil Christie's _From Constantine to Charlemagne: an Archaeology of Italy, AD 300-800_ (Ashgate, 2006). In general, Christianity started in cities and in coastal towns and spread only gradually in the hinterlands. So archeology could be important by documenting the where and when of churches and baptisteries unrecorded in literary sources. With any luck these will also have some information about the Christianization of other parts of the Adriatic: Flaminia et Picenum, part of Samnium, and Apulia on the west and Dalmatia and northern Epirus (Epirus nova) on the east. There is an extensive literature on the Italian side but it is almost entirely in Italian. _Pari passu_, I imagine that almost all of the current literature on the Christianization of the eastern side of the Adriatic below Istria is not in English. Vadim Prozorov has cited two pertinent books on Dalmatia that _are_ in English (Dyggve; Wilkes). But both are rather old and there's been a lot of archeological work since. Some of the archeological writing on northern Epirus (the area around Durres/Durazzo/Dyrrachium) is in English but I don't know how much of that deals specifically with the Christianization of this territory or whether there's an English-language synthesis. Hope this helps a bit. Best, John Dillon On Tuesday, October 6, 2009, at 5:38 am, Cate Gunn wrote: > -----Original Message----- > Italian: > > La cristianizzazzione dell'Adriatico, ed. G. Cuscito (Trieste: > Editreg, > 2008). > > > I assume this is on the Christianization of the Adriatic - the Italian > would be beyond me but does anyone know of something in English on this > topic? I recently spent a wonderful week in Istria (part of Croatia) > and > visited a few medieval churches - including the wonderful basilica of > Euphrasius at Porec of which I have a few (not terribly good) photos > which I > may send to Marjorie for the medrelart shutterfly site - highlights > are the > 6th century apse mosaics and 13th cent. ciborium. There was a great > Byzantium influence but, as far as I can make out, a deliberate choice > to > join the Roman church after the split. This is neither the period nor > the > region of my expertise (such as it is) but I would like to learn more. ********************************************************************** 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