Volume 13, Issue 1

Communities of violence have always and accross cultures used weapons, i. e. tools that are manufactured specifically for the purpose of either harming and killing humans and animals (so-called offensive weapons) or of protecting oneself against being harmed and killed by others (so-called defensive weapons). This article examines the arms used by Gothic warriors in the fifth and sixth centuries AD, trying to answer basic questions: What sort of arms did Gothic warriors own and how did they use them in combat ? Where and how did they procure these arms ? What sort of training did they have ? In addition, the article also focuses on the symbolic functions of weapons. It analyzes arms as markers of status and identity and as icons of military virtue, giving special attention to their role in rituals and in the self-representation of rulers. In Gothic Italy, being armed was a feature that distinguished Gothic warriors from Roman civilians, but the type, quality and value of these arms also marked out differences within the Gothic community itself. Rulers were depicted as warrior kings; weapons were prominent in the construction of artificial kinship and the transferal of rulership. The article also studies the code of honour to which Gothic warriors felt bound: Their heroic ethos explains the common practice of entering into single combats before pitched battleswere begun, as warriors wanted to prove their valour in front of as many witnesses as possible.

As the title suggests, the present paper offers an analysis of selected letters from Cassiodorus’ Variae, which are important for late antique history of Dalmatia and Pannonia. The study is intended to be twofold: on the one part, it examines the information that can be derived from the letters about both provinces’ political, administrative, economic, social and ethnic picture in the time of Ostrogothic rule over the Eastern Adriatic and Middle Danube regions; on the other part, it explores literary and political contexts and underlying ideologies that are present in the selected letters.

Only written sources from the 10th and 11th centuries inform us about the existence of images of the Mother of God in the three buildings of the Blachernae shrine at Constantinople (Great Church, Chapel of the Soros and Holy Bath). The first part of my study deals with the question of the localization of these images as well as their date and iconographical details. Furthermore, their possible material and technical features (wall paintings, mosaics or stone carvings) are discussed. In the case of the icon of the „usual miracle“ the Mother of God was doubtless represented with the Christ child on her arm. The second part of the paper investigates an icon in the Sinai Monastery with images of the Blachernitissa, Hodegetria, Hagiosoritissa and Cheimeute. The Hagiosoritissa can be identified as the icon of the Mother of God in the Chalkoprateia, probably linked with the icon of the Christos Antiphonetes. In an excursus, the returning date of the garment of the Virgin into the Blachernae sanctuary is examined.