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Sortes Sanctorum
''Sortes Sanctorum'' (incipit ''Post solem surgunt stellae'') is a late antique text that was used for divination by means of dice. The oldest version of the text may have been pagan, but the earliest surviving example—a 4th- or 5th-century Greek fragment on papyrus—is Christian. The original version had 216 answers available depending on three ordered throws of a single die. It was later revised down to 56 answers for a single throw of three dice. This version was translated into Latin by the time of the council of Vannes (465), which condemned its use. The Latin version was subsequently revised to render it more acceptable to ecclesiastical authorities. This Latin version survives in numerous manuscripts from the early 9th century through the 16th, as well as in Old Occitan and Old French translations.AnneMarie Luijendijk and William E. Klingshirn, "The Literature of Lot Divination", in AnneMarie Luijendijk and William E. Klingshirn (eds.), ''Sortilege and Its Practitioners i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Incipit
The incipit ( ) of a text is the first few words of the text, employed as an identifying label. In a musical composition, an incipit is an initial sequence of Musical note, notes, having the same purpose. The word ''incipit'' comes from Latin and means "it begins". Its counterpart taken from the ending of the text is the Explicit (text), explicit. Before the development of title (publishing), titles, texts were often referred to by their incipits, as with for example ''Agnus Dei (liturgy), Agnus Dei''. During the medieval period in Europe, incipits were often written in a different Typeface, script or colour from the rest of the work of which they were a part, and "incipit pages" might be heavily decorated with Illuminated manuscript, illumination. Though the word ''incipit'' is Latin, the practice of the incipit predates classical antiquity by several millennia and can be found in various parts of the world. Although not always called by the name of ''incipit'' today, the practi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Late Antique
Late antiquity marks the period that comes after the end of classical antiquity and stretches into the onset of the Early Middle Ages. Late antiquity as a period was popularized by Peter Brown in 1971, and this periodization has since been widely accepted. Late antiquity represents a cultural sphere that covered much of the Mediterranean world, including parts of Europe and the Near East.Brown, Peter (1971), '' The World of Late Antiquity, AD 150-750''Introduction Late antiquity was an era of massive political and religious transformation. It marked the origins or ascendance of the three major monotheistic religions: Christianity, rabbinic Judaism, and Islam. It also marked the ends of both the Western Roman Empire and the Sasanian Empire, the last Persian empire of antiquity, and the beginning of the Arab conquests. Meanwhile, the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire became a militarized and Christianized society. This was also an era of significant cultural innovation and trans ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Divination
Divination () is the attempt to gain insight into a question or situation by way of an occultic ritual or practice. Using various methods throughout history, diviners ascertain their interpretations of how a should proceed by reading signs, events, or omens, or through alleged contact or interaction with supernatural agencies such as ghost, spirits, gods, god-like-beings or the "will of the universe". Divination can be seen as an attempt to organize what appears to be random so that it provides insight into a problem or issue at hand. Some instruments or practices of divination include Tarot card reading, Tarot-card reading, Runic magic, rune casting, Tasseography, tea-leaf reading, automatic writing, water scrying, and psychedelics like psilocybin mushrooms and DMT. If a distinction is made between divination and fortune-telling, divination has a more formal or ritualistic element and often contains a more social character, usually in a religion, religious context, as se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dice
A die (: dice, sometimes also used as ) is a small, throwable object with marked sides that can rest in multiple positions. Dice are used for generating random values, commonly as part of tabletop games, including dice games, board games, role-playing games, and games of chance. A traditional die is a cube with each of its six faces marked with a different number of dots ( pips) from one to six. When thrown or rolled, the die comes to rest showing a random integer from one to six on its upper surface, with each value being equally likely. Dice may also have other polyhedral or irregular shapes, may have faces marked with numerals or symbols instead of pips and may have their numbers carved out from the material of the dice instead of marked on it. Loaded dice are specifically designed or modified to favor some results over others, for cheating or entertainment purposes. History Dice have been used since before recorded history, and their origin is uncertain. It is hypoth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ancient Greek Language
Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek Dark Ages, Dark Ages (), the Archaic Greece, Archaic or Homeric Greek, Homeric period (), and the Classical Greece, Classical period (). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athens, fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and Ancient Greek philosophy, philosophers. It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance. This article primarily contains information about the Homeric Greek, Epic and Classical periods of the language, which are the best-attested periods and considered most typical of Ancient Greek. From the Hellenistic period (), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek, which is regar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Latin
Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area around Rome, Italy. Through the expansion of the Roman Republic, it became the dominant language in the Italian Peninsula and subsequently throughout the Roman Empire. It has greatly influenced many languages, Latin influence in English, including English, having contributed List of Latin words with English derivatives, many words to the English lexicon, particularly after the Christianity in Anglo-Saxon England, Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons and the Norman Conquest. Latin Root (linguistics), roots appear frequently in the technical vocabulary used by fields such as theology, List of Latin and Greek words commonly used in systematic names, the sciences, List of medical roots, suffixes and prefixes, medicine, and List of Latin legal terms ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Council Of Vannes
The Council of Vannes, also known as the Council of Veneticum, was a Christian provincial council in the year 465. Perpetuus of Tours presided. Bishops in attendance included Nunechius, bishop of Nantes; Athenius, bishop of Rennes; and Albinus and Liberalis, possibly from Quimper and Aleth. The council elected Padarn as bishop of Vannes. Legislation The council, which continued discussion of topics from the 461 Council of Tours, passed a total of sixteen canons. It regulated monastic and clerical life, passing the earliest known legislation on cenobitic monasticism in Western Christianity. The canons passed by the council called for ecclesiastical law and order and for separate ecclesiastical courts. Clerics were banned from attending secular courts, attending wedding parties with music or dancing, missing morning hymns, or becoming intoxicated. In addition, the council banned the use of the , a form of Christian divination. Clerics were also banned from sharing meals with ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old Occitan
Old Occitan (, ), also called Old Provençal, was the earliest form of the Occitano-Romance languages, as attested in writings dating from the 8th to the 14th centuries. Old Occitan generally includes Early and Old Occitan. Middle Occitan is sometimes included in Old Occitan, sometimes in Modern Occitan. As the term ' appeared around the year 1300, Old Occitan is referred to as "Romance" (Occitan: ') or "Provençal" (Occitan: ') in medieval texts. History Among the earliest records of Occitan are the '' Tomida femina'', the '' Boecis'' and the '' Cançó de Santa Fe''. Old Occitan, the language used by the troubadours, was the first Romance language with a literary corpus and had an enormous influence on the development of lyric poetry in other European languages. The interpunct was a feature of its orthography and survives today in Catalan and Gascon. The official language of the sovereign principality of the Viscounty of Béarn was the local vernacular Bearnès dialect of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old French
Old French (, , ; ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France approximately between the late 8th [2-4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to talk of the beginnings of French, that is, when it was deemed no longer make to think of the varieties spoken in Gaul as Latin. Although a precise date can't be given, there is a general consensus (see Wright 1982, 1991, Lodge 1993) that an awareness of a vernacular, distinct from Latin, emerged at the end of the eighth century.] and mid-14th centuries. Rather than a unified Dialect#Dialect or language, language, Old French was a Dialect cluster, group of Romance languages, Romance dialects, Mutual intelligibility, mutually intelligible yet Dialect continuum, diverse. These dialects came to be collectively known as the , contrasting with the , the emerging Occitano-Romance languages of Occitania, now the south of France. The mid-14th century witnessed the emergence of Middle French, the lang ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sortes Apostolorum
''Lots of the Apostles'' () is the name of several texts used in Christian divination, based on the ''Acts of the Apostles'' 1:26, which describes how the Apostles cast lots to select a replacement for Judas Iscariot. The earliest reference to the ''Lots of the Apostles'' is found in the 6th-century ''Gelasian Decree'', a Latin work from southern Gaul or northern Italy. It lists a , 'book which is called lots of the Apostles', among the New Testament apocrypha. The identity of this text is uncertain. It may be a reference to the ''Sortes Sanctorum'', but this work is not otherwise called ''Sortes Apostolorum'' prior to the 13th century. In late antiquity, another text called ''Lots of the Apostles'' circulated in Syriac. Around 700, Jacob of Edessa in his canons forbade monks "to take answers ... from the Lots called the Apostles." He issued a similar rule in answering a question of Addai the Priest. The identity of the work condemned by Jacob is also uncertain. It may be the Syr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sortes Biblicae
() is a method of divination where by the Bible is opened randomly and the first words which one sees or points to are interpreted as predictive. The practice was common in late antiquity and had pagan precedents in the ''Sortes Homericae'' and '' Sortes Vergilianae''. It was nevertheless condemned by numerous church councils, including in Gaul alone by those of Vannes (465), Agde (506) and Orléans (511).Bruce M. Metzger"Sortes Biblicae" in Bruce M. Metzger and Michael D. Coogan (eds.), ''The Oxford Companion to the Bible'' (Oxford University Press, 1993 nline 2004. Sometimes Bibles were specially prepared for fortune-telling with fortunes being written in the lower margins. These were marked by the Ancient Greek word ('interpretation'). The Bible could be opened at random or dice could be rolled to determine a page number. The 5th‐century Codex Bezae contains 69 such 'interpretations' added to the Gospel of Mark in the 9th or 10th century. The fortunes include "Expect a gr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edward Gibbon
Edward Gibbon (; 8 May 173716 January 1794) was an English essayist, historian, and politician. His most important work, ''The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'', published in six volumes between 1776 and 1789, is known for the quality and irony of its prose, its use of primary sources, and its polemical Criticism of religion, criticism of organized religion. Early life: 1737–1752 Edward Gibbon was born in 1737, the son of Edward Gibbon (died 1770), Edward and Judith Gibbon, at Lime Grove in the town of Putney, Surrey. He had five brothers and one sister, all of whom died in infancy. His grandfather, also named Edward, had lost his assets as a result of the South Sea Company, South Sea bubble stock-market collapse in 1720 but eventually regained much of his wealth. Gibbon's father thus inherited a substantial estate. His paternal grandmother, Catherine Acton, was granddaughter of Sir Walter Acton, 2nd Baronet. Gibbon described himself as "a puny child, neg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
