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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 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. Before the development of titles, texts were often referred to by their incipits, as with for example ''Agnus Dei''. During the medieval period in Europe, incipits were often written in a different script or colour from the rest of the work of which they were a part, and "incipit pages" might be heavily decorated with 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 practice of referring to texts by their initial words remains commonplace. Historical examples Sumerian In th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Late Antique
Late antiquity is the time of transition from classical antiquity to the Middle Ages, generally spanning the 3rd–7th century in Europe and adjacent areas bordering the Mediterranean Basin. The popularization of this periodization in English has generally been credited to historian Peter Brown, after the publication of his seminal work '' The World of Late Antiquity'' (1971). Precise boundaries for the period are a continuing matter of debate, but Brown proposes a period between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Generally, it can be thought of as from the end of the Roman Empire's Crisis of the Third Century (235–284) to the early Muslim conquests (622–750), or as roughly contemporary with the Sasanian Empire (224–651). In the West its end was earlier, with the start of the Early Middle Ages typically placed in the 6th century, or earlier on the edges of the Western Roman Empire. The Roman Empire underwent considerable social, cultural and organizational changes starting with ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Divination
Divination (from Latin ''divinare'', 'to foresee, to foretell, to predict, to prophesy') is the attempt to gain insight into a question or situation by way of an occultic, standardized process or ritual. Used in various forms throughout history, diviners ascertain their interpretations of how a querent should proceed by reading signs, events, or omens, or through alleged contact or interaction with a supernatural agency. Divination can be seen as a systematic method with which to organize what appears to be disjointed, random facets of existence such that they provide insight into a problem at hand. If a distinction is to be made between divination and fortune-telling, divination has a more formal or ritualistic element and often contains a more social character, usually in a religious context, as seen in traditional African medicine. Fortune-telling, on the other hand, is a more everyday practice for personal purposes. Particular divination methods vary by culture and reli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dice
Dice (singular die or dice) are small, throwable objects with marked sides that can rest in multiple positions. They 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 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 designed to favor some results over others for cheating or entertainment. History Dice have been used since before recorded history, and it is uncertain where they originated. It is theorized that dice developed from the practice ... [...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 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. From the Hellenistic period (), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek, which is regarded as a separate historical stage, although its earliest form closely resembles Attic Greek and its latest form a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the Roman Republic it became the dominant language in the Italian region and subsequently throughout the Roman Empire. Even after the fall of Western Rome, Latin remained the common language of international communication, science, scholarship and academia in Europe until well into the 18th century, when other regional vernaculars (including its own descendants, the Romance languages) supplanted it in common academic and political usage, and it eventually became a dead language in the modern linguistic definition. Latin is a highly inflected language, with three distinct genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter), six or seven noun cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative, and vocative), five declensions, four verb conjuga ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Council Of Vannes
A council is a group of people who come together to consult, deliberate, or make decisions. A council may function as a legislature, especially at a town, city or county/ shire level, but most legislative bodies at the state/provincial or national level are not considered councils. At such levels, there may be no separate executive branch, and the council may effectively represent the entire government. A board of directors might also be denoted as a council. A committee might also be denoted as a council, though a committee is generally a subordinate body composed of members of a larger body, while a council may not be. Because many schools have a student council, the council is the form of governance with which many people are likely to have their first experience as electors or participants. A member of a council may be referred to as a councillor or councilperson, or by the gender-specific titles of councilman and councilwoman. In politics Notable examples of types of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old Occitan
Old Occitan ( oc, occitan ancian, label=Occitan language, Modern Occitan, ca, occità antic), also called Old Provençal, was the earliest form of the Occitano-Romance languages, as attested in writings dating from the eighth through the fourteenth 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 language, Gascon. The official language of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old French
Old French (, , ; Modern French: ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France from approximately the 8th to the 14th centuries. Rather than a unified language, Old French was a linkage of Romance dialects, mutually intelligible yet diverse, spoken in the northern half of France. These dialects came to be collectively known as the , contrasting with the in the south of France. The mid-14th century witnessed the emergence of Middle French, the language of the French Renaissance in the Île de France region; this dialect was a predecessor to Modern French. Other dialects of Old French evolved themselves into modern forms (Poitevin-Saintongeais, Gallo, Norman, Picard, Walloon, etc.), each with its own linguistic features and history. The region where Old French was spoken natively roughly extended to the northern half of the Kingdom of France and its vassals (including parts of the Angevin Empire, which during the 12th century remained under Anglo-Norman rul ... [...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 S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sortes Biblicae
''Sortes biblicae'' ('biblical lots') is a method of divination where by the Bible is opened randomly and the first words which one sees 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 Greek word ''hermeneia'' ('interpretation'). The Bible could be opened at random or dice could be rolled to determine a page number. The 5th‐century Codex Bezae The Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis, designated by siglum D or 05 (in the Gregory-Aland numbering o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edward Gibbon
Edward Gibbon (; 8 May 173716 January 1794) was an English historian, writer, and member of parliament. His most important work, ''The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'', published in six volumes between 1776 and 1788, is known for the quality and irony of its prose, its use of primary sources, and its polemical criticism of organised religion. Early life: 1737–1752 Edward Gibbon was born in 1737, the son of Edward and Judith Gibbon at Lime Grove, in the town of Putney, Surrey. He had six siblings, 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 bubble stock-market collapse in 1720 but eventually regained much of his wealth. Gibbon's father was thus able to inherit a substantial estate. One of his grandmothers, Catherine Acton, descended from Sir Walter Acton, 2nd Baronet. As a youth, Gibbon's health was under constant threat. He described himself as "a puny ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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