Beatrice Caseau | Sorbonne University (original) (raw)
Books by Beatrice Caseau
Baptême et baptistères : regards croisés sur l'initiation chrétienne entre Antiquité tardive et Moyen Âge, 2023
Cet ouvrage regroupe des articles écrits sur le baptême et les baptistères antiques et médiévaux ... more Cet ouvrage regroupe des articles écrits sur le baptême et les baptistères antiques et médiévaux par un panel international d’archéologues et d’historiens renommés. Nous abordons une très grande variété de sujets qui concernent l’initiation chrétienne, de la liturgie à l’architecture, de la théologie à l’histoire des institutions et du droit canonique, du symbolisme religieux à la dimension politique du baptême. Nous traitons de ces questions dans un cadre géographique large qui va des Îles Britanniques à l’Éthiopie.
La confrontation des sources littéraires et des données archéologiques s'avère importante pour es... more La confrontation des sources littéraires et des données archéologiques s'avère importante pour essayer de comprendre tout à la fois la mise en place des interdits alimentaires particuliers à une religion, les limites de la mise en pratique des interdits alimentaires et leur évolution dans le temps. Les interdits alimentaires et les restrictions sur la commensalité permettent à différents groupes religieux d'établir une frontière entre «eux» et «nous». Le corpus de textes normatifs appartenant aux droits religieux et civils interdisant la consommation d'aliments particuliers a été souvent étudié pour le judaïsme ou l'islam, moins souvent pour les polythéismes, le zoroastrisme ou le christianisme. Nous allons présenter la littérature normative et faire réfléchir sur les limites de sa mise en application, en nous appuyant sur l'archéozoologie qui peut fournir des données sur le décalage entre norme et pratique.
The confrontation of literary sources and archaeological data is important to try altogether to understand the implementation of dietary prohibitions peculiar to a religion, the limits of the practice of dietary prohibitions and their evolution over time. Food prohibitions and restrictions on commensality allow different religious groups to draw a line between 'them' and 'us'. The body of normative texts pertaining to religious and civil laws prohibiting the consumption of particular foods has often been studied for Judaism or Islam, less often for polytheisms, Zoroastrianism or Christianity. We intend to present the normative literature and to reflect on the limits of its implementation, relying on archaeozoology that can provide data on the discrepancy between norm and practice.
The 39th Congress of the SHMESP that took place in April-May 2008 was held in an Eastern capital,... more The 39th Congress of the SHMESP that took place in April-May 2008 was held in an Eastern capital, Cairo. Its aim was to foster dialogue between West and East and to highlight the fact that both the East and the West owed their cultural richness in the Middle Ages not only to their common heritage but also to dialogue and exchange throughout the period of the Medieval Millennium.
This volume, The Authority of the Written in the Middle Ages deals with the production of the written, with the authority derived from documents and with the setting up of archives in the West as well as in the Muslim and Byzantine sphere.
Firstly, our authors have envisaged the place occupied by the written in societies where the spoken word and the gesture are essential. They examined groups whose profession involved writing (redactors, chancellery clerks, cadis etc.) and studied their practices looking at how they diffused the techniques that they employed. The use of writing leads us to pose the question of the authority of a document which is produced and of its efficacity – the written and the recorded gestures, the signs of validation, the status of the people who present the document and of the witnesses who underwrite it, the multiple choices of language adopted by the redactors and the situations in which the document is used even its falsification. In the Muslim sphere, for example, where there is a tendency to place the evidence of reliable witnesses above documentary evidence, given that the latter can be falsified, we see that evidence based on documents has a lower status than in the West where it is of prime importance. The setting up and the preservation of archives is a key to the maintenance of power: who is in charge of the documents and where are they housed? Here too, there is a difference in practice between West and East. The kings of France believed that the constitution of registers of royal acts was a manifestation of their power, whereas Muslim monarchs, though possessing elaborately organized archives, did not see them as an expression of their sovereignty. Finally, our authors had a look at the themes of random preservations, discards, destructions, of copies, of translations and of forgeries of documents, opening up new avenues of exploration.
This article focuses on the social and institutional history of charitable distributions, based o... more This article focuses on the social and institutional history of charitable distributions, based on objects that were related to the exercise of charity: charity tesserae and certain seals, especially seals of charitable institutions. The aim is to trace over a long period of time, the evolution of charity practices on the part of donors rather than beneficiaries. The duty of charity towards the poor, affirmed by Christianity, has in fact led to the establishment of a sharing of resources, especially food, starting with the ancient Church and continuing during the Middle ages. Modalities for sharing with the poor have changed. While the Church aimed at concentrating the gifts of donors, insisting that it could do a better job to distribute resources, part of these resources were used for its own needs. Lay charitable institutions emerged. Also, the wealthiest wished to benefit from the prayers of the poor in their favor, which they considered necessary for their salvation and they organized charitable distributions in their own name. This article follows this evolution from anonymous gifts to personalized distributions illustrated by the tesserae of the middle byzantine period.
This article is about the transition between childhood and adulthood and looks at sources, which ... more This article is about the transition between childhood and adulthood and looks at sources, which discuss it.
This book is a collection of papers edited by C. Caseau and S. Huebner about family conflicts ove... more This book is a collection of papers edited by C. Caseau and S. Huebner about family conflicts over inheritance in the Ancient and Mediaeval Worlds. It deals with rules of inheritance and property division in ancient Greece, in the Roman and Byzantine Empires, in some Latin kingdoms and in mediaeval Islamic Egypt. The book focuses on the impact religions, had on family law and property transmission and offers insight for Greco-Roman religion, Judaism, Orthodox Christianity and Islam
Papers by Beatrice Caseau
Syrian Stylites: Rereadings and Recastings of Late Ancient Super-Heroes, éds. Barbara Crostini & Christian Høgel, Transactions of the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbu, 2024
this article studies the image of stylites in the middle byzantine period through the study of th... more this article studies the image of stylites in the middle byzantine period through the study of the Lofe of Theodore of Edessa
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2015
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2014
En 399, un texte posté à Padoue prévoit que les idoles des temples, qui malgré l'interdiction abs... more En 399, un texte posté à Padoue prévoit que les idoles des temples, qui malgré l'interdiction absolue de sacrifices reçoivent un culte seront déposées et placées sous le contrôle des autorités impériales : Codex Theodosianus, 16, 10, 18 ; Un texte similaire fut posté à Rome en 407 pour que les statues des temples qui continuent à recevoir un culte soient arrachées de leur socle : Codex Theodosianus,
Peeters Publishers eBooks, Apr 20, 2022
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2022
Christians' Rejection of Sacrificial Incense (2-5 th c) This article aims to present an anomaly i... more Christians' Rejection of Sacrificial Incense (2-5 th c) This article aims to present an anomaly in this history of the use of incense in cultic practices, either offered as a sacrifice to please or appease deities or to communicate with heaven. The ascending smoke of incense was present during Roman religious ceremonies as well as later in the Middle Ages, when it carried the prayers of the faithful during Christian liturgies. For a few centuries, however, between the 2 nd and the 5 th or 6 th century, the sacrifice incense was rejected by Christians, denounced as a pagan idolatrous sacrifice or as an obsolete Jewish practice. Jesus himself had not denounced the use of sacrificial incense in the Temple of Jerusalem, still standing in his time. So, what were the motivations and arguments behind the formal rejection of the sacrifice of incense on the part of Christian Apologists and how did this rejection help them in building up a Christian identity. The rejection of sacrificial incense was instrumental in proving that orthodox Christianity had nothing to do with paganism, Judaism, or Gnosticism, and had, of course, no link at all with magic. So, for a few centuries, incense as a medium of communication with heaven was also condemned by prominent voices among Christian writers and its Biblical mentions interpreted and reduced as a symbol for prayers. This condemnation, however, can be considered as an anomaly in the long history of incense since, before and after this period of rejection, incense was widely used for its mediatory powers and its perfume. Besides, this stern condemnation of incense concerned its use as the matter of sacrifices, leaving untouched many other uses, which Christians continued to hold, in funerary or medical practices for example, because they thought that incense shared in the beneficial powers that fragrances were granted in the ancient world. The sacrifice of incense in the traditional cults of the Roman empire In the Roman world of the early Christian period, while incense was used in many circumstances, the odor of incense seem to have triggered the notion that a sacrifice was taking place. Athenaeus cites Xenophanes of Colophon to call frankincense, the sacred fragrance. 1 Although brought in at the end of the banquets and basically used to dispel the 1 Here is the description of the end of a banquet with its mixture of sacred and profane, cited
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 1998
L’Empire byzantin a maintenu la tradition romaine qui donnait à l’écrit une valeur probatoire sup... more L’Empire byzantin a maintenu la tradition romaine qui donnait à l’écrit une valeur probatoire supérieure à celle accordée à la parole. Le recours à l’écrit était donc courant pour les affaires privées et publiques. L’État, comme l’Église, a produit une abondante documentation dont nous n’avons plus aujourd’hui que de modestes témoignages. Seule l’Egypte et, dans une moindre mesure, la Palestine ont conservé d’abondants papyrus privés, qui fournissent une information exceptionnelle, mais seule..
Baptême et baptistères : regards croisés sur l'initiation chrétienne entre Antiquité tardive et Moyen Âge, 2023
Cet ouvrage regroupe des articles écrits sur le baptême et les baptistères antiques et médiévaux ... more Cet ouvrage regroupe des articles écrits sur le baptême et les baptistères antiques et médiévaux par un panel international d’archéologues et d’historiens renommés. Nous abordons une très grande variété de sujets qui concernent l’initiation chrétienne, de la liturgie à l’architecture, de la théologie à l’histoire des institutions et du droit canonique, du symbolisme religieux à la dimension politique du baptême. Nous traitons de ces questions dans un cadre géographique large qui va des Îles Britanniques à l’Éthiopie.
La confrontation des sources littéraires et des données archéologiques s'avère importante pour es... more La confrontation des sources littéraires et des données archéologiques s'avère importante pour essayer de comprendre tout à la fois la mise en place des interdits alimentaires particuliers à une religion, les limites de la mise en pratique des interdits alimentaires et leur évolution dans le temps. Les interdits alimentaires et les restrictions sur la commensalité permettent à différents groupes religieux d'établir une frontière entre «eux» et «nous». Le corpus de textes normatifs appartenant aux droits religieux et civils interdisant la consommation d'aliments particuliers a été souvent étudié pour le judaïsme ou l'islam, moins souvent pour les polythéismes, le zoroastrisme ou le christianisme. Nous allons présenter la littérature normative et faire réfléchir sur les limites de sa mise en application, en nous appuyant sur l'archéozoologie qui peut fournir des données sur le décalage entre norme et pratique.
The confrontation of literary sources and archaeological data is important to try altogether to understand the implementation of dietary prohibitions peculiar to a religion, the limits of the practice of dietary prohibitions and their evolution over time. Food prohibitions and restrictions on commensality allow different religious groups to draw a line between 'them' and 'us'. The body of normative texts pertaining to religious and civil laws prohibiting the consumption of particular foods has often been studied for Judaism or Islam, less often for polytheisms, Zoroastrianism or Christianity. We intend to present the normative literature and to reflect on the limits of its implementation, relying on archaeozoology that can provide data on the discrepancy between norm and practice.
The 39th Congress of the SHMESP that took place in April-May 2008 was held in an Eastern capital,... more The 39th Congress of the SHMESP that took place in April-May 2008 was held in an Eastern capital, Cairo. Its aim was to foster dialogue between West and East and to highlight the fact that both the East and the West owed their cultural richness in the Middle Ages not only to their common heritage but also to dialogue and exchange throughout the period of the Medieval Millennium.
This volume, The Authority of the Written in the Middle Ages deals with the production of the written, with the authority derived from documents and with the setting up of archives in the West as well as in the Muslim and Byzantine sphere.
Firstly, our authors have envisaged the place occupied by the written in societies where the spoken word and the gesture are essential. They examined groups whose profession involved writing (redactors, chancellery clerks, cadis etc.) and studied their practices looking at how they diffused the techniques that they employed. The use of writing leads us to pose the question of the authority of a document which is produced and of its efficacity – the written and the recorded gestures, the signs of validation, the status of the people who present the document and of the witnesses who underwrite it, the multiple choices of language adopted by the redactors and the situations in which the document is used even its falsification. In the Muslim sphere, for example, where there is a tendency to place the evidence of reliable witnesses above documentary evidence, given that the latter can be falsified, we see that evidence based on documents has a lower status than in the West where it is of prime importance. The setting up and the preservation of archives is a key to the maintenance of power: who is in charge of the documents and where are they housed? Here too, there is a difference in practice between West and East. The kings of France believed that the constitution of registers of royal acts was a manifestation of their power, whereas Muslim monarchs, though possessing elaborately organized archives, did not see them as an expression of their sovereignty. Finally, our authors had a look at the themes of random preservations, discards, destructions, of copies, of translations and of forgeries of documents, opening up new avenues of exploration.
This article focuses on the social and institutional history of charitable distributions, based o... more This article focuses on the social and institutional history of charitable distributions, based on objects that were related to the exercise of charity: charity tesserae and certain seals, especially seals of charitable institutions. The aim is to trace over a long period of time, the evolution of charity practices on the part of donors rather than beneficiaries. The duty of charity towards the poor, affirmed by Christianity, has in fact led to the establishment of a sharing of resources, especially food, starting with the ancient Church and continuing during the Middle ages. Modalities for sharing with the poor have changed. While the Church aimed at concentrating the gifts of donors, insisting that it could do a better job to distribute resources, part of these resources were used for its own needs. Lay charitable institutions emerged. Also, the wealthiest wished to benefit from the prayers of the poor in their favor, which they considered necessary for their salvation and they organized charitable distributions in their own name. This article follows this evolution from anonymous gifts to personalized distributions illustrated by the tesserae of the middle byzantine period.
This article is about the transition between childhood and adulthood and looks at sources, which ... more This article is about the transition between childhood and adulthood and looks at sources, which discuss it.
This book is a collection of papers edited by C. Caseau and S. Huebner about family conflicts ove... more This book is a collection of papers edited by C. Caseau and S. Huebner about family conflicts over inheritance in the Ancient and Mediaeval Worlds. It deals with rules of inheritance and property division in ancient Greece, in the Roman and Byzantine Empires, in some Latin kingdoms and in mediaeval Islamic Egypt. The book focuses on the impact religions, had on family law and property transmission and offers insight for Greco-Roman religion, Judaism, Orthodox Christianity and Islam
Syrian Stylites: Rereadings and Recastings of Late Ancient Super-Heroes, éds. Barbara Crostini & Christian Høgel, Transactions of the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbu, 2024
this article studies the image of stylites in the middle byzantine period through the study of th... more this article studies the image of stylites in the middle byzantine period through the study of the Lofe of Theodore of Edessa
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2015
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2014
En 399, un texte posté à Padoue prévoit que les idoles des temples, qui malgré l'interdiction abs... more En 399, un texte posté à Padoue prévoit que les idoles des temples, qui malgré l'interdiction absolue de sacrifices reçoivent un culte seront déposées et placées sous le contrôle des autorités impériales : Codex Theodosianus, 16, 10, 18 ; Un texte similaire fut posté à Rome en 407 pour que les statues des temples qui continuent à recevoir un culte soient arrachées de leur socle : Codex Theodosianus,
Peeters Publishers eBooks, Apr 20, 2022
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2022
Christians' Rejection of Sacrificial Incense (2-5 th c) This article aims to present an anomaly i... more Christians' Rejection of Sacrificial Incense (2-5 th c) This article aims to present an anomaly in this history of the use of incense in cultic practices, either offered as a sacrifice to please or appease deities or to communicate with heaven. The ascending smoke of incense was present during Roman religious ceremonies as well as later in the Middle Ages, when it carried the prayers of the faithful during Christian liturgies. For a few centuries, however, between the 2 nd and the 5 th or 6 th century, the sacrifice incense was rejected by Christians, denounced as a pagan idolatrous sacrifice or as an obsolete Jewish practice. Jesus himself had not denounced the use of sacrificial incense in the Temple of Jerusalem, still standing in his time. So, what were the motivations and arguments behind the formal rejection of the sacrifice of incense on the part of Christian Apologists and how did this rejection help them in building up a Christian identity. The rejection of sacrificial incense was instrumental in proving that orthodox Christianity had nothing to do with paganism, Judaism, or Gnosticism, and had, of course, no link at all with magic. So, for a few centuries, incense as a medium of communication with heaven was also condemned by prominent voices among Christian writers and its Biblical mentions interpreted and reduced as a symbol for prayers. This condemnation, however, can be considered as an anomaly in the long history of incense since, before and after this period of rejection, incense was widely used for its mediatory powers and its perfume. Besides, this stern condemnation of incense concerned its use as the matter of sacrifices, leaving untouched many other uses, which Christians continued to hold, in funerary or medical practices for example, because they thought that incense shared in the beneficial powers that fragrances were granted in the ancient world. The sacrifice of incense in the traditional cults of the Roman empire In the Roman world of the early Christian period, while incense was used in many circumstances, the odor of incense seem to have triggered the notion that a sacrifice was taking place. Athenaeus cites Xenophanes of Colophon to call frankincense, the sacred fragrance. 1 Although brought in at the end of the banquets and basically used to dispel the 1 Here is the description of the end of a banquet with its mixture of sacred and profane, cited
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 1998
L’Empire byzantin a maintenu la tradition romaine qui donnait à l’écrit une valeur probatoire sup... more L’Empire byzantin a maintenu la tradition romaine qui donnait à l’écrit une valeur probatoire supérieure à celle accordée à la parole. Le recours à l’écrit était donc courant pour les affaires privées et publiques. L’État, comme l’Église, a produit une abondante documentation dont nous n’avons plus aujourd’hui que de modestes témoignages. Seule l’Egypte et, dans une moindre mesure, la Palestine ont conservé d’abondants papyrus privés, qui fournissent une information exceptionnelle, mais seule..
Revue des études byzantines, 2001
Caseau Béatrice. R. Popović, Le Christianisme sur le sol de l'Illyricum oriental jusqu'à ... more Caseau Béatrice. R. Popović, Le Christianisme sur le sol de l'Illyricum oriental jusqu'à l'arrivée des Slaves. . In: Revue des études byzantines, tome 59, 2001. p. 294
Le sacré et son inscription dans l’espace à Byzance et en Occident
Personne ne conteste qu’entre le ive et le viie siècle les espaces religieux païens tout comme le... more Personne ne conteste qu’entre le ive et le viie siècle les espaces religieux païens tout comme les objets du culte païen ont été désacralisés, c’est-à-dire que leur usage à des fins cultuelles, dans le cadre du polythéisme, a été interdit. La discussion porte sur la date de cette désacralisation ainsi que sur ses modalités. Le sort des espaces religieux païens n’a pas été uniforme. Selon les cas, ils ont été sécularisés et transformés en espaces à usage profane et en objets de décor, ou bien ..
Économie et société à Byzance (viiie-xiie siècle)
Mise en scène et glorification du pouvoir, le cérémonial impérial a pour fonction de rendre à la ... more Mise en scène et glorification du pouvoir, le cérémonial impérial a pour fonction de rendre à la fois visible et intelligible la place prééminente de l’empereur et celle qui revient à chaque individu selon son origine, son groupe social, sa dignité et son rang. Ce cérémonial reflète la taxis, l’ordre du monde comme image de l’ordre divin. Le cérémonial impérial et la taxis sont connus par les taktika : le taktikon Uspenskij (842-843), le taktikon de Philothée (899), le taktikon Beneševič (934..
The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, 2012
Zbornik Radova Vizantoloskog Instituta, 2009
Two Latin authors of the 4 th and 5 th century offer a typology of good and bad monks. Both of th... more Two Latin authors of the 4 th and 5 th century offer a typology of good and bad monks. Both of them describe the lifestyles of monks in Egypt. Their aim was to condemn the lifestyle of monks living in the West, but the main point was to condemn domestic monasticism and to replace it with the coenobitic one.
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2022
Holy bones, holy dust: how relics shaped the history of medieval Europe (New Haven 2011). Cet art... more Holy bones, holy dust: how relics shaped the history of medieval Europe (New Haven 2011). Cet article est rédigé au cours des projets de recherche PHE The Past Has Ears, projet EU JPI on Cultural Heritage (JPI-CH) et ANR PHEND : The Past Has Ears at Notre Dame (2020-2024), dir. B. Katz (Sorbonne université) auxquels je participe. Il s'agit d'interroger l'impact des objets dans l'acoustique des cathédrales, ce qui inclut une étude sur l'emplacement et la taille des reliquaires. Je remercie Charis Messis (Athènes) et Jean-Claude Cheynet (Paris) pour leur relecture et leurs commentaires.
Revue des études byzantines, 2005
REB 63, 2005, p. 71-96. Béatrice Caseau, Syméon Stylite l'Ancien entre puanteur et parfum. - ... more REB 63, 2005, p. 71-96. Béatrice Caseau, Syméon Stylite l'Ancien entre puanteur et parfum. - La puanteur est le plus souvent associée avec le péché dans la littérature chrétienne antique, elle est la conséquence de certaines maladies qui sont perçues comme un châtiment divin. Cependant, quelques saints ont choisi d'éprouver par eux-mêmes la douleur et le rejet liés à la mauvaise odeur dégagée par les plaies infectées. Par cette expérience, ils apprennent à éprouver de la compassion pour l'humanité et la patience dans la souffrance. En cela, ils reprennent le modèle de Job. Les différentes Vies de Syméon stylite l'ancien montrent une variété dans la manière d'évoquer la puanteur du saint, liée plutôt au choix de l'hagiographe qu'à une différence culturelle entre monde latin, monde grec et monde syriaque.
Late Antique Archaeology, 2004
Throughout the Roman period the countryside was a landscape of sacred sites both monumental and n... more Throughout the Roman period the countryside was a landscape of sacred sites both monumental and natural. Rural temples were numerous and essential to the religious life of peasants and landowners. The fate of rural temples reveals something of the conflicting religious beliefs that were present in the rural landscape until the 6th c. Rural temples were among the first temples to be destroyed on some Christian estates, but in other places their power of attraction remained strong until the Early Middle Ages, even when they were in ruins. In the Early Byzantine period, however, temples were too visible, causing some Christians to lead expeditions against them. Convinced pagans searched for other, more remote, cult places to where they could maintain some form of pagan practice. These included inner sanctuaries inside their homes, or remote natural sites. Temple traditions were lost as a result.
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2010
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2002
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 1999
While plundering has been an intrinsic part of warfare throughout human history, this workshop w... more While plundering has been an intrinsic part of warfare
throughout human history, this workshop will explore the specific notion of pillaging sacred space from diachronic and cross-cultural perspectives. How is looting and destroying sacred space negotiated, conceived, and judged within the framework of conquest? Are individual ‘arch-plunderers’ discernible in various ancient and medieval cultures? How should we read accounts of pillaging sacred space? The speakers address these and related questions by analysing the plundering histories of particular sites
and by tackling broader cultural trends and influences such as economic factors, religious zealotry, and the possibility of creating or enforcing norms.
Byzantine Materiality conference poster, 2019
Popular descriptions of Byzantium often emphasize the mystical and immaterial while overlooking t... more Popular descriptions of Byzantium often emphasize the mystical and immaterial while overlooking the mediating role of matter implied by the Christian belief in the incarnation. In the field of art history and across the humanities, a new interest in matter and materials constitutes what is now being referred to as the "material turn" or "new materialisms." This conference explores matter, materials, and materiality in Byzantine art and culture. It aims to examine material strategies of objects, makers, and users; the agency and affective properties of materials and objects; Byzantine depictions and descriptions of matter in images and texts; and the senses and embodied experiences in Byzantium.