CCSA GUEST LECTURE SERIES
Watch Past Lectures
Est insolitum quaerere taliter:
a momentous witchcraft investigation
The Malleus Maleficarum was the first hand book printed on the topic of satanic witchcraft (1486), and was seminal in the spread of witch hunting in Early Modern western Europe. The main author was a Dominican friar and inquisitor named Heinricus Institoris, and a major influence on the work’s composition came from an inquisition he conducted in Innsbruck in 1485, where a major difference of views about witchcraft between Institoris and the local bishop completely derailed the proceedings. As a result of this disagreement, a large archive of documents about the proceedings has been preserved in the episcopal archives, and though their existence has been known since the late 19th century, the texts have not been fully published prior to the upcoming edition by C.S. Mackay. These texts allow us to see how Institoris put together accusations of witchcraft on the basis of his theories, and how the entire proceedings came to a very dramatic conclusion through the behind-the-scenes efforts of the bishop to undermine the inquisitor. For some pre-Halloween fun, we’ll talk about strange theories about witch craft and stranger Latinity.
Dr. Christopher S. Mackay
PhD, Harvard University
Professor of History and Classics, University of Alberta
Dr. John Serrati,
PhD University of St Andrews
Adjunct Professor and Erasmus Scholar, Dept. of Classics and Religious Studies, University of Ottawa
Gender and Roman Warfare:
Women as Arbiters of Male Virtus
Virtus could be projected in multiple places and instances; however, during the mid-Republic - the high point of Rome’s hypermasculine, martial culture - the term was most associated with martial courage. Battle was therefore the primary area in which males in the middle Republic displayed their virtus. Although the term is inherently masculine, women played a vital role in influencing a male to perform his civic duty by service in war. Armed conflict in ancient Rome was framed as one party taking vengeance upon another for a perceived wrong. This framing meant that the war was just and in harmony with the divine cosmos. Via the act of ritual lamentation, mid-Republican Roman women called upon men to take revenge through warfare. Lamentation was a ritualised female mourning tradition which regularly took place at funerals and for which there is strong evidence in contemporary Latin literature. The lamentation was not just undertaken to honour the deceased, but more importantly, it was directed at the living male members of society and served as a demand that these men take up arms and display their virtus in order to avenge the wrongs perpetrated by an enemy. This not only spurred Roman males into martial action, but also afforded women a voice in the normally masculine spheres of political decision-making and warfare. In demanding vengeance and armed displays of courage, women in mid-Republican Rome played a necessary rolein virtus, since they themselves served as the arbiters of masculinity.
PLAGUE, PORK, AND THE PLEBS OF ROME:
a demographic profile of fourth-century CE Rome, and why the size of the population matters
This lecture presents a demographic profile of the city of Rome in the fourth century CE. It has long been espoused that beginning in the mid-third century and extending into the fourth CE, Rome's population began a gradual but inexorable decline. The statement has become so solidified in scholarly discourse that it is often repeated uncritically as if a certainty. According to this view, two exogenous shocks to the empire’s population, triggered by high-mortality pandemics, caused large-scale demographic disruptions from which the city of Rome never recovered. I argue, to the contrary, that the evidence we do have is more consistent with a high population count in the fourth century. More importantly, the same evidence also suggests an increase in the size of certain sections of the population. This lecture then will offer a critical reassessment of prevailing scholarly opinion and, in the process, demonstrate how by studying institutional change alongside disease regimes, food supply, and fiscal structures, we can illuminate socio-economic and demographic aspects of historical populations.
Dr. John Fabiano
PhD, University of Toronto
Lecturer, Dept. of Classics, University of Toronto
Perhaps the most famous legacy of ancient Greek thought is Plato’s Theory of Forms. It was a stunningly innovative idea, a grand theory, and one with which Plato wanted to do a lot of philosophical work, and wanted to explain many things that seemed mysterious. And, of course, right from the get-go, there were lots of voices that were highly critical of the theory. Over the centuries, most of the criticism of Plato’s theory (and its later versions) has borne on the question whether such things as Forms can really exist: these ideal entities that are, on the one hand, non-material, but, on the other, not just ideas in people’s individual heads. Could such strange things possibly exist? In this talk I want to explore a new tack of criticism. The gist of it is that Plato, without realizing it, really had two quite different understandings of the Forms at work in his thought. On the one hand, he pictured Forms as absolutely marvellous entities, the supremely perfect exemplars of whatever was in question. Thus the Form of Bed would be the most perfect, the most splendid, of all possible beds. We can call this picture the “Archetype” of Bed. But on the other hand he also thought of Forms as something much leaner, basically, the necessary and sufficient conditions of Bed—a platform for lying on. This picture we can call the “Essence” of Bed. My argument is that Plato never really saw the difference between Archetypes and Essences; he wobbled between pursuing the one and the other. And this ambiguity dramatically weakens his theory.
Dr. John Thorp
DPhil, University of Oxford
Professor Emeritus, Dept. of Philosophy, Western University
Plato’s Theory of Forms:
a fresh look
WHY XENOPHON TODAY?
Dr. Buzzetti's primary research interest is in classical political philosophy, and he is the author of Xenophon the Socratic Prince: The Argument of the Anabasis of Cyrus. In this lecture, Dr. Buzzetti will discuss the remarkable resurgence of interest in Xenophon in the last 30 years, and will examine why the study of Xenophon's work is important to us today.
Dr. Eric Buzzetti
PhD, Boston University
B.C.L/L.L.B Law, McGill University
Associate Professor, Dept. of Political Science, Concordia University
Prof. Kathleen MacDonald
Professor, Dept. of Classics, Modern Languages and Linguistics, Concordia University
Gold of the gods:
possession, transmission, reception.
This lecture will explore objects of gold in ancient Greek myth, particularly those possessed by the deities, and those given to humans by the gods. A number of questions about the gold of the gods will be raised, and hopefully answered, including what value the gods place on their golden possessions, what causes them to send gold into the realm of humans, and what place divine gold has in the world of mortals.
The Obelisk
Taking the figure of the obelisk as its focus, this talk explores the dynamic, performative, and commemorative dimensions of empire. Over time and across cultures, obelisks have come to anchor ceremonial practices across such broad centers as New Kingdom Egypt, Augustan Rome, Byzantine Constantinople (New Rome), and Ottoman Kostantiniyye (Istanbul). By considering the dynamic relationship between concrete and ephemeral performances of imperial ritual, this talk insists on a diachronic perspective for viewing the interactions of empires through their monuments, monuments that endure today as anchors for present politics.
Dr. Cecily Hilsdale, McGill University
Associate Professor of Medieval Art and Architecture, Department of Art History and Communication Studies