History
The sense of antiquitates, the idea that a civilization could be recovered by a systematic exploration of its relics and material culture, in the sense used by Varro and reflected in Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews was lost during the Middle Ages, when ancient objects were collected with other appeals, the rarity or strangeness of their materials or simply because they were thought to be endowed with magical or miraculous powers. Precious cameos and other antique carved gems might be preserved when incorporated into crowns and diadems and liturgical objects, consular ivory diptychs by being used as gospel covers. Roman columns could be re-erected in churches. sarcophagi could receive new occupants and cinerary urns could function as holy water stoups. Sculptural representations of the human form, feared and reviled as "idols" could be rehabilitated by reidentifying their subjects: the equestrian bronze Marcus Aurelius of the Campidoglio was respected as a representation of the Christian emperor Constantine, and in Pavia the Regisole acquired a civic role that preserved it. In Rome the Roman bronze Spinario was admired for itself by the guidebook writer Magister Gregorius. The classicism of the Carolingian renaissance was in part inspired by appreciation of Late Antique manuscripts: the Utrecht Psalter attempts to recreate such a Late Antique original, both in its handwriting and its illustrations.
Read more about this topic: Antiquities
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“The history of the genesis or the old mythology repeats itself in the experience of every child. He too is a demon or god thrown into a particular chaos, where he strives ever to lead things from disorder into order.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)