From prophecy to apocalypse: the verb tenses of Jerusalem in Robert the Monk's Historia of the First Crusade

In the prologue to his Historia of the First Crusade, Robert the Monk posed this rhetorical question: ‘since the creation of the world what more miraculous undertaking has there been (other than the mystery of the redeeming Cross) than what was achieved in our own time by the journey of our own people to Jerusalem?’ For Robert, the answer was of course simple: nothing was more miraculous. Yet when we answer that question along with Robert, we lose sight of its significance, and how staggering that claim actually would have been in the early twelfth century. For Robert, the events of 1095–9 signalled a new moment in sacred history. Old Testament prophecy had come true in his own day. What ‘was to come’ became what simply ‘was’. For Robert the Monk, prophecy became apocalypse.     

„Simulanten des Irrsinns auf dem Vortragspult“: Dada,Krieg und Psychiatrie,eine ‚Aktive Traumadynamik‘

“Simulanten des Irrsinns auf dem Vortragspult”: Dada, War and Psychiatry – ‘Active Dynamics of Trauma’. This paper relates stage performances of dada artists to war neurosis and shell shock as sociocultural phenomena. The leitmotif of this investigation is the notion of simulation, as dada artists were referred to as malingerers (simulators) of madness by the press at the time. I hypothesize that the performers imitate/simulate with drums, shouting and ‘bruitist’ sound poems, the noises of war, staging themselves as war neurotics in a kind of shocking clinical demonstration. Both discourses intersect in the fact that many dadaists try to dodge the draft by simulating madness. The scandalizing anti-art of dada will be understood as contagious anti-pedagogy, trying to vaccinate against the madness of the era.     

Beached swords from Marano Lagoon (northern Adriatic) reveal ancient land–sea connections and recent coastal evolution

Depositional and erosional processes, subsidence and sea-level changes have strongly modified the coastal landscape of northern Adriatic lagoons. Such rapid transformations have induced significant consequences on human settlements and, thus, on the archaeological visibility of the area, still largely unexplored. We present here six metal swords fortuitously retrieved by fishermen over the last decades in front of the barrier islands of Marano Lagoon (north-eastern Italy). Multi-analytical analyses carried out on the artefacts (X-ray radiography and computed micro-tomography, radiocarbon dating and typo-chronology) combined with the study of the coastal paleo-environment (mainly based on historical cartography and remote sensing) allowed the items’ main features to be defined, and highlighted both the historical importance of the area and the significant morphological changes that have occurred there over the last millennium. Data presented indicate that Marano Lagoon was a major hub in the northern Adriatic in the Late Middle Ages, during the crucial period of the Crusades, and in Early Modern times, connecting inland Europe with the Mediterranean Sea. Moreover, the research highlights the onset of coastal erosion that occurred in the last century after a phase of relatively geomorphic stability, possibly deriving from the intensification of human impact and climate change.