Includes bibliographical references and index.

Preliminary Material / Evangelos Chrysos and Ian Wood -- Preface / Evangelos Chrysos and Ian Wood -- Introduction / Evangelos Chrysos -- The City of Mérida ( Emerita ) in the Vitas Patrum Emeritensium (VIth Century A.D.) / Javier Arce -- Images as a Substitute for Writing / Peter Brown -- Images as a Substitute for Writing: A Reply / Ian Wood -- Administrative Language and its Public Deployment / N. Oikonomedes -- Some Reflections on Mandarin Language / Mayke de Jong -- Communicating Holiness / Lennart Rydén -- The Use and Abuse of Latin Hagiography in the Early Medieval West / Ian Wood -- Social Language and its Private Deployment / Averil Cameron -- Social Language, Identities and the Control of Discourse / Walter Pohl -- Mit was für Mitteln kann einem physisch Anonymen Auctoritas Verliehen werden? / Beat Brenk -- How did rising Christianity cope with Pagan Sculpture? / Niels Hannestad -- Le Développement des Langues Regionales et L’introduction D’alphabets dans des Communautés Illettrées / Christian Hannick -- Conflits et Compromis Langagiers en Occident latin: de la Crise Culturelle à L’invention Linguistique (III e –X e Siècle) / Michel Banniard -- Transformation of the Roman World. Reflections on Current Research / Paolo Delogu -- The Transformation of the Roman World Reflections on Five Years of Work / Thomas F.X. Noble -- Modes of Communication: An Afterword / Ian Wood -- Index / Evangelos Chrysos and Ian Wood -- List of Illustrations / Evangelos Chrysos and Ian Wood -- Abbildungen 1–27 Figure 1–9 / Evangelos Chrysos and Ian Wood.

The End of Antiquity saw an increase in the divide between East and West. This crucial development in the history of the Late and Post-Roman World was addressed in a series of linked papers delivered at the first plenary conference of the European Science Foundation's scientific programme on the Transformation of the Roman World, held in 1995. A group of leading scholars (Beat Brenk, Peter Brown, Averil Cameron, Christian Hannick, N. Oikonomedes, Lennard Ryden) addressed questions of social, cultural, artistic and linguistic change, concentrating largely on developments within the East, while changes in the West were explored in a series of responses (from Michel Banniard, Mayke de Jong, Alain Dierkens, Niels Hannestad, Walter Pohl, Ian Wood). In addition, the history of Late Roman and Visigothic Merida, the setting for the conference, was set out by Javier Arce. Together these papers constitute a major exploration of the social and cultural changes in East and West in the period of the Transformation of the Roman World. To this collection are added two papers, by Paolo Delogu and Thomas F.X. Noble, delivered in the course of the third and final plenary congress of the programme, held in Isernia in 1997, assessing the achievement of the whole project at the end of five years of conferences and workshops.

English

Description based on print version record.