youval rotman
Youval Rotman is a social and anthropological historian of the Byzantine Mediterranean world. Within this framework he has worked on slavery, prisoners of war, captives, ransoming of captives, cultural and social relationships between religious communities of different faith, forms of sanctity and insanity, psychological processes of transformation, and religious and psychological conversion.
He is the author of "Byzantine Slavery and the Mediterranean World" (Harvard University Press, 2009: http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674036116 ), published first in French (Les Belles Lettres, 2004), which ascribes a decisive role to slavery in the transformation of the medieval Mediterranean.
His second book: "Insanity and Sanctity in Byzantium: the Ambiguity of Religious Experience" (Harvard University Press, 2016, http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674057616 ) studies different forms of social abnormality and their sanctification as a motor of social change. The book analyzes the role of psychology in historical processes. It aspires to turn the relation between history and psychology into a two-way-street relationship, and to look into the historical evidence in order to challenge the way we conceptualize insanity today.
His recent book "Slaveries of the First Millennium" (ARC Humanities Press, 2021) challenges modern concepts about slavery and offers a diachronic comparative perspective to analyze slavery as a historical process. It proposes to change the perspective that look at slavery as a discrete phenomenon and instead to examine the historical development of the first millennium through the eyes of slavery. If we want to fight for the eradication of modern slavery we first need to understand its significance as a form of exploitation, adaptable to changing circumstances, that is as a historical process.
His current research project studies the conceptualization of the soul-psyche-anima, and combines an historical analysis of the evolution of these terms with a study of psychological theories and an anthropological field work on human-tree relationships in animistic societies in Southeast Asia. His recent article on this topic, "The Relational Mind: In Between History, Psychology and Anthropology" appeared in History of Psychology 24(2), pp. 142–163 (2021): https://doi.org/10.1037/hop0000175
He is the author of "Byzantine Slavery and the Mediterranean World" (Harvard University Press, 2009: http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674036116 ), published first in French (Les Belles Lettres, 2004), which ascribes a decisive role to slavery in the transformation of the medieval Mediterranean.
His second book: "Insanity and Sanctity in Byzantium: the Ambiguity of Religious Experience" (Harvard University Press, 2016, http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674057616 ) studies different forms of social abnormality and their sanctification as a motor of social change. The book analyzes the role of psychology in historical processes. It aspires to turn the relation between history and psychology into a two-way-street relationship, and to look into the historical evidence in order to challenge the way we conceptualize insanity today.
His recent book "Slaveries of the First Millennium" (ARC Humanities Press, 2021) challenges modern concepts about slavery and offers a diachronic comparative perspective to analyze slavery as a historical process. It proposes to change the perspective that look at slavery as a discrete phenomenon and instead to examine the historical development of the first millennium through the eyes of slavery. If we want to fight for the eradication of modern slavery we first need to understand its significance as a form of exploitation, adaptable to changing circumstances, that is as a historical process.
His current research project studies the conceptualization of the soul-psyche-anima, and combines an historical analysis of the evolution of these terms with a study of psychological theories and an anthropological field work on human-tree relationships in animistic societies in Southeast Asia. His recent article on this topic, "The Relational Mind: In Between History, Psychology and Anthropology" appeared in History of Psychology 24(2), pp. 142–163 (2021): https://doi.org/10.1037/hop0000175
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Books by youval rotman
If we wish to fight for the eradication of modern slavery we first need to understand its significance as a form of exploitation, adaptable to changing circumstances. The purpose of this book is to challenge perspectives that look at slavery as a discrete phenomenon and instead to examine the historical development of the first millennium through the eyes of slavery. Perceiving slavery not just as a social phenomenon but as a system that enabled the development of historical
societies and emerging economies reveals the role it plays as a historical process.
The present study chooses a different line of investigation. In a way, it goes in the opposite direction in focusing on societies which sanctified what we consider today as insanity. These societies looked for spiritual values in abnormal, in-sane, behavior, and legitimized it by attributing a unique spiritual character to figures who portrayed it. In this they were changing the social and cultural norms related to abnormality and normality. A parallel process can also be detected in contemporary societies. Only few decades ago, people in Western societies who turned to healers, clairvoyants, and mediums were considered to be themselves not in their right mind. Today, not only is such behavior legitimized, but this is even becoming a norm. These so-called ‘new age’ phenomena express the invasion of the religious sphere into modern secular societies. We do not call them ‘religious,’ but ‘spiritual’ in order to reject the religious establishment and its historical framework. However, such expressions of spirituality have long been the realm of the religious sphere. The question is why secular societies today have become more and more inclined to adopt and legitimize these expressions of spirituality, and justify their functionality.
In the Roman and Byzantine Near East, the holy fool emerged in Christianity as a way of describing individuals whose apparent madness allowed them to achieve a higher level of spirituality. Insanity and Sanctity in Byzantium examines how the figure of the mad saint or mystic was used as a means of individual and collective transformation in the period between the birth of Christianity and the rise of Islam. It presents a novel interpretation in revealing the central role that psychology plays in social and historical development.
Early Christians looked to figures who embodied extremes of behavior-like the holy fool, the ascetic, the martyr-to redefine their social, cultural, and mental settings by reading new values in abnormal behavior. Comparing such forms of extreme behavior in early Christian, pagan, and Jewish societies, and drawing on theories of relational psychoanalysis, anthropology, and sociology of religion, Youval Rotman explains how the sanctification of figures of extreme behavior makes their abnormality socially and psychologically functional. The sanctification of abnormal mad behavior created a sphere of ambiguity in the ambit of religious experience for early Christians, which brought about a deep psychological shift, necessary for the transition from paganism to Christianity.
A developing society leaves porous the border between what is normal and abnormal, between sanity and insanity, in order to use this ambiguity as a means of change. Rotman emphasizes the role of religion in maintaining this ambiguity to effect a social and psychological transformation.
Looking at the Byzantine concept of slavery within the context of law, the labor market, medieval politics, and religion, Youval Rotman illustrates how these contexts both reshaped and sustained the slave market. By focusing on a period of great change, his historical analysis brings a new perspective to concepts of slavery and freedom. In this period, when Byzantium had to come to terms with the rising power of the Islamic state, and to fight numerous wars over territory and economic interests, Rotman traces a shift in the cultural perception of slaves as individuals: they began to be seen as human beings instead of private property. His book analyzes slavery as a historical process against the background of the political, social, and religious transformation of the Mediterranean world, and demonstrates the flexible and adaptable character of this institution.
Arguing against the use of the term slavery for any extreme form of social dependency, Rotman shows instead that slavery and freedom are unrelated concepts. His work offers a radical new understanding of the geopolitical and religious dynamics that have defined and redefined slavery and freedom, in the past and in our own time.
Talks by youval rotman
Articles/Papers by youval rotman
In a similar way, independency is defined as the state of being non-dependent on something or someone. This concept is normally perceived in our modern mind as a developmental stage, economic, political, psychological development for example. Modern theories of the social sciences even define independency as the objective of developmental processes. All this adds a moral aspect to the way we define human relationships and relationships in general: the state of being dependent is perceived negatively, while the state of independency is an objective, and often is equated with freedom, i.e. to be free from being dependent. This perspective has oriented the scholarship and the research about phenomena of dependency, in particular in the social sciences, towards perceiving them within a sociopolitical context of power relations.
Keywords: history-psychoanalysis, potential space, conversion, tree spirits, animism
Although “passions” meant different things to different authors in different times, it was used by all as means to link between inner mental activities and the way the body react to the outside world. We can see it as an obligatory element to conceptualize illness, disorder, and health in regards to mental activities. Pagan ancient authors as well as early Christian authors used it to construct new theories and praxes about mental health, while early modern psychiatrists used it to develop corporeal methods of cure. In all currents of thought the concept of “passions” and the definition of the ways in which they affected the mind were used to distinguish mental illness and mental health from any other type of illness and health.
Keywords: psychopathology, passions, moral psychology, mental illness-history, Christian psychology
The article examines what criteria can be adopted as defining features of a collective entity. We shall take here as a case study the very large definition of Jews in the Greco-Roman world and will focus on the ways in which certain Jews portrayed themselves to themselves as a collective group. Having a single term to designate themselves, Bney-Israel (“the sons of Israel”), they had to do without terms such as ethnos, genos, laos, dēmos, populus, natio, polis, and civitas when referring to themselves as an entity. The question is what kind of collective entity they were referring to, and whether their definition was kept unchanged. For this, the article proposes to focus on the borderline between what constituted a Jew and a Gentile by analyzing the way in which Jews included newcomers in their collectivity and excluded others. The article shows that Jews referred to themselves as an entity by employing prisms to define political entities available to them in Greco-Roman antiquity.
Studies in Global Migration History, Band: 39/13
Edited by Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Lucian Reinfandt und Yannis Stouraitis
The transition zone between Africa, Asia and Europe was the most important intersection of human mobility in the medieval period. The present volume for the first time systematically covers migration histories of the regions between the Mediterranean and Central Asia and between Eastern Europe and the Indian Ocean in the centuries from Late Antiquity up to the early modern era.
Within this framework, specialists from Byzantine, Islamic, Medieval and African history provide detailed analyses of specific regions and groups of migrants, both elites and non-elites as well as voluntary and involuntary. Thereby, also current debates of migration studies are enriched with a new dimension of deep historical time.
Contributors are: Alexander Beihammer, Lutz Berger, Florin Curta, Charalampos Gasparis, George Hatke, Dirk Hoerder, Johannes Koder, Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Lucian Reinfandt, Youval Rotman, Yannis Stouraitis, Panayiotis Theodoropoulos, and Myriam Wissa.
If we wish to fight for the eradication of modern slavery we first need to understand its significance as a form of exploitation, adaptable to changing circumstances. The purpose of this book is to challenge perspectives that look at slavery as a discrete phenomenon and instead to examine the historical development of the first millennium through the eyes of slavery. Perceiving slavery not just as a social phenomenon but as a system that enabled the development of historical
societies and emerging economies reveals the role it plays as a historical process.
The present study chooses a different line of investigation. In a way, it goes in the opposite direction in focusing on societies which sanctified what we consider today as insanity. These societies looked for spiritual values in abnormal, in-sane, behavior, and legitimized it by attributing a unique spiritual character to figures who portrayed it. In this they were changing the social and cultural norms related to abnormality and normality. A parallel process can also be detected in contemporary societies. Only few decades ago, people in Western societies who turned to healers, clairvoyants, and mediums were considered to be themselves not in their right mind. Today, not only is such behavior legitimized, but this is even becoming a norm. These so-called ‘new age’ phenomena express the invasion of the religious sphere into modern secular societies. We do not call them ‘religious,’ but ‘spiritual’ in order to reject the religious establishment and its historical framework. However, such expressions of spirituality have long been the realm of the religious sphere. The question is why secular societies today have become more and more inclined to adopt and legitimize these expressions of spirituality, and justify their functionality.
In the Roman and Byzantine Near East, the holy fool emerged in Christianity as a way of describing individuals whose apparent madness allowed them to achieve a higher level of spirituality. Insanity and Sanctity in Byzantium examines how the figure of the mad saint or mystic was used as a means of individual and collective transformation in the period between the birth of Christianity and the rise of Islam. It presents a novel interpretation in revealing the central role that psychology plays in social and historical development.
Early Christians looked to figures who embodied extremes of behavior-like the holy fool, the ascetic, the martyr-to redefine their social, cultural, and mental settings by reading new values in abnormal behavior. Comparing such forms of extreme behavior in early Christian, pagan, and Jewish societies, and drawing on theories of relational psychoanalysis, anthropology, and sociology of religion, Youval Rotman explains how the sanctification of figures of extreme behavior makes their abnormality socially and psychologically functional. The sanctification of abnormal mad behavior created a sphere of ambiguity in the ambit of religious experience for early Christians, which brought about a deep psychological shift, necessary for the transition from paganism to Christianity.
A developing society leaves porous the border between what is normal and abnormal, between sanity and insanity, in order to use this ambiguity as a means of change. Rotman emphasizes the role of religion in maintaining this ambiguity to effect a social and psychological transformation.
Looking at the Byzantine concept of slavery within the context of law, the labor market, medieval politics, and religion, Youval Rotman illustrates how these contexts both reshaped and sustained the slave market. By focusing on a period of great change, his historical analysis brings a new perspective to concepts of slavery and freedom. In this period, when Byzantium had to come to terms with the rising power of the Islamic state, and to fight numerous wars over territory and economic interests, Rotman traces a shift in the cultural perception of slaves as individuals: they began to be seen as human beings instead of private property. His book analyzes slavery as a historical process against the background of the political, social, and religious transformation of the Mediterranean world, and demonstrates the flexible and adaptable character of this institution.
Arguing against the use of the term slavery for any extreme form of social dependency, Rotman shows instead that slavery and freedom are unrelated concepts. His work offers a radical new understanding of the geopolitical and religious dynamics that have defined and redefined slavery and freedom, in the past and in our own time.
In a similar way, independency is defined as the state of being non-dependent on something or someone. This concept is normally perceived in our modern mind as a developmental stage, economic, political, psychological development for example. Modern theories of the social sciences even define independency as the objective of developmental processes. All this adds a moral aspect to the way we define human relationships and relationships in general: the state of being dependent is perceived negatively, while the state of independency is an objective, and often is equated with freedom, i.e. to be free from being dependent. This perspective has oriented the scholarship and the research about phenomena of dependency, in particular in the social sciences, towards perceiving them within a sociopolitical context of power relations.
Keywords: history-psychoanalysis, potential space, conversion, tree spirits, animism
Although “passions” meant different things to different authors in different times, it was used by all as means to link between inner mental activities and the way the body react to the outside world. We can see it as an obligatory element to conceptualize illness, disorder, and health in regards to mental activities. Pagan ancient authors as well as early Christian authors used it to construct new theories and praxes about mental health, while early modern psychiatrists used it to develop corporeal methods of cure. In all currents of thought the concept of “passions” and the definition of the ways in which they affected the mind were used to distinguish mental illness and mental health from any other type of illness and health.
Keywords: psychopathology, passions, moral psychology, mental illness-history, Christian psychology
The article examines what criteria can be adopted as defining features of a collective entity. We shall take here as a case study the very large definition of Jews in the Greco-Roman world and will focus on the ways in which certain Jews portrayed themselves to themselves as a collective group. Having a single term to designate themselves, Bney-Israel (“the sons of Israel”), they had to do without terms such as ethnos, genos, laos, dēmos, populus, natio, polis, and civitas when referring to themselves as an entity. The question is what kind of collective entity they were referring to, and whether their definition was kept unchanged. For this, the article proposes to focus on the borderline between what constituted a Jew and a Gentile by analyzing the way in which Jews included newcomers in their collectivity and excluded others. The article shows that Jews referred to themselves as an entity by employing prisms to define political entities available to them in Greco-Roman antiquity.
Studies in Global Migration History, Band: 39/13
Edited by Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Lucian Reinfandt und Yannis Stouraitis
The transition zone between Africa, Asia and Europe was the most important intersection of human mobility in the medieval period. The present volume for the first time systematically covers migration histories of the regions between the Mediterranean and Central Asia and between Eastern Europe and the Indian Ocean in the centuries from Late Antiquity up to the early modern era.
Within this framework, specialists from Byzantine, Islamic, Medieval and African history provide detailed analyses of specific regions and groups of migrants, both elites and non-elites as well as voluntary and involuntary. Thereby, also current debates of migration studies are enriched with a new dimension of deep historical time.
Contributors are: Alexander Beihammer, Lutz Berger, Florin Curta, Charalampos Gasparis, George Hatke, Dirk Hoerder, Johannes Koder, Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Lucian Reinfandt, Youval Rotman, Yannis Stouraitis, Panayiotis Theodoropoulos, and Myriam Wissa.
Cette étude examine les effets de cette nouvelle réalité politique sur les populations byzantines, que les sources internes tendent souvent à présenter comme des victimes abandonnées à la menace des Arabes, passant sous silence les actions de l’État byzantin. Or, il importe d’envisager le rapport entre l’individu et l’État en la matière. Aujourd’hui, on parlerait de citoyenneté, mais, depuis le IIIe siècle, ce terme n’a plus le sens qu’il recouvrait auparavant. La Constitutio Antoniniana promulguée par Caracalla, qui accorda la citoyenneté romaine à tous les habitants libres de l’Empire, ne les constituait pas comme Romains, mais, bien au contraire, dépouilla le terme de « Romains » de tout sens politique [1]. Et peut-on parler de « citoyenneté » dans les sociétés médiévales ? Quoi qu’il en soit, nous voudrions montrer comment le rapport entre l’État et ses sujets change dans le monde byzantin à cause de l’arrivée d’un nouvel adversaire : l’islam arabe. L’étude des captifs, des réfugiés et des prisonniers de guerre offre la possibilité d’examiner ce changement. Dans ce cas, le rapport entre l’individu et l’État est particulier, parce que l’individu sort des limites de son État et passe sous l’autorité de l’adversaire politique. En fait, pour qui cherche à mettre en relief les changements de l’Empire byzantin face à l’islam, les échanges de prisonniers de guerre constituent un thème idéal. Et cela parce qu’il s’agit d’une innovation diplomatique de Byzance, et que cet usage fonde le sentiment d’une responsabilité de l’État envers l’individu.
Over three millennia slavery was an inextricable part of Mediterranean social and economic life. Its existence and expansion were conditioned by two main factors: the evolution of the Mediterranean political map, which determined the relations between Mediterranean civilizations, and the international economic map. Prosperity entailed large slave markets. But the value of a human being was in itself an engine for economic dynamics, and prosperity was also dependent on slavery. Slaves were not used exclusively in any economic sector. However, they were required, especially in the cities, for creating and maintaining a household as a hierarchical socio-economic enterprise. Many slaves advanced in their positions thanks to the opportunities that this framework offered. A few, especially in Muslim public sectors, rose high. This did not mean that they were less abused or suffered less from cruelty than slaves elsewhere. Just as we cannot categorize slaves in Mediterranean societies as a class according to their socio-economic position, we cannot categorize them according to the cruelty with which they were treated. Cruelty, abuse, rape and death were always prevalent, and although slaves did not suffer from them exclusively, their juridical status made them especially vulnerable and their subjugation especially extreme. Legislators tried to restrict cruelty towards slaves, but cultures found reasons to justify the inferiority of slaves, the existence of slavery and its perpetuation. This papers shows that slavery was not only a consequence of Mediterranean history, but also played a role in determining its course by its impact on relations between states, societies and cultures, and through a constant flow of human beings into and within the Mediterranean. The fact that most slaves were uprooted, transported and transplanted by force did not conflict with the fact that they were considered vital in most of Mediterranean societies in both the private and public sectors. On the contrary, it explains very clearly why they were trafficked by force. Slaves were considered vital because they were both human and property. And this two-sided seemingly self-contradicting definition proved to be extremely elastic and adaptable to changing reality.
This workshop will explore notions of sacred time by comparing cases within the different religions and cultures of the pre-modern Middle East. The idea that time is not homogenous – that some moments, days, or months are privileged than others, and the sanctification of such times by special rites – seems to be a universal cultural phenomenon. Yet, the construction of time as sacred, the choice of the specific time units to set apart, and the means by which these are distinguished from profane time, are diverse and dynamic, and should be studied within their historical-cultural contexts.
Generally, sacred times are acknowledged in calendars that regulate routine religious devotions, feasts, fasts, pilgrimage, commemorations, and other types of ritual worship at regular intervals (such as the Sabbath, Ramadan, saint-days and anniversaries). Astrological events, such as the winter solstice, or the change of seasons, and significant natural phenomena (such as the flooding of the Nile) were also regarded as religiously potent, as are certain moments in the life-cycle of the individual, or the history of the community. Sacred time can also be sporadic and singular, tied to occasional events and situations that mark divine intervention, or call for it.
Manifestations of sacred time play an important role in the formation of communal identity, and in community-life. Yet, traditions of sacred time appear not only as demarcations between groups, but can also be a product of acculturation and within inter-faith dynamics. They create what can be termed ‘ritual coherence’ on the one hand, and produce inter-religious conflicts, due to clashing concepts of sacred time and different calendars, especially between groups who shared the same geographical space, on the other hand.
Another issue that needs to be addressed in respect to sacred time is its relation to a global perception of time and history. More specifically we would like to ask how the scheduling of sacred time in the life of a community serves as means to place what can be termed ‘human sacred time’ within the framework of a ‘cosmic sacred time.’ This is especially important in the celebration of historical events, thus making the history of a particular community sacred.
In the workshop we are suggesting, we wish to investigate the different meanings assigned to privileged time, and practices marking sacred time, in the late antique and medieval Middle East. Special focus will be given to the conceptualization of sacred time in theological, legal and devotional works, and to debates and questions pertaining to the sanctity of specific times. We would like to address the following questions: How could we conceptualize and identify the notion of sacred time in medieval societies? How was the notion of sacred time constructed in specific historical and cultural contexts? Which needs, of both individuals and communities, call for defining sacred time? What functions did it fill, and in what ways?
Mixed marriage, conversion, and the family: norms and realities in pre-modern Iberia and the wider Mediterranean
Guest Editors:
Yonatan Glazer-Eytan & Mercedes García-Arenal
https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/fmhr20/35/1
Prof. Jacoby was a member of the international board of the Mediterranean Historical
Review, and contributed to it in various ways. His research in the fields of trade, economy
and society, revealed not only the Mediterranean aspects of these Byzantine activities,
but also the importance that Byzantine history holds for the study of the Mediterranean.
We regret this loss very much. To commemorate his lifelong achievements in the field of
Mediterranean history, the MHR intends to publish a special issue dedicated to the theme
“Byzantium between East and West”. We invite scholars to propose articles addressing
this theme in view of the special position of Byzantium between the Levant, Eastern
Europe and the Latin West. Byzantium boasts a history of over 12 centuries, maybe more
than any other Mediterranean civilization. We wish to address the unique position it held,
both geographically and chronologically, in the history of the region. Papers may deal
with any aspect of the subject in history, art history or archaeology, in any timeframe
(narrow or wide) and in local, global or entangled perspective. All papers will be peerreviewed following the Journal’s normal evaluation process.
Deadline for submission of articles: 31 March 2020.
https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/fmhr20/33/2?nav=tocList
TOC
Editorials
Irad Malkin, Zur Shalev & Youval Rotman
Farewell to our Managing Editor, Dr Tal Goldfajn
Articles
Arnold Esch
New sources on trade and dealings between Christians and Muslims in the Mediterranean region (ca.1440–1500)
Luca Zavagno
“Islands in the stream”: toward a new history of the large islands of the Byzantine Mediterranean in the early Middle Ages ca.600–ca.800
Pedro Miguel Jiménez-Vicario, Pedro García-Martínez & Manuel Alejandro Ródenas-López
The influence of North African and Middle Eastern architectures in the birth and development of modern architecture in Central Europe (1898–1937)
Juraj Kittler
Caught between business, war and politics:late medieval roots of the early modern European news networks
Book Reviews
Anthony Bale
Le voyage au Moyen Âge: description du monde et quête individuelle, edited by Damien Coulon and Christine Gadrat-Ouerfelli
Matthew Gordon
Gouverner en Islam (Xe–XVe Siècle): textes et documents, edited by Sylvie Denoix and Anne-Marie Eddé
Susan Weingarten
Treasure trove of benefits and variety at the table: a fourteenth-century Egyptian cookbook, edited and translated by Nawal Nasrallah
Nicholas Coureas
Gênes et l’Outre Mer: Actes notariés rédigés à Chypre par le notaire Antonius Folieta (1445–1458), edited by Michel Balard, Laura Balletto and Catherine Otten-Froux
Marc Aymes
Mediterranean diasporas: politics and ideas in the long 19th century, edited by Maurizio Isabella and Konstantina Zanou
Cynthia Gabbay
Jewish volunteers: the International Brigades and the Spanish Civil War, by Gerben Zaagsma
Pablo Bornstein
Rebuilding Islam in contemporary Spain: the politics of Mosque establishment, 1976–2013, by Avi Astor
Ariel M. Sheetrit
Politics and Palestinian literature in exile: gender, aesthetics and resistance in the short story, by Joseph R. Farag
Publications Received