Facultatea de Istorie - Universitatea Alexandru Ioan Cuza

326
NOTE BIBLIOGRAFICE / NOTIZIE BIBLIOGRAFICHE
the conflict between the antique and the new religiosity, on the one hand, and the
Catholic and the heretical Christianity, on the other hand. From the religious point
of view, the evolution of these two opposed phenomena could lead to the
establishment of what could be called the end of the Late Antiquity” (p. 51, author’s
underlining).
Since the 4 th century the expansion of the Christianity beyond the Roman
Empire’s borders had been augmenting at a rate unknown until then. It is very
interesting that „this progress of the Christianity among the Roman gentiles or
barbarians caused for the nations of the Late Antiquity the consciousness of a new
unity – that of the communion «into Christ» as the foundation of the universal
solidarity – and of a new identity – that between Romanitas and Christianitas – of
which, at the beginning of the 5 th century, the historian Orosius thought as
deliberate and settled by God. Thus, in the Late Antiquity there has been founded
the spiritual and cultural identity of what is to be called in the European space, in
the Middle Ages, as Republica Christiana” (p. 49-50).
The specificity of the Late Antiquity relies also on its cultural and artistic
status and derives from the parallel evolution of two spiritualities: a pagan, antique
one and a Christian one. Certainly, the phenomenon gave birth to a new, original
culture: „The Late Antiquity represents the temporal crucible in which a
replacement took place – the local multiple cultures, emerged from the intellectual
experiences and artistic sensibilities of various origins (Greek and Roman, native,
Oriental, barbarian origins), were replaced with a new, integrative cultural
paradigm, bearing entirely the seal of Christianity” (p. 58-59). That is why the Late
Antiquity was defined by Michel Banniard as a period of „cultural genesis of
Europe”.
The last section of the book is dedicated to an aspect of urban civilization:
the town (p. 88-114), as the continuity of the urban settlements in the Late
Antiquity is indubitably. As in the previous chapters, the phenomenon is treated
methodologically, being taken into consideration the juridical, topographic, demographic,
social and institutional, economic, ideological and religious aspects, by
analogy with those from the Classic Antiquity. Being presented as a definitory
element of the Late Antiquity civilization, the town from this period stands for the
basis of the mediaeval burg.
At the end of the work, Testimonia (p. 115-130) constitutes a very important
section, including documentary texts, most of them unpublished, referring
to some problems of the Late Antiquity, concerning religious, political and economic
issues, and this increases the utility of the work.
The work of Prof. Nelu Zugravu remarks itself by erudition, the footnotes
being quite impressive, and this implies that the author wants to thoroughly present
the discussed issue. In this context, the work may be considered a necessary
instrument, it could be seen as a methodologically achieved guide, meant for those
who want to study the Late Antiquity. Otherwise, maybe this is the aim of the