Vor 1300 Jahren begann im August 717 die arabische Belagerung Konstantinopels. Der US-amerikanische Autor Harry Turtledove spielte 1989 in seiner Kurzgeschichte „Islands in the Sea“ mit der Idee einer arabischen Eroberung Konstantinopels im Jahr 717, die zu einer Dominanz des Kalifats in Osteuropa...

Temporal dynamics of medieval and modern banking systems Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, IMAFO/ABF, Austrian Academy of Sciences (Email: Johannes.Preiser-Kapeller@oeaw.ac.at)   Social Complexity and Financial Markets In the last decades, the concept of complex systems has revolutionised our...

JEWISH AND NON-JEWISH NETWORKS IN THE SPREAD OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY: A CASE OF THE MARCIONATE AND LUKAN CHRISTIANITY The influence of Jewish heritage on the spread of early Christianity represents a traditional research issue in the history of Christianity. However, research projects up to now have...

Dalibor is an Assistant Professor at the Department for the Study of Religions, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic. His fields of interest include history of religions (early Christianity, Second Temple Judaism), comparative study of religions, spatiality in ancient...

Christianization of the Roman Empire: Diffusion on a Settlement Network At the beginning of the fourth century, Christians already constituted a substantial proportion of population of the Roman Empire, especially in eastern provinces, but also in Italy, north Africa or Spain. With its origins in...

(ISIS-CULTS) DIRECTIONS FOR THE GODS KEY FACTORS INFLUENCING THE EARLY SPREAD OF THE ISIAC CULTS Early in the Ptolemaic era, the cult of Isis and Sarapis spread successfully to the ports in the ancient Mediterranean (Bricault 2005). However, the reasons standing behind this process are only...

(MITHORIG) THE ORIGINS OF THE ROMAN CULT OF MITHRAS The origins of the Roman cult of Mithras remain an unsolved puzzle. Since the Cumontian scenario (Cumont 1913), which holds that the Mithraic cult spread from ancient Persia to the Roman Empire, was abandoned due to increasing criticism, various...

Vojtěch is a PhD-candidate at University of Helsinki, Finland, and Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic. His research interests cover early Christianity, ancient Mediterranean religions, cognitive science of religion, quantitative methods in historiography, computational social science and...

Tomáš is a PhD candidate at the Department for the Study of Religions, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University. His fields of Interest include history of religions (Hellenistic religions, especially the Isiac and royal cults under the early Ptolemies and the cult of Asclepius), cognitive archaeology,...

Aleš is an Assistant Professor at the Department for the Study of Religions, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic. His fields of interest include history of religions (Graeco-Roman religions, especially the Roman cult of Mithras, Graeco-Roman magic and divination), cognitive science...