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In recent decades, archaeological and written records have been used in combination to improve our understanding of Late Antique and Early Medieval Hispanic architectural culture (5th–10th c.). Within this renewed research context, the rebuilding of Late Antique churches and the reuse of earlier materials in both Early Medieval Christian and Islamic religious buildings; the transformation of Late Antique churches into early Islamic mosques in al-Andalus; and the rebuilding of other churches by the Christians themselves, both in al-Andalus and in the northern Iberian plateau, from the late 8th century onwards, have often been used to thread narratives concerning tradition, continuity, and re-sacralisation of earlier religious architectural spaces and, through this, religious change in the middle ages. However, the application of modern archaeological methodology reveals that these processes need to be qualified, for the stratigraphic gaps between building phases make them sometimes hard to interpret. By analysing some examples of Hispanic religious sites, this paper reflects on the many concepts related to sacralisation, explains the way archaeology is able to trace the sacralisation processes, and intends thus to highlight the complexity of these phenomena.

Baptism is the sacramental celebration of Christian initiation. Paul’s letter to the Romans, which is central to the understanding of baptism, characterizes this sacramental event as a dying with Christ and the beginning of a new existence. This new mode of existence gains an aesthetic-performative form in the liturgical rites. The design of the liturgical spaces can then be understood as “petrified rites”. The imperial church basilicas and baptisteries of the Byzantine period in Ravenna bear particular witness to such petrified manifestations of liturgy. What took place in the liturgical rites found an aesthetic counterpart in the interior design and in the rich mosaic art of the ancient buildings. The Ravennese color-intensive wall and ceiling motifs substantiate in a sensuous way the eschatological aesthetic, which is opened to believers through baptism. Biblical texts, architecture, rite, and pictorial program thus form an aesthetic ensemble whose elements mutually illuminate each other and only gain their full depth of meaning in the context of this performative dynamic. This contribution analyzes the interplay of these different registers, based on some selected examples of Ravenna’s sacred buildings, and explores how the baptismal event is conveyed in them as an aesthetic access to the world.

Drawing on a systematic study of the Savi sopra l’eresia archive in Venice, the most complete collection of historical records pertaining to Italian heretical movements and their repression, this article sketches the geography of heretical circles in Venice between the 1540s and the 1580s. The article puts space back into history and reads the history of religious dissent against the urban structure of sixteenth-century Venice, where streets and squares favored people’s encounters, allowing and fueling the exchange of information and the process of knowledge generation. Shifting the focus from people to places, and emphasizing fluidity and porosity, suggests new ways to pursue a more dynamic and performative conception of religious dissent.

Il conflitto russo-ucraino, oltre a causare un'inaccettabile perdita di vite umane, sta mettendo a dura prova l'integrità del patrimonio culturale dell'Ucraina, nonostante il fatto che entrambi i paesi coinvolti sono parti della Convenzione dell'Aia del 1954 per la protezione dei beni culturali in caso di armi Conflitto e il suo primo protocollo. Le Chiese sono uno dei beni storici più importanti dell'Ucraina come luoghi simbolici di identità religiosa ortodossa comune sia agli invasori e invaso. Il distruzione di questi luoghi e il loro danno intenzionale da entrambe le parti sembrano essere parte di un conflitto più generale riguardante disaccordi interni tra ortodossia russa e ucraina, che, a loro volta, riflettono due diversi punti di vista storici del rapporto russo-ucraino. Un breve ricostruzione delle relazioni tra le Chiese ortodosse operanti sul territorio ucraino dimostra come l'appartenenza religiosa ha influenzato il conflitto, facendolo diventare decisivo e profondamente divisiva, tanto che il Patriarcato di Mosca è diventato una parte attiva del conflitto. Questa circostanza favorisce l'ipotesi che sia proprio il patrimonio culturale religioso più a rischio di distruzione intenzionale. I russi, distruggendo i luoghi simbolici di ucraino identità religiosa (urbicide), affermare l'unità spirituale dei popoli russo e ucraino. Per la loro parte, gli ucraini tentano di cancellare la presenza russa e le comuni radici culturali religiose distruggendo edifici di culto cari alla tradizione del Patriarcato di Mosca (cancellare la cultura). Rifiutano le tradizioni imperiali della Russia e, allo stesso tempo, rivendicano una Chiesa indipendente. Ci si chiede se il processo di ricostruzione dopo la guerra terrà conto le identità culturali-religiose originali, o se coglierà l'occasione per adottare un nuovo (anche) l'identità religiosa, invece, e se i vecchi e nuovi strumenti offerti dalla legge siano adeguati. The Russian–Ukrainian conflict, in addition to causing an unacceptable loss of human life, is straining the integrity of Ukraine’s cultural heritage, despite the fact that both countries involved are parties to the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and its First Protocol. Churches are one of Ukraine’s most important historical assets, as well as symbolic places of Orthodox religious identity common to both the invaders and the invaded. The destruction of these places and their deliberate damage on the part of both sides appear to be part of a more general conflict concerning internal disagreements between Russian and Ukrainian Orthodoxy, which, in turn, reflect two different historical views of the Russian–Ukrainian relationship. A brief reconstruction of relations between the Orthodox Churches operating on the territory of Ukraine demonstrates how religious affiliation has affected the conflict, causing it to become decisive and deeply divisive, so much so that the Patriarchate of Moscow has become an active part of the conflict. This circumstance favours the hypothesis that it is precisely the religious cultural heritage that is most at risk of deliberate destruction. The Russians, by destroying the symbolic places of Ukrainian religious identity (urbicide), affirm the spiritual unity of the Russian and Ukrainian peoples. For their part, the Ukrainians attempt to erase the Russian presence and the common religious cultural roots by destroying buildings of worship dear to the tradition of the Moscow Patriarchate (cancel culture). They reject the imperial traditions of Russia and, at the same time, claim an independent Church. The question arises as to whether the reconstruction process following the war will take into account the original cultural–religious identities, or whether it will take the opportunity to adopt a new (also) religious identity instead, and whether the old and new instruments offered by law are adequate.

The purpose of this article is to study the Romanian Orthodox place of worship of Lunghezza in Rome, utilizing the expression ‘shared religious place’ and thus referring to the shift from secular to religious and asserting that it is now a camouflaged religious place. Using GIS mapping and Digital Humanities methods and tools, the paper analyses the geographical presence of Orthodox Romanians in the Metropolitan City of Rome territory and the architectural typologies of their places of worship. The history and geography of the church in Lunghezza, a former stable converted into a house of worship, reveals the form of the resilience of the Romanian Orthodox parishes, forced to find various and compelling solutions in order to survive as places of worship.

Some harm reduction strategies encourage individuals to switch from a harmful addictive good to a less harmful addictive good. This approach is controversial, with advocates claiming it helps switching to a less harmful substance, and opponents claiming it may lead to new substance abuse. This paper builds on theories of addiction to model the introduction of a harm reduction method, and it demonstrates when each side is correct, depending on the enjoyableness of the harm reduction method, the addictiveness of the harm reduction method, and the substitutability with the original addictive good.

Abstract Background Decisions in healthcare usually rely on the goodness and completeness of data that could be coupled with heuristics to improve the decision process itself. However, this is often an incomplete process. Structured interviews denominated Delphi surveys investigate experts' opinions and solve by consensus complex matters like those underlying surgical decision-making. Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a field of study that combines computer science, artificial intelligence, and linguistics. NLP can then be used as a valuable help in building a correct context in surgical data, contributing to the amelioration of surgical decision-making. Results We applied NLP coupled with machine learning approaches to predict the context (words) owning high accuracy from the words nearest to Delphi surveys, used as input. Conclusions The proposed methodology has increased the usefulness of Delphi surveys favoring the extraction of keywords that can represent a specific clinical context. It permits the characterization of the clinical context suggesting words for the evaluation process of the data.