Romanness in Medieval Adriatic Culture – Meaning and Manifestations (ROMAC)

ROMAC was conceived and created as an open platform for academics and researchers with a special interest in Roman cultural heritage and its formative role for medieval Adriatic culture. Our primary aim is to study and define the phenomenon of Romanitas through exploration of its specific aspects and diverse manifestations in late antique and medieval material culture, especially along the Eastern Adriatic coast, but also in a wider Mediterranean context.

The term Romanitas is often found in both Byzantine studies and studies of the European Early Middle Ages. However, although many researchers have tried to fathom its scope and meaning, it still remains to be further explored and explained. Modern scholars from various historical disciplines offered their descriptive interpretations of Romanitas – what it actually meant and what it represented at certain periods and in particular regions, in its original form or in the consequent derivatives, both eastern and western. Nevertheless, there is still no academic consensus about its understanding and definition, its complexity and mechanisms of preservation and periodic regeneration through ages. We get an impression that modern researchers (in the field of Ancient Art and Culture, Classical Studies, Byzantine Studies, Medieval Studies etc.) are often inclined to substitute the term Romanitas with phrases and concepts such as “Roman identity”, “Roman culture”, “Roman ideology”, “Roman mentality”, etc. Those who venture to delve into the problem more deeply generally reach for various methods borrowed from social sciences – sociology (socio-cultural studies), socio-psychology (“theory of identity”), political and economic studies (”Theory of Imperialism”). Although these approaches are both interesting and useful, they still offer only partial insight into what Romanitas actually was, and what it meant for the history of Mediterranean civilization. With no understanding of its essence, its beginnings, its composition in terms of ideas and values, and its mechanisms of transformation, it is almost impossible to examine its particular manifestations in the ancient Roman world, late antique world of change, Byzantine world (actually the world of the new, Eastern Romanitas), or medieval western Europe (the world of new, Western Romanitates).

Thus, the strategy of ROMAC platform is to return to the main issues related to Romanitas in order to detect all of its manifestations from the time of Cicero and Late Republic to the end of the 15^th century and the decades after the fall of the Constantinople. The term “manifestations” encompasses equally, on a general level, permutations of the concept of Romanitas that arose through the ages and across the Adriatic, as well as the objects of material culture which stem from it. The strategy requires an objective approach to the subject matter, free from any preconceptions or connotations which have often heavily burdened the research of its regional manifestations. We have witnessed that such preconceptions and connotations did not help our understanding of this all-pervasive utopian concept in the West or in the East; pagan or Christian, Latin or Greek. So, trying to evade ideological, terminological, periodical or religious arbitrary delimitations, the platform is concerned with the dynamics of historical interaction, proliferation of thoughts, ideas and values related to the concept of Romanitas.

ROMAC platform promotes multidisciplinary approach in order to make a clear turn from the inherited preconceptions, some of which are still obvious in recent research. In the “spirit” of Romanitas itself, the platform promotes openness in research, ideas and methods, as well as trans-regional cooperation.

Some of the principal research topics of ROMAC are:

Defining Romanitas through written sources and material culture – “Back to the board and think it over”;
“Romanitas and collective memory – modes of translation”;
“Utopian idea and harsh reality – Ideal vs. Real”;
“Mechanisms of reframing Romanitas and the emergence of Romanitates”;
New methodologies in re-examination of Romanitas as a complex system;
“Lurking Romanitas – unrecognised traces of Romanitas”;
“Feedback loops and regeneration of Romanitas – metropolitan-regional dialectics”; etc.

ROMAC was initiated by the scholars from the University of Zagreb and with support of the University, in 2021.

Hygeia

Fifth element

Cosmic harmony

Social order

Male + Female

Salus

√5

Truth

Saviour