Guest Lectures by Professor Jan N. Bremmer

This week, our Faculty is pleased to host Professor Jan Bremmer from the University of Groningen as part of the visiting professorship program for the Master’s degree in History of Ancient Mediterranean Civilizations (IDUB initiative: Degree Programs in Priority Research Areas – Master’s Level, POB IV: Transcending the Boundaries of the Humanities; pl. działanie IDUB: Kierunków studiów w Priorytetowych Obszarach Badawczych (II stopnia), POB IV: Przekraczanie granic humanistyki).

Professor Bremmer is a world-renowned authority in the comparative study of ancient religions. He is the author of numerous influential works, including The Early Greek Concept of the Soul (Princeton, 1983), Greek Religion (Oxford, 1994), The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife (Routledge, 2002), and Greek Religion and Culture, the Bible and the Ancient Near East (Leiden, m2008), among many others. He has also edited and co-edited a wide range of volumes on Greek and Roman religions, the origins of Christianity, and the cult of saints and martyrs.

During his stay at the Faculty of History, Professor Bremmer delivered a series of lectures entitled “Explorations in Ancient Religion from Archaic Greece to Christian Late Antiquity.”

The first lecture focused on local and global motifs in the myth of Danaë and Perseus; the second addressed the categories of “belief,” “doubt,” and “atheism” in antiquity; the third introduced the audience to images of the afterlife through the story of Phlegon of Tralles; and the final lecture explored depictions of Hilarion and Anthony in monastic literature.