Pompeii and Herculaneum

Die Herausforderung religionsgeschichtlicher Forschung besteht darin, die Erschließung von Quellen in ihren Kontexten und ihre theoriegeleitete Erklärung mit einer historisch-kritischen Reflexion der Wissensproduktion selbst zu verknüpfen. Die Reihe Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten (RGVV) will dieser Komplementarität von historischer Kontextualisierung, theoretischer Verdichtung und disziplinärer Positionierung Rechnung tragen. Studien zu kulturspezifischen Sachzusammenhängen stehen neben vergleichenden Arbeiten, in Form von Monographien oder thematisch fokussierten Sammelbänden.

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Do we really need a new book about religion in Pompeii and Herculaneum? At least seven main scientific volumes were integrally dedicated – only during the last 25 years – to this topic, and reams and reams have been devoted to the subject by popularizing literature since the 18th century. Nonetheless, the answer to this question still remains positive. The always restless field-work on the Vesuvian sites and the even more intense intellectual “rumination” on their history is still providing abundant food for thought and contributing to a massive bibliographical production. This new book, which collects and expand on ideas developed by the author during two decades, casts an original (at times even provocative) and updated look on the local pre-Roman and Roman religious praxis by tackling it through the paradigm of “urban religion”, that is focusing on the negotiation between “lived” and “civic” religion and on the tension between individual creativity and institutionalized cultic practices.