Arnaldo Momigliano

Arnaldo Dante Momigliano (born September 5, 1908 in Caraglio , Piedmont , † September 1, 1987 in London ) was an Italian ancient historian who was known for his work on historiography . Momigliano is considered one of the most important ancient scholars of the 20th century.

Life

Momigliano was born into a strictly Orthodox Jewish family. His parents and many of his family members did not survive the Holocaust .

He studied classical philology and history in Rome and Turin . In 1936 he became professor of Roman history at the University of Turin , but as a Jew he lost this position in 1938 due to the anti-Jewish laws of Italian fascism . Momigliano then moved to Great Britain, where he stayed. After teaching at Oxford University for some time , he moved to University College London , where he was Professor of Ancient History from 1951 to 1975 . In the course of his career he taught in various visiting professorships , including at the École normal supérieure and at numerous universities in Israel. Most recently he was visiting professor for ancient history at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa and Alexander White visiting professor at the University of Chicago . Momigliano also held numerous honorary doctorates . In 1960 he was awarded an Antonio Feltrinelli Prize . Since 1954 he was a member of the British Academy . In 1969 he was elected to the American Philosophical Society and in 1971 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

research

The universally educated scientist dealt mainly with the history of the ancient Greek, Roman and Jewish world and their interactions. Mostly he pursued the question of the historical, ideological and political conditions under which historians - including modern ones - write history. Thus Momigliano is one of the pioneers in the history of historiography. One of his main areas of research was the history of science in antiquity and humanism - especially that of the German-speaking area. Momigliano also dealt with late antiquity and was one of the most influential researchers in the 1950s and 60s alongside Arnold Hugh Martin Jones and Ronald Syme .

In the 1930s he wrote numerous biographies for the Enciclopedia Italiana , and in the 1940s and 1950s he contributed biographies to the Oxford Classical Dictionary and the Encyclopædia Britannica . Momigliano wrote numerous monographs and hundreds of scientific articles and studies.

Some of his essays were posthumously collected and published in individual volumes.

Fonts (selection)

• Selected writings on history and historiography . Metzler, Stuttgart 1998/2000, ISBN 3-476-01514-9

1. Glenn W. Most (ed.): The old world . 1998, ISBN 3-476-01511-4 .
2. Wilfried Nippel (Ed.): Late Antiquity to Late Enlightenment . 1999, ISBN 3-476-01512-2 .
3. Anthony Grafton (Ed.): Modern Old World Historiography . 2000, ISBN 3-476-01513-0 .

• Paths to the old world . New edition Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt / M. 1995, ISBN 3-596-12285-6 (reprint of the Berlin 1991 edition).
• The Classical Foundations of Modern Historiography ("Le radici classiche della storiografia moderna"). University Press, Berkeley, Calif. 1991, ISBN 0-520-06890-4 .
• The Jews in the Old World . Wagenbach, Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-8031-5105-8 (Small cultural studies library; Vol. 5).
• On Pagans, Jews and Christians . University Press, Middletown, Conn. 1987, ISBN 0-8195-5173-2 .
• How to Reconcile Greeks and Trojans . North-Holland Press, Amsterdam 1983, ISBN 0-4448-5576-9 .
• Essays in Ancient and Modern Historiography . University Press, Middletown, Conn. 1977, ISBN 0-8195-5010-8 .
• High cultures in Hellenism. The encounter of the Greeks with the Celts, Jews, Romans and Persians ("Alien Wisdom. The Limits of Hellenization"). Beck, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-406-06790-5 (Beck's black series; Vol. 190).
• The Development of Greek Biography. Four lectures . University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1971, ISBN 0-674-20040-3 .
• Contributo alla storia degli studi classici , 10 volumes, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, Roma 1955–2012.

literature

• Karl Christ : Arnaldo Momigliano (1908-1987). In: Karl Christ: New Profiles of Ancient History. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1990, ISBN 3-534-10289-4 , pp. 248-294.
• Karl Christ: Klios Wandlungen: the German ancient history from neo-humanism to the present. Beck, Munich 2006, pp. 99-101.
• Donald Kagan : Arnaldo Momigliano and the human sources of history . In: The New Criterion 10, March 1992 ( Arnaldo Momigliano and the human sources of history ( Memento from June 29, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) by Donald Kagan )
• Peter N. Miller: Momigliano and antiquarianism. Foundations of the modern cultural sciences. University of Toronto Press, Toronto 2007, ISBN 0-8020-9207-1 .
• Leandro Polverini (Ed.): Arnaldo Momigliano nella storiografia del Novecento. Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, Roma 2006, ISBN 978-88-8498-250-6 .
• Peter Brown : Arnaldo Dante Momigliano, 1908–1987. In: Proceedings of the British Academy. Volume 74, 1988, pp. 405-442 ( online ).

Web links

• Literature by and about Arnaldo Momigliano in the catalog of the German National Library

Remarks

1. ^ Deceased Fellows. British Academy, accessed July 8, 2020 . 
2. ^ American Philosophical Society Member History