The second issue of the AHAB comes out under the title of Art and the Sacred. Ritual and religious objects, today classified as art, were once not claimed as such. Clearly, artworks that were intended for religious services were not created on purely aesthetic grounds; they were not intended to be art works per se. Nevertheless, academic practice and discourse has treated them primarily as art even though the word ‘sacred’ is placed before the word ‘art’ in these discourses. In today’s scholarship, the proliferation of anthropological research vividly indicates the tensions that exist between art and what is considered sacred.

The first issue of the new periodical dedicated to art history art in the countries around the Baltic Sea. Co-publishers of the journal: Estonian Academy of Arts, Gdansk University and three Lithuanian institutions: Vilnius Academy of Art, Lithuanian Art Museum, and Culture, Philosophy and Arts Research Institute.

Trying to identify abbreviated titles of journals and standard bibliographic works is a major difficulty facing researchers and librarians in the field of Classical Studies. This revised edition has been greatly expanded, with nearly twice the abbreviations (17,000) and bibliographic entries (12,400) as the first edition. Also, the Greek and Cyrillic abbreviations have increased by seven and four fold respectively. Abbreviations for internet sites are now included, as are those for associations in the broad area of Classical Studies. There are also more entries for Eastern European and regional archaeological publications. This revised volume is divided into two parts. Part One consists of an alphabetical listing of bibliographic abbreviations found in the scholarship of classical studies and related disciplines. Meanwhile, Part Two is an alphabetically arranged bibliographic descriptions for the works published in classical studies and related disciplines. Special efforts were made to increase the coverage in peripheral areas, making this new edition a useful reference tool for scholars in all subjects of study in the ancient and medieval world.

Stephen I, Hungary's first Christian king (reigned 997-1038) has been celebrated as the founder of the Hungarian state and church. Despite the scarcity of medieval sources, and consequent limitations on historical knowledge, he has had a central importance in narratives of Hungarian history and national identity. This book argues that instead of conceptualizing modern political medievalism separately as an 'abuse' of history, we must investigate history's very fabric, because cultural memory is woven into the production of the medieval sources. Medieval myth-making served as a firm basis for centuries of further elaboration and reinterpretation, both in historiography and in political legitimizing strategies. In many ways we cannot reach the 'real' Stephen, but we can do much more to understand the shaping of his myths. The author traces the origin of crucial stories around Stephen, contextualizing both the invention of early narratives and their later use. A challenger to Stephen's rule who may be a medieval literary invention became the protagonist of a rock opera in 1983, also standing in for Imre Nagy, a key figure of the 1956 revolution; moreover, he was reinvented as the embodiment of true Hungarian identity. The alleged right hand relic was 'discovered' to provide added legitimacy for Hungary's kings and then became a protagonist of the entanglement of Church and state. A medieval crown was invested with supernatural status, before turning into a national symbol. This book analyses the often seamless flow that has turned medieval myth into modern history, showing that politicisation was not a modern addition, but a determinant factor from the start.

This twenty-seventh volume of ABHB (Annual bibliography of the history of the printed book and libraries) contains 5076 records, selected from some 1000 periodicals, the list of which follows this introduction. They have been compiled by the National Committees of the following countries: Arab Countries Italy Australia Latin America Austria Latvia Lithuania Belarus Belgium Luxembourg Bulgaria Mexico The Netherlands Canada Croatia Poland Estonia Portugal Finland Rumania France Russia Germany South Africa Great Britain Spain Hungary Sweden Switzerland Iceland Ukraine Ireland Israel USA Benevolent readers are requested to signal the names of bibliographers and historians from countries not mentioned above, who would be willing to co-operate to this scheme of international bibliographic collaboration. The editor will greatly appreciate any communication on this matter. Subject As has been said in the introduction to the previous volumes, this biblio graphy aims at recording all books and articles of scholarly value which relate to the history of the printed book, to the history of the arts, crafts, techniques and equipment, and of the economic, social and cultural envi ronment, involved in its production, distribution, conservation, and descrip tion. Of course, the ideal of a complete coverage is nearly impossible to at tain. However, it is the policy of this publication to include missing items as VIII INTRODUCTION much as possible in the forthcoming volumes. The same applies to coun tries newly added to the bibliography.