Epigraphic Echoes (EpiEch) conjugates epigraphic research with the
methods of Public History, by studying the diachronic, diatopic and
diastratic reuse of inscriptions from Antiquity to nowadays, from the
Balkans to the Iberian Peninsula.
From a Public History viewpoint, the historian’s work has a double
mission: it aims at academic results and concrete impacts on citizens. It engages everybody, with some precise methodological support, in understanding history on primary sources such as inscriptions, wherever these are. Public History promotes collaborative practices; its practitioners interact with people and embrace a mission to make their historical insights accessible and useful to the public.
A vast number of epigraphs communicate a public message sent by an institution to its recipients; the authors of epigraphs usually belong to an establishment, either religious, familial, political or social.
An epigraph uses the past to convey its public and political message.
For example, the epigraphs of Medieval societies often contain explicit or implicit, conscious or unconscious echoes of the past at various levels: language, style, glyphs, choice of the support, topographical location, iconographic elements… With the renewal of urban centers in the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance Period2, the inscriptions regain the public space and play a role in constructing historical narratives by reusing the past. During the 19th century the public use of epigraphy becomes even more commonplace, adopted by the bourgeoisie, as well as by the army, with new models inspired by Romanticism and trends like Art Nouveau. Today, epigraphs are definitely a mark of the public spaces in our cities, buildings and landscapes.
Therefore, EpiEch addresses the following research questions: what is the most important issue in this re-use: the style, the language,
quotations from literature, or the contents? E.g. some habits
concerning the position of the verb in the sentence; the use of the
writing “DVX”, used before the World War II; or explicit references to Rome in several medieval epigraphs; which is the presence of those interconnected inscriptions in the present, in our European daily lives, in our cities and countries? Do we still see them and understand them? How inscriptions of the Ancient Roman society were mimicked in many different ways by later European societies? How medieval religious themes were repeated in early modern Europe? How local communities defined their identity using symbolic narratives borrowed from earlier inscriptions from the origins of European civilization to nowadays?