Vexillum: The Undergraduate Journal of Classical and Medieval Studies

A Letter from the Editor in Chief

Dear Scholars,

It is with great pleasure and pride that I present the inaugural volume of Vexillum: The Undergraduate Journal of Classical and Medieval Studies, a labor of many months of work and sleepless nights of research, both on the part of the editorial staff and the authors whose works are featured herein. I congratulate all who have been published in this volume and thereby chosen to represent the multitudes of undergraduate scholars who study in fields ranging from art history to archaeology. I also wish to thank the editorial staff, who took my ideas for Vexillum and created something tangible and worthwhile, and without whom the journal would not have achieved such success—though humble—in this first year.

A little over a year ago the editorial staff of Vexillum was selected by myself and our brilliant faculty advisor, Diane Johnson, and since then we have created the nation’s first undergraduate journal for classical and medieval studies. Our goal is to provide an open-access journal to Classical and Medieval Studies students which will serve as a platform for students to share their work while reaping the benefits of peer-review and undergraduate publication. With no funds and little support, our editorial staff conducted research on over one hundred universities and four-year colleges, searching for relevant degree programs in Anthropology and Archaeology, Art History, Classics, Comparative Literature, History, Linguistics, Medieval Studies, Modern and Classical Languages, Music, Philosophy, and Religious Studies, and compiled a list of contacts for our call for papers. Though we awaited the deadline for the call for papers quite anxiously, when the deadline fell Vexillum received twenty-three submissions from eleven institutions across the country. Together the editors and I have had to overcome challenges, but we have been fortunate to receive such enthusiastic support from all over the country and it is my hope that each year the number of submissions, institutions involved, and papers we publish will grow.

In this inaugural volume you will find the essays of ten young authors, whose intellect and passion for times past comes to life in a number of studies that explore such diverse topics as imagery in early the early Italian Renaissance, the “divine economy” of Plato’s Euthyphro, a comparison of the Mongol and Roman imperial guards, and Christ’s image in Byzantine churches. Congratulations and thanks to those authors who have graciously provided their essays; it is my hope that you will encourage others in your fields to publish with Vexillum in the coming years, and return with further works of your own.

As with any peer-review process, we are not able to publish all of the submissions we receive. This first volume has been a learning process, and with the knowledge we gain from our mistakes and successes we hope to continue publishing every article we can that meets the high academic standards set forth by our editors. In doing so, Vexillum will commit to not sacrificing those papers that, with improvement, could easily meet those standards.

Again, thank you to everyone for your contributions to Vexillum, and it is my hope that this journal will continue to grow each year and become a go-to source for budding scholars seeking quality academic articles, and a symbol of the drive of students everywhere to push forward the limit of our collective knowledge.

Sincerely,

Sean A. Guynes, Editor in Chief

N.B. Several of the PDF files may be missing footnotes. If this is the case, the DOC files will contain the footnotes.