From the Editor

The authors of the first issue of our fourth volume represent a virtual gazetteer of the world, with contributors not only from the U.S., but also from Australia, Canada, Germany, Israel, Italy, Poland, The Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. The volume begins with a certain angelic quality: Linda Safran and Galit Noga-Banai discuss a pair of archangels, Michael and Gabriel, who are depicted on a newly published Toronto reliquary; Matthew Dal Santo studies images of angels and archangels, and in particular Michael; Rangar Cline investigates no less than seven archangels, including, of course, Michael, who were called upon magically to protect the city of Miletus; and angels appear once again in a contribution of Iain Gardner that exhaustively discusses ten Manichaean prayers. The next two contributions, by Daniëlle Slootjes and Luigi Pedroni, take us to the late third century in general and the reign of the emperor Aurelian (270–275) in particular. The final two contributions turn to the western Mediterranean, with Nathan Ristuccia discussing the use of law and legal documents by bishop Peter Chrysologus of Ravenna, and Robert Wiśniewski briefly discussing an aspect of the early development of the cult of relics in Carthage. To conclude the volume, we have not only our de rigueur book reviews, but also our first review of a conference specifically dealing with Late Antiquity.

In the world of publishing, JLA continues to receive kudos, having just been awarded the Association of American Publishers Award for Professional and Scholarly Excellence as Best New Journal in the Social Sciences & Humanities for 2010 (http://www.proseawards.com/current-winners.html). This award is a tribute not only to our many fine authors, who have published in the journal scholarship of the highest merit, and to our hard-working editorial boards, but also to the dedicated staff at Johns Hopkins University Press, and in particular William Breichner and Carol Hamblen, without whose support, above and beyond the call of duty, the journal would be but a shadow of its present self.

And finally, once more I encourage our readers to continue not only to submit their scholarship for publication and to encourage colleagues and libraries to subscribe to JLA (http://www.press.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_late_antiquity/).