Hesitant Steps: Acceptance of the Gregorian Calendar in Eighteenth-Century Geneva

2006 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
pp. 544-564 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Powell McNutt
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Julius Caesar ◽  
Ancien Regime ◽  
Gregorian Calendar ◽  
Julian Calendar ◽  
Ancien Régime ◽  
At Will ◽  
The Catholic Church

History demonstrates that the calendar is a tool of far more significance than simply a means to organize units of time. For Roman high priests prior to the reign of Julius Caesar, the calendar was a tool of power, symbolizing political supremacy over society through the manipulation of time at will. Under Pope Gregory XIII, the calendar was a symbol of papal responsibility to ensure the proper worship of the Catholic Church. In the case of European Protestants, the Julian calendar was a symbol of religious identity and protest against Catholic domination. Likewise, within revolutionary France, the Calendrier Républicain symbolized the rejection of the Ancien Régime and Catholicism. These few examples are an indication that throughout history in various times and places calendars have proven to represent more to humanity than mere time reckoning methods. Consequently, one may approach the study of the calendar as a means to grasp cultural and religious identity within specific regional contexts.

Perceptions of marriage in late-eighteenth-century Malta

2001 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-398 ◽  
Author(s):  
FRANS CIAPPARA
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Sexual Relations ◽  
Court Records ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The Church ◽  
At Will ◽  
Parish Registers ◽  
The Catholic Church

Although the Catholic Church claimed to control marriage, in late-eighteenth-century Malta the faithful still considered matrimony to be a personal affair. The study is based upon episcopal court records and parish registers, which reveal substantial numbers of clandestine marriages, contravening the Council of Trent's directives concerning entry into marriage. Couples separated from each other at will, without the Church's consent. A few took other partners, despite the inquisitors' nets. Couples viewed sexual relations as matters for themselves to regulate, and sex outside marriage as not something into which the Church was to intrude. Especially noteworthy in this respect were relations between betrothed, since a man would not marry a woman who could not bear children.

Conclusion

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Doyle
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Ancien Regime ◽  
Religious Intolerance ◽  
Cultural Terms ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Free Thought ◽  
Ancien Régime

In cultural terms the Ancien Régime began with the Renaissance and the Reformation. The monolithic authority of the medieval Catholic Church had gone, and the next three centuries were a time when extensive energies were devoted by anxious established churches to maintaining some authority by monopolizing education and persecuting dissent. By the eighteenth century, irreligion and “free thought” were coming to be seen as even more dangerous than the latter. Partly this was because the spread of literacy, and the growing desire of moneyed elites to invest in expensive education, gave increasing numbers access to media that might subvert faith or obedience if uncontrolled. The revolutionaries of 1789 condemned censorship and religious intolerance as cardinal vices of the Ancien Régime. They looked back on the growth of free thought or “philosophy” as the source of their reforming agenda.

THE FRENCH CHURCH AND THE REVOLUTION Jansénismes et Lumières: pour un autre XVIIIe siècle. By Monique Cottret. Paris: A. Michel, 1998. Pp. 418. ISBN 2-226-10475-5. 160 Fr. Frs. Catholic Revival in the age of the Baroque: religious identity in Southwest Germany, 1550–1750. By Marc R. Forster. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Pp. xiv+268. ISBN 0-521-78044-6. £40.00. Church and society in eighteenth-century France,I: The clerical establishment and its social ramifications;II: The religion of the people and the politics of religion. By John McManners. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999. Pp. xviii+817, xiv+866. ISBN 0-19-827003-8 and 0-19-827004-6. £59.90. Christianity under the ancien régime, 1648–1789. By W. R. Ward. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Pp. xii+269. ISBN 0-521-55361-X. £13.95.

2003 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 211-218
Author(s):  
DEREK BEALES
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Ancien Regime ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
The People ◽  
Politics Of Religion ◽  
Church And Society ◽  
Recent Edition ◽  
Ancien Régime

If few historians of the French ancien régime and Revolution entirely ignore the role of the Church, most treat it perfunctorily and many make crass errors in writing about it. To start with examples of error, J. F. Bosher declared in his generally admirable The French Revolution: ‘at least nine abbots wrote for the Encyclopédie’. Actually, at least twenty-three abbés did so, but no abbots. J. C. D. Clark, in his recent edition of Burke's Reflections, attempts to explain Burke's discussion of French commendatory abbots by defining commendam as it was used in England, which makes Burke's argument incomprehensible. Until now it has not been easy to find a work, at any rate in English, which would settle such matters authoritatively. McManners's Church and society in eighteenth-century France will certainly do that. A delightful chapter deals with the vast majority of abbés who were not abbots, that is, those who had taken the very first steps towards an ecclesiastical career, probably to enhance their educational prospects, but never taken vows or significant orders. To this group belonged such notorious philosophes as the abbé Diderot and the abbé Raynal.

scholarly journals "Gardez-vous-en bien ... de la brochure"

1970 ◽  
Vol 69 ◽  
pp. 233-248
Author(s):  
Michiel Van Dam
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Current Understanding ◽  
Ancien Regime ◽  
Political Language ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Ancien Régime ◽  
Social Upheaval

At the end of the eighteenth century, the Austrian Netherlands were plagued by politicalturmoil and social upheaval, brought forth by a reaction against the reformatory movementset up by the Habsburg government. The contestation of Joseph II's reformist policywas performed in public, as the region was flooded with polemical pamphlets, ideologicaltreatises and many other types of popular writings during (but also before and after) theperiod of the Brabant Revolution (1787-1789). Pamphlets have stood at the centre ofattention for historiography on Belgian political culture at the end of the ancien régime,yet this wide employment of the source material has not led to a comparative overview ofthe way these writings have been used in historical research. This article will attempt tofill this gap, by first providing a methodological typology of several historiographicaluses of a particular pamphlet, the Manifeste du Peuple Brabançon, written at the end of1789, and signed by the leader of the conservative opposition, Hendrik Van der Noot.Secondly, I will attempt to show how eighteenth-century pamphleteers used a multitudeof discourses at their disposal, by briefly discussing another set of (pre-revolutionary)pamphlets. This has immediate consequences for the current understanding of eighteenth-centuryBrabant political culture, which, so I argue, should not be considered discursivelymonolithic (containing one political language) but pluralist (containing multiple politicallanguages).

The Root of all Evil? Money and the Scottish Catholic Mission in the Eighteenth Century

1987 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 267-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. F. McMillan
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
International Finance ◽  
Ancien Regime ◽  
Material Resources ◽  
The World ◽  
Catholic Mission ◽  
Ancien Régime ◽  
Joseph Ii ◽  
The Church

We are all familiar with the idea that the Church is in the world but not of it, and that too great a preoccupation with earthly things may compromise the Church’s other-worldly objectives. One thinks of the extravagance of a Renaissance pope such as Leo X, reputed to have said, ‘Let us enjoy the papacy, since God has given it to us’: or of an ancien régime prelate like the Archbishop of Mainz, who arrived for the coronation of the Emperor Joseph II with a retinue of fourteen sumptuous carriages: or, in our own time, the Vatican’s reported links with some of the shadier elements in the world of international finance. Yet, it is equally obvious that lack of adequate material resources can act as a serious impediment to the Church’s mission to go forth and teach all nations. Excessive poverty, like excessive wealth, brings its own problems. As the adage has it, not money itself but the desire for money is the root of all evil. Excessive poverty and the desire for money are the themes which I wish to pursue in this paper, in the context of the Scottish Catholic Mission in the eighteenth century, and more specifically as they relate to the so-called Jansenist quarrels which divided the Mission in the 1730s and 1740s.

Clavius

1931 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 40
Keyword(s):  
Julius Caesar ◽  
Gregorian Calendar ◽  
Julian Calendar ◽  
German Scholar ◽  
Mathematical Activities

Christopher Clavius (1537-1612) was a German scholar who became a Jesuit and who spent the latter part of his life in Rome. His portrait gives evidence of his varied mathematical activities for the instruments hung on his wall or standing on his desk indicate his interest in astronomy and trigonometry, the drawings under his hand and the compasses be holds show his work in geometry, and the books piled before him may be looked upon as being his arithmetic, his algebra, and his commentaries on the works of earlier writers. Clavius was influential through his power as a teacher and through the popularity of his publications rather than for his discoveries in the field of mathematics. What is perhaps his greatest achievement was in connection with the adoption of our present calendar. Here, again, his role was to interpret and execute the ideas of others. It is unnecessary to discuss the details of the omission of ten days from the year 1582 in order to bring the calendar year into harmony with the astronomical year or the replacing of the Julian calendar sponsored by Julius Caesar by the Gregorian calendar of Pope Gregory XIII, but it is interesting to note that Clavius was summoned to Rome to explain the theory of the innovations. Ball notes* that Clavius rejected the proposal of omitting a leap year day once in 134 years and substituted the omission of three days in a 400 year period.

Avalokiteśvara's Manifestation as the Virgin Mary: The Jesuit Adaptation and the Visual Conflation in Japanese Catholicism after 1614

2011 ◽  
Vol 80 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Junhyoung Michael Shin
Keyword(s):  
Religious Identity ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
Great Success ◽  
Strict Enforcement ◽  
Jesuit Mission ◽  
The Catholic Church

Since St. Francis Xavier landed in Kagoshima in 1549, the Jesuit mission in Japan had achieved an amazing number of conversions, even though their activity lasted for merely about fifty years. Their great success came to an abrupt end in 1614 when the Bakufu government began the full proscription and persecution of the religion. An earlier ruler, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, had already banned Christianity and ordered the expulsion of foreign missionaries in 1587, but without strict enforcement. Since the 1630s, the former Christians were required to enroll in local Buddhist temples and annually go through the practice of treading on Christian icons in order to prove their apostasy. However, many Christians secretly retained the faith by disguising their true religious identity with Buddhist paraphernalia. These so-called “underground” (or sempuku) Christians survived more than two hundred years of persecution, and today some groups still continue to practice their own religion, refusing to join the Catholic Church. The present-day religion of the latter, called “hidden” (or kakure) Christians to distinguish them from the former, has drawn the attention of ample anthropological as well as religious studies.

A Lawyer's Defense of a Wine Merchant against a Carpenter's Deposition: A Story about Friendship and Betrayal

1999 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 365-384
Author(s):  
Santo L. Aricò
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Family Law ◽  
Ancien Regime ◽  
History Of ◽  
Parlement Of Paris ◽  
Ancien Régime ◽  
Sacred Laws

In 1770, Antoine-Louis Séguier, the avocat général (king's advocate) of the Parlement of Paris, defended Jean-Baptiste Dubarle, a Parisian wine merchant, against charges of theft, seduction, kidnapping, and adultery initiated by a carpenter, Eustache Chefdeville. For all of the offenses, Chefdeville demanded monetary reparation.The case, summarized in a mémoire, connects the history of family law in France under the ancien régime to the skillful use of lawyerly forensics. But it also relates to literary portrayals of social scapegraces who betray the esteemed values of friendship and gratitude: in fact, this member of Paris's menu peuple emerges from the pages of the case abstract as a dissembling traitor. Séguier's legal brief, viewed as a work of fiction, projects Chefdeville as an ungrateful betrayer who feigns comradery. In Séguier's telling, this disfigured pariah, albeit socially inferior, takes his place next to the deceptive worldlings described in many eighteenth-century novels. Like them, he violates the sacred laws of sincerity, turning himself into a moral pervert. Séguier's mémoire is rich precisely because it demonstrates how a skilled lawyer attempting to win his case adopts the form of a story characterized by all the literary qualities of the day—love, friendship, avarice, and betrayal. It illustrates a classic legal approach and also reads like a novel from beginning to end.

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