scholarly journals RESPONDING TO VIOLENCE: LITURGY, AUTHORITY AND SACRED PLACES, c. 900–c. 1150

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 23-47
Author(s):  
Sarah Hamilton
Keyword(s):  
Good Deal ◽  
Sacred Places ◽  
Sacred Spaces ◽  
Secular World ◽  
Holy Places ◽  
Fresh Perspective ◽  
History Of ◽  
Medieval Christianity ◽  
Church Buildings

ABSTRACTThe principle that church buildings constitute sacred spaces, set apart from the secular world and its laws, is one of the most enduring legacies of medieval Christianity in the present day. When and how church buildings came to be defined as sacred has consequently received a good deal of attention from modern scholars. What happened when that status was compromised, and ecclesiastical spaces were polluted by acts of violence, like the murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral? This paper investigates the history of rites for the reconciliation of holy places violated by the shedding of blood, homicide or other public acts of ‘filthiness’ which followed instances such as Becket's murder. I first identify the late tenth and early eleventh centuries in England as crucial to the development of this rite, before asking why English bishops began to pay attention to rites of reconciliation in the years around 1000 ce. This paper thus offers a fresh perspective on current understandings of ecclesiastical responses to violence in these years, the history of which has long been dominated by monastic evidence from west Frankia and Flanders. At the same time, it reveals the potential of liturgical rites to offer new insights into medieval society.

scholarly journals Kirkeasyl og kirkebygg som hellig rom og tilfluktsted

2020 ◽  
pp. 129-148
Author(s):  
Ralph Meier
Keyword(s):  
Legal Status ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Police Force ◽  
Sacred Places ◽  
Police Practice ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Church Building ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church ◽  
Church Buildings

The article has its starting point in church asylum as a phenomenon in Norway in the 1990s. It focuses on police practice related to church asylum and the rationale for this practice by state authorities in Norway. It also looks at the theological argumentation for church asylum in official church statements at that time in Norway. Both state authorities and the Church of Norway agree that church buildings do not have a special legal status and that church asylum is not a legal right. But the state authorities respect church asylum because of the understanding of churches as sacred places and protected areas. To better understand this view, the article also looks at the history of church buildings as sacred places. From a theological point of view, church asylum has its foundation historically both in the church building as a sacred room (loci reverentia) and in the Christian duty of helping people in need (intercessio). But the article also points out that the theological argumentation of church asylum based on the understanding of churches as sacred and protected places is no longer used, neither in Catholic nor in Protestant theology. The article concludes that the understanding of churches as sacred and protected places has its foundation in a long tradition that still exists in the population. This is also regarded as the reason why state authorities in Norway do not enter church buildings with police force.

scholarly journals Sacred places: spaces for a dialogue among cultures

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 90
Author(s):  
Olimpia Niglio ◽  
Luigi Guerriero
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Dimension ◽  
Sacred Places ◽  
Sacred Place ◽  
Sacred Spaces ◽  
Physical Conditions ◽  
Religious Architecture ◽  
Multiple Cultures ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual

Background. The construction of a sacred space identifies a place where men realize a direct relationship with their God, qualifying this space as the absolute center of the existence, regardless of its location and its definition.In the sacred places, the geometric-dimensional relations, that define each space, are enriched with the temporal connotation, making more explicit the inseparable relationship between the architecture and the historical process (to stay erected in front of the history, following the more convincing anthropological meaning of the building action) with the material changes of the same architecture.Results. Then, each sacred place is the center (from which an axis is inevitably outlined) of a spatial dimension that is emancipated from pure physical conditions and it forces to involve tools of unusual analysis that fit the specificity of the use (in other words, the symbolic character).The sacred place assumes the role of an instrument of synthesis (of manifesto) that allows a vision of the world ables to build the dialogue among the cultures, overcoming the limits of the individual perspectives and fitting a community program based on the sharing of the Human Values.Conclusion. Given these premises, the paper reconsiders some studies of the history of the architecture that has given specific attention to the issue of the sacred place that is also seen as material and intangible space, where men meet their God, their self and the community. The contribution also analyzes experiences of realization of sacred spaces, between the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth, examining religious architecture in different geographic areas and with multiple cultures. These sacred spaces have often allowed overcoming the fracture caused by colonial politics, favoring the regeneration of the meaning of the sacred places.

Secularization and Sacred Space

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Bains
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Sacred Space ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Sacred Spaces ◽  
Religious Rituals ◽  
Secular World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Roman Catholics

Secularization, or the decline in the authority of religious institutions, became a pronounced feature of Western culture in the 20th century, especially in its latter half. Secularization has affected the history of Western sacred space in four ways: (a) It has helped to shape the concept of “sacred space” so that it designates a space that helps generate a personal religious experience independent of religious rituals and teachings. (b) It has caused many houses of worship to use architectural forms not previously associated with religion in order to link their religious communities to the respected realms of business, science, and entertainment. And it has motivated religious communities to craft spaces that encourage worshipers to recognize God at work in the secular world and to demonstrate to others the continued relevance of religion. (c) Many former houses of worship have been destroyed or converted to other uses. Sometimes this occurred not because of declining membership but in order to relocate to a more favorable building or location. Nonetheless, these changes have created a more secular cityscape. Other times destruction and conversion have been the product of state-sponsored regimes of secularization or a decline in the number of clergy or church supporters. The reuse of these former houses of worship often results in the association of religious symbols with commercial or personal endeavors. It also raises challenges for maintaining public space in dense urban environments and for preserving artistic and cultural heritage. Given the increasing closure of churches, in 2018 the Pontifical Council of Culture issued guidelines to guide Roman Catholics in determining best uses for buildings no longer needed for worship. (d) Spaces which are not linked to religious communities, especially museums and monuments, came to be frequently designed in ways similar to historic sacred spaces. For this reason and others, they are esteemed by many people as places to encounter the sacred in a secularized world.

A Sacred Space Is Never Empty

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Smolkin
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Sacred Space ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
Mikhail Gorbachev ◽  
Soviet Leadership ◽  
Sacred Spaces ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Communist Ideology ◽  
History Of ◽  
Soviet Experiment

When the Bolsheviks set out to build a new world in the wake of the Russian Revolution, they expected religion to die off. Soviet power used a variety of tools—from education to propaganda to terror—to turn its vision of a Communist world without religion into reality. Yet even with its monopoly on ideology and power, the Soviet Communist Party never succeeded in overcoming religion and creating an atheist society. This book presents the first history of Soviet atheism from the 1917 revolution to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The book argues that to understand the Soviet experiment, we must make sense of Soviet atheism. It shows how atheism was reimagined as an alternative cosmology with its own set of positive beliefs, practices, and spiritual commitments. Through its engagements with religion, the Soviet leadership realized that removing religion from the “sacred spaces” of Soviet life was not enough. Then, in the final years of the Soviet experiment, Mikhail Gorbachev—in a stunning and unexpected reversal—abandoned atheism and reintroduced religion into Soviet public life. The book explores the meaning of atheism for religious life, for Communist ideology, and for Soviet politics.

The Roman Military Base at Dura-Europos, Syria

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon James
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Examination ◽  
Military Base ◽  
Roman World ◽  
The World ◽  
Social Dynamic ◽  
Holy Places ◽  
History Of ◽  
Roman Military ◽  
Roman East

Dura-Europos, a Parthian-ruled Greco-Syrian city, was captured by Rome c.AD165. It then accommodated a Roman garrison until its destruction by Sasanian siege c.AD256. Excavations of the site between the World Wars made sensational discoveries, and with renewed exploration from 1986 to 2011, Dura remains the best-explored city of the Roman East. A critical revelation was a sprawling Roman military base occupying a quarter of the city's interior. This included swathes of civilian housing converted to soldiers' accommodation and several existing sanctuaries, as well as baths, an amphitheatre, headquarters, and more temples added by the garrison. Base and garrison were clearly fundamental factors in the history of Roman Dura, but what impact did they have on the civil population? Original excavators gloomily portrayed Durenes evicted from their homes and holy places, and subjected to extortion and impoverishment by brutal soldiers, while recent commentators have envisaged military-civilian concordia, with shared prosperity and integration. Detailed examination of the evidence presents a new picture. Through the use of GPS, satellite, geophysical and archival evidence, this volume shows that the Roman military base and resident community were even bigger than previously understood, with both military and civil communities appearing much more internally complex than has been allowed until now. The result is a fascinating social dynamic which we can partly reconstruct, giving us a nuanced picture of life in a city near the eastern frontier of the Roman world.

scholarly journals Johann Michael von Hermann (1793–1855): A predecessor of Max Schweidler?

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 239-270
Author(s):  
Susanne Wagini ◽  
Katrin Holzherr
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Early History ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Conservation History ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
Close Study ◽  
Fresh Perspective ◽  
History Of ◽  
Paper Conservation

Abstract The restorer Johann Michael von Hermann (1793–1855), famous in the early nineteenth century, has long fallen into oblivion. A recent discovery of his work associated with old master prints at the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München has allowed a close study of his methods and skills as well as those of his pupil Ludwig Albert von Montmorillon (1794–1854), providing a fresh perspective on the early history of paper conservation. Von Hermann’s method of facsimile inserts was praised by his contemporaries, before Max Schweidler (1885–1953) described these methods in 1938. The present article provides biographical notes on both nineteenth century restorers, gives examples of prints treated by them and adds a chapter of conservation history crediting them with a place in the history of the discipline. In summary, this offers a surprising insight on how works of art used to be almost untraceably restored by this team of Munich-based restorers more than 150 years before Schweidler.

Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser on Transnational Governance and the Future of Christendom

2021 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 369-411
Author(s):  
Brian C. Lockey
Keyword(s):  
Edmund Spenser ◽  
Charles Taylor ◽  
Transnational Governance ◽  
Sacred Spaces ◽  
Religious Conflicts ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of

This article considers the writings of Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser within the context of European religious conflicts between Protestants and Catholics, amid the perceived Ottoman threat to Christendom. In their fictional works, these authors imagine an overarching authority that might replace the traditional papal power of oversight and deposing in order to regulate temporal sovereigns and foster a unity of Christian princes within Europe. Even as they can be read as reimagining Christendom, their fictional works reflect what Charles Taylor has called the “disenchantment” of sacred spaces within his philosophical history of the emergence of secularity within European cultures.

scholarly journals Religion at Play

Pneuma ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 17-36
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Vondey
Keyword(s):  
Charles Taylor ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Critical Dialogue ◽  
Secular World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Secular Age

Abstract Pentecostals do not fit the dominant narrative of a secular age constructed by Charles Taylor. Instead, Pentecostalism is a religion at play that engages with the secular without accepting its authority. A critical dialogue with Taylor’s foundational proposal of the central conditions of premodern life that have made room for our modern secular world demonstrates how and why these conditions are not met in Pentecostalism. The article then identifies the alternative mechanisms in place in Pentecostalism as a form of religion at play manifested in an enchanted worldview, sociospiritual attachment, the festival of Pentecost, the transformation of secular time, and a porous cosmos. A close examination of the notion of play in Taylor’s narrative illuminates in more detail the ill fit of Pentecostalism in the history of a secular age and reveals that Pentecostalism represents a condition of religion that resolves the tension between sacred and secular and that challenges the dominance of “secular” and “religious” as uncontested ideas of our modern world.

Unions and the Popular Front: The West Coast Waterfront in the 1930s

1986 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 59-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Nelson
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
The United States ◽  
Popular Front ◽  
Human Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
Patterns Of Behavior ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Made In

Recent discussions of the history of American communism have generated a good deal of controversy. A youthful generation of “new social historians” has combined with veterans of the Communist party to produce a portrait of the Communist experience in the United States which posits a tension between the Byzantine pursuit of the “correct line” at the top and the impulses and needs of members at the base trying to cope with a complex reality. In the words of one of its most skillful practitioners, “the new Communist history begins with the assumption that … everyone brought to the movement expectations, traditions, patterns of behavior and thought that had little to do with the decisions made in the Kremlin or on the 9th floor of the Communist Party headquarters in New York.” The “new” historians have focused mainly on the lives of individuals, the relationship between communism and ethnic and racial subcultures, and the effort to build the party's influence within particular unions and working-class constituencies. Overall, the portrait has been critical but sympathetic and has served to highlight the party's “human face” and the integrity of its members.

scholarly journals “Decently and order”: Scotland and Protestant pastoral power

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alistair Mutch
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Pastoral Power ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church

Foucault’s conceptualization of “pastoral power” is important in the development and application of the notion of “governmentality” or the regulation of mass populations. However, Foucault’s exploration of pastoral power, especially in the form of confessional practice, owes a good deal to his Roman Catholic heritage. Hints in his work, which were never developed, suggest some aspects of Protestant forms of pastoral power. These hints are taken up to explore one Protestant tradition, that of Scottish Presbyterianism, in detail. Based on the history of the church in the eighteenth century, four aspects of Protestant pastoral power are outlined: examination, accountability, ecclesiology, and organizing as a good in its own right.

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