The History of Ideas in the Christian Middle Ages from the Fathers to Dante in American and Canadian Publications of the Years 1940-1952

Traditio ◽  
1953 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 439-514
Author(s):  
Gerhart B. Ladner

The initial date chosen for this survey is the beginning of the publication of the Journal of the History of Ideas in 1940; the final date, 1952, is that of the appearance of A Syntopicon of Great Books of the Western World. These two events mark the two principal directions in which the method of the historical study of ideas has moved on this continent: first toward the analytical study of ‘unit ideas’ as defined by Arthur O. Lovejoy (especially in The Great Chain of Being, 1936), who is also the intellectual father of the Journal of the History of Ideas; secondly toward the synthetic ‘recording’ of the main currents and aspects of the ideological tradition of the West in its entirety, unity, and continuity, as aimed at by the Great Books program of Robert M. Hutchins, Mortimer J. Adler, and their collaborators.

Author(s):  
James Morton

This book is a historical study of these manuscripts, exploring how and why the Greek Christians of medieval southern Italy persisted in using them so long after the end of Byzantine rule. Southern Italy was conquered by the Norman Hauteville dynasty in the late eleventh century after over 500 years of continuous Byzantine rule. At a stroke, the region’s Greek Christian inhabitants were cut off from their Orthodox compatriots in Byzantium and became subject to the spiritual and legal jurisdiction of the Roman Catholic popes. Nonetheless, they continued to follow the religious laws of the Byzantine church; out of thirty-six surviving manuscripts of Byzantine canon law produced between the tenth and fourteenth centuries, the majority date to the centuries after the Norman conquest. Part I provides an overview of the source material and the history of Italo-Greek Christianity. Part II examines the development of Italo-Greek canon law manuscripts from the last century of Byzantine rule to the late twelfth century, arguing that the Normans’ opposition to papal authority created a laissez faire atmosphere in which Greek Christians could continue to follow Byzantine religious law unchallenged. Finally, Part III analyses the papacy’s successful efforts to assert its jurisdiction over southern Italy in the later Middle Ages. While this brought about the end of Byzantine canon law as an effective legal system in the region, the Italo-Greeks still drew on their legal heritage to explain and justify their distinctive religious rites to their Latin neighbours.


1897 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 485-549
Author(s):  
M. Gaster

More marvellous and more remarkable than the real conquests of Alexander are the stories circulated about him, and the legends which have clustered round his name and his exploits. The history of Alexander has, from a very early period, been embellished with legends and tales. They spread from nation to nation during the whole of the ancient times, and all through the Middle Ages. Many scholars have followed up the course of this dissemination of the fabulous history of Alexander. It would, therefore, be idle repetition of work admirably done by men like Zacher, Wesselofsky, Budge, and others, should I attempt it here. All interested in the legend of Alexander are familiar with those works, where also the fullest bibliographical information is to be found. I am concerned here with what may have appeared to some of these students as the bye-paths of the legend, and which, to my mind, has not received that attention which is due to it, from more than one point of view. Hitherto the histories of Alexander were divided into two categories; the first were those writings which pretended to give a true historical description of his life and adventures, to the exclusion of fabulous matter; the other included all those fabulous histories in which the true elements were smothered under a great mass of legendary matter, the chief representative of this class being the work ascribed to a certain Callisthenes. The study of the legend centred in the study of the vicissitudes to which this work of (Pseudo-) Callisthenes had been exposed, in the course of its dissemination from the East, probably from its native country, Egypt, to the countries of the West.


2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Muhammad Rafiqul Hoque ◽  
Muhammad Mustaqim Mohd Zarif

Dispute resolution systems are broadly divided into two sides namely Judicial Dispute Resolution (JDRS) and Non-Judicial Dispute Resolution Systems (NJDRS). The first one is more formal, and the latter is informal which is known as Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) all over the world. Though ADR is claimed to be a great innovation of the West, it is found to be practiced in the Islamic Judicial System from its very inception. ADR was practiced throughout the history of Islamic Judiciary as sulh. However, the use of the word sulh in the meaning of ADR needs to be explained in the present judicial context. Scholars sometimes discussed sulh as a system parallel to ADR and sometimes as a process, which creates confusion in its multiuse. Hence, this study aims at eliminating this confusion on the paradoxical use of the term sulh as a system for dispute resolution as well as a process of that system. At present, hardly any study has precisely differentiated between them. Thus, this qualitative study focuses on discussing it primarily from the perspectives of the Quran, documented sources as well as interviews. The major finding of this study is that sulh, comparing with present day ADR, does not need to be used paradoxically. The main contribution of the study is to propose a clarification of sulh in the line of ADR fruitfully. The findings of this study are not only useful in clarifying the exact meanings of the term as used in different contexts but also applicable to solve problems faced by arbitrators involved in various indigenous traditional dispute resolution systems such as shalish in Bangladesh and elsewhere.


Author(s):  
Levon Hakobian

This chapter deals with the history of Soviet music’s relations with the outside world from the mid-1920s until the end of the millennium. During all these decades the Soviet musical production of any coloration was perceived by the free Western world as something largely strange or alien, often exotic, almost ‘barbarian’. The inevitable spiritual distance between the Soviet world and the ‘non-Soviet’ one resulted in some significant misunderstandings. Though some important recent publications by Western musicologists display a well qualified view on the music and musical life in the Soviet Union, the traces of past naiveties and/or prejudices are still felt quite often even in the writings of major specialists.


2001 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 611-613
Author(s):  
Avner Giladi

With the series of critical editions and studies of Arabic medical texts from the Middle Ages he has published in recent years, Gerrit Bos has made a significant contribution to the history of medicine in the Islamic world. He has dedicated special attention to the work of Abu Jaעfar Ahmad ibn Abi Khalid ibn al-Jazzar of Qayrawan, a 10th-century physician and prolific author of medical texts. Ibn al-Jazzar was famous and influential not only within his own Arabic– Islamic cultural domain but also—thanks to widely circulated translations of his works into Greek, Latin, and Hebrew—among Christian and Jewish physicians in the East as well as the West. (For Bos's publications on Ibn al-Jazzar's writings see p. 406).


Author(s):  
Bernhard Pöll

The basic vocabulary of Portuguese—the second largest Romance language in terms of speakers (about 210 million as of 2017)—comes from (vulgar) Latin, which itself incorporated a certain amount of so-called substratum and superstratum words. Whereas the former were adopted in a situation of language contact between Latin and the languages of the conquered peoples inhabiting the Iberian Peninsula, the latter are Germanic loans brought mainly by the Visigoths. From 711 onward, until the end of the Middle Ages, Arabic played a major role in the Peninsula, contributing about 1,000 words that are common in Modern Portuguese. (Classical) Latin and Greek were other sources for lexical enrichment especially in the 15th and 16th centuries as well as in the 18th and 19th centuries. Contact with other European languages—Romance and Germanic (especially English, and to a lower extent German)—led to borrowings in several thematic fields reflecting the economic, cultural, and scientific radiance that emanated from the respective language communities. In the course of colonial expansion, Portuguese came into contact with several African, Asian, and Amerindian languages from which it borrowed words for concepts and realia unknown to the Western world.


2019 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulrich Rudolph ◽  
Roman Seidel

AbstractThe Argument for God’s Existence is one of the major issues in the history of philosophy. It also constitutes an illuminating example of a shared philosophical problem in the entangled intellectual histories of Europe and the Islamic World. Drawing on Aristotle, various forms of the argument were appropriated by both rational Islamic Theology (kalām) and Islamic philosophers such as Avicenna. Whereas the argument, reshaped, refined and modified, has been intensively discussed throughout the entire post-classical era, particularly in the Islamic East, it has likewise been adopted in the West by thinkers such as the Hebrew Polymath Maimonides and the Medieval Latin Philosopher and Theologian Thomas Aquinas. However, these mutual reception-processes did not end in the middle ages. They can be witnessed in the twentieth century and even up until today: On the one hand, we see a Middle Eastern thinker like the Iranian philosopher Mahdī Ḥāʾirī Yazdī re-evaluating Kant’s fundamental critique of the classical philosophical arguments for God’s existence, in particular of the ontological proof, and refuting the critique. On the other hand, an argument from creation brought forward by the Islamic Theologian and critic of the peripatetic tradition al-Ghazāli has been adopted by a strand of Western philosophers who label their own version “The Kalām-cosmological Argument”. By discussing important cornerstones in the history of the philosophical proof for God’s existence we argue for a re-consideration of current Eurocentric narratives in the history of philosophy and suggest that such a transcultural perspective may also provide inspiration for current philosophical discourses between Europe, the Middle East and beyond.


Traditio ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 62 ◽  
pp. 259-284
Author(s):  
Larissa Tracy

During the Middle Ages, collections of hagiography were among the most widely circulated texts, serving as both inspirational and instructional stories. The legends of virgin martyrs were some of the most popular. These young women were venerated for their ability to withstand torture in defiance of tyranny and served as models for medieval piety. One of these accounts, the legend of Saint Dorothy, is extant in at least three different Middle English versions, including select manuscripts of the 1438 Gilte Legende and Osbern Bokenham's 1447 Legendys of Hooly Wummen. The earlier history of the legend of Saint Dorothy, unknown in Greek tradition and venerated in the West since the seventh century, has been well described by Kirsten Wolf in her edition of the Icelandic redaction. Despite its relationship to many of the other fictitious hagiographical legends that came into existence in the fourth and fifth centuries based on the various calendars and martyrologies, and its development as a virgin martyr legend, Jacobus de Voragine (ca. 1230–1298) did not include the legend of Saint Dorothy in his Legenda aurea, compiled between 1252 and 1260.


1956 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 487-507
Author(s):  
Francis Dvornik

Interest in Slavic and mid-European studies,* so long neglected, is growing considerably in the United States. Unfortunately it concentrates mostly on modern history. In Slavic studies, too much time is often devoted to the history of Russia since the Revolution, and to the analysis of the new social and political order established in that country under the influence of non-Slavic social ideas which had originated in the West, and especially in Germany (K. Marx and Lasalle) in the nineteenth century. The earlier evolution of Russia, other Slav nations, and their mid-European neighbors, is still undeservedly neglected. It is a mistake. In the Middle Ages, the Slavic nations, the Hungarians, and the Rumanians played a prominent role in the civilizing of Europe. The memories of their glorious past helped the Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Serbs, Bulgars, Magyars, Rumanians and also the small Albanian nation to survive the difficult period of oppression by foreign rulers and inspired their national leaders in their fight for independence and freedom.


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