‘Reformed Pastors’ and Bons Curés: the Changing Role of the Parish Clergy in Early Modern Europe

1989 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 249-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Green
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Half Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Status ◽  
Secular Society ◽  
Parish Clergy ◽  
Changing Role ◽  
Traditional Roles

Over the last half century, a number of sociologists on both sides of the Atlantic have tried to define the contemporary role of the ministry. Among the ideas which emerged from their work, three are relevant for our purpose here. The first was that a number of roles which well-intentioned if not always well-qualified clergy had tried to play in the past had been lost or were being lost to rival professions, few of whose members were in holy orders: doctors and psychiatrists, marriage guidance counsellors and social caseworkers, solicitors and schoolteachers. Sociologists detected a sense of what was called ‘role uncertainty’ among the English clergy, and a feeling that in future they should be trained in new skills such as counselling. Allied to this disquiet was another concern, that the administrative and organizational side of the minister’s work was threatening to swamp the more important traditional roles of priest, pastor, and preacher. A third suggestion was that in an increasingly secular society the status of the ministry was declining. For centuries, it was argued, the clergy had enjoyed a unique place in society because of their sacerdotal functions and special skills, but this was now changing: the value of the Christian ministry in the eyes of the laity was falling behind that of more ‘useful’ professions such as medicine and the law.

Customizing the Past

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Pollmann
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Common Knowledge ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Poor People ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
The Past ◽  
Legal Power ◽  
The Status ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Stable Source

Memory in early modern Europe closely related to the knowledge of what was ‘customary’. The term ‘custom’ was used to describe both cultural, often local, habits, and usages that had acquired legal power, and its status derived from its being ancient and its being common knowledge. Custom was both an elite tool to keep the poor in place, and the best strategy for poor people to defend themselves against unwanted changes. In the course of the early modern period the status of custom changed. First, codification of custom rendered it less flexible than it had once been. Secondly, the emergence of new intellectual tools led to more scepticism about the past as a stable source of authority. Finally, as a consequence of contact with non-Europeans, there emerged new ideas on the development of human culture, in which the abandoning of custom came to be seen as a hallmark of civility.

The Renaissance of Conversation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Randall
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Default Mode ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Changing Role

This chapter focuses upon the transformation from roughly 1400 to 1700 of the conception of conversation itself, both within treatises touching on theories of conversation and in the practice of the literary genre of dialogue, that literary emulation of sermo whose changing form registered conversation’s transformations. This transformation began with the Renaissance humanists, who intensified the Petrarchan abstraction of conversation-as-metaphor from actual conversation. The changing role of Renaissance conversation was linked to the simultaneous expansion of oratory’s ambitions, which inspired both the use of conversation as a refuge from oratory and, in a revolutionary riposte, the counter-claim that conversation should expand the scope of its subject matter supplant oratory. The innovative genre of Utopian dialogue provided a climax to this last development, by transforming the old debate as to the optimus status rei publicae into a conversation, and thus incorporating the ends of political action within the genre of sermo. Finally, in seventeenth-century France, the preceding expansion of conversation culminated in a revolutionary triumph, as conversation replaced oratory as the default mode of rhetoric. These changes collectively set the stage for the centrality of conversation in the intellectual world of early modern Europe.

John Locke: The Philosopher as Christian Virtuoso

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Nuovo
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Natural Philosopher ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Christian Philosophy ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
Empirical Stance

The purpose of this book is to present the philosophical thought of John Locke as the work of a Christian virtuoso. In his role as ‘virtuoso’, an experimental natural philosopher of the sort that flourished in England during the seventeenth century, Locke was a proponent of the so-called ‘new philosophy’, a variety of atomism that emerged in early modern Europe. But he was also a practicing Christian, and he professed confidence that the two vocations were not only compatible but mutually sustaining. Locke aspired, without compromising his empirical stance, to unite the two vocations in a single philosophical endeavor with the aim of producing a system of Christian philosophy. Although the birth of the modern secular outlook did not happen smoothly or without many conflicts of belief, Locke, in his role of Christian virtuoso, endeavored to resolve apparent contradictions. Nuovo draws attention to the often-overlooked complexities and diversity of Locke’s thought, and argues that Locke must now be counted among the creators of early modern systems of philosophy.

HISTORY, MEMORY, AND THE ENGLISH REFORMATION

2012 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 899-938 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALEXANDRA WALSHAM
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
The Past ◽  
University Of Cambridge ◽  
Inaugural Lecture ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The University

ABSTRACTThis article is a revised and expanded version of my inaugural lecture as Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge, delivered on 20 Oct. 2011. It explores how the religious upheavals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries reshaped perceptions of the past, stimulated shifts in historical method, and transformed the culture of memory, before turning to the interrelated question of when and why contemporaries began to remember the English Reformation as a decisive juncture and critical turning point in history. Investigating the interaction between personal recollection and social memory, it traces the manner in which remembrance of the events of the 1530s, 1540s, and 1550s evolved and splintered between 1530 and 1700. A further theme is the role of religious and intellectual developments in the early modern period in forging prevailing models of historical periodization and teleological paradigms of interpretation.

REVIEW ARTICLE

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1954 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 269-279
Author(s):  
CHARLES D. MAY
Keyword(s):  
Vitamin B6 ◽  
Convincing Evidence ◽  
Human Nutrition ◽  
Nutritional Factors ◽  
Dietary Requirement ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Status ◽  
Metabolic Reactions ◽  
Convulsive Seizures

WITHIN the past year a dramatic outbreak of a singular type of convulsive seizures in babies has provided convincing evidence of an essential role for Vitamin B6 in human nutrition under natural circumstances. This is a general review of the circumstances surrounding this outbreak and of the present state of our knowledge of vitamin B6. But it is also important that this episode be considered as a reminder of the complex interrelationships which permeate studies of nutritional factors and as a warning against hasty conclusions. It also serves as an illustration of the hazard in premature or uncontrolled application to human nutrition of isolated fragments of knowledge concerning nutritional factors. The existence of Vitamin B6 was discovered in 1934 by experiments with rats. Symptoms of deficiency of this vitamin were soon described in several species of animals but not in man. Within a few years the chemistry of the vitamin was determined and the synthesis achieved. Considerable information as to the metabolic reactions affected by a deficiency of Vitamin B6 was rapidly accumulated. Only recently, 16 years after the discovery of Vitamin B6, the Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry of the American Medical Association reviewing the status of our knowledge of the role of Vitamin B6 in human nutrition reached only a cautious acceptance of an essential dietary requirement for Vitamin B6 in the human. The original observations which called attention to the problem of unusual convulsions in infants and pointed the way to its solution were made by a doctor in practice, just as were similar observations which led a few years ago to an appreciation of the circumstances producing a deficiency of folic acid in infancy.

scholarly journals Alternative Pasts and Colonial Engagements in the North: The Materiality and Meanings of the Pajala ‘Runestone’ (Vinsavaara Stone), Northern Sweden

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 613-628
Author(s):  
Vesa-Pekka Herva ◽  
Janne Ikäheimo ◽  
Matti Enbuske ◽  
Jari Okkonen
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
General Level ◽  
Northern Sweden ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
The Past ◽  
The North ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Cosmological Context ◽  
Ancient Times

The unknown and exotic North fascinated European minds in the early modern period. A land of natural and supernatural wonders, and of the indigenous Sámi people, the northern margins of Europe stirred up imagination and a plethora of cultural fantasies, which also affected early antiquarian research and the period understanding of the past. This article employs an alleged runestone discovered in northernmost Sweden in the seventeenth century to explore how ancient times and northern margins of the continent were understood in early modern Europe. We examine how the peculiar monument of the Vinsavaara stone was perceived and signified in relation to its materiality, landscape setting, and the cultural-cosmological context of the Renaissance–Baroque world. On a more general level, we use the Vinsavaara stone to assess the nature and character of early modern antiquarianism in relation to the period's nationalism, colonialism and classicism.

scholarly journals Not for Sale, but for Own Need”: Trade of the Volhynian Gentry in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Second Half of the 16th — First Half of the 17th Century

2021 ◽  
pp. 89-100
Author(s):  
Ihor Huliuk
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Traded Goods ◽  
Classical Economic ◽  
Economic Nature ◽  
Eastern And Western Europe ◽  
General Criticism

The article analyzes socioeconomic processes in the early modern Europe, in particular trade in its separate regions. It considers the classical economic model focused on the industry and agriculture, which Eastern and Western Europe followed in their multifaceted development. It studies legislation, namely the Second Lithuanian Statute and the Sejm Constitutions for assessing the involvement of gentry representatives in commerce. It indicates that the activity of the Volhynian gentry in the internal trade of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was due to both external changes in the market, primarily the demand for products from Eastern Europe, and the tendency observed on the continent when running a household became a business that made incomes grow. It analyzes general criticism in the intellectual circles of the trade activity of the gentry as such, which could lead to a certain deterioration of traditions. Man-knight and man-merchant intersections in the society of that time were acceptable if a nobleman traded goods from his own estates and could prove it with an oath.The article also investigates key areas of trade of the Volhynian gentry in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth on the basis of documentary material of court books of the 16th–17th-century Volhynia and previously published sources of economic nature. It studies main range of goods sold and bought by the representatives of the elite, observes the participation of the Volhynian gentry in trade operations with the core centers of the Polish-Lithuanian economy, and their involvement in local fairs and tradings. It shows the role of intermediaries, first of all representatives of the Jewish community and peasants from the gentry fоlwarks, in the trade enterprise of the gentry.

Veronicas and Artists

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Religious Images ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of Art ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way ◽  
Contemporary Artists

Chapter One deals with several central issues with regard to understanding the role of religious motifs in contemporary art. Besides being a repetition of imagery from the past, religious motifs embedded in contemporary artworks become a means to problematise not only the way different periods in the history of art are delimited, but larger and seemingly more rigid distinctions as those between art and non-art images. Early religious images differ significantly from art images. The two types are regulated according to different sets of rules related to the conditions of their production, display, appreciation and the way images are invested with the status of being true or authentic instances of art or sacred images. Chapter One provides a discussion of the important motif of the image not made by an artist’s hand, or acheiropoietos, and its survival and transformation, including its traces in contemporary image-making practices. All images are the result of human making; they are fictions. The way the conditions of these fictions are negotiated, or the way the role of the maker is brought to visibility, or concealed, is a defining feature of the specific regime of representation. While the cult image concealed its maker in order to maintain its public significance, and the later art image celebrated the artist as a re-inventor of the old image, contemporary artists cite religious images in order to reflect on the very procedures that produce the public significance and status of images.

The role of ancient remains in the Sarmatian culture of early modern Poland

2018 ◽  
pp. 286-304
Author(s):  
Barbara Arciszewska
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
The Past ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Material Evidence ◽  
Ancient Remains ◽  
Class Discourse

Visible material remnants of ancient cultures were, for a variety of historical reasons, not particularly abundant in the territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569-1795). The past monuments of these lands were not hewn in stone and marble but in timber, leaving behind no impressive structures to provoke the interest of subsequent generations. The dearth of material evidence did not, however, prevent generations of Polish historians and antiquarians from assigning Greco-Roman identities to local monuments. They were keen to offer tangible proof of the past glory of the land inhabited by the alleged descendants of the Sarmatians. In this paper, some of these monuments are explored, especially the Mounds of Krakus and Wanda near Cracow as well as an alleged tomb of Ovid in Vohlyna. The narratives fabricated around them as a part of the ideology of Sarmatism, a class discourse, which constructed an identity for the Polish nobility as the descendants of the ancient tribe of Sarmatians, are also examined.

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