2. Secularism in Western societies

2019 ◽  
pp. 6-30
Author(s):  
Andrew Copson
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Real World ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Full Theory ◽  
Late 18Th Century ◽  
City States ◽  
State Relations ◽  
First Time ◽  
The City

‘Secularism in Western societies’ begins by considering the city states of Ancient Greece and then the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire, with increasing church–state relations. It was the thinkers of the age of Enlightenment in Europe from the late 17th to the late 18th century whose work on church and state gave birth to a full theory of secularism that for the first time affected the policy of states in the real world. Official state secularism in France and America is discussed along with a look at modern Western societies where the rule of law through non-religious values embedded in constitutions has become the foundation of most states.

scholarly journals “His Soul Is Weeping inside That He Cannot Bury the Dead as before.” Plague and Rebellion in Debrecen (Hungary), 1739–1742

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 687
Author(s):  
Ildikó Sz. Kristóf
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
Medical Science ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Criminal Proceedings ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Anthropological Study ◽  
Late 18Th Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
Religious Piety ◽  
The City

This is a historical anthropological study of a period of social and religious tensions in a Calvinist city in the Kingdom of Hungary in the first half of the 18th century. The last and greatest plague epidemic to devastate Hungary and Transylvania between cca. 1738 and 1743 led to a clash of different opinions and beliefs on the origin of the plague and ways of fighting it. Situated on the Great Hungarian Plain, the city of Debrecen saw not only frequent violations of the imposed lockdown measures among its inhabitants but also a major uprising in 1739. The author examines the historical sources (handwritten city records, written and printed regulations, criminal proceedings, and other documents) to be found in the Debrecen city archives, as well as the writings of the local Calvinist pastors published in the same town. The purpose of the study is to outline the main directions of interpretation concerning the plague and manifest in the urban uprising. According to the findings of the author, there was a stricter and chronologically earlier direction, more in keeping with local Puritanism in the second half of the 17th century, and there was also a more moderate and later one, more in line with the assumptions and expectations of late 18th-century medical science. While the former set of interpretations seems to have been founded especially on a so-called “internal” cure (i.e., religious piety and repentance), the latter proposed mostly “external” means (i.e., quarantine measures and herbal medicine) to avoid the plague and be rid of it. There seems to have existed, however, a third set of interpretations: that of folk beliefs and practices, i.e., sorcery and magic. According to the files, a number of so-called “wise women” also attempted to cure the plague-stricken by magical means. The third set of interpretations and their implied practices were not tolerated by either of the other two. The author provides a detailed micro-historical analysis of local events and the social and religious discourses into which they were embedded.

Maputo

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Morton
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Foreign Investment ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
East Coast ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Late 18Th Century ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Indian Ocean World ◽  
The City

Maputo (Lourenço Marques until 1976) is the capital of Mozambique and one of the busiest port cities on the east coast of Africa. The Bay of Lourenço Marques had already been a source of ivory for the Indian Ocean world and Europe for centuries when, in the late 18th century, Portugal established a permanent garrison there, among the Mpfumo and other Xi-ronga-speaking clans. From 1898 until independence in 1975, the fort-turned-city was the administrative headquarters of Portugal’s territory of Mozambique, a home to many Portuguese settlers, and a stark example of racialized exploitation and urban segregation under colonial rule. It was also the principal transit hub for hundreds of thousands of southern Mozambican men recruited to labor in neighboring South Africa. Following independence, the city became a laboratory of revolutionary socialist experimentation as well as an overcrowded safe haven for refugees of Mozambique’s long and terrible civil war. Despite closer historical ties to South Africa than to most of Mozambique, Maputo is the country’s economic center and its gateway for foreign investment. According to 2017 census figures, the metropolitan population exceeded 2.5 million, making it one of the larger urban areas in southern Africa.

scholarly journals Church and State during the French Revolution in the Works of J.M. Zakher

2020 ◽  
Vol 162 (6) ◽  
pp. 121-133
Author(s):  
A.A. Kutuzova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Church And State ◽  
The State ◽  
French Society ◽  
Late 18Th Century ◽  
Comprehensive Picture ◽  
Revolutionary Period ◽  
The Church ◽  
The French Revolution

The relations between the church and the state during the revolutionary events in France in the late 18th century were discussed based on the works of Jakov Mikhailovich Zakher (1893–1963), an outstanding Soviet historian. J.M. Zakher’s works cast light on a number of questions: the general position of the church; the frame of people’s mind in the pre-revolutionary period; the emergence and development of the antireligious struggle; the roles played by J. Foucher and A. Schomet, two most prominent public figures of the deсhristianization movement who triggered the most dramatic changes in the spiritual framework of the French society; etc. It was concluded that, despite a whole complex of studies have been performed on the French Revolution, the works of J.M. Zakher provide an important systematic coverage of the state-church relations in France during the 18th century. His legacy clearly preserves the “École russe” traditions, such as thoroughness, scrupulousness and attention to details, as well as the desire to create a vivid and comprehensive picture of the past.

scholarly journals Karasubazar: Historical Topography of the City of the Crimean Khanate in the 16th-18th Centuries

2020 ◽  
pp. 4-16
Author(s):  
Sergei G. Bocharov
Keyword(s):  
Final Stage ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Town Planning ◽  
Shopping Malls ◽  
Planning History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Characteristic Features ◽  
First Time ◽  
The City ◽  
The Town

The article covers the main points of the town-planning history of Karasubazar, the city of the Crimean khanate, and, most importantly, offers a graphic reconstruction of its master plan for the last quarter of the 18th century, the final stage of the state’s existence. Reconstruction of the historical topography of the late medieval city was carried out for the first time on the basis of three types of sources – written, cartographic, and archaeological. All the basic elements of the city’s historical topography as well as the plan of quarterly residential development and a network of streets are reconstructed. Characteristic features of the location of the quarters inhabited by the Greek, Armenian and Jewish population among the main population of the Tatar inhabitants are revealed. City mosques, bathhouses, fountains supplying the citizens with water, hotels-caravanserais, shopping malls, and production workshops are localized. It is found out that Karasubazar was the second largest settlement in the state, its capital Bakhchisarai being the largest one. By the final stage of the Crimean khanate’s existence the area of the urban development of Karasubazar was 109.0 hectares

The Iberian Peninsula

2019 ◽  
pp. 583-602
Author(s):  
José Luis López Castro
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Iberian Peninsula ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Animal Husbandry ◽  
Indigenous Populations ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Julius Caesar ◽  
City States ◽  
Punic Wars ◽  
The City

The initial Phoenician presence in the Iberian Peninsula dates to the ninth century bce with the foundation of small settlements along the southern coast. During the eighth and seventh centuries bce, the number of colonial settlements along the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts of Iberia began to increase rapidly. Phoenicians traded with indigenous populations, exchanging high-quality artisanal products for metals from Iberia. In addition, colonial settlers exploited their surrounding territory for agriculture and animal husbandry. They also took advantage of marine resources such as fishing. The colonial population was socially stratified and included individuals of indigenous origin who worked in the various industries, as well as women who intermarried with foreigners. Around the beginning of the sixth century bce, the colonial population was restructured: the western Phoenicians organized themselves into city-states, a process that is recorded in the ancient written sources. They maintained commercial relations with the indigenous Iberians and with Carthaginians, Greeks, and Etruscans. In the final part of the third century bce, these cities allied with Carthage in the fight against Rome. Following Rome’s success in the Punic Wars and conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, the cities were required to pay tribute to Rome, except the city of Gades/Gadir (Cádiz), which maintained a foedus. The elite Phoenician citizens underwent a process of integration with the Roman Empire, eventually obtaining municipal status for their cities, some under Julius Caesar and others later during the Flavian period.

Aspects of Mediaeval Thought on Church and State

1947 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 403-422 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerhart B. Ladner
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Special Kind ◽  
Human Society ◽  
City Of God ◽  
Two Cities ◽  
Love Of God ◽  
Heavenly City ◽  
The City

“Two loves,” St. Augustine says in De Civitate Dei, “have made two cities, love of self unto contempt of God the Earthly City, love of God unto contempt of self the Heavenly City,” the City of God. These “cities”—civitates—are, of course, not states, but societies; St. Augustine himself tells us that the term civitas is an equivalent of the term society. They are societies, however, of a special kind. The Ciyitds Dei is a “mystical” society of all the elect, past, present and future. The Civitas Terrena, the Earthly City, is identical neither with the earthly state nor with any particular earthly state such as the Roman Empire, nor with any merely human society, it too is a “mystical” society, that of the impious, the damned.

scholarly journals La Basilica di San Miniato al Monte di Firenze (1018-2018)

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Ecclesiastical Reform ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
First Time ◽  
The City

Between the 11th and the 20th century, the monastery of San Miniato al Monte in Florence played a leading role in the religious and cultural life of the city. The volume analyses for the first time the historical and documentary evolution of this regular institute, famous almost only from the architectural and artistic points of view. The book focuses the period of the bishop’s patronage in the 11th century, when the monastery and some of its members emerged in the context of the ecclesiastical reform, and continues with the study of the the Olivetan monks community, during the 14th-16th centuries, to arrive at the important structural and functional, but also semantic, transformations of the monument between the 18th century and the contemporary times.

scholarly journals From a history of war into a multicultural urban environment: A cultural impact assessment of the conservation of the Swedish-Russian Fortress of Lappeenranta, Finland

1970 ◽  
pp. 74
Author(s):  
Suvi Niinisalo
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
Correctional Facility ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Cultural Impact ◽  
Late 18Th Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
The City ◽  
Second World

Finland, under Swedish rule at the time, started constructing the Lappeenranta Fortress in the 1720s for defence against an eastern threat. A small town had been founded on the site as early as 1649. In 1741, the Russians invaded the fortress in a fierce battle. Russians, led by Aleksandr Suvorov, started to improve the fortress in the late 18th century. The oldest buildings in the fortress date back to this time. When Finland was annexed into the Russian Empire as an autonomous grand duchy, the fortress was employed as a correctional facility for prisoners. After the Second World War, the fortress was left to deteriorate, but in the 1970s a 30-year conservation project was launched. This article explores the effects of this conservation work on the city of Lappeenranta as well as on its inhabitants.

Religion and Classical Europe, Twelfth Century bce–600 ce

2021 ◽  
pp. 18-37
Author(s):  
Christoph Auffarth
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
North West ◽  
The North ◽  
History Of ◽  
City States ◽  
Urban Character ◽  
The City

In a history of religion and Europe classical Antiquity is both an example of difference, that is, the polytheistic systems of Greek and Roman religions, and the beginnings of the monotheistic religions, which became the mainstream in medieval and modern Europe. Drawing on the rituals, symbols, and patterns of polytheism as the legacy of the palace cultures in the Ancient Near East and Greece (until 1200 bc), the city-states (poleis) adapted these to non-autocratic societies (polis-religion). In the empires of Hellenism and the Roman Empire itself, religions were not part of a power structure (e.g. a ruler-cult). Rather their urban character allowed a plural neighbourhood, in which the monotheistic religions were well integrated. In late Antiquity a long transformation formed the Middle Ages, when with the rise of Islam the Mediterranean became divided into three parts: the Islamic south, Greek Orthodoxy in the east, and Latin-speaking ‘Europe’ in the north-west.

scholarly journals The Bolognese Societates Armatae of the Late 13th Century

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 195-233
Author(s):  
Jürg Gassmann
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
13Th Century ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Italian City ◽  
City States ◽  
The City

The Bologna archives preserve the bye-laws of 24 „armed societies”, dating from between 1230 and the early 1300s, written in good notary Latin. Though known to exist in other Italian city-states, only few non-Bolognese armed society bye-laws are preserved. These armed societies had disappeared everywhere by the Late Middle Ages. This article explores the function of these armed societies and the feudal law aspects of the bye-laws - was their function predominantly military, social or political? Why did they suddenly appear, and just as suddenly disappear? How did they fit into Bologna’s constitution - how did they relate to the civic authorities, the guilds? How did these armed societies operate? Who were the members? What arms did they have? Did they participate in the warfare between the city-states, the battles of the Lombard League and the Holy Roman Empire, the struggles between the Emperor and the Pope, the feuds between the Ghibellines and the Guelphs?

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