Writing History

Author(s):  
W. B. Patterson

During the Renaissance and Reformation historical writing underwent dramatic changes in Europe and England. The recovery of many of the texts of classical antiquity that began in Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries became a focus for university scholars and literary circles. The German scholar Martin Luther, who protested against papal indulgences in 1517, provided the foundation for a radically different approach to the scriptures and to the study of the past. A school of historians led by Matthias Flacius Illyricus produced a series of volumes that showed that the Church had changed significantly over time in its teaching and practices. In England the Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries sought to avoid legends, distortions, and ideological assumptions and find a new approach to the investigation of the past. William Camden, a member of the society, helped to provide a new kind of history, one that significantly influenced Fuller.

1979 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 353-367
Author(s):  
Bernard J. Cooke

“It is probably safe to say that theology will utilize religious experience as a starting-point even more than it has done in the past two decades. This will mean that the development of ecclesiology will spring from careful reflection upon the communal experience of Christians, upon their shared awareness of what it means to be the church, upon the manifestations of the Spirit as prophetic and life-giving. This will not be an entirely new approach for ecclesiology; what will be new will be some of the experiences shared in tomorrow's church.”


2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 603-609 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN BREWER ◽  
SILVIA SEBASTIANI

According to Michel de Certeau, distance is the indispensable prerequisite for historical knowledge and the very characteristic of modern historiography. The historian speaks, in the present, about the absent, the dead, as Certeau labels the past, thus emphasizing the performative dimension of historical writing: “the function of language is to introduce through saying what can no longer be done.” As a consequence, the heterogeneity of two non-communicating temporalities becomes the challenge to be faced: the present of the historian, as a moment du savoir, is radically separated from the past, which exists only as an objet de savoir, the meaning of which can be restored by an operation of distantiation and contextualization. In Evidence de l’histoire: Ce que voient les historiens, François Hartog takes up the question of history writing and what is visible, or more precisely the modalities historians have employed to narrate the past, opening up the way to a reflection on the boundaries between the visible and the invisible: the mechanisms that have contributed to establish these boundaries over time, and the questions that have legitimized the survey of what has been seen or not seen. But, as Mark Phillips points out, it is the very ubiquity of the trope of distance in historical writings that has paradoxically rendered it almost invisible to historians, so that “it has become difficult to distinguish between the concept of historical distance and the idea of history itself.”


1981 ◽  
Vol 71 ◽  
pp. 50-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emilio Gabba

Like all works of literature, works of history end up sooner or later with a readership quite different from that envisaged or hoped for by their authors. A subtle and polemical work such asThe Gallic Warof Caesar has become a standard text for teaching Latin in the early years of secondary education, as have the tender and sophisticated elegies of Tibullus and Propertius. In Italy, the unpopularity of ‘The Betrothed’ by A. Manzoni, a finely ironical and difficult but rewarding novel, is the result of the distaste or boredom experienced by children forced to read it at school.A similar fate has dogged Thucydides. As T. P. Wiseman has recently emphasized, Thucydides and Polybius, precisely because their historical method is close to our own, are regarded as the paradigms against which to judge ancient historical writing—quite wrongly. In fact they are untypical and exceptional; and one has moreover to ask to what extent they were even properly understood in antiquity. In a famous chapter near the beginning of his work (1. 22. 4), Thucydides proudly distances it from that of Herodotus, though without naming him: his own history is not designed for passing appreciation, but is to be of permanent value. Because human nature is always the same, a critical record of past events will present analogies and resemblances when compared with future developments. Knowledge of the past is thus useful, because it improves ones judgment and understanding and even suggests how to behave in situations in which one may find oneself.


Author(s):  
K.J. Drake

The extra Calvinisticum, that the eternal Son maintains his existence beyond the flesh during his earthly ministry and perpetually, divided the Lutheran and Reformed traditions during the Reformation. This book explores the emergence and development of the extra Calvinisticum in the Reformed tradition by tracing its exposition from Ulrich Zwingli to early Reformed orthodoxy. Rather than being an ancillary issue, the questions surrounding the extra Calvinisticum were a determinative factor in the differentiation of Magisterial Protestantism into rival confessions. Reformed theologians maintained this doctrine in order to preserve the integrity of Christ’s divine and human natures as the mediator between God and humanity. This rationale remained consistent across this period, with increasing elaboration and sophistication to meet the challenges leveled against the doctrine in Lutheran polemics. The study begins with Zwingli’s early use of the extra Calvinisticum in the eucharistic controversy with Martin Luther and especially as the alternative to Luther’s doctrine of the ubiquity of Christ’s human body. Over time, Reformed theologians, such as Peter Martyr Vermigli and Antoine de Chandieu, articulated the extra Calvinisticum with increasing rigor by incorporating conciliar christology, the church fathers, and scholastic methodology to address the polemical needs of engagement with Lutheranism. The book illustrates the development of christological doctrine by Reformed theologians offering a coherent historical narrative of Reformed christology from its emergence into the period of confessionalization. The extra Calvinisticum was interconnected to broader concerns affecting concepts of the union of Christ’s natures, the communication of attributes, and the understanding of heaven.


Author(s):  
Sara Hughes ◽  
Megan Mullin

Decentralization in water management authority has shifted decision-making to the local level and expanded participation to include a wider set of actors. The result is a politics of water that is more variable than in the past, across space and over time, reflecting the diversity of local values and local water resources. Fragmentation of policy responsibility offers potential for more environmental and financial sustainability in the long term, but in the short term it requires management agencies and stakeholders to find ways to interact effectively. How we design our local institutions, and the incentives that higher levels of government provide for directing local decisions, will help determine whether the new approach produces a more sustainable and resilient water future.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (7) ◽  
pp. 355-367
Author(s):  
Благоје Чоботин

This study is the result of field research that we have conducted in some of the villages situated on the shores of Mures River, where a Serbian community still exists and therefore I managed to identify some important people that know the customs and popular traditions of the Church. The content of the article presents the elements of the Christmas rituals, those that are still retained and used, as well as those rituals from the past that have been lost over time and are no longer practiced today. We have also tried to identify the causes that contributed to the forgetting or loss of these Christmas habits and rituals of the Serbian community living on the shores of Mures River.


2020 ◽  
pp. 72-83
Author(s):  
Т.И. Янгайкина ◽  
П.Н. Назин

Цель статьи – изучить современные формы мордовской свадебной обрядности, выявить степень их соответствия традиционным обрядовым практикам прошлого и показать основные тенденции их эволюции (на полевом материале села Адашево Кадошкинского района Республики Мордовия). В качестве источников использованы этнографические факты, отраженные в собранных авторами полевых материалах, архивные документы, результаты исследований российских этнографов. Особенностью исследования является личное участие авторов в связанных со свадьбой событиях (праздничной процессии и православно-обрядовой части). Большинство выявленных и использованных материалов вводится в научный оборот впервые. Проведенные изыскания позволяют сделать вывод о том, что в прошлом мордовская свадьба заключала в себе сакральный смысл, однако в современном обществе обряды и традиции сохраняются лишь частично и являются скорее «театрализованной» постановкой. The aimof the study is to assess the degree of compliance of the modern forms of Mordovian wedding rituals spread in the village of Adashevo with traditional ritual practices of the past and to identify the main trends in their evolution. The sources used were ethnographic facts reflected in the field materials the authors collected, archival documents, the results of research by Russian and Mordovian ethnographers. Within the framework of the historical and ethnographic approach, the study used various methods: historiographic, comparative, logical, systemic analysis; empirical (conversation, interview, questioning, visiting rituals), which made it possible to collect the necessary information in archival and field conditions. An example for studying was the wedding of a young Mordovian couple, which took place in the village of Adashevo. The details of the matchmaking, reproduced according to a local informant’s testimony, are considered; the details of the process and the related planning of the upcoming wedding are characterized. Archpriest Pavel (Nazin), one of the authors of the article, conducted the wedding ceremony in the local Trinity Church. The authors give a detailed description of the traditional wedding rituals that follow the church wedding (dressing the bride, naming, gift-giving rituals). The role of some objects (towels, bells, etc.) in wedding rituals is characterized. Special attention is paid to the street procession of guests and to the specific rite of avozen' praftoma [rolling the mother-in-law]. Among the rituals on the second day of the wedding, the custom of making pancakes by the daughter-in-law and the toron kandy [groomsman], and ceremonies with the posazhyonnaya mat’ [woman giving the bride to the groom], are described. The role and place of newlyweds at the wedding table in the past and present are characterized. The general and special elements of the Mordovian wedding ritual complex, common in the village of Adashevo, have been identified. It has been established that most of the traditional rituals are still preserved: matchmaking, weddings, bride complaints, weddings in national costumes. Over time, many rituals lost their original meaning and were performed only according to tradition, some received a new understanding, and others acquired a comic playful character. Most of the rituals are currently perceived not as a truly sacred act, but rather are a simple reproduction of forms that took place in the past, a kind of tribute to tradition, the adherence to which is not accompanied by a deep comprehension.


Author(s):  
Levi Roach

This book takes a fresh look at documentary forgery and historical memory in the Middle Ages. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, religious houses across Europe began falsifying texts to improve local documentary records on an unprecedented scale. As the book illustrates, the resulting wave of forgery signaled major shifts in society and political culture, shifts which would lay the foundations for the European ancien régime. Spanning documentary traditions across France, England, Germany and northern Italy, the book examines five sets of falsified texts to demonstrate how forged records produced in this period gave voice to new collective identities within and beyond the Church. Above all, the book indicates how this fad for falsification points to new attitudes toward past and present — a developing fascination with the signs of antiquity. These conclusions revise traditional master narratives about the development of antiquarianism in the modern era, showing that medieval forgers were every bit as sophisticated as their Renaissance successors. Medieval forgers were simply interested in different subjects — the history of the Church and their local realms, rather than the literary world of classical antiquity. As a comparative history of falsified records at a crucial turning point in the Middle Ages, the book offers valuable insights into how institutions and individuals rewrote and reimagined the past.


2013 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 132-143
Author(s):  
Charlotte Methuen

It is well known that Martin Luther found ultimate authority sola scriptura. The evangelical endeavour which he initiated and exemplified focused on the return to the gospel and the rediscovery of a church modelled according to scriptural lines. For the Reformers, the truly catholic church was that church which adhered most closely to the church established by Scripture. The early church, being chronologically closest to that established in Scripture, was more authentic, not yet affected by innovation. But how were the details of that church to be discovered? Scripture was not always informative on practical questions of church life and ecclesiastical order, and for these an appeal to church history was necessary. Drawing particularly on Scott Hendrix’s study of Luther’s attitude towards the papacy, and the studies by John Headley and others of Luther’s view of, and appeal to, church history, this essay explores the ways in which Luther used his knowledge of church history to define and support his developing critique of the papacy. It focuses on his early writings to 1521, but will also consider the later work Von den Consiliis und Kirchen (1539), a testimony to Luther’s growing interest in the history of the church.


1997 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 356-364
Author(s):  
J.M. Van der Merwe

Church Reformers we should not forget. On thefifth of November 1980, the Reformed Day Witness was published in Die Kerkbode by eight theologians of the Dutch Reformed Church. The Witness, as it became known, soon had storm clouds gathering in the church, because of it's content. It was a wakeup call to the church about it's prophetic call, it's guidance to government and it's role in reconciliation. Many ministers and members of the church supported The Witness while church leadership was mainly against it. In the end The Witness was silenced but the seed were sown. Many ministers and church members now knew that the Dutch Reformed Church had to take a new approach with regard to it's prophetic call and it's role in society. When we look back over what happened in the past seventeen years, history tells us that these men were prophets of their time, men that we must not forget.


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