scholarly journals Introduction: Early Catholic Orientalism and the Missionary Discovery of Asian Religions

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (6) ◽  
pp. 463-470
Author(s):  
Robert Trent Pomplun ◽  
Joan-Pau Rubiés ◽  
Ines G. Županov

Abstract New encounters in America, Africa, and Asia facilitated the “discovery” of non-Biblical religious traditions that were distinct from the ancient paganism known to Christian humanists and antiquarians from classical sources and patristic literature. Although Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism did not exist as concepts in the early modern period, the three articles in this special issue illustrate the learning process by which a number of influential and pioneering Catholic missionaries came to distinguish these various traditions from each other. We argue that they did not simply “invent” new religions arbitrarily: instead, on the basis of the very broad categories of true religion and idolatry, they engaged in some close interaction and “dialogue”—albeit usually polemical—with local religious elites and their writings, including Eastern Christians. In addition, in the case of the Jesuits in particular, we note that these various engagements were often connected events that influenced each other in important ways, from India to Japan, from Japan to China, and from all these to Tibet.

Itinerario ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (01) ◽  
pp. 47-62
Author(s):  
Cátia Antunes ◽  
Susana Münch Miranda

While this special issue raises a significant number of questions, constraints have dictated that only some of these questions are actually answered. The pioneering work presented consequently remains a modest attempt to initiate a more general discussion about the causes and the social and economic consequences of business failure in the early modern period, particularly with regard to colonial enterprises.


2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-77
Author(s):  
Eva M. Pascal

Buddhism and Christianity are major world religions that both make universal and often competing claims about the nature of the world and ultimate reality. These claims are difficult to reconcile and often go to the core of Buddhist and Christian worldviews. This article looks at the age of encounter in the early modern period for ways Christians and Buddhists forged friendship through common spiritual commitments and action. Beyond seeking theological and philosophical exchange, convergences along spirituality and practice proved important vehicles for friendship. With the examples of Christian–Buddhist friendship from historical case studies, this article explores the ways contemporary Christian expressions of spiritual practice and advocacy allows Christians to connect with Buddhists. Early modern encounters have important lessons for furthering Christian–Buddhist friendship that may also be applied to other religious traditions.


2014 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-244
Author(s):  
Eli Rubin

The essays in this special issue all focus on the city of Berlin, in particular, its relationship with its margins and borders over thelongue dureé. The authors—Kristin Poling, Marion Gray, Barry Jackisch, and Eli Rubin—all consider the history of Berlin over the last two centuries, with special emphasis on how Berlin expanded over this time and how it encountered the open spaces surrounding it and within it—the “green fields” (grüne Wiesen) referred to in the theme title. Each of them explores a different period in Berlin's history, and so together, the essays form a long dureé history of Berlin, although each of the essays in its own way explores the roots of Berlin's history in deeper time scales, from the early modern period, to the Middle Ages, and even to the very end of the last ice age, more than 10,000 years ago.


2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Calaresu

Abstract All of the articles in this special issue show the necessity of having to combine different kinds of sources—texts with images, images with objects, and objects with absences—to build an integrated history of the material worlds of food in the early modern period. They also reflect newer approaches to materiality which are sensitive to the relationship between matter and the senses and consider the haptic, visual, olfactory, and even aural aspects of cooking and eating alongside taste. In turn, the tastes of collectors and the fragility and absence of source material also need to be taken into consideration in order to write a meaningful cultural and social history of food. Despite the ephemeral nature of eating and cooking, this special issue shows that the sources studied by historians of material culture of the early modern period are remarkably rich, and their analysis fruitful.


Author(s):  
Natália Da Silva Perez

In this introductory text to the special issue Regulating Access: Privacy and the Private in Early Modern Dutch Contexts, Natália da Silva Perez argues that privacy can be a productive analytical lens to examine the social history of the Dutch Republic. She starts by providing an overview of theoretical definitions of privacy and of the ‘private versus public’ dichotomy, highlighting their implications for the study of society. Next, she discusses the modern view of privacy as a legally protected right, explaining that we must adjust expectations when applying the concept to historical examination: in the early modern period, privacy was not yet fully incorporated within a legal framework, and yet, it was a widespread need across different echelons of society. She provides a historical overview of this widespread need for privacy through instances where people attempted to regulate access to their material and immaterial resources. Finally, she describes how the four articles in this special issue contribute to our understanding of the role of privacy in early modern Dutch life.


2015 ◽  
Vol 19 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 93-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maartje van Gelder ◽  
Tijana Krstić

This special issue, an exercise in integrated Mediterranean history through the lens of diplomacy, demonstrates that diplomatic genres and practices associated with a European political and cultural tradition, on the one hand, or an Islamic tradition, on the other, were not produced in isolation but attained meaning through the process of mediation and negotiation among intermediaries of different confessional and social backgrounds. Building on the “new diplomatic history,” the essays focus on non-elite (e.g. Christian slaves, renegades, Jewish doctors, Moriscos) and less commonly studied (mid- and high-ranking Muslim officials) intermediaries in Mediterranean cross-confessional diplomacy. The issue argues that the early modern period witnessed a relative balance of power among Muslim- and Christian-ruled polities: negotiations entailed not only principles of reciprocity, parity, and commensurability, but these were actually enforceable in practice. This challenges the notion of European diplomatic supremacy, prompting scholars to fundamentally rethink the narrative about the origins of early modern diplomacy.


2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (5) ◽  
pp. 470-491 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leigh T.I. Penman

Contributing to discussions concerning the influence of eschatological ideas on trajectories of natural philosophy in the early modern period, the present article analyses several distinct projects which emerged from the intellectual and religious traditions of Lutheran confessional culture, which imagined a future earthly golden age that existed in a discursive space between communistic utopia and heavenly Jerusalem. A consideration of this impulse among figures who emerged from Lutheran culture – like Wolfgang Ratke, Wilhelm Eo Neuheuser, Johann Valentin Andreae, Johann Permeier, and even Samuel Hartlib – sheds a unique light on broader issues of epistemology, eschatology and reforming activism of the period, and the varying cultures – natural philosophical, political and religious – which could be harmonized within the ambit of an encompassing eschatological vision.



Author(s):  
Adrian Plau

This chapter gives an overview of the transformations that combined to give early modern Hinduism its distinct characteristics. New practices of bhakti devotionalism reshaped the relationship between devotee and deity; new modes of organization, both within religious lineages and between religious agents and imperial courts, brought ideas of identity into heightened focus; and the rise of a vernacular language was followed by the emergence of broadly popular devotional literatures that still define the period in the historical imagination. By detailing the dynamics of these transformations across the lives of several key figures of the early modern period, the chapter argues that the circulation of ideas, impulses, and practices across languages and religious traditions contributed to a new set of modes of delineating Hindu identities and, consequently, that debates on the concept of ‘Hinduism’ itself should not overlook the early modern period.


2012 ◽  
pp. 135-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. Volkova

The article describes the evolution of accounting from the simple registration technique to economic and social institution in medieval Italy. We used methods of institutional analysis and historical research. It is shown that the institutionalization of accounting had been completed by the XIV century, when it became a system of codified technical standards, scholar discipline and a professional field. We examine the interrelations of this process with business environment, political, social, economic and cultural factors of Italy by the XII—XVI centuries. Stages of institutionalization are outlined.


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