From Idolatry to Religions: the Missionary Discourses on Hinduism and Buddhism and the Invention of Monotheistic Confucianism, 1550-1700

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (6) ◽  
pp. 499-536
Author(s):  
Joan-Pau Rubiés

Abstract The emergence of a European discourse to distinguish, analyze, and historicize various non-Biblical religious traditions within Asia involved a significant amplification of the concept of idolatry. The Jesuit experience of Japanese Buddhism in the second half of the sixteenth century posed a particular challenge, because of its overt atheism. The patristic models of Christian apologetics, based on distinguishing elite monotheism from popular religion in ancient paganism, had been useful in India, but in Japan had to be replaced by a system where the elite cultivated an atheistic form of esoteric monism. When focusing their dialectical firepower upon the doctrines of double truth and non-theistic monism, the Jesuits, led by Alessandro Valignano, were in fact responding to the doctrinal distinctiveness of East Asian Buddhism, notably the emphasis on provisional teachings, on the one hand, and Buddha-nature, on the other. When in China Ricci decided to classify the Confucian literati as civil philosophers rather than as a religious elite, he also transferred Valignano’s critique of Buddhist pantheism to specifically Neo-Confucian doctrines, distinct from the supposed monotheism of the original Confucians.

1981 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 149-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip M. J. McNair

Between the execution of Gerolamo Savonarola at Florence in May 1498 and the execution of Giordano Bruno at Rome in February 1600, western Christendom was convulsed by the protestant reformation, and the subject of this paper is the effect that that revolution had on the Italy that nourished and martyred those two unique yet representative men: unique in the power and complexity of their personalities, representative because the one sums up the medieval world with all its strengths and weaknesses while the other heralds the questing and questioning modern world in which we live.


2007 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 43-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirsten Gibson

The naming of John Dowland as ‘Author’ on the title page of his publication The First Booke of Songes or Ayres (1597) suggests a proprietary relationship between the composer and his work. This proprietary relationship is, perhaps, reinforced with the alignment of Dowland’s intellectual activities as ‘author’ with the notions of ‘composition’ and ‘invention’ in the same passage. All three terms could be used by the late sixteenth century to refer to notions of creativity, individual intellectual labour or origination. While many early examples of the use of ‘author’ refer specifically to God or Christ as creator, such as Chaucer’s declaration that ‘The auctour of matrimonye is Christ’, by the sixteenth century it was increasingly used to refer to an individual originator of intellectual or artistic creation closer to the modern sense of the word. Its sixteenth-century usage is, for instance, reflected in the title ‘A tretys, excerpte of diverse labores of auctores’, or as in a reference in 1509 to ‘The noble actor plinius’. Likewise, ‘invent’ or ‘inventor’ could be used to refer to the process of individual intellectual creation, exemplified by its use in 1576 ‘Your brain or your wit, and your pen, the one to invent and devise, the other to write’, while ‘compose’ could mean to make, to compose in words, ‘to write as author’ or, more specifically, to write music.


Daímon ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 171-184
Author(s):  
Julián Barenstein

En este trabajo nos proponemos poner de manifiesto un aspecto poco estudiado del Contra los griegos de Taciano (circa 170); nos referimos a la introducción del discurso historiográfico en la apologética cristiana. En cumplimiento de nuestro objetivo daremos cuenta, por una parte, del carácter idiosincrático de la producción de este apologista en el contexto de la defensa de la fe cristiana en el s. II y analizaremos, por otra, lo que de acuerdo con nuestra línea de investigación es lo más relevante de su controvertido modus cogitandi: el rechazo de la Filosofía como via regia de acceso al Cristianismo para las gentes de alta cultura y la introducción del discurso historiográfico como garantía de veracidad. In this paper we propose to highlight a little studied aspect of the Discourse Against the Greeks of Taciano (circa 170); we refer to the introduction of historiographical discourse in Christian apologetics. In fulfillment of our objective we will give account, on the one hand, of the idiosyncratic character of the production of this apologist in the context of the defense of the Christian faith in the s. II and we will analyze, on the other hand, what according to our line of research is the most relevant of his controversial modus cogitandi: the rejection of Philosophy as a way of access to Christianity for people of high culture and the introduction of the historiographical discourse as a guarantee of truthfulness.


2016 ◽  
Vol 61 (S24) ◽  
pp. 93-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rossana Barragán Romano

AbstractLabour relations in the silver mines of Potosí are almost synonymous with the mita, a system of unfree work that lasted from the end of the sixteenth century until the beginning of the nineteenth century. However, behind this continuity there were important changes, but also other forms of work, both free and self-employed. The analysis here is focused on how the “polity” contributed to shape labour relations, especially from the end of the seventeenth century and throughout the eighteenth century. This article scrutinizes the labour policies of the Spanish monarchy on the one hand, which favoured certain economic sectors and regions to ensure revenue, and on the other the initiatives both of mine entrepreneurs and workers – unfree, free, and self-employed – who all contributed to changing the system of labour.


1893 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 127-292
Author(s):  
I. S. Leadam

In the ‘English Historical Review’ for April (1893) Professor Ashley offers some criticisms upon the ‘Introduction to the Inquisition of 1517,’ contributed by me to the ‘Transactions of the Royal Historical Society’ for 1892. One object of that Introduction, it may be remembered, was to disprove the assertion of Professor Ashley that at the time when the evictions for inclosure began, and until ‘towards the end of the period,’ ‘the mass of copyholders’ had no legal security. In my view, the manorial records, the compilations of laws in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the practice of the courts, even the treatises of the jurists when critically scrutinised, led to the conclusion not merely that copyholders enjoyed protection in legal theory, but that their predecessors in title, the villeins, had done so before them. I drew no distinction in this matter between customary tenants and copyholders, as Professor Ashley appears to suppose, but showed that security extended even to villeins by blood, or ‘nativi,’ on custo-mary lands. Professor Ashley's proposition that ‘customary tenants’ and ‘copyholders’ were equivalent terms was never doubted by me, and is irrelevant to my argument. Indeed, it is assumed by me on the very pages to which he refers. ‘Mr. Leadam,’ he says, ‘draws a sharp distinction between “copyholders” on the one side and “tenants at will” on the other—a distinction which one may doubt whether the men of the sixteenth century would have felt so keenly.’ The distinction, as those who turn to the passage will see, is between ‘copyholders,’ used in Fitzherbert's sense as equivalent to customary tenants, who were ‘tenants at will according to the custom of the manor,’ and ‘tenants at will at Common Law.’


2020 ◽  
Vol 94 (2) ◽  
pp. 305-322
Author(s):  
Henrik Lagerlund ◽  

In this article, I present two virtually unknown sixteenth-century views of human freedom, that is, the views of Bartolomaeus de Usingen (1465–1532) and Jodocus Trutfetter (1460–1519) on the one hand and John Mair (1470–1550) on the other. Their views serve as a natural context and partial background to the more famous debate on human freedom between Martin Luther (1483–1556) and Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466–1536) from 1524–1526. Usingen and Trutfetter were Luther’s philosophy teachers in Erfurt. In a passage from Book III of John Mair’s commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics from 1530, he seems to defend a view of human freedom by which we can will evil for the sake of evil. Very few thinkers in the history of philosophy have defended such a view. The most famous medieval thinker to do so is William Ockham (1288–1347). To illustrate how radical this view is, I place him in the historical context of such thinkers as Plato, Augustine, Buridan, and Descartes.


2010 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-107
Author(s):  
Hetty Zock

The author argues that individual usage and appropriation of religious traditions has become increasingly important. Therefore, church leaders and pastors should pay more attention to the psychological functions of religion. On the one hand religion serves as a source of existential meaning-making and on the other hand as a powerful glue of group identities. By discussing the psychological theories of Erik H. Erikson, Hubert Hermans and James W. Jones, the Janus face of religion is highlighted. Religion may lead to intolerance and stereotyped behaviour (when it is only used to reduce identity anxiety and narcissistic problems), but it may also stimulate empathy and dialogical capacities.


2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefanie Knauss ◽  
Daria Pezzoli-Olgiati

In this introductory article to the special issue of Religion and Gender on gender, normativity and visuality, we establish the theoretical framework to discuss the influence of visual culture on gender norms. This introduction also provides a reflection on how these norms are communicated, reaffirmed and contested in religious contexts. We introduce the notion of visuality as individual and collective signifying practices, with a particular focus on how this regards gender norms. Two main ways in which religion, gender and normativity are negotiated in visual meaning making processes are outlined: on the one hand, the religious legitimation of gender norms and their communication and confirmation through visual material, and on the other hand, the challenge of these norms through the participation in visual culture by means of seeing and creating. These introductory reflections highlight the common concerns of the articles collected in this issue: the connection between the visualisation of gender roles within religious traditions and the influence of religious gender norms in other fields of (visual) culture.


Al-Albab ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Ansor ◽  
Laila Sari Masyhur

Using a theory of power relation of Michel Foucault, the following research analyzes the behavior of religious conversion in the community of the Indigenous People of Anak Rawa in Penyengat Village, Siak District, hereinafter referred to as the Native People. The research will show that in the middle of the domination of the State and theologians, the community of Indigenous People actualizes power to maintain its identity in the midst of the invasion of new values and culture. To support the argument, the researchers traced the religiosity of the Indigenous People focusing on several events of everyday life such as traditions of marriage, death, and celebration of religious holidays. In addition to adapting to the country’s religious traditions they have adopted, this community also modifies the ritual traditions of each religion so that these traditions become a means of preserving their communal identity as a native tribe. The research ultimately shows the interplay between the State and theologians as the dominant group, on the one hand, and the indigenous community as a subjugated group, on the other, in the use of power. Keywords: Indigenous People, Religion, Power Relation


1997 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 43-62
Author(s):  
Brenda Dunn-Lardeau

In 1534 Pierre de Sainte Lucie published Jehan Du Pré's Le Palais des Nobles Dames in which the treatment of the theme of prodigious births and death in childbirth is of particular interest compared to that of his sixteenth century contemporaries. On the one hand, the author's religious faith enables him to adopt a sympathetic attitude toward certain aspects of pregnancy such as unusual variations in gestation length. On the other hand, the same faith limits Du Pré's critical powers since it prevents him from distinguishing legend from reality. His conception of motherhood is confined to the biological level. Finally, the woodcuts represent midwives still playing a major role in obstetrics in contrast with their growing marginalization by surgeons in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.


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