scholarly journals Affirming Divine Providence and Limiting the Powers of Saints: the Byzantine Debate about the Term of Life (6th-11th Centuries)

Scrinium ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 392-433
Author(s):  
Dirk Krausmüller
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Middle Age ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Divine Providence ◽  
Critical Editions ◽  
Contentious Issue ◽  
Biblical Commentaries ◽  
Willingness To Engage

Abstract One of the chief characteristics of Byzantine culture in the early Middle Age was the willingness to engage in sometimes fierce debates. The best known of these debates, the controversy about the veneration of images, has been studied by many scholars and is now well known. The same cannot be said about another contentious issue, the question of whether the time of one’s death was fixed from eternity or whether it could be changed. In the late 1970s Leendert Gerrit Westerink and Giuseppe Zanetto published critical editions of two major contributions to the debate, a disputation by Theophylact Simocatta and a dialogue by Patriarch Germanus of Constantinople. Yet this did not lead to sustained engagement with the texts. The only discussion is found in Wolfgang Lackner’s edition of a much later treatise by Nicephorus Blemmydes. In the introduction to his edition Lackner identified numerous relevant primary sources dating to the fourth to twelfth centuries, proposed a rough classification and discussed some of the arguments used by the authors. What is still missing is a reconstruction of the historical context of the debate. The present article seeks to fill this gap. It considers not only treatises about the term of life but also Biblical commentaries, homilies, hymns, letters and saints’ lives that can throw light on the debate.

scholarly journals The Almohads and the “Qur’anization” of War Narrative and Ritual

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (10) ◽  
pp. 876
Author(s):  
Javier Albarrán
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Direct Study ◽  
War Narrative ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
Formed Part ◽  
Religiosity And Spirituality ◽  
War Discourse

The Almohad movement (12th–13th centuries, Islamic West) had in the return to the direct study of the primary sources of Islam—the Qur’an and the Sunna—and in jihād, two of its most important pillars of legitimation and action. In this sense, it is an ideal period to study how both realities—Qur’an and jihād—were linked in a given historical context. During the Almohad period, the use of Qur’anic verses in accounts related to war episodes became widespread. We thus witness a “Qur’anization” of the war narrative, a resource adding greater religiosity and spirituality to the context of jihād, to its elaboration and discursive representation, and to its memory and remembrance through written testimonies. In this paper I study, through the main narrative and documentary sources of the period, how the Qur’an was inserted into and adapted to the Almohad war discourse. Likewise, this approach allows me to explore how the Qur’an came to life within the framework of the Almohad jihād, how it served for its justification and legitimation, and how it formed part of the ceremony and the war protocol of the Maghrebi caliphate, thus linking itself with other discursive and propaganda mechanisms such as architecture or military parades.

BARTÓK'S REVISIONS TO THE INSTRUMENTATION OF ‘DUKE BLUEBEARD'S CASTLE’

Tempo ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 67 (264) ◽  
pp. 52-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Márton Keréfky
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Change ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Opera House ◽  
One Act

AbstractThe full score of Béla Bartók's one-act opera Duke Bluebeard's Castle (1911) reached its final form through many intermediate stages and after many years. The most comprehensive revision had been carried out in 1917 before Bluebeard was finally put on the programme of the Budapest Opera House. Bartók's revisions concerned not only the ending of the opera and the vocal parts but also the instrumentation. On the basis of all available primary sources, the present article examines how the instrumentation changed between 1911 and 1925, when the full score was published by Universal Edition. As a result of experiences gained during rehearsals of The Wooden Prince in 1917, Bartók added two instruments, the celesta and the xylophone, which he had originally not used in Bluebeard. However, the original score included two tenor tuba parts, which he later replaced with trumpets and trombones. In the revised score Bartók applied new instrumental techniques, corrected an unplayable passage, made the orchestral material thinner in favour of the vocal parts, and altered the instrumentation in order to emphasize motivic connections. Most of these alterations, however, do not represent a conceptual change in the opera's instrumentation but rather realize Bartók's original ideas in a more precise and more elaborate way.

scholarly journals Constructing the rights and duties of slave-owners as socio-historic context of the New Testament

2009 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Goede
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Jewish Law ◽  
Religious Context ◽  
Legal Context ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Legal Contexts

This article aims to construct the rights and duties of slave- owners in antiquity as part of the socio-historical context of the New Testament. In order to achieve this aim, the primary sources referring to Greek, Roman and Jewish law of slavery will first be described. Three aspects of the law of slavery, namely legal definitions of freedom and slavery, the legal status of slaves, and the rights of slave-owners are investigated in Greek, Roman and Jewish law. Relevant texts from these sources are then identified, analysed and interpreted. The re- sults of this process of analysis and interpretation are used to construct the legal context within which the exhortations directed at slave-owners in the New Testament should be read. We submit that Jewish law provided a sound alternative legal and religious context to the writers of the New Testament addressing Christian slave-owners. This alternative context functioned as a counterweight to the strict legal contexts pro- vided by Greek and Roman law.

scholarly journals Lotmanian explosion: From peripheral space to dislocated time

2014 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-30
Author(s):  
Soo Hwan Kim
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Spatial Model ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Theoretical Implication ◽  
Time Model ◽  
Time Out ◽  
Theoretical System

The problem of the “shift” in Lotmanian thought in his last period (the so-called Lotmanian explosion) still remains a subject of controversy for those who are interested in the scholarly heritage of Lotman. Besides explanations pointing out the “circumstantial” factors (for example, the historical context or influence from other thinkers) which brought about changes in Lotman’s views, it is important to identify a dimension of substantial “internal” changes which took place in the theoretical system itself. Regarding the essential changes relating to the concept of explosion as a movement from a ‘spatial’, more specifically ‘centre-periphery’ model to a ‘temporal’, namely ‘dislocated time’ model, the present article will focus on revealing the theoretical implication of this movement. The concept of explosion as an exceptional moment of ‘time out of joint’ was an active alternative to a theoretical breakthrough which was introduced in the process of overcoming the limitations of a previous ‘spatial’ model.

‘A kind of suicide’? Errors and misconceptions in Roland Huntford's account of the last days of Scott's polar party

Polar Record ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 156-164
Author(s):  
Karen May ◽  
George Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Strong Motivation ◽  
Return Home

ABSTRACTIn writing and interviews Roland Huntford has stated that at the end of his life Captain Robert Falcon Scott ‘probably’ had no reason to wish to survive, and that he ‘persuaded’ Dr Edward A. Wilson and Lieutenant Henry Bowers to remain in the tent with him when they could have gone forward. This commentary demonstrates that Huntford's interpretation of events shows a serious misunderstanding of the primary sources and historical context; that Wilson and Bowers could not have survived had they gone forward, a fact which Huntford himself understands; and that Scott had extremely strong motivation to wish to return home.

Narratives of Buddhist legislation: Textual authority and legal heterodoxy in seventeenth through nineteenth-century Burma

2012 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Christian Lammerts
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Legal Ideology ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Textual Authority ◽  
The Status ◽  
Written Law ◽  
Asian History ◽  
The Relationship

For more than a century scholars of central and western mainland Southeast Asia have sought to characterise the status ofdhammasattha— the predominant genre of written law from the region before colonialism — and define its authority vis-à-vis Pali Buddhism. For some,dhammasatthatexts represent a predominantly ‘secular’ or ‘customary’ tradition, while for others they are seen as largely commensurate with, if not directly derived from, the religio-political ideas of a cosmopolitan and purportedly canonical ‘Theravāda’. However, scholarship has yet to investigate the way that regional authors during the late premodern period themselves understood the character and legitimacy of written law. The present article examines seventeenth through nineteenth-century Burmese narratives concerning the genealogy and status ofdhammasatthato advance a pluralist conception of the relationship between law and religion in Southeast Asian history. This analysis addresses a historical context where ideas concerning Buddhist textual authority were in the process of development, and where there were multiple and competing discourses of legal ideology in play. For elite monastic critics closely connected with royalty,dhammasatthastood in problematic relation to authoritative taxonomies of scripture, and its jurisprudence was seen to contradict authorised accounts of the origin and nature of Buddhist law; the genre thus required reform to be brought into alignment with what were construed as orthodox legal imaginaries. The principal hermeneutic move these monastic commentators performed to achieve this involved redescribingdhammasatthain light of such accounts as a variety of Buddhist royal legislation and written law as the prerogative of the Buddhist state.

The Past in Weimar History

2006 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROBERT GERWARTH
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
German History ◽  
Public Controversy ◽  
The Past ◽  
Wide Range

This article examines Weimar Germany's public controversy about the Republic's place in German history. In a period that was seen by many contemporaries as a time deprived of historical context, all political parties tried to legitimise their actions and aims through the construction of very different historical traditions. Based on a wide range of primary sources, the article seeks to analyse this ‘battle over the past’ within the broader context of Weimar's political culture and the Republic's struggle for survival.

scholarly journals ¡No lo haré más!: la sociedad española en El verdugo de Berlanga

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcos Rafael Cañas Pelayo
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Social Aspects ◽  
Spanish Society ◽  
The Social

Recientemente, la influencia del director Luis García Berlanga ha sido destacada por crítica y público. Generalmente asociado por su colaboración con el guionista Rafael Azcona, Berlanga fue un cineasta atípico cuyas películas han sido irónicas, pero serios exponentes de la evolución de la sociedad española durante el pasado siglo. En el presente artículo, intentaremos mostrar uno de sus más importantes trabajos, El Verdugo, analizando no solamente sus aspectos sociales, sino incluyendo un estudio del lenguaje cinematográfico empleado para ello y el particular estilo con el que el director abordó algunos de los temas más controvertidos de su tiempo.Abstract:The influential of the director Luis García Berlanga has been recently increased by critics and public. Generally associated with the script-player Rafael Azcona, Berlanga was an unusual artist which films have been and ironical but serious example of the changes and the evolution of the Spanish society during the last century. In the present article, we will try to show the social aspects of one of his most important masterpieces, El verdugo, analyzing not only the historical context, but also including his cinematographically language and particular style for translate to the big screen some controversial realities of their time.Palabras clave:Berlanga; Azcona; contexto social; ironía; El Verdugo.Keywords: Berlanga; Azona; Social Context; Irony; El Verdugo.

scholarly journals Epidemiology and the SIR Model: Historical Context to Modern Applications

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Francesca Bernardi
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Research ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Sir Model ◽  
Social Attitudes ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Mathematical Epidemiology ◽  
Credit Assignment ◽  
Historical Importance ◽  
Undergraduate Research Project

We suggest the use of historical documents and primary sources, as well as data and articles from recent events, to teach students about mathematical epidemiology. We propose a project suitable -- in different versions -- as part of a class syllabus, as an undergraduate research project, and as an extra credit assignment. Throughout this project, students explore mathematical, historical, and sociological aspects of the SIR model and approach data analysis and interpretation. Based on their work, students form opinions on public health decisions and related consequences. Feedback from students has been encouraging. We begin our project by having students read excerpts of documents from the early 1900s discussing the Indian plague epidemic. We then guide students through the derivation of the SIR model by analyzing the seminal 1927 Kermack and McKendrick paper, which is based on data from the Indian epidemiological event they have studied. After understanding the historical importance of the SIR model, we consider its modern applications focusing on the Ebola outbreak of 2014-2016 in West Africa. Students fit SIR models to available compiled data sets. The subtleties in the data provide opportunities for students to consider the data and SIR model assumptions critically. Additionally, social attitudes of the outbreak are explored; in particular, local attitudes towards government health recommendations.

scholarly journals Chronology of the Klip River Affair of 1847

Werkwinkel ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-41
Author(s):  
Michał Leśniewski
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Primary Sources

Abstract The aim of the present article is the reconstruction of the chronology of the klip River affair of 1847. Reading primary sources and literature for the natal history in the 1840s I realized that the chronology of the klip River affair is incomplete and incorrect, a d that this affects the analyses of this affair and the whole situation of natal colony at that time. Therefore the decision to reconstruct the chronology of this affair as much as possible and put it straight, in hope that it will be helpful for further studies of kwaZulunatal history during 1840s and 1850s.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document