scholarly journals Finding Martyrs at Home?: Jesuit Attempts at Redefining Martyrdom in the Seventeenth Century and Their Censure

2022 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-35
Author(s):  
Jean-Pascal Gay

Abstract Pope Francis’s recent recognition of the death of several priests active in Guatemala in the 1980s as martyrdom has reminded the public of a long-term hesitation within Catholicism as to the boundaries of martyrdom. Key aspects of the history of this hesitation played out in the seventeenth century. Several religious orders—most prominently the Jesuits—argued for a redefinition of martyrdom that would include the so-called “martyrdom of charity” (i.e. the death of those who had imperiled their lives to care for the sick). Among the theologians that entered the fray to advocate for such a redefinition, the most prominent is certainly Theophile Raynaud (the “new Bellarmine” of the mid seventeenth century) whose De martyrio per pestem was censured with other texts that promoted the same position, when the Inquisition decided to take a stand against the campaign for the redefinition of martyrdom. By studying Raynaud’s and other treatises, as well as their censure, this paper will try to assess the significance of this debate for Jesuit history and that of early modern Catholicism. It will try and show how it connected with the theological controversies of the time but also how it pertained to an issue within the order, namely that of the hierarchy of ministries that sometimes weighed on how the order operated, particularly in Europe.

2013 ◽  
Vol 68 (01) ◽  
pp. 5-39
Author(s):  
Jean-Pascal Gay

This article attempts to bring together religious history and the history of the public sphere. It proposes to reinterpret the historical significance of doctrinal controversies by examining the relationship between a regime of publicity and an ecclesiastic regime. For instance, seventeenth-century French theological controversies were characterized by the frequent publication of letters, which indicates just how strongly the religious legitimacy of a given controversy was called into question. The publication of letters appears to have offered a means of responding to the destabilization of publishing practice caused by these controversies. It also attests to both the religious refusal to transform the church into a public sphere and how the ecclesiastic aspect of doctrinal controversies made them difficult to resolve. The relationship between publicity and religion thus appears particularly relevant for both historians of early modern Catholicism and historians of the public sphere.


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 570
Author(s):  
James W. Watts

Leviticus 25:39–46 describes a two-tier model of slavery that distinguishes Israelites from foreign slaves. It requires that Israelites be indentured only temporarily while foreigners can be enslaved as chattel (permanent property). This model resembles the distinction between White indentured slaves and Black chattel slaves in the American colonies. However, the biblical influence on these early modern practices has been obscured by the rarity of citations of Lev. 25:39–46 in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century sources about slavery. This article reviews the history of slavery from ancient Middle Eastern antiquity through the seventeenth century to show the unique degree to which early modern institutions resembled the biblical model. It then exposes widespread knowledge of Leviticus 25 in early modern political and economic debates. Demonstrating this awareness shows with high probability that colonial cultures presupposed the two-tier model of slavery in Leviticus 25:39–46 to naturalize and justify their different treatment of White indentured slaves and Black chattel slaves.


Histories ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 108-121
Author(s):  
Satoshi Murayama ◽  
Hiroko Nakamura

Jan de Vries revised Akira Hayami’s original theory of the “Industrious Revolution” to make the idea more applicable to early modern commercialization in Europe, showcasing the development of the rural proletariat and especially the consumer revolution and women’s emancipation on the way toward an “Industrial Revolution.” However, Japanese villages followed a different path from the Western trajectory of the “Industrious Revolution,” which is recognized as the first step to industrialization. This article will explore how a different form of “industriousness” developed in Japan, covering medieval, early modern, and modern times. It will first describe why the communal village system was established in Japan and how this unique institution, the self-reliance system of a village, affected commercialization and industrialization and was sustained until modern times. Then, the local history of Kuta Village in Kyô-Otagi, a former county located close to Kyoto, is considered over the long term, from medieval through modern times. Kuta was not directly affected by the siting of new industrial production bases and the changes brought to villages located nearer to Kyoto. A variety of diligent interactions with living spaces is introduced to demonstrate that the industriousness of local women was characterized by conscience-driven perseverance.


The Lake Rudolf Rift Valley Expedition was designed to carry out many different lines of investigation in the Lake Rudolf Basin. One of the chief of these was a study of the geological history of that part of the East African Rift Valley. The expedition was assisted financially by The Royal Society, The Geological Society of London, The Royal Geographical Society, The Percy Sladen Trustees and the Geographical and Geological Sections of the British Association. A general description of the activities of the Expedition was given in a paper read before the Royal Geographical Society (Fuchs 1935). Owing to the tragic loss of two members of the expedition, Dr W. S. Dyson and Mr W. R. H. Martin, two fruitless months were spent searching for them. Consequently a great amount of the work planned for the east side of the lake had to be abandoned. Nevertheless, the considerable distance travelled within the 50,000 sq. miles of the Rudolf Basin has enabled me to make out the chief events of its geological history. I am very much indebted to all those who assisted us in the field and at home, in particular to the Kenya Government, the Officers of the King’s African Rifles, and Mr H. L. Sikes of the Public Works Department; I would also like to thank Mr A. M. Champion, Provincial Commissioner of Turkana, who wholeheartedly assisted us in every way possible both in the field and at home, for he has placed at my disposal his own excellent topographical maps and his extensive observations on the geology of the area. I am also deeply indebted to Professor O. T. Jones, Mr Henry Woods and Mr W. Campbell Smith for their criticisms. Mr Campbell Smith has also given me provisional identifications of the rocks.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 232-244
Author(s):  
Kyungmoo Heo ◽  
Yongseok Seo

Public interests in coming futures of Korea continue to be increasing. Fears on uncertainties and pending challenges as well as demands on a new but Korea-own development model trigger a quantitative increase of futures research and relevant organizations in both public and private. The objective of this paper is to review history of futures studies and national development plan and strategy linked with foresight along with its challenges and recommendations. This paper identifies drawbacks and limits of Korea foresight such as misapplication of foresight as a strategic planning tool for modernization and economic development and its heavy reliance on government-led mid- and long-term planning. As a recommendation, an implementation of participatory and community-based foresight is introduced as a foundation for futures studies in Korea. A newly established research institute, the National Assembly Futures Institute, has to be an institutional passage to deliver opinions of the public, a capacity-building platform to increase the citizen’s futures literacy, and a cooperative venue for facilitating a participation and dialogue between politicians, government officials, and researchers.


Author(s):  
Jane Rowling

The Lincolnshire lowlands owe their existence to a long-term programme of formal and informal drainage, by which the landscape has been managed since the Roman period. The public bodies that have held responsibility for this drainage, namely the Commissions of Sewers followed by the Internal Drainage Boards (IDBs) from 1930, are often perceived as solely aiming to remove water from the land as quickly as possible. Recent water management planning in Lincolnshire has begun to explore the idea of water retention, but, as this article will show, this is not a new idea. Far from keeping water out at all costs, Lincolnshire’s drained, farmed landscape is a porous one, which has benefited from a long history of deliberate, managed flooding and small-scale sacrifice of valuable agricultural land to water. This is a lacuna which exists in both the academic literature, and in the stories people involved in the drainage boards tell about themselves.


Sederi ◽  
2009 ◽  
pp. 153-174
Author(s):  
Javier Ruano García

The analysis of regional dialects in the Early Modern period has commonly been disregarded in favour of an ample scholarly interest in the ‘authorised’ version of English which came to be eventually established as a standard. The history of regional ‘Englishes’ at this time still remains to a very great extent in oblivion, owing mainly to an apparent scarcity of sources which supply trustworthy data. Research in this field has been for the most part focused on phonological, orthographical and morphological traits by virtue of the rather more abundant information that dialect testimonies yield about them. Regional lexical diversity has, on the contrary, deserved no special attention as uncertainty arises with regard to what was provincially restricted and what was not. This paper endeavours to offer additional data to the gloomy lexical scene of Early Modern regional English. It is our aim to give a descriptive account of the dialect words collated by Bishop White Kennett’s glossary to Parochial Antiquities (1695). This underutilised specimen does actually widen the information furnished by other well known canonical word-lists and provides concrete geographical data that might help us contribute to complete the sketchy map of lexical provincialisms at the time.


The Perraults ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Oded Rabinovitch

The introduction sets the story of the Perraults against the backdrop of early modern France. It covers the transformation of French culture in the seventeenth century (in its different dimenstion: geographical, social, and institutional, including the rise of academies and salons, the court at Versailles), the history of intellectual families, notions of family strategy, and the use of networks in historical analysis. It also includes an outline of the chapters.


Author(s):  
Christopher Hamlin

There are many precedents for long-term research in the history of science. Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program’s current identity reflects significant change—intended and accidental, both consensual and conflictual—from research concerns that were prevalent in the 1980s. LTER program has pioneered modes of research organization and professional norms that are increasingly prominent in many areas of research and that belong to a significant transformation in the social relations of scientific research. The essays in this volume explore the impact of the LTER program, a generation after its founding, on both the practice of ecological science and the careers of scientists. The authors have applied the agenda of long- term scrutiny to their own careers as LTER researchers. They have recognized the LTER program as distinct, even perhaps unique, both in the ways that it creates knowledge and in the ways that it shapes careers. They have reflected on how they have taught (and were taught) in LTER settings, on how they interact with one another and with the public, and on how research in the LTER program has affected them “as persons.” A rationale for this volume is LTER’s distinctiveness. In many of the chapters, and in other general treatments of the LTER program, beginning with Callahan (1984), one finds a tone of defensiveness. Sometimes the concerns are explicit: authors (e.g., Stafford, Knapp, Lugo, Morris; Chapters 5, 22, 25, 33, respectively) bemoan colleagues who dismiss LTER as mere monitoring instead of serious science or who resent LTER’s independent funding stream. But more broadly, there is concern that various groups, ranging from other bioscientists to the public at large, may not appreciate the importance of long-term, site-specific environmental research. Accordingly, my hope here is to put LTER into several broader contexts. I do so in three ways. First, to mainstream LTER within the history of science, I show that the LTER program is not a new and odd way of doing science but rather exemplifies research agendas that have been recognized at least since the seventeenth century in the biosciences and beyond.


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