scholarly journals Civil war and religion in medieval Japan and medieval Europe: War for the Gods, emotions at death and treason

2020 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-287
Author(s):  
Philippe Buc
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Specific Form ◽  
Christian Belief ◽  
Holy War ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
Medieval Japan ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Compare And Contrast ◽  
The Church

To compare and contrast medieval Japan and medieval Western Europe allows one to discover three things. First, analogous to Catholic holy war, in Japan becomes visible a potential for war (albeit seldom actualised) for the sake, quite surprisingly, of Buddhism. Second, the different role played by emotions during war: in Europe, when vicious (and motivated by emotions such as greed, ambition or lust), they endanger the victors; thus the concern for right emotions foster, to a point, proper behavior during war; in Japan, however, the focus is on the emotions of the defeated, which may hamper a good reincarnation and produce vengeful spirits harmful to the victors and to the community at large. Finally, while Japanese warriors could and often did switch sides, the archipelago did not know for centuries anything approaching the European concept of treason, ideally punished with the highest cruelty, hated and feared to the point of generating collective paranoia and conspiracy theories. Western treason was (and is still) a secularised offspring of the Christian belief in the internal enemy of the Church, the false brethren. Arguably, the texture of the religions present in the two ensembles gave their specific form to these three aspects of warfare.

At the Edge of Reformation

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Linehan
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Black Death ◽  
The West ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
History Of ◽  
Portuguese Society ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

This book springs from its author’s continuing interest in the history of Spain and Portugal—on this occasion in the first half of the fourteenth century between the recovery of each kingdom from widespread anarchy and civil war and the onset of the Black Death. Focussing on ecclesiastical aspects of the period in that region (Galicia in particular) and secular attitudes to the privatization of the Church, it raises inter alios the question why developments there did not lead to a permanent sundering of the relationship with Rome (or Avignon) two centuries ahead of that outcome elsewhere in the West. In addressing such issues, as well as of neglected material in Spanish and Portuguese archives, use is made of the also unpublished so-called ‘secret’ registers of the popes of the period. The issues it raises concern not only Spanish and Portuguese society in general but also the developing relationship further afield of the components of the eternal quadrilateral (pope, king, episcopate, and secular nobility) in late medieval Europe, as well as of the activity in that period of those caterpillars of the commonwealth, the secular-minded sapientes. In this context, attention is given to the hitherto neglected attempt of Afonso IV of Portugal to appropriate the privileges of the primatial church of his kingdom and to advance the glorification of his Castilian son-in-law, Alfonso XI, as God’s vicegerent in his.

Demonic Possession and Lived Religion in Later Medieval Europe

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sari Katajala-Peltomaa
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Physical Symptoms ◽  
Lived Religion ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
Demonic Possession ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Significant Case ◽  
And Inversion ◽  
The Church ◽  
Spiritual State

This book focuses on conceptualizations of lived religion by analysing significant case studies from canonization processes (c. 1240–1450). Geographically it covers Western Europe and one of its aims is to compare Northern and Southern material and customs. ‘Lived religion’ is both a thematic approach and a methodology: a focus on rituals, symbols, and gestures as well as sensitivity to nuances and careful contextualizing of the sources are constitutive elements of the argumentation. Demonic possession was a spiritual state that often had physical symptoms. The main argument developed throughout is, however, that demonic possession was a social phenomenon which should be understood with regard to the community and culture. Each set of sources formed its own specific context, in which demonic presence derived from different motivations, reasonings, and methods of categorization. Rituals, gestures, emotions, and sensory elements in constructing demonic presence reveal negotiations over authority and agency. In the argumentation, the hierarchy between the ‘learned’ and ‘popular’ within religion is contested, as is a strict polarity between individual and collective religious participation. Cases of demonic possession demonstrate how the personal affected the communal, and vice versa, and how they were eventually transformed into discourses and institutions of the Church; that is, definitions of the miraculous and the diabolical. Alterity and inversion of identity, gender, and various forms of corporeality and the interplay between the sacred and diabolical are themes running throughout the volume.

The Indirectly Political Word of the Church

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael P. DeJonge
Keyword(s):  
Word Type ◽  
Specific Form ◽  
The State ◽  
Jewish Question ◽  
The Political ◽  
The World ◽  
Type 3 ◽  
The Church

This chapter continues the examination of Bonhoeffer’s first phase of resistance through an exposition of “The Church and the Jewish Question,” turning now to the modes of resistance proper to the church’s preaching office. Because such resistance involves the church speaking against the state, it appears to stand in contradiction with Bonhoeffer’s suggestion earlier in the essay that the church should not speak out against the state. This is in fact not a contradiction but rather the coherent expression of the political vision as outlined in the first several chapters of this book, which requires that the church criticize the state under certain circumstances but not others. The specific form of word examined here is the indirectly political word (type 3 resistance) by which the church reminds the messianic state of its mandate to preserve the world with neither “too little” nor “too much” order.

From Cycling Priests to the ‘Sportsman's Pope’. Italy, Sport and the Catholic Church

2011 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 545-561 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Martin
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Democratic Society ◽  
Central Feature ◽  
Tour De France ◽  
Alternative Culture ◽  
National Life ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Church ◽  
Regime Analysis

This article surveys the Catholic Church's exploitation of sport in Liberal (1861–1922), Fascist (1922–1943), and post-war Italy. It examines how and why the Church overcame its initial reticence to embrace sport and turn it into a fundamental pillar of an alternative culture that challenged the monopoly of national sporting federations. Following the rise of Fascism, sport became one of the principal means by which the Church resisted a complete takeover by the regime. Analysis of the devout Catholic cyclist Gino Bartali reveals how the Church maintained its identity and tradition of sporting independence despite the inevitable suppression of Catholic sporting organisations. Culminating in an examination of the ‘immortalisation’ of Bartali after his win in the 1948 Tour De France – a victory popularly credited with saving Italy from civil war – the article illuminates the processes by which sport became a central feature of Catholicism in national life. It highlights the Church's contribution to the development of Italian sport, assesses the wider impact of sport's role in forming alternative cultures, and argues that sport perfectly positioned the Church to respond to the demands of Reconstruction Italy and provided opportunities to secure a post-war Christian Democratic society.

Culture and the Spanish Civil War - A Fascist View: 1936-1939

1965 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 557-577 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kessel Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Scientific Investigation ◽  
Intellectual Freedom ◽  
Council Of Trent ◽  
Spanish Inquisition ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
Foreign Ideas ◽  
The Church

Almost from the inception of the Spanish Inquisition which sought to stifle scientific investigation and philosophical speculation while rejecting foreign ideologies, contrary currents existed in Spain. The liberal humanistic movement headed by Erasmus preached intellectual freedom and a defense of interior religión. This ideology never disappeared in Spain in spite of the formation of the Company of Jesus by Ignacio de Loyola and the efforts of Spanish theologians who promoted the Counter Reformation at the Council of Trent. Under Felipe II foreign ideas were forbidden as heretical and interpretations independent of the Church were stifled. Nevertheless, criticism of the status quo continued. Reginaldo González Montano wrote the first attack on the Inquisition, Sanctae Inquisitioms Hispanicae in 1567.

Multi-scaled secularization or postsecular present? Christianity and migrant workers in Shenzhen, China

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 553-570 ◽  
Author(s):  
Quan Gao ◽  
Junxi Qian ◽  
Zhenjie Yuan
Keyword(s):  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Christian Belief ◽  
Religious Revival ◽  
Reflective Process ◽  
Geography Of Religion ◽  
Missionary Work ◽  
Rural Migrant ◽  
The World ◽  
The Church

This article provides a multi-scaled, grounded understanding of how secularization and re-sacralization occur simultaneously in a context of rapid modernization. Recent geographical scholarship in the geography of religion have exhibited deficient reflection over the geo-historical contingencies and complexities of secularization and secularity. This article seeks to re-conceptualize secularization as a multi-scaled, grounded and self-reflective process through an empirical study of the hybrid, contradictory processes of secularization and postsecular religious revival in a ‘gospel village’ in Shenzhen, China. In this rapidly urbanizing village, Christian belief inherited from Western missionary work has gradually lost its hold amidst modernization and urbanization. However, the inflow of rural migrant workers has re-invigorated the church. Christianity has created possibilities for postsecular ethics and resistances, enabling migrant workers to materially, symbolically and emotionally settle in a new socio-economic environment. Also, new situated religiosities arise as theological interpretations are used to negotiate and even legitimize social inequalities and alienation. This article therefore argues that the postsecular turn in human geography needs to consider how the postsecular articulates, and co-evolves with, secular conditions of being in the world. It highlights the hybrid and contested nature of the secularization process, which gives rise not only to disengaged belief and immanent consciousness but also to new aspirations for, and formations of, religiosities.

A Leicestershire Recusant Family: The Nevills of Nevill Holt – I

1984 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard Elliott
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
James I ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Charles Ii ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
The Church

At the Reformation, three possibilities faced English Catholics. They could continue to be Catholics and so suffer the penalties of the penal laws; they could conform to the Church of England; or they could adopt a middle course and become Church Papists. The Nevills of Nevill Holt, near Market Harborough in Leicestershire, went through all three phases. In the reign of Edward VI, Thomas Nevill I became a Protestant. His grandson, Thomas Nevill II, became a Church Papist under James I; and Thomas II’s son, Henry Nevill I, continued to be one at the time of the Civil War. But Henry l’s son William was definitely a Catholic and went into exile with King James II, while William’s son, Henry Nevill II, was an open Catholic under Charles II. Henry Nevill II’s descendants continued to be Catholics throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries until they left Nevill Holt in the late nineteenth century.

scholarly journals Old Russian Graffito Inscription in the Abbey of Saint-Gilles, South of France

Slovene ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 110-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne-Sophie Brun ◽  
Andreas Hartmann-Virnich ◽  
Estelle Ingrand-Varenne ◽  
Savva M. Mikheev
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Linguistic Analysis ◽  
The South ◽  
Archaeological Investigation ◽  
Southern France ◽  
Santiago De Compostela ◽  
Old Russian ◽  
Medieval Europe

The abbey of Saint-Gilles-du-Gard near Arles in the south of France was one of the most prominent pilgrimage sites in medieval Europe. Recent archaeological investigation has shown that construction of the abbey church, one of the most significant Romanesque pilgrimage churches in southern France, began ca. 1170/1180. The lower church (crypt) with the tomb of St. Giles (Lat. Aegidius, Fr. Gilles) and some of the walls of the upper church belong to that period. A well-preserved Cyrillic graffito was discovered on a pier of the upper church, close to the spot where the tomb of St. Giles is located in the crypt below. The text contains a prayer with a common formula: GI POMЪZI | RABU SVЪ|EMU SЬMKЪ|VI NINOSLA|VICHIU ‘Lord, help your servant Semko, son of Ninoslav.’ Palaeographic and linguistic analysis shows that the graffito is of Russian origin. It was probably made at some time between 1180 and 1250 by a pilgrim travelling from Russia to Santiago de Compostela, and it is the most geographically remote Old Russian graffito inscription discovered so far in western Europe.

A Disputed Letter: Relations Between the Church of Scotland and the Reformed Church in the Province of Zeeland in the Year of the Solemn League and Covenant

1991 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 237-251
Author(s):  
Willbm Nijenhuis
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Military Operations ◽  
Church Of Scotland ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
Dutch Revolt ◽  
The Church ◽  
United Provinces

In the year 1643 the Dutch revolt against Spain was dragging gradually to an end. Repeated attempts by Stadtholder Frederick Henry to take Antwerp had failed. Since 1640 only minor military operations had been undertaken. The demand for peace was growing, but this, at the same time, led to divisions of opinion. During this period of domestic tension the United Provinces became involved in events in England leading to the Civil War.

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