Nationalism in Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages

1972 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimitri Obolensky

The divergent views held by historians and sociologists as to what does and does not constitute nationalism will, I hope, provide me with some excuse for not attempting here a general definition of this phenomenon. Nor will I presume to adjudicate between the opinions of scholars like Hans Kohn who, confining their attention to Western Europe, will not hear of nationalism before the rise of modern states between the sixteenth and the eighteenth century, and of historians like G. G. Coulton who, after surveying the policy of the Papacy, the life of the Universities, the internal frictions in the monasteries and the history of medieval warfare, concluded that nationalism, which had been developing in Western Europe since the eleventh century, became a basic factor in European politics by the fourteenth. My paper is concerned with the medieval history of Eastern Europe: an area which I propose to define, by combining a geographical with a cultural criterion, as the group of countries which lay within the political or cultural orbit of Byzantium. The subject is vast and complex, and I can do no more than select a few topics for discussion. These I would like to present as arguments in support of three theses.

Author(s):  
Lilia Kulykova ◽  

The subject of the research is the study of scientific researches of personalities, biographies and creative way of outstanding domestic scientists, scholars of Byzantium in the second half of the 19th – first half of the 20th century, who be-came the founders of Byzantine studies. Research methods. A system of theoretical and empirical research methods was used to study the specific purpose of scientific research and solving problems, namely: historical and pedagogical analysis and syn-thesis, definition of the purpose, subject and tasks, exploration, synthesis of abstrac-tion, comparison, generalization and analogy to clarify the peculiarities of the devel-opment of theoretical approaches underlying the renewal and expansion of the study of Byzantinists and their research on the specified topic; analysis of sources, as well as research materials with the subsequent synthesis of its results into a holistic system of views on this problem; personalistic and biographical method – for the analysis of historical, biographical, reference and encyclopedic literature devoted to historical and pedagogical personalities. The aim of the study is to present to modern historians and all those interested in studying the history of Byzantium, both in Ukraine and abroad, the names of prominent historians of the past and objectively evaluate their work and scientific results in terms of modern international scientific views and approaches. Conclusion. Personalized study of life and scientific and pedagogical heritage of professors and academics of Byzantine studies V. G. Vasilievsky, O. O. Vasiliev, V. E. Regel, Y. A. Kulakovsky, F. I. Uspensky, A. G. Gotalov-Gottlieb gave the opportunity to reveal their fundamental role in the development of domestic Byzantine studies, the establishment of their own scientific schools and areas in scientific and pedagogical activities, created scientific and educational literature on Byzantine history, medieval history and culture, national foreign research institutes, scientific societies, associations and more. The scholars in their monographs and textbooks gave a personal vision of the problem and an interpretation of the expediency and importance of studying the history and culture of Byzantium and the Middle Ages in general. V. G. Vasilievsky, O. O. Vasiliev, V. E. Regel, Y. A. Kulakovsky, F. I. Uspensky, A. G. Gotalova-Gotliba laid the foundation of the national scientific championship. Their names and works are our scientific pride "forgotten", "shot", destroyed or simply unknown today to the general public of modern scientists in Ukraine and abroad. Further research of publications and use of their works and textbooks could become a valuable source for modern researchers of Byzantine history, as well as a discovery and subject for acquaintance for modern foreign researchers.


Author(s):  
James Bugslag

The slight evidence for Marian pilgrimage in Western Europe from the sixth century begins to increase by the tenth century. Pilgrimage shrines, often related with an apparition of Mary, mushroomed from the eleventh century, appearing in greater and greater numbers into the early modern period. Marian relics begin to appear, as well, in the eleventh century, but the vast majority of Marian pilgrimages focused on miraculous images, icons in Italy and Eastern Europe, statues elsewhere. As Mary became more embedded in affective devotion from the twelfth century onwards, Marian pilgrimage experienced dramatic escalation. Yet, much local pilgrimage, which rooted Mary’s presence in the landscape, was related to help in this life: cures, protection, security, etc. Despite the presence of some major international pilgrimage shrines, most Marian pilgrimage was very local by the late Middle Ages, creating a dense network of Marian shrines all over Europe.


1959 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 51-79
Author(s):  
K. Edwards

During the last twenty or twenty-five years medieval historians have been much interested in the composition of the English episcopate. A number of studies of it have been published on periods ranging from the eleventh to the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. A further paper might well seem superfluous. My reason for offering one is that most previous writers have concentrated on analysing the professional circles from which the bishops were drawn, and suggesting the influences which their early careers as royal clerks, university masters and students, secular or regular clergy, may have had on their later work as bishops. They have shown comparatively little interest in their social background and provenance, except for those bishops who belonged to magnate families. Some years ago, when working on the political activities of Edward II's bishops, it seemed to me that social origins, family connexions and provenance might in a number of cases have had at least as much influence on a bishop's attitude to politics as his early career. I there fore collected information about the origins and provenance of these bishops. I now think that a rather more careful and complete study of this subject might throw further light not only on the political history of the reign, but on other problems connected with the character and work of the English episcopate. There is a general impression that in England in the later middle ages the bishops' ties with their dioceses were becoming less close, and that they were normally spending less time in diocesan work than their predecessors in the thirteenth century.


Author(s):  
Katarzyna Czeczot

The article deals with the love of Zygmunt Krasiński to Delfina Potocka. The point of departure is the poet's definition of love as looking and reads Krasiński's relationship with his beloved in the context of two phenomena that fascinated him at the time: daguerreotype and magnetism. The invention of the daguerreotype in which the history of photography and spiritism comes together becomes a pretext for the formulation of a new concept of love and the loving subject. In the era of painting the woman was treated as a passive object of the male gaze; photography reverses this scheme of power. Love ceases to be a static relationship of the subject in love and the passive object – the beloved. The philosophy of developing photographs (and invoking phantoms) allows Krasiński - the writing subject to become like a light-sensitive material that reveals the image of the beloved.


Author(s):  
Peter D. McDonald

The section introduces Part II, which spans the period 1946 to 2014, by tracing the history of the debates about culture within UNESCO from 1947 to 2009. It considers the central part print literacy played in the early decades, and the gradual emergence of what came to be called ‘intangible heritage’; the political divisions of the Cold War that had a bearing not just on questions of the state and its role as a guardian of culture but on the idea of cultural expression as a commodity; the slow shift away from an exclusively intellectualist definition of culture to a more broadly anthropological one; and the realpolitik surrounding the debates about cultural diversity since the 1990s. The section concludes by showing how at the turn of the new millennium UNESCO caught up with the radical ways in which Tagore and Joyce thought about linguistic and cultural diversity.


Author(s):  
Nurit Yaari

This chapter examines the lack of continuous tradition of the art of the theatre in the history of Jewish culture. Theatre as art and institution was forbidden for Jews during most of their history, and although there were plays written in different times and places during the past centuries, no tradition of theatre evolved in Jewish culture until the middle of the nineteenth century. In view of this absence, the author discusses the genesis of Jewish theatre in Eastern Europe and in Eretz-Yisrael (The Land of Israel) since the late nineteenth century, encouraged by the Jewish Enlightenment movement, the emergence of Jewish nationalism, and the rebirth of Hebrew as a language of everyday life. Finally, the chapter traces the development of parallel strands of theatre that preceded the Israeli theatre and shadowed the emergence of the political infrastructure of the future State of Israel.


Author(s):  
Carolyn Muessig

Francis of Assisi’s reported reception of the stigmata on Mount La Verna in 1224 is often considered to be the first account of an individual receiving the five wounds of Christ. The thirteenth-century appearance of this miracle, however, is not as unexpected as it first seems. Interpretations of Galatians 6:17—I bear the stigmata of the Lord Jesus Christ in my body—had been circulating in biblical commentaries since late antiquity. These works explained stigmata as wounds that martyrs received, like the apostle Paul, in their attempt to spread Christianity in the face of resistance. By the seventh century, stigmata were described as marks of Christ that priests received invisibly at their ordination. In the eleventh century, monks and nuns were perceived as bearing the stigmata in so far as they lived a life of renunciation out of love for Christ. By the later Middle Ages holy women like Catherine of Siena (d. 1380) were more frequently described as having stigmata than their male counterparts. With the religious upheavals of the sixteenth century, the way stigmata were defined reflected the diverse perceptions of Christianity held by Catholics and Protestants. This study traces the birth and evolution of religious stigmata as expressed in theological discussions and devotional practices in Western Europe from the early Middle Ages to the early seventeenth century. It also contains an introductory overview of the historiography of religious stigmata beginning in the second half of the seventeenth century to its treatment and assessment in the twenty-first century.


Author(s):  
Ildar Garipzanov

The concluding chapter highlights how the cultural history of graphic signs of authority in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages encapsulated the profound transformation of political culture in the Mediterranean and Europe from approximately the fourth to ninth centuries. It also reflects on the transcendent sources of authority in these historical periods, and the role of graphic signs in highlighting this connection. Finally, it warns that, despite the apparent dominant role of the sign of the cross and cruciform graphic devices in providing access to transcendent protection and support in ninth-century Western Europe, some people could still employ alternative graphic signs deriving from older occult traditions in their recourse to transcendent powers.


Author(s):  
Ross McKibbin

This book is an examination of Britain as a democratic society; what it means to describe it as such; and how we can attempt such an examination. The book does this via a number of ‘case-studies’ which approach the subject in different ways: J.M. Keynes and his analysis of British social structures; the political career of Harold Nicolson and his understanding of democratic politics; the novels of A.J. Cronin, especially The Citadel, and what they tell us about the definition of democracy in the interwar years. The book also investigates the evolution of the British party political system until the present day and attempts to suggest why it has become so apparently unstable. There are also two chapters on sport as representative of the British social system as a whole as well as the ways in which the British influenced the sporting systems of other countries. The book has a marked comparative theme, including one chapter which compares British and Australian political cultures and which shows British democracy in a somewhat different light from the one usually shone on it. The concluding chapter brings together the overall argument.


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