scholarly journals THE SACRED AND THE SECULAR IN THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH: ON THE PROBLEM OF BORDERS AND INTERACTION

Author(s):  
Наталия Ивановна Сазонова

В статье анализируется взаимодействие сакрального и мирского элементов в пространстве христианского храма, проблема границы мирского и сакрального и варианты ее решения в истории христианской церкви. Характер взаимодействия сакрального и мирского определяется космическим характером христианства. Христианство стремится к освящению окружающего мира и изменению его на Божественных началах, так как мир сотворен Богом и несет на себе Его образ. Высшей формой преображения мира является таинство Евхаристии. Конечное преображение мира, согласно христианскому учению, возможно после Второго Пришествия Христа. С первых веков существования христианства граница сакрального и мирского пространств в храме была подвижной, а богослужение предполагало активное участие мирян. В первые века христианства алтарь храма выделялся из его пространства, но не отделялся от верующих. Миряне имели возможность видеть происходящее в алтаре и участвовать в таинствах через приношения. Такие черты характерны как для Византии, так и для Руси X–XIII вв. В дальнейшем возникает проблема нарушения баланса мирского и сакрального элементов, которая по-разному решается на Западе и Востоке. Христианский Запад пошел по пути интеграции сакрального пространства в мирскую жизнь. Первоначально это проявилось в совершении молитв и тайнодействий «лицом к народу». Возникло представление, что такое совершение молитв соответствует Тайной Вечере Христа и апостолов. По той же причине место епископа в храме было перенесено ближе к молящимся мирянам. Позже произошел переход к богослужению на национальных языках. Все это привело к прогрессирующей десакрализации богослужения. По-другому развивалось богослужение на Востоке. Здесь приоритетным стало разделение священного и мирского пространств, что проявилось в увеличении высоты алтарной преграды и появлении высокого иконостаса. В дальнейшем снижается активность участия мирян в богослужении, а в XVII столетии происходит окончательное разделение сакрального и мирского пространств. В результате литургической реформы патриарха Никона изменяется положение священника. Священник понимается как носитель благодати, положение которого выше положения мирянина. Из текстов богослужения удаляются слова, имеющие мирское значение. Так возникает сфера мирской жизни, отдельная от церковной жизни. Это ведет к секуляризации культуры. Таким образом, западные и восточные христиане от христианской идеи освящения мира разными путями пришли не к освящению пространства жизни людей, а к секуляризации культуры и богослужения. Но богослужение и устройство храма на христианском Востоке, имея тенденцию к отделению своего пространства от мирского, все же в большей степени, чем Запад, сохраняет сакральное содержание христианства. The article analyzes the interaction of sacred and secular elements in the space of the Christian Church, the problem of the boundary between the secular and the sacred, and options for its solution in the history of the Christian Church. The nature of the interaction between the sacred and the secular is determined by the cosmic character of Christianity. Christianity seeks to sanctify the surrounding world and change it by divine principles, since the world was created by God and has His image. The highest form of transformation of the world is the sacrament of the Eucharist. The final transformation of the world, according to the Christian doctrine, is possible after the Second Coming of Christ. Since the first centuries of Christianity, the border of the sacred and secular spaces in the temple was mobile, and the service involved the active participation of the laity. In the first centuries of Christianity, the altar of the temple stood out from its space, but was not separated from the faithful. Lay people were able to see what was happening in the altar and participate in the sacraments through offerings. Such features are typical for both Byzantium and Russia of the 10th–13th centuries. Later, the problem of disturbing the balance of the secular and sacred elements appears; it is solved differently in the West and East. The Christian West has taken the path of integrating the sacred into its secular life. Initially, this was manifested in the performance of prayers and sacraments “facing people”. There was an idea that such a performance of prayers corresponds to the Last Supper of Christ and the apostles. For the same reason, the bishop’s place in the church was moved closer to the praying lay people. Later, there was a transition to perform liturgy in national languages. All this led to the progressive desacralization of liturgy. In the East, liturgy developed in a different way. The separation of the sacred and secular spaces became a priority, which was manifested in the increase in the height of the altar barrier and in the appearance of a high iconostasis. Then the activity of lay participation in liturgy decreases, and, in the 17th century, the final separation of the sacred and secular spaces takes place. As a result of Patriarch Nikon’s liturgical reform, the position of the priest changes. A priest is understood as a bearer of grace, whose position is higher than that of a lay person. Words that have a secular meaning are removed from the texts of the service. The sphere of secular life that is separate from church life appears. This leads to the secularization of culture. Thus, Western and Eastern Christians came from the Christian idea of sanctifying the world in different ways to the secularization of culture and worship rather than to the sanctification of the space of people’s lives. But liturgy and the arrangement of the temple in the Christian East, with its tendency to separate its space from the secular, still preserve the sacred content of Christianity to a greater extent than the West.

2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 299-317 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shohei Sato

AbstractThis article re-examines our understanding of modern sport. Today, various physical cultures across the world are practised under the name of sport. Almost all of these sports originated in the West and expanded to the rest of the world. However, the history of judo confounds the diffusionist model. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, a Japanese educationalist amalgamated different martial arts and established judo not as a sport but as ‘a way of life’. Today it is practised globally as an Olympic sport. Focusing on the changes in its rules during this period, this article demonstrates that the globalization of judo was accompanied by a constant evolution of its character. The overall ‘sportification’ of judo took place not as a diffusion but as a convergence – a point that is pertinent to the understanding of the global sportification of physical cultures, and also the standardization of cultures in modern times.


Archaeologia ◽  
1890 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 183-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
F.M. Nichols

It may be of interest to the Society if I submit to its notice some observations made last year, which render it necessary to re-write the history of one of the best known monuments of Rome.The monument, which for fifty-six years has been called the Column of Phocas, was formerly, when nothing but the pillar itself was seen above ground, the subject of much curiosity and speculation among the visitors of the Forum. The “nameless column with the buried base” was thought by some to be the sole relic of a great temple or other public building. By others it had been conjectured to be part of the famous bridge by which Caligula united his palace on the Palatine with the temple of Capitoline Jupiter. In the early years of the century, among other works of the same kind, it was resolved to clear away the soil and débris from the substructure of this column; and on the 13th of March, 1813, the inscription of its pedestal, which had remained for centuries a few feet below the level of the ground, was uncovered, and revealed the fact that it had supported a statue dedicated by the exarch Smaragdus to the honour of a Caesar, whose name had been erased, but who, by other indications, could be no other than Phocas, an emperor of evil reputation, but to whom Rome and the world owe some gratitude for having been instrumental in dedicating the Pantheon to Christian worship, and so preserving from ruin one of the noblest and most original architectural works of antiquity.


1963 ◽  
Vol 58 ◽  
pp. 30-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. N. Coldstream

On the east slope of Lower Gypsades hill, about 100 metres west of the Temple Tomb, a chamber tomb came to light in August 1958, when a cutting for a new water pipe was driven through the area (A in Plate 9 a). In the course of this operation, part of a plain larnax (iii) was sliced off, and much earth removed from the west end of the collapsed chamber: at no point, however, had the municipal workmen penetrated to the tomb floor.The chamber was approached by a sloping dromos (Plate 9 a: length 2·80 metres; max. width 1 metre), roughly cut into the natural kouskouras rock: its walls were approximately perpendicular. Although the gradient varied a good deal, there was no suggestion of a stairway.The blocking wall was found in good condition. Of especial interest were the numerous fragments of larnakes that had been built into its fabric: some of them could be recognized as belonging to each of the three fragmentary larnakes (i, ii, v) whose scattered pieces were found below and around the two undisturbed burials in the chamber (iii, iv). We may thus distinguish two periods in the history of the tomb: larnakes i, ii, and v were evidently smashed up in order to make room for iv and iii, which must have been deposited in that order. The debris of v was found under iv, with a few adult bones in its wreckage. Part of i lay on the floor near the south-west corner, where two plain vases (2, 3) were found in situ, hence, also, came most of the fragments of the fine L.M. IIIA 2 stirrup vase (1), although its other pieces were scattered all over the floor of the tomb. This small group of offerings may belong to the disturbed adult skeleton, whose skull lay up against the lower edge of iii. Curiously, some fragments of i and ii were also found above the broken lid of iv (Plate 9 b): perhaps the lid of the later larnax was accidentally smashed at the time of the funeral, in which case the debris from earlier burials could have been piled up above it, as a rough and ready means of protection.


Author(s):  
Józef Kuźma ◽  

The concept of paradigm has its origin in ancient Greece. Plato understood a paradigm as an idea or form, while Aristotle gave it the meaning of a particular pattern or model. The school, alongside the Temple, is the oldest social institution that meets the very important developmental needs of the young generations of society. It is shown in the article, based on the genesis of the school in various countries of the world, how in the history of the school there were periods of both development and stagnation. Major school system and program changes were carried out in accordance with the general principle of continuation and change. This means that everything that has worked well in the current practice of the school’s activities should be continued and the curricula and upbringing should be constantly enriched with new content, values, and experience, while consistently changing what is incompatible with current science and practice in programmes and the organizational sphere and, above all, outdated knowledge and teaching methods. This general rule should also apply to the reform of the Polish school system introduced in 2019. Only by observing the general principle of continuation and change can school reform achieve its intended goals. The fact that the optimal change paradigm is the guiding thought of learning about school or scholiology deserves to be emphasized in the presented article. The concept of scholiology met with positive feedback from many Polish scholars involved in school education, as well as Professor Mark Bray, Chairman of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies (University of Hong Kong, 2019).


2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Muhammad Rafiqul Hoque ◽  
Muhammad Mustaqim Mohd Zarif

Dispute resolution systems are broadly divided into two sides namely Judicial Dispute Resolution (JDRS) and Non-Judicial Dispute Resolution Systems (NJDRS). The first one is more formal, and the latter is informal which is known as Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) all over the world. Though ADR is claimed to be a great innovation of the West, it is found to be practiced in the Islamic Judicial System from its very inception. ADR was practiced throughout the history of Islamic Judiciary as sulh. However, the use of the word sulh in the meaning of ADR needs to be explained in the present judicial context. Scholars sometimes discussed sulh as a system parallel to ADR and sometimes as a process, which creates confusion in its multiuse. Hence, this study aims at eliminating this confusion on the paradoxical use of the term sulh as a system for dispute resolution as well as a process of that system. At present, hardly any study has precisely differentiated between them. Thus, this qualitative study focuses on discussing it primarily from the perspectives of the Quran, documented sources as well as interviews. The major finding of this study is that sulh, comparing with present day ADR, does not need to be used paradoxically. The main contribution of the study is to propose a clarification of sulh in the line of ADR fruitfully. The findings of this study are not only useful in clarifying the exact meanings of the term as used in different contexts but also applicable to solve problems faced by arbitrators involved in various indigenous traditional dispute resolution systems such as shalish in Bangladesh and elsewhere.


2021 ◽  

A Cultural History of Objects in the Modern Age covers the period 1900 to today, a time marked by massive global changes in production, transportation, and information-sharing in a post-colonial world. New materials and inventions – from plastics to the digital to biotechnology – have created unprecedented scales of disruption, shifting and blurring the categories and meanings of the object. If the 20th Century demonstrated that humans can be treated like things whilst things can become ever more human, where will the 21st Century take us? The 6 volume set of the Cultural History of Objects examines how objects have been created, used, interpreted and set loose in the world over the last 2500 years. Over this time, the West has developed particular attitudes to the material world, at the centre of which is the idea of the object. The themes covered in each volume are objecthood; technology; economic objects; everyday objects; art; architecture; bodily objects; object worlds.


2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-178
Author(s):  
Gabriela Goldin Marcovich ◽  
Rahul Markovits

AbstractThis article offers the first study of the Cahiers d’Histoire Mondiale, the Journal of World History published under the auspices of UNESCO from 1953 to 1972 as a by-product of the ‘History of mankind’ project. Drawing on material in the UNESCO archives, it delves into what Lucien Febvre, the first editor of the Cahiers, called his ‘kitchen’, in order to understand world history as a practice. Data on author origin and article subject matter point to the journal’s mitigated success in overcoming Eurocentrism. The article ultimately contends that the Cahiers was at once a laboratory that experimented with new forms of relational history, and a forum where the very nature of world history was discussed by scholars from around the world (mainly from the West, but also from the East and the South). It suggests that today’s epistemological discussion on global history might benefit from the reflection offered by this now largely forgotten experiment.


Archaeologia ◽  
1874 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-241
Author(s):  
Richard Henry Major

In the year 1861 I had the satisfaction of laying before the Society of Antiquaries, and thereby making known to the world for the first time, the important fact that the great continental island of Australia had been discovered in the year 1601 by a Portuguese navigator, named Manoel Godinho de Eredia. Up to that time the earliest authenticated discovery of any part of the great southern land was that made a little to the west and south of Cape York by the commander of the Dutch yacht the Duyfhen, or Dove, about the month of March 1606. Thus the fact which I announced in 1861 gave a date to the first authenticated discovery of Australia earlier by five years than that which had been previously accepted in history, and transferred the honour of that discovery from Holland to Portugal. The document on which this fact, so entirely new to the world, was based, was a MS. Mappe-monde in the British Museum, in which, on the northwest corner of a country which could be shown beyond all question to be Australia, stood a legend in Portuguese to the following effect:— “Nuça antara was discovered in the year 1601 by Manoel Godinho de Eredia, by command of the Viceroy Ayres de Saldanha.” This mappe-monde had the great disadvantage of being only a copy, possibly made even in the present century, from one the geography of which proved it to be some two centuries older. Still, the mere fact of its being a copy laid it open to a variety of possible objections, which fortunately I was able to forestall by arguments that I believe to be unanswerable, and which I think I need not repeat now, as they are already printed in the “Archaeologia,” vol. xxxviii. I will merely say that I had the good fortune at the time to find a happy confirmation of what was stated in the map in a little printed work which described the discoverer as a learned cosmographer and skilful captain, who had received a special commission from the Viceroy at Goa to make explorations for gold mines, and at the same time to verify the descriptions of the southern islands.


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