JACOB’s LADDER: Reason, Liberty and Science. The Contribution of Freemasonry to the Enlightenment

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-136
Author(s):  
Mădălina Calance
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Universal Human Rights ◽  
Jacob's Ladder ◽  
The Church ◽  
Church Tradition

Abstract The theme of the article relies to the particular contribution of Freemasonry in the initiation and development of modernity, focusing on science, religion and politics. We know that, during the late Middle Ages, the European society was obedient to the „Church-Tradition-Monarchy” trinity; this status-quo collapsed due to the rational way of thinking; also the establishment of the universal human rights belongs to the Enlightenment, whose theses were supported mainly by Freemasons. Many researchers have proposed to show the extent to which Freemasonry helped to build the ideals of Enlightenment. The main conclusions that can be drawn, by analyzing their tracks, are: (1) All famous leaders of the Enlightenment had connections to Freemasonry; (2) The Enlightenment tenets overlap Freemasonry tenets, and, therefore they were supported and propagated by English, French, and American lodges; (3) Freemasonry progressively turned into a transnational vehicle for liberal thinking, disseminating the concepts of property and freedom in Europe and across the Atlantic.

The church in the West Highlands in the late middle ages

2003 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-46
Author(s):  
A. D. M. Barrell
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
The West ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Church

scholarly journals “Making the face beautiful”(feature on medieval beauty products)

2020 ◽  
pp. 73-79
Author(s):  
Radivoj Radic
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Medical Texts ◽  
Medieval Medicine ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Face ◽  
Bad Breath ◽  
Ambivalent Relationship ◽  
The Church ◽  
Beauty Products

In the Middle Ages, people had an ambivalent relationship to the beauty products: some were fully supportive of the attempts to beautify oneself, while the others, first and foremost the representatives of the church, frowned upon this notion. This feature represents a show?case of the advice and recipes for beautification from two medical collections created in the late Middle Ages. These are the Byzantine medical treatise (dating from 11th to 14th century) and the collection of Serbian medieval medicine, the so-called Hodoch Code (dating from the end of the 14th or beginning of the 15th century). The treatise is focusing more on the practical advice than theoretical knowledge, and its greatest part is dedicated to pharmacology. Hodoch Code (Hodoski zbornik) is in fact a therapeutic collection, and it consists of diverse medical texts. These collections contain the advice how to make one?s face white, hair black or blond, but most certainly rich in volume, as well as recipes for treating facial lines, warts, freckles, cracked lips or bad breath.

Knights, Cooks, Monks and Tourists: Elite and Popular Experience of the Late-Medieval Jerusalem Pilgrimage

2006 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 99-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryne Beebe
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Popular Interest ◽  
Multiple Levels ◽  
The Church

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the late Middle Ages was the centre of a range of pilgrimage activity in which elite and popular beliefs and practices overlapped and complicated each other in exciting ways. The Jerusalem pilgrimage, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in particular, abounded in multiple levels of ‘elite’ and ‘popular’ experience. Through the pilgrimage writings of a fifteenth-century Dominican pilgrim named Felix Fabri, this paper will explore two specific levels: the distinction between noble and lower-class experiences of the Jerusalem pilgrimage (both physical and spiritual), and the distinction between spiritually ‘elite’ and ‘popular’ conceptions of pilgrimage itself – that uneasy balance between the spiritually-sophisticated, contemplative experience of pilgrimage promoted by St Jerome and the more ‘popular’ interest in traditional ‘tourist’ activities, such as gathering indulgences or stocking up on holy souvenirs and relics to take home. However, as we will see, even these tourist acts were grounded in the orthodox spirituality of late-medieval piety, and the elite and popular experiences of pilgrimage, whether social or spiritual, were not so distinct as they may first appear.

scholarly journals Religious Poverty, Mendicancy, and Reform in the Late Middle Ages

2003 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 457-482 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael D. Bailey
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Kingdom Of God ◽  
Reform Movements ◽  
Material Wealth ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Urban Spirituality ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Ideal

The idea and the ideal of religious poverty exerted a powerful force throughout the Middle Ages. “Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff,” Christ had commanded his apostles. He had sternly warned, “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for someone who is rich to enter into the kingdom of God.” And he had instructed one of the faithful, who had asked what he needed to do to live the most holy sort of life, “if you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give your money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.” Beginning with these biblical injunctions, voluntary poverty, the casting off of wealth and worldly goods for the sake of Christ, dominated much of medieval religious thought. The desire for a more perfect poverty impelled devout men and women to new heights of piety, while disgust with the material wealth of the church fueled reform movements and more radical heresies alike. Often, as so clearly illustrated by the case of the Spiritual Franciscans andfraticelliin the later thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the lines separating devout believer from condemned heretic shifted and even reversed themselves entirely depending on how one understood the religious call to poverty. Moreover, the Christian ideal of poverty interacted powerfully with and helped to shape many major economic, social, and cultural trends in medieval Europe. As Lester Little demonstrated over two decades ago, for example, developing ideals of religious poverty were deeply intermeshed with the revitalizing European economy of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries and did much to shape the emerging urban spirituality of that period.

scholarly journals Sårbarhet, mangfold og menneskerettigheter

2020 ◽  
pp. 129-151
Author(s):  
Hans Morten Haugen
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
People With Disabilities ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Enabling Technology ◽  
World Council Of Churches ◽  
Persons With Disabilities ◽  
A Value ◽  
The World ◽  
World Council ◽  
The Church

The article examines recent understandings of vulnerability and exposedness, and studies proving that people with disabilities are more exposed to violence, discrimination, and various forms of exclusion. Diversity has been elevated as a value, both in societies and in churches. The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) is the only human rights treaty that names specific human rights principles, and one of these principles is diversity. There are also opposing trends to the enhanced recognition of diversity, summarized in three points: preservation of status quo; highlighting majority normality; and budgetary efficiency are given priority over empowering solutions. The Church of Norway, inspired by the World Council of Churches, wants to promote inclusion and empowerment, but is itself lagging behind, for instance in providing access to enabling technology.

scholarly journals Grundtvig om samfundspagt, gensidig frihed og menneskerettigheder i ca. 1840: Med en kommenteret tekstudgivelse.

2004 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-33
Author(s):  
Kim Arne Pedersen
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Contract Theory ◽  
Civic Society ◽  
Social Compact ◽  
The Social ◽  
Universal Human Rights ◽  
Written Form ◽  
Public Character ◽  
The Church

Grundtvig om samfundspagt, gensidig frihed og menneskerettigheder i ca. 1840: Med en kommenteret tekstudgivelse[Grundtvig on the Social Contract, reciprocal Liberty and human Rights, c. 1840]By Kim Arne PedersenIn the current Danish debate, Grundtvig’s emphasis upon a fellowship of the folk [folkefællesskabet] is often perceived as standing in opposition to the idea of universal human rights as a foundational social concept. However, Grundtvig links together contract-theory and ideas upon liberty and upon human rights within his premise that every society, whether civic [borgerlig] or Christian, is founded upon a contract, a consensus which finds its expression in a covenant [,sammenfatning], a constitution [grundlov], which in Grundtvig’s view should be oral but which in his own writings can also be found in written form. This constitution comes about by the establishment of a pact [pagtsslutning], in the first place between God and man, creator and creature, thence in a derivative form in civic society between king and people. A society’s constitution expresses a dialogue-relationship between the two parties involved in the social compact, and upon this rests Grundtvig’s concept of dialogue-based liberty. The two-way I/you-relationship between God and man and between person and person is the basis of Grundtvig’s principle of freedom which Kaj Thaning concisely phrases thus: they alone are free who allow their neighbour to be free as well. On this principle of freedom rests Grundtvig’s concept of a pact, which is crucial to his notion of the Apostolic Creed as being the foundation of the Church and to his thinking on civic society. The Christian baptismal compact [dåbspagt] is entered into by God and man, the social compact in the first instance by king and people whose reciprocal freedom becomes the model for the citizens’ life with each other. This finds its expression in an oral English Summaries / danske resuméer but fixed agreement, a mutual pledge. The pledge binds fast the two parties to their rights and responsibilities and thus becomes the premise for Grundtvig’s Locke-inspired thinking on human rights. In the first transcribed text it is seen how Grundtvig incorporates human rights within an outline for a social constitution; and in the second text how, on the grounds of the oral and public character of the social compact, he rejects the Danish Royal Law [kongelov] of 1665, written down but at various times kept secret, as society’s foundation.

The Garden

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mailan S. Doquang
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Sensory Modalities ◽  
The Church

This section addresses the use of real plants in medieval churches from the Early Christian period to the Late Middle Ages. It demonstrates that living vegetation was a key aspect of the church experience, notably during the consecration rite, the Easter liturgy, and on other special occasions, such as baptisms, weddings, and the feast days of certain saints. Late medieval documents from the church of Saint-Mary-at-Hill in London reveal that live plants were a consistent expense for clerical communities. Alongside sculpted flora, real plants heightened the presence of the organic in sacred architectural contexts, while also engaging different sensory modalities.

Light through Time and Space

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 75-92
Author(s):  
Xing Guozhong ◽  
Shang Chen ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Profound Influence ◽  
French Enlightenment ◽  
Global Problems ◽  
Cultural Movements ◽  
Ideological Resources

Chinese Confucianism, which emerged during the Axial Age, has had a profound influence on many intellectual and cultural movements in history, including the European Enlightenment. This article analyzes the influence of Confucianism on the European Enlightenment from four perspectives: human rights, a benevolent government, religion and nature. The humanist spirit propagated by Confucianism was similar to the views expressed by Enlightenment thinkers on reason and human rights and provided a powerful ideological weapon for Enlightenment thinkers to criticize religious theocracy and break through the darkness of the Middle Ages. During this process of learning and absorbing the humanist spirit of Confucianism, French Enlightenment thinkers developed the rational and critical spirit of the Enlightenment and paved the way for intellectual liberation. Today, the world is facing the new challenges of global climate change, artificial intelligence and genetic technology. In the context of these global problems, China and the West can learn from each other and join efforts to gather new ideological resources to carry out a new ideological enlightenment movement on a global scale and achieve sustainable development for all humanity.

“Clandestine” Marriage in the Later Middle Ages: A Reply

1992 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 315-322 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Donahue
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The People ◽  
Marriage Customs ◽  
The Church

Andrew J. Finch has taken issue in these pages with my interpretation of “clandestine” marriage in the later Middle Ages. He is certainly correct that the phenomenon of “clandestine” marriage in the high and late Middle Ages cannot be given a single explanation. As I said in the first piece that I wrote on the topic: “The cases provide evidence for the proposition that some people were genuinely confused about to whom they were married; that the Alexandrine rules were being used to defraud the innocent; and that they were being used by people to get out of marriages which had become intolerable for reasons quite unrelated to the Alexandrine rules.” And again: “while the reasons why the parties chose to marry informally rather than solemnly is in many cases obscure, there are some cases in which we may conclude that the parties chose informal marriage in order to escape pressure from their families or lords. Howard… and Homans… both suggest that the reason for informal marriage is that the Church was unable to enforce her rules on the ingrained marriage customs of the people. Turlan…, on the other hand, sees as I do informal marriage as a way of escaping both family and ecclesiastical pressure. The two views are not necessarily inconsistent. Varying motivations may have played a part in different places and times and among different individuals.”

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