scholarly journals Intercultural Dialogue in the Middle Ages: A Christian Cemetery in Pagan Vilnius

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-58
Author(s):  
Rytis Jonaitis
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Eastern Orthodox ◽  
Intercultural Dialogue ◽  
Orthodox Christianity ◽  
Burial Site ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Christian Culture

In Medieval Europe, Lithuania remained a pagan state the longest, officially accepting Catholic baptism only in 1387. But the country had already been influenced by Christian culture, Orthodox from the East and Catholic from the West, since the 11th century. It should be noted that this influence was not the same: Catholicism was mostly brought ‘by fire and sword’ in the role of the Teutonic Order while the spread of Orthodox Christianity could be more peaceful. It is frequently stressed that the Ruthenian Orthodox Christians were close neighbours of the pagan Lithuanians, settling in Lithuania as subjects of the grand dukes. While the Catholics needed to be invited, the Orthodox Christians from the Ruthenian lands were already subjects of the grand dukes. Thus, communities of both branches of Christianity: Eastern Orthodox and Western Catholic, had settled here and were interacting in a still pagan environment in pagan cities ruled by pagan dukes. This article, in seeking to present the circumstances of the settlement of one of the early Christian communities in Vilnius, the Orthodox one, and its development, examines this community through data from the burial site it left and the interpretation of those data.

Calendars Beyond Borders: Exchange of Calendrical Knowledge Between Jews and Christians in Medieval Europe (12th-15th Century)

2014 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Philipp E. Nothaft ◽  
Justine Isserles
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
Extensive Literature ◽  
Medieval Latin ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Medieval Europe

Abstract During the Middle Ages, calendars played a significant role in both the Jewish and Christian communities as a means of reckoning time and structuring religious worship. Although calendars spawned a rich and extensive literature in both medieval Latin and Hebrew, it remains a little-known fact that Jews and Christians studied not only their own calendrical traditions, but also those of their respective rival group: Jewish scribes incorporated Christian material into Hebrew calendrical manuscripts, while some Christian scholars even dedicated entire treatises to the calendar used by Jews. The present article will examine these sources from a comparative perspective and use them to shed new light on the intellectual exchange that took place between Jews and Christians during the twelfth to fifteenth centuries. Particular attention will be paid to the role of oral vs. written transmission in the transfer of calendrical knowledge from one context to another.

scholarly journals History and theory of Scripture translations

2008 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Claude Loba-Mkole
Keyword(s):  
Frames Of Reference ◽  
Functional Equivalence ◽  
Historical Overview ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Bible Translation ◽  
Bible Translations ◽  
The Bible ◽  
History And Theory

This article argues for the importance of Bible translations through its historical achievements and theoretical frames of reference. The missionary expansion of Christianity owes its very being to translations. The early Christian communities knew the Bible through the LXX translations while churches today still continue to use various translations. Translations shape Scripture interpretations, especially when a given interpretation depends on a particular translation. A particular interpretation can also influence a given translation. The article shows how translation theories have been developed to clarify and how the transaction source-target is culturally handled. The articles discuss some of these “theoretical frames”, namely the functional equivalence, relevance, literary functional equivalence and intercultural mediation. By means of a historical overview and a reflection on Bible translation theories the article aims to focus on the role of Africa in translation history.

Jesus and Paul

2021 ◽  
pp. 139-170
Author(s):  
Donald Senior
Keyword(s):  
Literary Form ◽  
Christian Community ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Pastoral Letters ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Paul's Letters

The writings of Paul form a major part of the New Testament. This includes not only the so-called undisputed letters of Paul but also other letters attributed to him in antiquity that might have been written by later disciples of Paul citing him as author to evoke his apostolic authority. This chapter describes what we know of Paul’s life, beginning with his strong Jewish identity as well as his roots in the Greco-Roman world. Paul himself cites his inaugural visionary experience of the Risen Jesus as a decisive turning point in his life, leading him ultimately to be an ardent proclaimer of the gospel to the Gentile world. Paul’s letters to various early Christian communities in the Greco-Roman Mediterranean world served as extensions of his missionary efforts. Although fashioned in a different literary form than the gospel narratives, Paul’s letters also portray Jesus’s identity as both rooted in Judaism and exhibiting a unique transcendent character and purpose. Paul’s Christology focuses intensely on the significance of Jesus’s death and resurrection. The so-called deutero-Pauline Letters extend Paul’s theological vision; in the case of Colossians and Ephesians, situating the redemptive and reconciling role of Christ within the cosmos, and, in the case of the Pastoral Letters, bringing Paul’s exhortations about the life of the Christian community to some of the developing challenges of the late first-century church.

scholarly journals Prosper Guéranger O.S.B. (1805-1875) and the Struggle for Liturgical Unity

1999 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 333-344
Author(s):  
Peter Raedts
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Historical Continuity ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Unbroken Line ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
The Catholic Church

One of the strongest weapons in the armoury of the Roman Catholic Church has always been its impressive sense of historical continuity. Apologists, such as Bishop Bossuet (1627-1704), liked to tease their Protestant adversaries with the question of where in the world their Church had been before Luther and Calvin. The question shows how important the time between ancient Christianity and the Reformation had become in Catholic apologetics since the sixteenth century. Where the Protestants had to admit that a gap of more than a thousand years separated the early Christian communities from the churches of the Reformation, Catholics could proudly point to the fact that in their Church an unbroken line of succession linked the present hierarchy to Christ and the apostles. This continuity seemed the best proof that other churches were human constructs, whereas the Catholic Church continued the mission of Christ and his disciples. In this argument the Middle Ages were essential, but not a time to dwell upon. It was not until the nineteenth century that in the Catholic Church the Middle Ages began to mean far more than proof of the Church’s unbroken continuity.

scholarly journals Medieval encyclopedia as a form of of religious worldview universalization (on the example of "Speculum Maius " by Vincent of Beauvais)

2021 ◽  
pp. 42-63
Author(s):  
Alla Aristova
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Secular Culture ◽  
Religious Doctrine ◽  
Religious Worldview ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Christian Worldview ◽  
European Science ◽  
History Of ◽  
Relationship Of

The article actualizes the significance of scholastic encyclopedias for the religious and secular culture of medieval Europe. Their role as a compendium of accumulated knowledge and at the same time ideological synthesis of Christian religious doctrine and scientific achievements, ancient and scholastic traditions, university, and church-monastery intellectual culture is shown. The main attention is paid to the multi-volume Vincent of Beauvais’ work «Speculum Maius» («The Great Mirror») as the most significant work among medieval encyclopedias and its conceptual completion. The extraordinary role of the encyclopedia as a documentary evidence of knowledge, ideas, worldview, mentality of the Western European Middle Ages is proved. The author outlines the principles of codification of «The Great Mirror»; highlights the influence of the Christian-theological context on the content, structure and methods of organizing its material; the relationship of encyclopedic work with the processes of development and rationalization of the religious worldview. The focus is on the universalizing potential of the Christianity concepts, the extraordinary expression of which was the work by Vincent of Beauvais. The aspiration for universality was manifested both in the desire to understand the world as a Whole, created by God-completed omnipresence, and in attempts to base all the accumulated human experience, all kinds of knowledge and life on the principles of the Christian worldview. The encyclopedia is valued as a real «mirror» of an entire era, the medieval reception of Christianity, the history of European science and knowledge.

scholarly journals Russian Orthodoxy and Political Culture Transformation

1993 ◽  
pp. 54
Author(s):  
James W. Warhola
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Orthodox ◽  
Russian Orthodox ◽  
Orthodox Christianity ◽  
Russian Orthodoxy ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Culture Transformation ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Role Of Religion ◽  
Changing Role

Russian Orthodox Christianity has served as a major if not principal taproot of Russian culture, and has done so in varying forms and to varying degrees since the formal adoption of the Eastern Orthodox rites as official religion by Prince Vladimir of the Kievan Rus' in June of 988 A.D.1 The specific role of Russian Orthodoxy in the governance of Russia has been closely investigated.2 In addition, the political role of religion, particularly Russian Orthodoxy, during the Soviet era has been the subject of close scholarly examination.3 This paper focuses on the changing role of Orthodoxy under current conditions.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. xxx-3
Author(s):  
Paul M. Blowers ◽  
Peter W. Martens
Keyword(s):  
Crucial Role ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Theological Hermeneutics ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Sacred Scripture

This Introduction sets out the crucial role of sacred Scripture in the life, faith, and practices of the early churches, a centrality that is the very premise of all the essays in this Handbook. The editors also contextualize this Handbook within the burgeoning of interest in early Christian biblical interpretation that has unfolded in patristic studies in recent decades, and indicate its interest for scholars and readers from disciplines broader than patristics. An important aspect of this Handbook, highlighted here, is its attention to forms, modes, and genres of biblical interpretation beyond line-by-line commentary undertaken by scholarly exegetes. Only by observing these does one begin to grasp how Scripture was the lifeblood of early Christian communities. The Introduction closes by insisting on the importance of including early Christian biblical interpretation, whatever its foreignness to modern biblical-critical methodologies, in contemporary conversations over philosophical and theological hermeneutics.

Monks, Bailiffs, Constables, and Others

2021 ◽  
pp. 26-50
Author(s):  
Clive Emsley
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Significant Degree ◽  
Market Regulation ◽  
Dark Ages ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Appointed Administrators ◽  
The Middle Ages

This chapter discusses how, during the period known as the Dark Ages and then the Middle Ages, a few policing institutions began to be developed, but often their existence could be brief and limited in scope. Throughout the period, princes had to fight to gain or maintain territory, and ensuring the safety of frontiers meant that they appointed administrators and/or warriors to protect territory, or to bring in soldiers and revenue as and when necessary. The warriors, increasingly known as knights, established themselves as hereditary rulers over the territory granted to them by the prince. Municipalities could acquire a significant degree of independence from the local prince, and they were permitted to establish their own laws; they also recruited men to enforce those laws, which included market regulation, the supervision of abattoirs, watching for fire, and ensuring the safety and tidiness of the streets. The municipal guards, often backed by all fit men in a town, might also be called upon occasionally to defend the walls and outlying territory. The chapter then considers the role of warrior monks, clergy, and feudal municipalities. Ultimately, officers such as bailiffs, sheriffs, or constables, and institutions such as the watch, emerged across medieval Europe, but they were not police officers in the sense of people seeking to prevent crime or regularly gathering information about offences and pursuing offenders beyond their boundaries.

Religion and Orthodox Eastern Europe, 700–1500

2021 ◽  
pp. 59-78
Author(s):  
Matthew C. Briel
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Christian Culture ◽  
The Middle Ages

Taking the Byzantine (East Roman) Empire as its focus, this chapter paints in broad brush strokes the theological developments over the course of eight centuries, from the outbreak of Iconoclasm in the eighth century to the Hesychast debates of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It was from Byzantium that the earliest Christian missionaries spread the Gospel and Byzantine Christian culture to the various Slavic lands. The chapter also includes a note on the role of the Jews and Manichean sects in Orthodox Europe. Overall the chapter argues that it was the Orthodox Church, and especially the Patriarchate of Constantinople, that was the primary creator of culture in Eastern Europe during the Middle Ages.

Body preservation in the Middle Ages: natural and artificial mummies

1970 ◽  
Vol 80 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleonora Bonis
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Burial Site ◽  
The Public ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Public Exposure ◽  
The Middle Ages

This research focuses on cases of natural and artificial mummification from the Early to Late Middle Ages in Italy and Europe. Particular attention is placed on the bodies of saints, popes and kings which – for devotional or practical purposes, such as the public exposure of the bodies – required embalming. Natural mummies are primarily represented by the bodies of saints. Relics – parts of the mummified bodies – also were researched. The phenomena of burial site expansion, as well as heart tombs, were studied in depth. These showed changes in funerary ceremonial practices (double funerals, funerary effigies) and methods of cadaver treatment (dismemberment, boiling, heart exerisis). The policy of the Papacy in response to the distribution of these practices – as exemplified in the Bull Detestandae feritatis abusum of Bonifacio VIII (1299) – is further analyzed. Finally, a note of interest: the role of the mummia in the pharmacopoeia of the Middle Ages and subsequent centuries.

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