Alfenus Varus and the Faculty of Advocates: Roman Visions and the Manners that were Fit for Admission to the Bar in the Eighteenth Century

Author(s):  
John W Cairns

The Bar was a socially exclusive institution in most countries, even though it was in theory an open one. This chapter focuses on two curious episodes towards the end of the eighteenth century, when the Faculty unsuccessfully attempted to exclude two men — John Wright and Robert Forsyth — from membership. The debates among the Faculty arising from these episodes show the deployment of the language of manners, sentiment, and politeness, as well as argument about the traditional Roman models of what it was to be an advocate. To some extent, we can view these debates as helping redefine not only the advocates’ perception of themselves, whereby they moved away from identification with the Roman jurists, but also the role of Roman law in the training of the Bar. At the same time, the social composition of the Faculty was changing.

1991 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 321-365 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lakshmi Subramanian

The Banias of eighteenth-century Surat, whom Michelguglielmo Torri earlier treated with indifference if not innocence, have invited his wrath since they were brought into focus by the publication of my essay on the Banias and the Surat riot of 1795. In his ‘rejoinder’ to my article, he seeks to wish away their existence altogether (to him there was no specific Bania community, the term merely signifying traders of all communities engaged in the profession of brokerage), and seeks to provide what he regards as an ‘alternative’ explanation of the Muslim–Bania riot of 1795. the Muslim-Bania riot of 1795. It shall be my purpose in this reply to show that his alternative explanation is neither an alternative nor even an explanation, and is based on a basic confusion in his mind about the Banias as well as the principal sources of tension in the social structure of Surat. I shall treat two main subjects in this reply to his misdirected criticisms. First, I shall present some original indigenous material as well as European documentation to further clarify the identity, position and role of the Banias, whom Irfan Habib in a recent article has identified as the most important trading group in the trading world of seventeenth and eighteenth-century India. It is also my purpose to show how the social order of Surat operated under stress by presenting some archival material, the existence of which Torri seems to be completely unaware of, on the Parsi-Muslim riot of 1788.


Author(s):  
Gershon David Hundert

This chapter investigates the conditions in Jewish society in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the middle decades of the eighteenth century. The place of hasidism in the religious history of the eighteenth century ought to be reconsidered not only in light of the questions about the schismatic groups in the Orthodox Church raised by Ysander, but also in light of the general revivalist currents in western Europe. The social historian cannot explain hasidism, which belongs to the context of the development of the east European religious mentality in the eighteenth century. Social history does, however, point to some significant questions that ought to be explored further. One of these is the role of youth and generational conflict in the beginnings of the movement, and not only in its beginnings. A realistic recovery of the situation of the Polish-Lithuanian Jewry in the eighteenth century shows that neither the economic nor the security conditions were such as to warrant their use as causal or explanatory factors in the rise and reception of hasidism.


2001 ◽  
Vol 46 (S9) ◽  
pp. 107-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Potukuchi Swarnalatha

This paper examines the form, content, and role of petitions in the context of protests occasioned by the handloom weavers of colonial Andhra, particularly the northern districts of the northern Coromandel region, between 1770 and 1820. Minor and major protests and revolts by weavers erupted with increasing frequency from around the middle of the eighteenth century, whenever their socioeconomic structures and conditions of work and trade were under threat from the old and new elites, as well as from the commercial interests of the colonial state. On these occasions, weavers expressed their grievances through petitions and representations, either in combination with other strategies or independently. These petitions therefore offer opportunities to study and identify the economic and social conditions that prompted weavers to resort to collective action. Careful analyses of the petitions yield considerable insights with respect to the causes of the protests; their spatial and social diffusion; the social profile of contending parties, and their mentalities; the changing organizational structure of the textile industry; the petitions' consequences; and, finally, the attitude of the colonial state towards these petitions.


1967 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henryk Wereszycki

The question of whether the Poles were an integrating or a disintegrating factor within the Habsburg monarchy has yet to be fully studied by Polish historians. Up to now they have concerned themselves mainly with the part played by the Austrian empire in the history of the Polish nation after the eighteenth century partitions and have overlooked the role of the Poles in the Austrian empire. They have concentrated their attention on the fate of the territories of the historic Polish state which fell under Habsburg rule and have studied the social, cultural, and political transformations which affected Galicia during the century and a half of Austrian domination. Polish historians have even studied the contributions made by former Habsburg subjects to the reconstruction of the Polish state after the dissolution of the monarchy, but they have rarely discussed the part which the Poles took in the political life of the multinational empire.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dániel Bárth

The aim of this paper is to examine the role of the Christian lower priesthood in local communities in eighteenth–twentieth century Hungary and Transylvania in cultural transmission. The author intends to map out the complex and changing conditions of the social function, everyday life, and mentality of the priests on the bottom rung of the clerical hierarchy. Particular emphasis is placed on the activity of priests active at the focus points of interaction between elite and popular culture who, starting from the second half of the eighteenth century, often reflected both directly and in a written form on the cultural practices of the population of villages and market towns. The theoretical questions and possible approaches are centered around the complex relations of the priest and the community, their harmonious or conflict-ridden co-existence, questions of sacral economy, stereotypes of the “good priest” and the “bad priest” as shaped from above and from below, the subtleties of “priest-keeping”, the intentions related to preserving traditions and creating new customs, and the different temperaments of priests in relation to these issues.


Author(s):  
Frederick Beiser

Hamann was one of the most important critics of the German Enlightenment or Aufklärung. He attacked the Aufklärung chiefly because it gave reason undue authority over faith. It misunderstood faith, which consists in an immediate personal experience, inaccessible to reason. The main fallacy of the Aufklärung was hypostasis, the reification of ideas, the artificial abstraction of reason from its social and historical context. Hamann stressed the social and historical dimension of reason, that it must be embodied in society, history and language. He also emphasized the pivotal role of language in the development of reason. The instrument and criterion of reason was language, whose only sanction was tradition and use. Hamann was a sharp critic of Kant, whose philosophy exemplified all the sins of the Aufklärung. Hamann attacked the critical philosophy for its purification of reason from experience, language and tradition. He also strongly objected to all its dualisms, which seemed arbitrary and artificial. The task of philosophy was to unify all the various functions of the mind, seeing reason, will and feeling as an indivisible whole. Although he was original and unorthodox, Hamann’s critique of reason should be placed within the tradition of Protestant nominalism. Hamann saw himself as a defender of Luther, whose reputation was on the wane in late eighteenth-century Germany. Hamann was also a founder of the Sturm und Drang, the late eighteenth-century literary movement which celebrated personal freedom and revolt. His aesthetics defended creative genius and the metaphysical powers of art. It marked a sharp break with the rationalism of the classical tradition and the empiricism of late eighteenth-century aesthetics. Hamann was a seminal influence upon Herder, Goethe, Jacobi, Friedrich Schlegel and Kierkegaard.


Author(s):  
John Uhr

This chapter draws on the fields of politics and performance to analyze the nature of leadership performance in contemporary political societies. It recovers neglected themes about leadership performance originally articulated by two political thinkers deeply interested in the role of public performance by political leaders, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Walter Bagehot, both of whom can help strengthen contemporary appraisals of leadership performance. The two thinkers evaluate leadership performance quite differently, using different performance standards. The eighteenth-century philosopher Rousseau devised a moral critique of modern liberalism, including a detailed evaluation of underdeveloped modes of leadership performance typical of modern liberal political regimes. Rousseau’s alternative leadership morality sketched in The Social Contract remains a powerful source for contemporary analysis of the limits of liberalism and of the options for more egalitarian, republican alternatives.


2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 341-362 ◽  
Author(s):  
PAOLA BERTUCCI

In the eighteenth century, dramatic electrical performances were favourite entertainments for the upper classes, yet the therapeutic uses of electricity also reached the lower strata of society. This change in the social composition of electrical audiences attracted the attention of John Wesley, who became interested in the subject in the late 1740s. The paper analyses Wesley's involvement in the medical applications of electricity by taking into account his theological views and his proselytizing strategies. It sets his advocacy of medical electricity in the context of his philanthropic endeavours aimed at the sick poor, connecting them to his attempts to spread Methodism especially among the lower classes. It is argued that the healing virtues of electricity entailed a revision of the morality of electrical experiment which made electric sparks powerful resources for the popularization of the Methodist way of life, based on discipline, obedience to established authorities and love and fear of God.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reza Tabandeh

How were the Ni‘matullāhī masters successful in reviving Ni‘matullāhī Sufism in Shi‘ite Persia? This book investigates the revival of Ni‘matullāhī Sufi order after the death of the last Indian Ni‘matullāhī master, Riḍā ‘Alī Shāh (d. 1214/1799) in the Deccan. After the fall of Safavids, the revival movement of the Ni‘matullāhī order began with the arrival in Persia of the enthusiastic Indian Sufi master, Ma‘ṣūm ‘Alī Shāh, during the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Later, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Persian masters of the Ni‘matullāhī Order were able to solidify the order’s place in the mystical and theological milieu of Persia. Ma‘ṣūm ‘Alī Shāh and his disciples soon spread their mystical and ecstatic beliefs all over Persia. They succeeded in converting a large mass of Persians to Sufi teachings, despite the opposition and persecution they faced from Shi‘ite clerics, who were politically and socially the most influential class in Persia. The book demonstrates that Ḥusayn ‘Alī Shāh, Majdhūb ‘Alī Shāh, and Mast ‘Alī Shāh were able to consolidate the social and theological role of the Ni‘matullāhī order by reinterpreting and articulating classical Sufi teachings in the light of Persian Shi‎‘ite mystical theology.


1965 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 309-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norman Ravitch

The increasing emphasis of historians of the eighteenth century on the role of aristocracy under the old régime justifies looking once again, more carefully, at the upper clergy of the established religious cults. The leaders of the established churches were ex officio, if not also by birth, always members of the aristocracy. No comprehension of the membership, organization, or objectives of the eighteenth-century aristocracy is possible without consideration of its ecclesiastical wing—in the case of episcopal churches, of its bishops.


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