scholarly journals The Church of Georgia in War

2019 ◽  
pp. 115-132
Author(s):  
Mamuka Tsurtsumia

In Western Europe the Church as an institution was integrated into the military system and was obliged to serve the monarchy. Apart from performing vassal duties, the Latin clergy frequently participated in military actions. Although the Church laws forbade clergymen to shed blood, there were many examples of the violation of this rule. The attitude of the Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire concerning the possible participation of the clergy in war differed significantly from that of Latin Europe. The Byzantine priesthood did not become involved in military actions. The Greek Church possessed neither military units nor vassal commitment to the Empire. Despite a very close relationship with the Byzantine Church the attitude of the Georgian Church to the issue differs from that of Byzantium and is closer to the Western practice. The feudal organization of Georgia conditioned the social structure of the Georgian Church and its obligations before the monarchy. Despite the fact that the Georgian Church enjoyed many advantages, it had to take part in military campaigns. The upper circles of Georgian Church dignitaries were accustomed to both conducting military campaigns or taking part in the combat. In regard to military activities of clergy, Georgian law was much more lenient than Byzantine, and in the case of necessity, it even modified Greek legal norms. The conflict with the Christian canons was decided in favor of military necessity, and it was reflected in the legislation.

Author(s):  
Vladimir V. Mironov

The process of disorganization of the armed forces of Austria-Hungary in 1918 is considered through the prism of the national issue and the prospects for the further preservation of the Habsburg Monarchy. It is concluded that the military and diplomatic victories won in the early 1918 by Austria-Hungary were illusory and only put off the inevitable defeat of its army. Investigation of the first cases of mass withdrawal from obedience of military units in the spring and summer of 1918, showed that they were an interweaving of social, national-political and military reasons proper. At the same time, a serious discrepancy was revealed between Slovenian and Italian researchers in the interpretation of the reasons for the uprising in the 97th infantry regiment stationed in the Slovenian Radkersburg (Radgon). If for the former it was typical, following the Marxist tradition, to emphasize the social contradictions that led to the revolutionization of the army according to the “Russian model”, the latter praised the participants in the uprising from the Italian side as genuine national patriots. It is shown that the “shock force” of all the soldiers’ uprisings that broke out in the spring and summer of 1918 in the Austro-Hungarian army were servicemen who returned from Russian captivity in the spring of 1918, where some of them were imbued with revolutionary ideas. The conclusion is drawn about the extreme severity of military justice, which condemned many of the insurgents to death, which became the reason for deputy inquiries.


2015 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-125
Author(s):  
Urška Strle

UNDERSTANDING WOMEN'S WORK DURING THE GREAT WARThe article deals with the intersection of war economy and women's workforce during World War I and pays a special attention to the Slovenian population. Using a variety of sources, the author tries to synthesise the generalities and specifics of the women’s involvement into the war economy in the so-called Slovenian lands. War economy is understood in the broadest sense and includes not only armament and war-related production, but also the acute issue of supplies for the military and civil sphere.The economic role of the Slovenian lands, peripheral within the Habsburg Monarchy, and the social structure of the Slovenian population profoundly affected the way how women were being included into the activities at the home front. The author argues that the sensational images from Western Europe, presenting a massive inclusion of women into the war industry, are not typical for the Slovenian space. However, the role of women in the war economy should not be underestimated, for they represented the majority of economically active population, supporting not only the civil society but also the army.


Author(s):  
Р.Г. ДЗАТТИАТЫ

В результате процессов, сопровождавших Великое переселение народов, аланы, попав в Западную Европу, были ассимилированы, оставив во Франции, Северной Италии, Испании, Англии несколько сотен топонимов, связанных с ними. Следы пребывания алан на Западе впервые были обобщены В.А. Кузнецовым и В.К. Пудовиным. Появление труда американского ученого Б. Бахраха «Аланы на Западе» сняли скептицизм по отношению к роли алан в истории народов Западной Европы. О роли алан в исторических событиях Западной Европы раннего и зрелого Средневековья было отчетливо заявлено в трудах В.Б. Ковалевской, Франко Кардини, Говарда Рида, Скотта Литлтона, Линды Малкор. Особенно замечательна объемная работа Агусти Алемани «Аланы в древних и средневековых письменных источниках». У алан было заимствовано устройство конного войска, а вместе с этим, вероятно, и экипировка всадника, важной деталью которой был воинский пояс. Пряжка со щитком такого пояса служила у алан маркером статуса: в зависимости от того, из какого материала она была изготовлена (золото, серебро, бронза), она указывала на место в социальной иерархии. Трехлепестковый орнамент в результате модификаций вполне мог стать основой или прообразом особого знака-символа – так называемой «королевской лилии». Схему трансформации трехлепесткового узора в лилию можно проиллюстрировать рисунками пряжек. Надо полагать, что аланы оставили свой след не только в топонимике, организации конного войска, но и в орнаментике, фольклоре, антропонимике и других проявлениях культуры, которые необходимо тщательно исследовать. As a result of the processes that accompanied the Great Migration of Nations, the Alans, having fallen into Western Europe, were assimilated, leaving several hundred place names associated with them in France, Northern Italy, Spain, and England. The traces of the Alans' stay in the West were first generalized by V.A. Kuznetsov and V.K. Pudovin. The appearance of the work of the American scientist B.S. Bachrach "Alans in the West" removed skepticism regarding the role of the Alans in the history of the peoples of Western Europe. The role of the Alans in the historical events of Western Europe of the early and mature Middle Ages was clearly stated in the works of V.B. Kovalevskaya, Franco Cardini, Howard Reed, Scott Littleton, Linda Malkor. Particularly remarkable is the voluminous work of Agusti Alemany "Alans in ancient and medieval written sources." The Alans borrowed the device of the horse army, and with it, probably, the equipment of the horseman, an important detail of which was the military belt. The buckle with the shield of such a belt served as a status marker for the Alans: depending on what material it was made of (gold, silver, and bronze) it indicated a place in the social hierarchy. As a result of modifications, the three-petal ornament could very well become the basis or prototype of a special sign-symbol – the so-called “royal lily”. The transformation pattern of a three-petal pattern into a lily can be illustrated with buckle patterns. It must be assumed that the Alans left their mark not only in toponymy, organization of the cavalry army, but also in ornamentation, folklore, anthroponymy and other cultural manifestations, which must be carefully studied.


Author(s):  
Hannes Stekl

The High Nobility. Landed Property, Careers, Living Spaces. This chapter outlines the social position of Lower Austria’s high nobility against the background of social change in the long 19th century. It focuses on the inner structure of the nobility, the dimensions of their landed property, economic management and wealth, professional careers at the court, in diplomacy, administration, the military and the church, and noble living spaces in the Vienna Residence and on the estates. The examination of various facets of a distinctly aristocratic lifestyle points to continuities as well as breaks in traditional patterns of behaviour and values; it also shows the chances and failures of autonomous life plans of women and men. This broad depiction of noble mentalities, ways of life and options for action reveals the ambivalent consequences of the progressive change in elites. Despite the loss of old positions of power, the exploitation of economic opportunities, the formation of networks across boundaries of social class and an unbroken paternalism opened up opportunities for the old high aristocracy to assert itself.


Author(s):  
Arsen K. Shahinyan ◽  

This paper states that the monograph published E. A. Mekhamadiev, a researcher from St. Petersburg, is a fundamental study of the Later Roman military organization, with especial attention to the epigraphic and papyrological accounts. The use of these sources allows the author to reconstruct the history of specific military units, their spatial movements, participation in various military campaigns and wars, and changes in their ranks. Important is that Mekhamadiev examined the internal (organizational) structure of all regional armies of the Roman empire from 253 to 305 and not restricted himself to specific and narrow aspects of history of a particular province or country. The author of the book under present review has analysed the data related to both the eastern and the western imperial provinces, discovered close interrelations of the western and eastern provinces, and indicated permanent movements of the military units from the west to east and in the opposite direction depending on the geopolitical and home political situation.


1983 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 59-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Holdsworth

The track to be explored in this paper was laid down when I realised how relatively unexamined the actual working out of Christian ideas about war within the medieval period is. Recent years have seen appear a notable book about the development of ideas on the Just War, and a great deal of work on the role of the military aristocracy and on its ideals, but upon the coming together of Christianity and actual events there seemed to me very little, at least in the period which interests me most. The one series of events which has attracted attention within what one can call loosely the twelfth century is, of course, the Crusades, but I decided to put them rather at the edge of my focus since they raised special questions, and to invite a scholar who has devoted much time to their elucidation to give a paper upon a crusading theme later in the conference. Yet when one turns for guidance for the history of western Europe there is only one book which stands out, La Guerre au Moyen Age by Philippe Contamine which appeared in the Nouvelle Clio series as recently as 1980, and it, as one would expect from its author’s earlier achievement, is strongest when it deals with the period of the Hundred Years War. Nonetheless it is a remarkable achievement, and one to which I am deeply indebted. But given the fact that the subject is still so unmapped, only two approaches seemed feasible to me, one where I would try to look at a series of specific wars and see what the Church did about them, or one where I would look at a source or group of sources, and see what it, or they, had to say about war and the Church.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (16) ◽  
pp. 4427 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stanisław Sirko ◽  
Jarosław Kozuba ◽  
Marzena Piotrowska-Trybull

This article focuses on the analysis of the military links with local communities in the context of sustainable development, in particular the social and economic aspects of development. The aim of the article is to identify and characterize the links between military units and entities in the local environment on the example of selected municipalities in Poland and to assess these links in the opinion of residents, local authorities, and soldiers. Between military units and local communities, there are relations of different nature and intensity, conditioned by internal and external factors. The military stationed on the territory of individual municipalities makes a direct and indirect contribution to building the social and economic potential of these places, as well as providing public goods in the form of the national defence. The links between the military and local communities are discussed in the source literature with reference to examples from different countries. While the scale and scope of these links vary, these impacts follow similar patterns.


2020 ◽  
Vol 125 (5) ◽  
pp. 1601-1631
Author(s):  
Monica H. Green

Abstract The Black Death, often called the largest pandemic in human history, is conventionally defined as the massive plague outbreak of 1346 to 1353 c.e. that struck the Black Sea and Mediterranean, extended into the Middle East, North Africa, and western Europe, and killed as much as half the total population of those regions. Yet genetic approaches to plague’s history have established that Yersinia pestis, the causative organism of plague, suddenly diverged in Central Asia at some point before the Black Death, splitting into four new branches—a divergence geneticists have called the “Big Bang.” Drawing on a “biological archive” of genetic evidence, I trace the bacterial descendants of the Big Bang proliferation, comparing that data to historical human activities in and around the area of plague’s emergence. The Mongols, whose empire emerged in 1206, unwittingly moved plague through Central Eurasia in the thirteenth, not the fourteenth, century. Grain shipments that the Mongols brought with them to several sieges, including the siege of Baghdad, were the most likely mechanism of transmission. The fourteenth century plague outbreaks represent local spillover events out of the new plague reservoirs seeded by the military campaigns of the thirteenth century.


Author(s):  
Sergey A. Denisov ◽  

This article considers the incorporation of Prussians, Sudovians, and Scalovians who migrated to territories which were not theirs originally, into the social system of the State of the Teutonic Order between the 1280s and 1370s. The author examines the main aspects of this issue, i.e. property status and duties of migrants, with reference to data from 41 acts granted to them by the Order and the church, and the Chronicles written by Peter of Dusburg and Caspar Shuetz. The study of these data with the help of the prosopographical and historical and comparative methods makes it possible to determine the main directions of migration, number of migrants, size, and composition of their property and duties performed in relation to the Order and the church. The main regions for migration were Sambia and Pomesania, receiving 5 144 out of 5 166 persons. The choice of the regions was caused by the lack of local farmers that was the result of the devastation committed during the struggle of Prussians, Scalovians, and Sudovians with the expansion of the Order between 1260s and 1280s. Another reason was the remoteness of Sambia and Pomesania from the migrants’ native lands and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. On the one hand, it prevented possible union between the settlers and the Lithuanian rulers and, on the other hand, fostered communication between the migrants and the Order which guaranteed the former status in the new community. The incorporation of Prussians, Scalovians, and Sudovians was carried out by granting them fief or locator’s office and implied the definition of their rights and duties similar to those enjoyed by the local inhabitants. The migrants served in the military, paid taxes, had jurisdiction over their peasants, added unclaimed lands to their property, received permission to fish in the nearby waters, etc. These features testify to the successful incorporation of migrants into the new social system that contributed to a further development of the State of the Teutonic Order.


Author(s):  
Sergey Denisov

The article deals with the problem of incorporation of the Pomezanians who settled in western Prussian lands in the social system of the Order State in the 1260–1370s. To research this problem, the article discusses composition and functions of 227 feoffees entered the service of brethern and bishops. These aspects have not been thoroughly studied in historiography; they are fixed in 147 acts, such as Pomezanian Law and the Chronicles of Peter of Dusburg and Wigand of Marburg. The given aspects have been researched with prosopographical, historical- comparative, typological, and diachron-synchronous methods, that allowed us to make the following conclusions. The majority of feoffees (165 of 227 persons) kept the military service for their estates and additionally paid natural, natural-money or cash taxes (Group 1) or were free from taxes (Group 2). These groups were constantly increased in number in the 1260–1370s. It was caused by the Order need for warriors for military campaigns against the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland. In contrast to them, Group 3 was rarely replenished and paid the brethern and church additional taxes from distinct lands. These groups had social-propriety differentiation, negative consequences of the latter were neutralized by the Order and church due to the heirs’ increasing numver, permission to change land estates, exemption from military service and taxes for a certain period of time and other actions. These measures were based on the local law and combined with regulations of military service and taxes fixed in Culm Charter. This situation the flexible policy conducted by the brethern and church in Pomezania. It became the basis for successful incorporation of local inhabitants in the social system of the Order State.


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