Federico Barbierato 11 Popular Atheism and Unbelief: A Seventeenth-Century Venetian Point of View

2000 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renate Dürr

“All, therefore, who consider themselves Christians may be absolutely certain that we are all equally priests.”1 With this declaration Martin Luther categorically repudiated the Catholic understanding of priesthood as a holy estate with indelible marks bestowed at consecration. According to the reformers all Christians, in principle, have the same authority in word and sacrament, but only those authorized by the respective community of believers may wield it. This assessment not only reflected certain irregularities within the clergy but also signified a completely new definition of the priesthood. It cannot be understood outside the context of existing contemporary criticism—not only from reformatory circles—of the state of numerous parishes who suffered under poorly educated, morally unacceptable (from a contemporary point of view) or indeed absent clergymen. The Catholic Church's answer to this challenge, therefore, had two aims: plans for far-reaching reforms were intended to renew the image of priests and, primarily, to provide effective pastoral care. Polemical theological debates against Protestants and discussions within the Catholic Church were intended not only to strengthen the certainty of the fundamental essence of priestly identity but also to facilitate a differentiation of Catholic from Protestant understanding. The decisions of the Council of Trent also touched both areas. At the 23rd session both the theological basis of the sacrament of consecration and the plans to reform the rules concerning the bishops' obligatory residence in their parishes were debated.2


Author(s):  
Richard Hingley

The works examined above have been explored through a chronological study based upon the four overlapping themes of civility/ Romanization, the walling out of humanity, Roman incomers, and ruination, emphasized through a reading of the sources to explore how the discovery of objects and sites has helped to inform a number of contrasting interpretations that went in and out of fashion. A number of more local and fragmented tales have also been addressed in passing and it is evident that a very different account could have been articulated if I had drawn more directly upon such ideas. Tales, such as those of Onion the Silchester Giant, Graham’s creation of a breach in the Antonine Wall, King Arthur and his ‘O’on’ at Camelon in central Scotland and the activities of the devil at Rodmarton, provide information about how local people interpreted the physical remains of the Romans in Britain. The focus on elite tales in this book should not detract from the potential of local myths, but a thorough study of such material remains to be undertaken. Instead, this book has emphasized stories that have been told about the pre- Roman and Roman history of Britain that served to develop relevant national and imperial tales. The significance of the civilizing of the ancient Britons drove a particular approach to the ancient sources during the early seventeenth century that emphasized the passing on of Roman civility to people of England (or Lowland Britain). From this point of view, the ruined Roman Walls projected the territorial limit of civility, beyond which were the lands of barbarians. Towards the end of the century, a new interpretation arose that placed emphasis on the Roman settlers, their ‘stations’, and roads, reflecting the contemporary military aspect of society while envisaging England (or Lowland Britain) as the inheritor of Roman civility. This military conception was redefined and updated during the succeeding centuries as an analogy for the extension of state control over the Scottish Highlands and later for the exploration, documentation, and domination of territories in India and elsewhere.


2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-185
Author(s):  
Felicita Tramontana

AbstractThis article focuses on the role played by local mobility in processes of confession and community building, taking the Catholic population in seventeenth-century Palestine as a case study. Works on the Reformation in Europe have acknowledged a connection between the strengthening of confessional identities and geographical mobility. Through the analysis of the parish records of Bethlehem, the article reveals some characteristics of seventeenth-century Catholic mobility in Palestine and shows how this mobility was bound up with the consolidation of a tiny Catholic minority and the establishment of a sacramental network. From a larger perspective, this research suggests that mobility plays an important role in the development and consolidation of small communities in a context of competing religion. From a methodological point of view, it also shows the importance of microanalysis in understanding the geographical mobility associated with religious practices and allegiances.


PMLA ◽  
1950 ◽  
Vol 65 (6) ◽  
pp. 1130-1145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Audrey Chew

During his own lifetime Bishop Joseph Hall was nicknamed “our spiritual Seneca” by Henry Wotton and later called “our English Seneca” by Thomas Fuller; as a result it has recently become fashionable to associate him with seventeenth-century English Neo-Stoicism. A seventeenth-century Neo-Stoic is of interest presumably because he points in the direction of eighteenth-century Neo-Stoicism, away from a revealed religion toward a natural religion, away from faith toward reason. In a recent article Philip A. Smith calls Hall “the leading Neo-Stoic of the seventeenth century” and says that he enthusiastically preached the “Neo-Stoic brand of theology” to which Sir Thomas Browne objected. This theology maintained that “to follow ‘right reason’ was to follow nature, which was the same thing as following God.” Smith goes on to say that “what most attracted seventeenth-century Christian humanists like Bishop Hall was the fact that Stoicism attempted to frame a theory of the universe and of the individual man which would approximate a rule of life in conformity with an ‘immanent cosmic reason‘”—though in the same paragraph he also mentions the point “that Neo-Stoic divines of the seventeenth century were interested in Stoicism almost exclusively from the ethical point of view.” He cites Lipsius to show how a Christian might reach an approximation between the Stoic Fate and Christian Providence, leaving the reader to assume that Hall might also have made this approximation. He says that “the natural light of reason, as expounded by the Stoic philosophers, became, for seventeenth-century Neo-Stoics, the accepted guide to conduct” and that “religious and moral writers endeavored to trace a relationship between moral and natural law which in effect resulted in the practical code of ethical behavior commonly associated with Neo-Stoicism.”


2020 ◽  
pp. 79-88
Author(s):  
Magdalena Zaród

Ludwik Kondratowicz (Władysław Syrokomla) represented a patriotic attitude towards his homeland.His works written in the years 1823–1862 were primarily an expression of the public moodin the middle of the 19th century. It was Syrokomla’s gentleman’s tale Born Jan Dęboróg, the Historyof His Family, Heads and Hearts, Told by Him Himself and Written Down in the Form of Rhythmby W. S., written in the years 1847–1851 and published for the first time in 1853, that reflected thatlocal/regional patriotism. For many years it remained in the shadow of the great legacy of the mostoutstanding representatives of Romanticism and was therefore underestimated.What is important in this tale is a tradition, with various events and customs related to it, datingback to the seventeenth century and continued till Syrokomla’s times. Apart from the defense ofpeasants, national tradition and patriotism, Syrokomla also emphasized his own views, so this taleis also a confession of the author’s faith. The popularity of Born Jan Dęborog was determined notonly by the personal tone of the tale saturated with a wistful feeling, but also by the manner in whichthe action is presented – from the point of view of the average person. Syrokomla consciously gaveup his role as the guide of the nation and immersed himself in the oral tradition, thanks to which heenjoyed the obedience and reverence of his people.


Author(s):  
Peter Auger

Abraham Cowley reacted against the tradition of divine poetry that Du Bartas embodied, arguing that scriptural poets needed to have technical expertise and spiritual insight. As later seventeenth-century poets like Thomas Heywood, John Perrot, and Samuel Pordage became aware of the limits of simply describing literal truths from the Bible and natural world, they reverted to allegorical and other figurative narrative structures that could accommodate higher truths to the human imagination and describe psychological experience. John Milton had known Sylvester’s translation since he was a teenager, but Paradise Lost makes purposeful allusions that surpass Devine Weekes, showing how difficult it is to apprehend divine truth, and how interpretation depends on our point of view. Lucy Hutchinson’s meditations on Genesis revise Du Bartas’ poetics to strip away extraneous material that distracts from scriptural truth.


2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irina Podgorny

AbstractThis article presents a preliminary survey by which to track, in thelongue durée, the path of the nail of theGran Bestia(great beast), a remedy that appeared in therapeutics on both sides of the Atlantic. TheGran Bestiais mentioned in the natural histories, books of remedies, and medical handbooks that proliferated in the Old World and European settlements from the seventeenth century onwards. From the point of view of global history, it is a revealing case from which to investigate, first, how the transfer of a name between continents involved the associated transfer of medical virtues and properties and, second, long before Linnaeus, how the commerce in medicines, skins, and other animal products contributed to associating different animal kinds from different cultural worlds. Far from human universals, the history of the great beast seems to refer to common meanings created by commerce. This article therefore argues for a new investigation into the global and transdisciplinary dimension of objects that is not limited to exclusively local traditions, and may instead reflect the living remains of a long history of exchanges, translations, and transfers that de- and re-functionalized nature in evolving geographies over several centuries.


Slavic Review ◽  
1967 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 577-583
Author(s):  
Omeljan Pritsak

The seventeenth-century chronicles record an interesting event under the year 1574:At that time Tsar Ivan Vasil'evich enthroned Simeon Bekbulatovich as tsar in Moscow and crowned him with the crown of the tsars, and called himself [simply] Ivan of Moscow; he left the city and lived in Petrovka. All the offices of tsardom he passed to Simeon, and himself rode simply, like a boyar with shafts, and whenever he comes to Tsar Simeon, he sits at a distance from the Tsar’s place, together with the boyars.That such an event did in fact take place, we have the testimony of contemporary witnesses, the English envoy Danyell Silvester and the imperial envoy Daniel Printz a Bucchau, as well as official documents which have been preserved from the time of Simeon’s reign as tsar.


PMLA ◽  
1942 ◽  
Vol 57 (4-Part1) ◽  
pp. 1196-1205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence LeSage

That preciosity is only a relative term will be readily endorsed by anyone who has studied the critical literature devoted to Jean Giraudoux. Some critics hurl the word as a reproach and condemnation, while others give themselves pains to plead or explain Giraudoux's case. Each, as well as the author himself, feels certain that preciosity is the word which will label and pigeon-hole him exactly; but alas, each proceeds to suggest a different nuance until the subject becomes quite confusing. The word preciosity itself suffers as many interpretations as classicism or romanticism, so a precise definition is out of the question. Originally associated with the seventeenth century arbiters of taste in language and etiquette, the term has since broadened its scope considerably. Literary historians have found it a convenient label for subtlety and refinement wherever these qualities may appear. Hence they do not mean an isolated phenomenon, but a fundamental characteristic of some minds, adapting and transforming itself according to time and place. Words such as gongorism, euphuism, concettism, conceptualism, or marivaudage are mutations or varieties of preciosity. According to popular usage, however, précieux means only précieux ridicule, synonymous with artificial or affected. In analyzing the preciosity of Jean Giraudoux from our own point of view, we shall find occasion to examine a great variety of critical opinions.


2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 367-385
Author(s):  
Ondřej Stolička

Abstract The past thirty years has brought an important change into the scholarship of the period of the last Habsburgs on the Spanish throne. Named after the book by Christopher Storrs, the long-term paradigm of the decline of the Spanish monarchy in the last half of the seventeenth century has been reestablished, however, the research of the relationships between the Spanish Habsburgs and Central Europe in the last quarter of the seventeenth century has yet to be to be considered. This study presents a more complex perception of the coup led by Juan José of Austria in the year 1677 and discovers an important perception of the situation from the point of view of the Emperor Leopold I and the Elector of Brandenburg Frederick William. The new Spanish government, as well, enacted shifts in their politics which could endanger their positions, however both accepted the new situation differently.


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