scholarly journals The Polish Contribution to Central European Musical Culture in the Seventeenth Century. The Case of Marcin Mielczewski

2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 137-148
Author(s):  
Barbara Przybyszewska-Jarmińska
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
German Language ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
Royal Court ◽  
Grand Duchy Of Lithuania ◽  
Musical Genres ◽  
Music Theorist

The seventeenth-century Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania, embracing the lands of the Polish Crown (together with the territory of present-day Ukraine) and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, belonged geographically to both Central and Eastern Europe. It was a multiethnic and multiconfessional state, in which the Latin and Greek cultures were mutually interactive. With regard to the musical culture of the royal court, however, itwas the close ties with Italy that were of the greatest significance. The Polish kings of the Vasa dynasty (above ali Zygmunt III and Władysław IV) maintained music chapels consisting to a considerable extent of Italian musicians, among whom were Luca Marenzio, Giulio Cesare Gabussi, Asprilio Pacelli, Giovanni Francesco Anerio and Tarquinio Merula. Thanks to the Polish patronage, they not only composed newworks, but also trained musicians of various nations belonging to the royal ensembles. Among the composers trained at the Polish court was the Italian Marco Scacchi (d. 1662), chapel-master to Władysław IV, the composer of operas staged in the royal theatre, and also a music theorist – the author of a classification of musical genres which was produced during Scacchi's dispute over music theory with the Gdansk organist Paul Siefert. This dispute contributed to the popularisation across Europe of the works of Scacchi and also of other musicians associated with the court of the Polish Vasas. Extant handwritten sources of Silesian provenance (belonging to the Emil Bohn collection, currently held in the Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin) testify the considerable interest in this region (now within the Polish borders, but in the seventeenth century constituting a dominion of the Empire) in the religious compositions of Marcin Mielczewski (d. 1651), musician to Władysław IV (until 1644) and subsequently, until his death, chapel-master to Karol Ferdinand Vasa, Bishop of Płock and Wrocław. Of Mielczewski's compositional output for the needs of the Roman Catholic Church, copyists from Lutheran circles in Wrocław chose primarily psalms that were universal to the Christian repertory, furnishing those works whose texts chimed with the doctrine of the Augsburg confession with more appropriate texts of German-language contrafacta. However, this method was not always successful in eliminating traces of Catholicism, which remained, for example, in the melodies of works based on pre-compositional material drawn by Mielczewski from Marian songs that were popular in Poland (e.g. the church concerto Audite gentes et exsultate, also preserved in a version with the text of a German-language contrafactum entitled Nun höret alle, based on the song O gloriosa Domina, which in the former Commonwealth  was treated as a chivalrous hymn).

scholarly journals Bishop Nicholas French and the second Ormond peace, 1648-9

1948 ◽  
Vol 6 (22) ◽  
pp. 83-100
Author(s):  
Patrick J. Corish
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
The State ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Moral Order ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

Europe in the seventeenth century was a land of mar and confusion because the great political problems raised by the religious disruption of the preceding century had not yet been solved. Chief among these was the problem of the relations between the Roman catholic church and a protestant state. The teaching of the pope's indirect power in temporal matters in any problem involving a breach of the moral order (ratione peccati) had been strongly re-stated by Bellarmine, and was the official attitude of the church. A protestant prince had committed a grave sin, that of heresy, and so it was the pope's right and duty to depose him and absolve his Catholic subjects from their allegiance. But this political theory was becoming impractical as the seventeenth century progressively demonstrated that Europe was permanently divided. As might be expected, juridical forms lagged behind the development of events; but by the middle of the century the Roman curia, while not prepared to give antecedent approval to a peace with protestants, might be said to be ready to acquiesce once it had been concluded, if the position and rights of the Catholic church could be assured. Yet this assurance was, in the circumstances, almost impossible. The Catholic church could not rest satisfied with toleration as a sect, but demanded recognition as an organised society with a source of jurisdiction illdependent of the state.

scholarly journals The Attempts to Establish A Balance of Power in Europe During the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century (1648–1702)

1904 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 33-76
Author(s):  
M. G. Routh
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
The Other ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The One

The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 put an end to the war which had troubled Europe for thirty years, and which had its origin in the bitter religious hatred, intensified by political jealousy, of the partisans of the Reformation on the one hand, and of the adherents of the Roman Catholic Church on the other.

The Voices of Nimes

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzannah Lipscomb
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Unintended Consequence ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
Criminal Courts ◽  
Court Records ◽  
Everyday Lives ◽  
Female Power

Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century women of the middling and lower levels of society left no letters or diaries. Criminal courts and magistrates kept few records of their testimonies, and no ecclesiastical court records are known to survive for the French Roman Catholic Church between 1540 and 1667. For the most part, we cannot hear the voices of ordinary French women—but this study allows us to. Based on 1,200 cases brought before the consistories—or moral courts—of the Huguenot church of Languedoc between 1561 and 1615, this book allows us to access ordinary women’s everyday lives: their speech, behaviour, and attitudes to love, faith, marriage, friendship, and sex. Women appeared frequently before the consistory because one of the chief functions of moral discipline was the regulation of sexual sin, for which women were thought to be primarily responsible. The registers include over a thousand testimonies by and about women. Women also featured prominently because of an unintended consequence of the system: women quickly learnt how to use the consistory. The registers therefore offer unrivalled evidence of women’s agency in a range of different contexts and let us see how independent, self-determining, and vocal women could be in an age when they had limited legal rights, little official power, and few prospects. This book suggests we need to reconceptualize female power: it was not just hidden, manipulative, and devious, but also far more public than previously recognized. Women emerge as more resourceful, more violent, and more powerful than we ever thought.

Popes, Saints, Beato Bones and other Images at War

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-364
Author(s):  
Kristin Norget
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Moral Authority ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Peripheral Populations ◽  
New Strategy ◽  
Catholic History ◽  
Local Cultures

This article explores new political practices of the Roman Catholic Church by means of a close critical examination of the beatification of the Martyrs of Cajonos, two indigenous men from the Mexican village of San Francisco Cajonos, Oaxaca, in 2002. The Church’s new strategy to promote an upsurge in canonizations and beatifications forms part of a “war of images,” in Serge Gruzinski’s terms, deployed to maintain apparently peripheral populations within the Church’s central paternalistic fold of social and moral authority and influence, while at the same time as it must be seen to remain open to local cultures and realities. In Oaxaca and elsewhere, this ecclesiastical technique of “emplacement” may be understood as an attempt to engage indigenous-popular religious sensibilities and devotion to sacred images while at the same time implicitly trying to contain them, weaving their distinct local historical threads seamlessly into the fabric of a global Catholic history.

DIALOG Z HUMANIZMEM RENESANSOWYM W DZIEŁACH PIOTRA SKARGI / PIOTR SKARGA’S DIALOGUE WITH RENAISSANCE HUMANISM

2013 ◽  
Vol 54 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 405-424
Author(s):  
Alina Nowicka -Jeżowa
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Ignatian Spirituality ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Renaissance Humanism ◽  
Cultural Conditions ◽  
Political Views ◽  
The City ◽  
The Church

Summary The article tries to outline the position of Piotr Skarga in the Jesuit debates about the legacy of humanist Renaissance. The author argues that Skarga was fully committed to the adaptation of humanist and even medieval ideas into the revitalized post-Tridentine Catholicism. Skarga’s aim was to reformulate the humanist worldview, its idea of man, system of values and political views so that they would fit the doctrine of the Roman Catholic church. In effect, though, it meant supplanting the pluralist and open humanist culture by a construct as solidly Catholic as possible. He sifted through, verified, and re-interpreted the humanist material: as a result the humanist myth of the City of the Sun was eclipsed by reminders of the transience of all earthly goods and pursuits; elements of the Greek and Roman tradition were reconnected with the authoritative Biblical account of world history; and man was reinscribed into the theocentric perspective. Skarga brought back the dogmas of the original sin and sanctifying grace, reiterated the importance of asceticism and self-discipline, redefined the ideas of human dignity and freedom, and, in consequence, came up with a clear-cut, integrist view of the meaning and goal of the good life as well as the proper mission of the citizen and the nation. The polemical edge of Piotr Skarga’s cultural project was aimed both at Protestantism and the Erasmian tendency within the Catholic church. While strongly coloured by the Ignatian spirituality with its insistence on rigorous discipline, a sense of responsibility for the lives of other people and the culture of the community, and a commitment to the heroic ideal of a miles Christi, taking headon the challenges of the flesh, the world, Satan, and the enemies of the patria and the Church, it also went a long way to adapt the Jesuit model to Poland’s socio-cultural conditions and the mentality of its inhabitants.

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