On the “very Brink between Time and Eternity”: Truth, Charity, and Last Dying Speeches in England, c. 1660–1700

2014 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 33-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea McKenzie
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
The Other ◽  
Good Death ◽  
Contested Space ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
The One

Late seventeenth-century England witnessed not only the rise of the coffee-house, the newspaper, and party politics, but also a proliferation of printed accounts of treason trials and executions, exposing hearers and readers to opposing religious and political truth claims. Such last dying words, spoken as they were on the “very Brink between Time and Eternity,” were equally compelling and controversial, dividing opinion along partisan and confessional lines. This study builds on recent scholarship emphasizing the dynamism of the Restoration public sphere and the degree to which the gallows was a contested space. It argues that the pamphlet wars over the meaning, veracity, and authenticity of the last dying speeches of late seventeenth-century condemned traitors, while largely overlooked by scholars of the Restoration crisis, have much to tell us about larger, shared preoccupations and mentalities. This article will focus in particular on two powerful contemporary credos which constrained and shaped the actions of authorities, malefactors, and pamphleteers alike: the equation of freedom of speech with liberty and Protestantism on the one hand and the association of charity with the good death, credibility, and truth, on the other.

Temporality and Truth

2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 377-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel W. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Continuous Variation ◽  
Pure Form ◽  
The Other ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One ◽  
Time Image ◽  
Positive Light

This paper examines the intersecting of the themes of temporality and truth in Deleuze's philosophy. For the ancients, truth was something eternal: what was true was true in all times and in all places. Temporality (coming to be and passing away) was the realm of the mutable, not the eternal. In the seventeenth century, change began to be seen in a positive light (progress, evolution, and so on), but this change was seen to be possible only because of the immutable laws of nature that govern change. It was not until philosophers such as Bergson, James, Whitehead – and then Deleuze – that time began to be taken seriously on its own account. On the one hand, in Deleuze, time, freed from its subordination to movement, now becomes autonomous: it is the pure form of change (continuous variation) that lies at the basis of Deleuze's metaphysics in Difference and Repetition (and is explored more thematically in The Time-Image). As a result, on the other hand, the false, freed from its subordination to the form of the true, assumes a power of its own (the power of the false), which in turn implies a new ‘analytic of the concept’ that Deleuze develops in What Is Philosophy?

scholarly journals The Bishop’s Role in Two Non-Catholic States

2015 ◽  
Vol 95 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 245-255
Author(s):  
Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Crucial Aspect ◽  
Religious Reform ◽  
Confessional Identity ◽  
The One ◽  
Catholic Reform

This paper contrasts the very different roles played by the Catholic hierarchy in Ireland, on the one hand, and Turkish-occupied Hungary, on the other, in the movement of early modern religious reform. It suggests that the decision of Propaganda Fide to adopt an episcopal model of organisation in Ireland after 1618, despite the obvious difficulties posed by the Protestant nature of the state, was a crucial aspect of the consolidation of a Catholic confessional identity within the island. The importance of the hierarchy in leadership terms was subsequently demonstrated in the short-lived period of de facto independence during the 1640s and after the repression of the Cromwellian period the episcopal model was successfully revived in the later seventeenth century. The paper also offers a parallel examination of the case of Turkish Hungary, where an effective episcopal model of reform could not be adopted, principally because of the jurisdictional jealousy of the Habsburg Kings of Hungary, who continued to claim rights of nomination to Turkish controlled dioceses but whose nominees were unable to reside in their sees. Consequently, the hierarchy of Turkish-occupied Hungary played little or no role in the movement of Catholic reform, prior to the Habsburg reconquest.

Paradoxes of Christian Solitude in the Seventeenth Century

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Louis Quantin
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Religious Discourse ◽  
The Other ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Moral Dimension ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Status ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
The One

AbstractIn seventeenth-century religious discourse, the status of solitude was deeply ambivalent: on the one hand, solitude was valued as a setting and preparation for self-knowledge and meditation; on the other hand, it had negative associations with singularity, pride and even schism. The ambiguity of solitude reflected a crucial tension between the temptation to withdraw from contemporary society, as hopelessly corrupt, and endeavours to reform it. Ecclesiastical movements which stood at the margins of confessional orthodoxies, such as Jansenism (especially in its moral dimension of Rigorism), Puritanism and Pietism, targeted individual conscience but also worked at controlling and disciplining popular behaviour. They may be understood as attempts to pursue simultaneously withdrawal and engagement.

scholarly journals Dynamics of Continuity and Change: Shifts in Labour Relations in the Potosí Mines (1680–1812)

2016 ◽  
Vol 61 (S24) ◽  
pp. 93-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rossana Barragán Romano
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Economic Sectors ◽  
Labour Relations ◽  
Continuity And Change ◽  
The One

AbstractLabour relations in the silver mines of Potosí are almost synonymous with the mita, a system of unfree work that lasted from the end of the sixteenth century until the beginning of the nineteenth century. However, behind this continuity there were important changes, but also other forms of work, both free and self-employed. The analysis here is focused on how the “polity” contributed to shape labour relations, especially from the end of the seventeenth century and throughout the eighteenth century. This article scrutinizes the labour policies of the Spanish monarchy on the one hand, which favoured certain economic sectors and regions to ensure revenue, and on the other the initiatives both of mine entrepreneurs and workers – unfree, free, and self-employed – who all contributed to changing the system of labour.

Transnationalism and Ethnonational Diasporism

2006 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-145
Author(s):  
Gabriel (Gabi) Sheffer
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Transnational Networks ◽  
Transnational Communities ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The One

This article argues that much recent scholarship devoted to the concept of transnationalism and to the category of transnational communities is misguided. Such scholarship neglects to acknowledge the distinctions between the transnational and the diasporic, in particular the qualities and features of certain ethno-diasporas that set them apart. The article argues that “scholars need on all occasions to acknowledge, first, the difficult work that dispersed entities must conduct in order to persist” and must recognize the very different capacities possessed by, say, Latino or Muslim transnational networks and communities, on the one hand, and Jewish, Armenian, or Indian ethnonational diasporas, on the other. It also affirms that scholars must acknowledge all features of the behavior of such communities, including “the possibility that some members of these entities may be guilty of creating difficulties, unrest, conflicts, [even] terrorism,” which does not mean that scholars need neglect their obligation to emphasize the immense contributions of various dispersions to the economies and cultures of their hostlands.

Strategy and imagination in a Mughal Sufi story of creation

2012 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muzaffar Alam
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Sanskrit Text ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One ◽  
Different Order ◽  
The Prestige

This article examines a seventeenth-century text that attempts to reconcile Hindu and Muslim accounts of human genesis and cosmogony. The text, Mir’āt al-Makhlūqāt (‘Mirror of Creation’), written by a noted Mughal Sufi author Shaikh ‘Abd al-Rahman Chishti, purportedly a translation of a Sanskrit text, adopts rhetorical strategies and mythological elements of the Purāna tradition in order to argue that evidence of the Muslim prophets was available in ancient Hindu scriptures. Chishti thus accepts the reality of ancient Hindu gods and sages and notes the truth in their message. In doing so Chishti adopts elements of an older argument within the Islamic tradition that posits thousands of cycles of creation and multiple instances of Adam, the father of humans. He argues however that the Hindu gods and sages belonged to a different order of creation and time, and were not in fact human. The text bears some generic resemblance to Bhavishyottarapurāna materials. Chishti combines aspects of polemics with a deft use of politics. He addresses, on the one hand, Hindu intellectuals who claimed the prestige of an older religion, while he also engages, on the other hand, with Muslim theologians and Sufis like the Naqshbandi Mujaddidis who for their part refrained from engaging with Hindu traditions at all.

A Historical Whodunit: The So-Called “Kano Chronicle” and its Place in the Historiography of Kano

1994 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 127-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Hunwick
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
The Other ◽  
The North ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The One

Murray Last obliquely suggests that [the “Kano Chronicle”] is best regarded as a rather free compilation of local legends and traditions drafted in the mid-seventeenth century by a humorous Muslim rationalist who almost seems to have studied under Levi-Strauss.The danger lies in being carried away by one's own ingenuity.The question of the authorship and date(s) of writing of the so-called “Kano Chronicle” (KC) and hence how historians should evaluate it as a source, have intrigued students of Kano (and wider Hausa) history since the work was first translated into English by H. R. Palmer in 1908. Palmer himself had the following to say:The manuscript is of no great age, and must on internal evidence have been written during the latter part of the decade 1883-1893; but it probably represents some earlier record which has now perished….The authorship is unknown, and it is very difficult to make a guess. On the one hand the general style of the composition is quite unlike the “note” struck by the sons of Dan Hodio [ʿUthmān b. Fūdī, Abdulahi and Muḥammad Bello, and imitated by other Fulani writers. There is almost complete absence of bias or partizanship…. On the other hand, the style of the Arabic is not at all like that usually found in the compositions of Hausa mallams of the present day; there are not nearly enough “classical tags” so to speak, in it…. That the author was thoroughly au fait with the Kano dialect of Hausa is evident from several phrases used in the book, for instance “ba râyi ba” used in a sense peculiar to Kano of “perforce.” The original may perhaps have been written by some stranger from the north who settled in Kano, and collected the stories of former kings handed down by oral tradition.

Episcopal Tombs in Early Modern England

2004 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 654-680 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER SHERLOCK
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Status ◽  
The One ◽  
The Church

The Reformation simultaneously transformed the identity and role of bishops in the Church of England, and the function of monuments to the dead. This article considers the extent to which tombs of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century bishops represented a set of episcopal ideals distinct from those conveyed by the monuments of earlier bishops on the one hand and contemporary laity and clergy on the other. It argues that in death bishops were increasingly undifferentiated from other groups such as the gentry in the dress, posture, location and inscriptions of their monuments. As a result of the inherent tension between tradition and reform which surrounded both bishops and tombs, episcopal monuments were unsuccessful as a means of enhancing the status or preserving the memory and teachings of their subjects in the wake of the Reformation.

Philip of Harvengt and Anselm of Havelberg: The Premonstratensian Vision of Time

1993 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 483-493
Author(s):  
Carol Neel
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Religious Reform ◽  
The Past ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The One

During the past two decades, a spate of interpretive studies has addressed the spirituality of regular canons in the twelfth century. Caroline Bynum'sDocere Verbo et Exemplo, most notably, has established that there was a distinctive canonical perspective on medieval religious reform. In Bynum's work in particular, the works of two Augustinian canons of the Order of Prémontré, Anselm of Havelberg (d. 1158) and Philip of Harvengt (d. 1183), figure importantly. Both Anselm and Philip—the one a bishop on the Slavic frontier and the other abbot of a double community in Brabant—were prominent apologists for their order's place among a proliferation of new religious groups. But recent scholarship has so far suggested no particular community of ideas between these two eminent twelfth-century Premonstratensians. Nor, more generally, has the ideology and spirituality of canons of their order, founded in 1121 by the Belgian nobleman Norbert of Xanten, been set clearly apart in more than name from the thought and practice of other groups of contemporary Augustinians.

THE ALHACENIAN ACCOUNT OF SPATIAL PERCEPTION AND ITS EPISTEMOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS

2005 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. MARK SMITH
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Visual Information ◽  
Spatial Perception ◽  
Crystalline Lens ◽  
The Other ◽  
External Objects ◽  
Latin West ◽  
Visual Imaging ◽  
The One ◽  
The Brain

From the late thirteenth to the early seventeenth century, the process of visual imaging was understood in the Latin West as an essentially subjective act initiated by the eye and completed by the brain. The crystalline lens took center stage in this act, its role determined by its peculiar physical and sensitive capacities. As a physical body, on the one hand, it was disposed to accept the physical impressions of light and color radiating to it from external objects. As a sensitive body, on the other hand, it was enabled by the visual spirit flowing to it from the brain to feel those impressions visually. Acting as a sentient selector of visual information, the lens transformed the brute physical impressions of light and color into visual impressions. These, in turn, gave rise to perceptual “depictions” that were passed back along the stream of visual spirits to the brain. Known in Scholastic parlance as “intentional species,” these depictions served as virtual representations of their generating objects. As such, they provided the wherewithal not only for perception, but also for conception and cognition.

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