Early Accounts of Witchcraft, Sorcery, and Magic in Medieval Rus

2020 ◽  
pp. 15-25
Keyword(s):  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
European Russia ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Narrative History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Devil ◽  
Runic Inscriptions

This chapter discusses early accounts of witchcraft, sorcery, and magic in medieval Rus. “Rus” is the name given to the lands of the Eastern Slavs in the medieval accounts of the region that now comprises Ukraine, Belarus, and European Russia. Conventionally, the narrative history of Rus begins in the eighth or ninth century, when diverse Slavic, Baltic, Finnic, Turkic, and Scandinavian people settled the region. Along with some Arabic accounts, Scandinavian runic inscriptions, occasional mentions in European documents, and a few Byzantine Greek records, the main textual sources on Rus are historical chronicles written by Rus churchmen beginning in the late eleventh century. The excerpts in the chapter may narrate actual historical events, or they may reveal more about how their authors thought about their history and their present. In either case, they are good stories, and they show how these medieval authors thought about magic and sorcery, and about how those practices interacted with other issues of concern: with the paganism that remained active long after the formal conversion of Rus; with teachings about the devil and his wiles; and with ideas about men and women and their respective characteristics and proclivities toward sorcery.

scholarly journals “I Long For My Mother’s Bread”: Poetry as Integrative, Historical Practice in the Palestinian Context

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron Frederick Eldridge
Keyword(s):  
Poetic Form ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Narrative History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Traumatic History ◽  
Cognitive Faculties ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Historical Practice

This paper is an adaption of a longer investigation of the relationship between politics and poetry in the Palestinian context, focusing on the work of Mahmoud Darwish. For this selection, I have adapted the sections pertaining to the efficacy of poetry in the context of historical events–specifically the traumatic history of the Palestinians. It is my argument that artistic practices like poetry act primarily as a means of narrative creation that skillfully integrate the experiences of the poet and thus negotiate the experiences of the listeners in order to create new meaning. This dialogue between audience and poet creates a persuasive and novel movement within the conceptual field; thinking about something in terms of something else (metaphor). This has the effect of making the poet an intractable source of historical meaning. The questions of the past, a dizzying array of dissonant occurrences, fractured experiences, and selected memory, find cogency within the poetic form. This artistic formation only gains this cogency through a precise system of cognitive faculties, which are shared by both poet and audience. The poetry of Mahmoud Darwish acts as a means of understanding history in the context of the present; creating an integrated narrative-history, which has important implications on experience, implicating present action through a ‘reading’ of the past.

Liudprand of Cremona, Preacher and Homilist

1985 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 43-60
Author(s):  
Karl Leyser
Keyword(s):  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Bible Studies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Magnum Opus

In the history of medieval Bible studies the tenth century in Beryl Smalley’s own words brought a sudden interruption, a dramatic pause, and any reader of her magnum opus must come away with the strong impression of a hiatus between the Carolingian commentators and the great teachers of the eleventh century, Fulbert of Chartres, Berengar of Tours, Drogo of Paris, and Lanfranc. Strangely enough she did not mention Atto of Vercelli’s elaborate and weighty Expositio in Epistolas S. Pauli, written not long after 940, which at least continued and used the massive labours of the ninth-century scholars.

From Missionary Translation to Local Theological Inquiry: A Narrative History of the Lisu Bible

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-219
Author(s):  
Aminta Arrington
Keyword(s):  
Minority Group ◽  
Local Leadership ◽  
Bible Translation ◽  
Narrative History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Christian Practices ◽  
Village Elders ◽  
The Village ◽  
The Waves ◽  
Bible Reading

The Lisu are a largely Christian minority group in south-west China who, as an oral culture, express their faith more through a set of Christian practices done as a group and less through bible reading as individuals. Even so, the Lisu practice of Christianity specifically, and Lisu culture more generally, was profoundly impacted by the written scriptures. During the initial evangelisation of the Lisu by the China Inland Mission, missionaries created a written script for the Lisu language. Churches were constructed and organised, which led to the creation of bible schools and the work of bible translation. In the waves of government persecution after 1949, Lisu New Testaments were hidden away up in the mountains by Lisu Christians. After 1980, the Lisu reclaimed their faith by listening to the village elders tell the Old Story around the fires and reopening the churches that had been closed for twenty-two years. And they reclaimed their bible by retrieving the scriptures from the hills and copying them in the evening by the light of a torch. The Lisu bible has its own narrative history, consisting of script creating, translating, migrating, and copying by hand. At times it was largely influenced by the mission narrative, but at other times, the Lisu bible itself was the lead character in the story. Ultimately, the story of the Lisu bible reflects the Lisu Christian story of moving from missionary beginnings to local leadership and, ultimately, to local theological inquiry.

Who Is the Founder of Psychophysics and Experimental Psychology?

1999 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Omar Khaleefa
Keyword(s):  
Visual Perception ◽  
Experimental Method ◽  
Experimental Psychology ◽  
Visual Illusion ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Psychological Explanation ◽  
Moon Illusion ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
History Of

The study is an investigation of the origins of psychophysics and experimentalpsychology. According to historians of psychology. FrancisBacon had the most crucial influence in the history of the experimentalmethod, because he emphasized the importance of induction, skepticism,quantification, and observation. The present study, however,attempts to show that Ibn al-Haytham laid the foundations of the aboveaspects of the experimental method. Furthermore, a number of historiansof psychology believe that Fechner was the founder of psychophysicswith his application “Filements of Psychophysics” in 1860.This study shows that in the eleventh century, Ibn al-Haytham made anoriginal contribution to the study of vision, wherein his psychophysicsborrowed its structure from physics and its spirit from psychology.Several aspects of visual perception were investigated by him, includingsensation (which occupies a central place in psychophysics), variationsin sensitivity, perception of colors. sensation of touch, perceptionof darkness, the psychological explanation of moon illusion, and binocularvision. This study presents five experiments by Ibn al-Haythamregarding the errors of vision, which is called in contemporary psychology“visual illusion.” These experiments have been applied andverified in Bahrain from both the physical and psychological perspectives.Finally, the study concludes that Ibn al-Haytham deserves the title“founder” of psychophysics as wellp the “founder” of experimentalpsychology. In this respect. Kitab ul-Manazir by Ibn al-Haytham.which appeared in the fmt half of the eleventh century, and not the“Elements of Psychophysics” by Fechner. which was published in thenineteenth century, marks the official “founding” of psychology,because it provides not only new concepts and theories but new methodsof measurement in psychology.

Fiona J. Griffiths, Nuns’ Priests’ Tales: Men and Salvation in Medieval Women’s Monastic Life. The Middle Ages Series. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018, pp. 360, 29 illus.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 286-288
Author(s):  
Therese Martin
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
University Of Pennsylvania ◽  
Medieval Studies ◽  
Monastic Life ◽  
Multiple Levels

The year 2018 saw the publication of two important monographs, each with groundbreaking scholarship on complementary aspects of monasticism; together they offer a clear path forward for Medieval Studies as a whole. While Fiona Griffiths’s Nuns’ Priests’ Tales and Steven Vanderputten’s Dark Age Nunneries approach the essentially interrelated natures of men’s and women’s medieval monasticism from different perspectives, it is by reading them in concert that one becomes aware of the paradigm shift they signal. In a welcome change from a traditional consideration of so-called “double” monasteries as neither fish nor fowl, Griffiths and Vanderputten offer a feast of evidence for the multiple levels of interactions between the genders—including priests and nuns, students and teachers, patrons, family members, and rulers, as well as the conventionally understood mixed religious communities of monks and nuns—at majority female monasteries in Western Christendom from the early through central Middle Ages. Vanderputten starts at the beginning of the ninth century and carries his investigation forward to the mid-eleventh, at which point Griffiths launches her study, moving the matter on from the late eleventh century into the early thirteenth.

Monastery, Monument, Museum

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maurizio Peleggi
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Art History ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Devotional Art ◽  
Cultural Legacy ◽  
Political Ideologies ◽  
Cultural Sites ◽  
History Of ◽  
Intellectual Knowledge

Monastery, Monument, Museum examines cultural sites, artifacts, and institutions of Thailand as both products and vehicles of cultural memory. From rock caves to reliquaries, from cultic images to temple murals, from museums and modern monuments to contemporary artworks, cultural sites and artifacts are considered in relation to the transmission of religious beliefs and political ideologies, as well as manual and intellectual knowledge, throughout thelongue durée of Thailand’s cultural history. Sequenced by and large chronologically along a period of time spanning the eleventh century through to the start of the twenty-first, the eight chapters in this book are grouped into three sections that surface distinct themes and analytical concerns: devotional art in Part I, museology and art history in Part II, and political art in Part III. The chapters can even be read as self-contained essays, each supplied with extensive bibliographic references.By examining the interplay between cultural sites and artifacts, their popular and scholarly appreciation, and the institutional configuration of a cultural legacy, Monastery, Monument, Museum makes a contribution to the literature on memory studies. A second area of scholarship this book engages is the art history of Thailand by shifting focus from the chronological and stylistic analysis of artifacts to their social life—and afterlife. Monastery, Monument, Museum brings together in one volume a millennium of art and cultural history of Thailand. Its novel analysis and thought-provoking re-interpretation of a variety of artifacts and source materials will be of interest to both the specialist and the general reader.

HIGHER EDUCATION IN ANCIENT INDIA

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (26) ◽  
Author(s):  
Satyendra Singh Chahar ◽  
Nirmal Singh
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
University Education ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Educational Method ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Ancient India ◽  
Herbert Spencer ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Ideal

University education -on almost modern lines existed in India as early as 800 B.C. or even earlier. The learning or culture of ancient India was chiefly the product of her hermitages in the solitude of the forests. It was not of the cities. The learning of the forests was embodied in the books specially designated as Aranyakas "belonging to the forests." The ideal of education has been very grand, noble and high in ancient India. Its aimaccording to Herbert Spencer is the 'training for completeness of life' and ‘the molding o character of men and women for the battle of life’. The history of the educational institutions in ancient India shows a glorious dateline of her cultural history. It points to a long history altogether. In the early stage it was rural, not urban. British Sanskrit scholar Arthur Anthony Macdonell says "Some hundreds of years must have been needed for all that is found" in her culture. The aim of education was at the manifestation of the divinity in men, it touches the highest point of knowledge. In order to attain the goal the whole educational method is based on plain living and high thinking pursued through eternity.

О ВИДЕ РОДА RORIPPA (BRASSICACEAE) С НИЖНЕЙ ВОЛГИ, "БОТАНИЧЕСКИЙ ЖУРНАЛ"

2013 ◽  
pp. 765-766
Author(s):  
А.П. ЛАКТИОНОВ ◽  
Е.В. МАВРОДИЕВ
Keyword(s):  
European Russia ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
The South ◽  
South Eastern ◽  
Lower Volga ◽  
History Of

The history of the putative endemic of the Lower Volga valley (the South-Eastern European Russia) Rorippa wolgensis Fursajev ex Laktionov et Mavrodiev nom. nov. is briefly discussed.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ildar Garipzanov
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Dominant Role ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Sources Of Authority ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Periods

The concluding chapter highlights how the cultural history of graphic signs of authority in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages encapsulated the profound transformation of political culture in the Mediterranean and Europe from approximately the fourth to ninth centuries. It also reflects on the transcendent sources of authority in these historical periods, and the role of graphic signs in highlighting this connection. Finally, it warns that, despite the apparent dominant role of the sign of the cross and cruciform graphic devices in providing access to transcendent protection and support in ninth-century Western Europe, some people could still employ alternative graphic signs deriving from older occult traditions in their recourse to transcendent powers.

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