Đông Kinh nghĩa thục - 110 năm nguồn sáng Canh Tân (1907-2017)

There was a turning point in the first decade of 20 century regarding the national liberalization by Duy Tan movement, Dong Du and Dong Kinh nghia thuc of Buddhists who have patriotism with innovative ideas, aims to two points: civilization and democracy. This was attached with well-known names such á Phan Boi Chau, Phan Chu Chinh, Luong van Can Dong Kinh nghia thuc only existed from March to December 1097, but its significant operation had created remarkable changes in educational contents and purposes; from education to reform culture; and then to the need of national liberalization from the domination of the colonial.

Asceticism in Old English and Syriac Soul and Body Narratives

A great deal of scholarship on Old English soul-body poetry centers on whether or not the presence of dualist elements in the poems are unorthodox in their implication that the body, as a material object, is not only wicked but seems to possess more agency in the world than the soul. I argue that the Old English soul-body poetry is not heterodox or dualist, but is best understood, as Allen J. Frantzen suggests, within the “context of penitential practice.” The seemingly unorthodox elements are resolved when read against the backdrop of pre-Conquest English monastic reform culture, which was very much concerned with penance, asceticism, death, and judgment. Focusing especially on two anonymous 10th-century Old English poems, Soul and Body I in the Vercelli Book and Soul and Body II in the Exeter Book, I argue that that both body and soul bear equal responsibility in achieving salvation and that the work of salvation must be performed before death, a position that was reinforced in early English monastic literature that was inspired, at least in part, by Eastern ascetics such as fourth-century Syrian hymnologist and theologian, St. Ephraim.

Culture and Legitimacy

This chapter draws on the writings of liberal theorists, from Adam Smith to the German ordo-liberals, to explain how state managers arrived at their focus on reforming conduct and ethics. The liberal economics tradition, before the turn towards neoclassical economics, recognized the ethical struggle at work in market participants, and the tendency towards market-distorting conduct. This helps to explain why state managers sought to strengthen market competition to reform culture, and why they also turned to an ethical reform agenda. The second half of the chapter turns to the work of Jürgen Habermas to explain the concept of a legitimacy crisis that state managers were also fighting. Here the chapter also introduces the concept of populist statecraft, as an ideologically thin, anti-establishment strategy. This also helps to explain how state managers used the culture of banking crisis as a political weapon.

The Celestine Monks of France, c.1350-1450

The Celestine monks of France represent one of the least studied monastic reform movements of the late Middle Ages, and yet also one of the most culturally impactful. Their order - an austere Italian Benedictine reform of the late thirteenth century, which came to be known after the papal name (Celestine V) of its founder (Pietro da Morrone / St Peter Celestine) - arrived in France in 1300. After a period of limited growth, they flourished in the region from c.1350: they added thirteen new houses over the next hundred years, taking their total to seventeen by 1450. Not only did the French Celestines expand in this century, they gained a distinctive character that separated them from their Italian brothers. More urban, better connected with both aristocratic and bourgeois society, and yet still rigorous and reformist, they characterised themselves as the 'Observant' wing of their order, having gained self-government for their provincial congregation in 1380 following the arrival of the Great Western Schism (1378-1417). But, as Robert L.J. Shaw argues, their importance runs beyond monastic reform: the late medieval French Celestines are a mirror of the political, intellectual, and Christian reform culture of their place and time. Within a France torn by war and a Church divided by schism, the French Celestines represented hope for renewal, influencing royal presentation, lay religion, and some of the leading French intellectuals of the period, including Jean Gerson.

Reforms, Semi-Reforms, and the Silencing of Women Religious in the Tenth Century

This chapter reviews the evidence for institutional and spiritual reform in women's communities, and makes three key observations. First, that bishops in particular relied on reform as a way of expressing specific claims to religious and political authority, and of rearranging the lordship and patronage of female monasticism to their own benefit and that of their associates. Second, that the installation of, or the ‘return’ to a Benedictine regime by no means heralded a greater degree of freedom from the interventions of clerical and lay rulers. And finally, that these interventions have rendered obscure a ‘pre-reform’ culture of reflection over the purpose and organization of female communal life, and also a great deal of experimentation. Instead of reversing a situation of terminal decline, the reforms marked the beginning of clerical intolerance towards the ‘ambiguous’ observance of women religious, and the end of a state of relative intellectual and spiritual autonomy.

Tradition, Innovation, and Experimentation: The Dramatic Stage and New Modes of Performance in Late Eighteenth-Century Naples

Naples in the last thirty years of the eighteenth-century was characterized by a fervent climate of theatrical experimentation. Although too often viewed as the last stronghold of Metastasian dramatic principles and traditions, the city was deeply influenced by the “reform culture” of Northern Europe. These exterior influences were bolstered by the contributions of local practitioners, whether composers, performers, and theorists. This essay is a brief consideration of how the ideas of “reform culture” affected contemporary Neapolitan theatrical practices and the emergence of new works in the city. A critical source for “reformed” theatrical philosophy was the work of Antonio Planelli (1747–1803), whose treatise Dell’opera in musica (1772) is a significant exploration and commentary on the dramatic stage of the Bourbon capital. Progressing from theatrical philosophy to existing practice, I will consider how the prevailing conditions animated the creation of the largely unknown cantata/pastorale/opera, La pietà d’amore (1782) by the singer, composer, and Calzabigi protégé Vito Giuseppe Millico (1737–1802), created expressly for Naples under the sway of reform principles and his direct collaborations with the poet of Orfeo, Alceste, and Paride ed Elena. My study concludes with an examination of the emergence of the so-called “Lenten tragedy” or azione sacra per musica, a theatrical form created in the exclusive environs of the Teatro di San Carlo, the royal theater of the Bourbon capital, yet imparting a new theatrical aesthetic and modes of representation for contemporary sacred genres consistent to select ideals of reform culture.