Time in Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History

Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History, a seminal late-antique historical narrative, features three periodizations of the church’s past. First, a soteriological periodization divides God’s relationship with humanity at Christ’s Incarnation, an event that Eusebius marks in Book 1 with detailed commentary on the gospels rather than narrative. Second, an ecclesiastical periodization divides pristine, heroic apostolic times from post-apostolic times. The divide between apostolic times and the post-apostolic periods is illustrated through a comparison of History 2.13–17, about Simon Magus, Peter, and Mark, and 6.12, on Serapion of Antioch. And third, an epistemological periodization distinguished earlier times from Eusebius’s lifetime, the latter marked by frequent references to “our time.” Eusebius changed numerous narrative features with his changes of period, including alternating between commentary, diachronic, and synchronic format for different time periods; changing protagonists’ fallibility, individuality, composition of texts, and citation of scripture; and providing notices of episcopal successions and quotation of sources. Moreover, Eusebius’s History changed periods not with the sharp breaks of many modern histories but with gradual transitions. He also underscored key continuities, including God’s intervention in human events and alternation between persecuting and protecting rulers—a continuity within which, contrary to scholarly assumptions, the History never inaugurates a new era with the emergence of Constantine. The case study of Eusebius’s periodization suggests an important limitation of the analytic usefulness of periodizations such as “Late Antiquity” for organizing intellectual history.

Geometry and Structure of the Philippine Fault in Ragay Gulf, Southern Luzon

A 15 km southward offshore extension of the Philippine Fault in the Ragay Gulf near the east coast of the Bondoc Peninsula is recognized and described with 150 newly acquired, high-resolution acoustic reflections. The vertically dipping fault strikes roughly NWSE and exhibits pressure ridges and depression structures indicative of strike-slip movement. The southern portions of the fault exhibit particularly sharp breaks on the seafloor that were probably produced by the 1973 Ragay Gulf Earthquake. Offsets of distinct acoustic layers are interpreted to indicate the strikeslip fault has slipped in earthquakes at least four, and likely more than 11 times during Holocene.

Identifying Shifts in Policy Regimes

One of the mainstays of political sociology and political science for generationshas been debate about the conditions under which one policy regime—that is, a distinct mix of public policies—is replaced by another. For instance, a vast literature seeks to identify the factors that caused the shift from orthodox to Keynesian policy regimes in the United States and Europe after the Second World War, as well as the shift during the 1980s to more conservative neoliberal policy regimes (e.g., Campbell 1998; Gourevitch 1986; Hall 1989, 1992;Weir and Skocpol 1985). Similarly, scholars have argued about whether the process through which regime shifts occur is a slow and incremental one, driven by bureaucratic inertia, muddling through, and path-dependent constraints, or a rapid and abrupt one, sparked by cataclysmic events like war that trigger sharp breaks with past policies (e.g., Baumgartner and Jones 1993; Hall 1993; Krasner 1984; Lindblom 1959; Pierson 1993, 1994). Regime shifts have also captured the imagination of historical sociologists who have recognized that history is marked by critical turning points that differentiate among relatively stable time periods and that this requires scholars to carefully identify historically specific patterns among variables (Abbott 1988, 1992, 1997; Isaac 1997).

Church and State in Mexico: A Corporatist Relationship

Conventional wisdom holds that two sharp breaks occurred historically in Mexican church-state relations: the first during the Reforma (1857-1861), and the second during the Revolution (1910-1920). These breaks reflected growing estrangement and hostility between secular and ecclesiastical authorities, culminating finally, with the Constitution of 1917, in the most anti-clerical and even anti-religious legislation ever enacted in the hemisphere. This paper has no quarrel with the above interpretation as far as it goes. What I will argue here is that, despite these very real changes, certain basic continuities have persisted in the conceptualization of the relationship between Church and State. Moreover, a number of specific quarrels and modes of government response have roots that extend well into the colonial period. Anti-monasticism has some precedent in the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767, and the nationalization of Church property in 1859 and again in 1917, in the royal Consolidation of 1804.

Faunal provinces in Canada as exemplified by mammals and birds: a mathematical consideration

Although different regions have a characteristic fauna, mathematical techniques based on rates of change in composition, changes in species density, and similarity of composition do not give unequivocal definitions of faunal provinces. There is some concordance between species consistency of large taxonomic groups (mammals, passerine, and non-passerine birds) and the ecological pressures exerted on the groups. Changes in species composition are characterized by gradual shifts over large zones of transition and not by sharp breaks between close homogeneous areas, so that no provinces or divisions are clearly defined.