Journal articles on the topic 'Monasticism and religious orders History Middle Ages'

The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the monastic houses operated on the northernmost periphery of Roman Catholic Europe during the Middle Ages. The intention is to debunk the long-held theory of Iceland and Norse Greenland’s supposed isolation from the rest of the world, as it is clear that medieval monasticism reached both of these societies, just as it reached their counterparts elsewhere in the North Atlantic. During the Middle Ages, fourteen monastic houses were opened in Iceland and two in Norse Greenland, all following the Benedictine or Augustinian Orders.

Monastic renewal of the eleventh century used to be treated by scholars as essentially Cluniac : Cluny, as the head of an order totalling hundreds of houses, spread its reform across Europe as the tide spreads across a beach. More recently, since Kassius Hallinger demonstrated the existence of multiple centres of reform in his classic study of Gorze, it has become common to draw distinctions between ‘Cluniac’ and ‘young’ (or ‘second-generation’) Cluniac influences, and Cluny's ‘order’ has been redefined to include only priories directly dependent on Cluny's abbot, encompassing not hundreds of houses but only dozens. However, Cluny's order is still commonly treated as something new and unprecedented and Cluniac reform in the tenth and eleventh centuries as prefiguring the monastic renewal of the High Middle Ages.

It is a characteristic merit of Richard Southern—recently voted the historians’ historian in The Observer—that as long ago as 1970, in Western Society and the Church, he devoted some luminous pages to ‘the influence of women in religious life’. Though these pages nestle in a chapter called ‘Fringe orders and anti-orders’, twenty years ago such labels were not pejorative. Southern made women emblematic of what could be called a pendulum-swing theory of medieval religious history. First came a primitive, earlier medieval age of improvization and individual effort, of spiritual warriors and local initiatives; the central medieval period saw ‘a drive towards increasingly well-defined and universal forms of organization’ in an age of hierarchy and order; then, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, back swung the pendulum towards complexity and confusion, individual experiment, and ‘small, humble, shadowy organizations’.

A Ukrainian historian of Canadian origin, Yuriy Tys-Krokhmalyuk, highlighting the pages of the early missionary history of the Irish monasticism, states that about 600 g. They from the territory of Western Europe went further to the East, reaching the land of the Antes and Kiev. In this regard, the researcher expresses the following opinion: "It is not known whether the Irish monks were the first on our (Ukrainian - B. B.) land. Apparently not, because they were not the first either in Burgundy, nor in France, nor in Switzerland. It was at that time that the Roman cultural center grew up, and between these two centers - the Gellensky (Gallic - B. B.) and the Roman - there was a misunderstanding in the competition for influence. Irish monks, coming to our lands, apparently intended to spread the Gaelic spirit in theology and science. Times have changed: there were those when the Gellian culture developed freely, but there were also those that were in the spread of difficulties and obstacles. Then Irish monks were looking for new peaceful centers for their activities "

Since Herbert Grundmann’s 1935 Religious Movements in the Middle Ages, interest in the Beguines has grown significantly. Yet we have struggled whether to call Beguines “religious” or not. My conviction is that the Beguines are one manifestation of an impulse found throughout Christian history to live a form of life that resembles Christian monasticism without founding institutions of religious life. It is this range of less institutional yet seriously committed forms of life that I am here calling the “Beguine Option.” In my essay, I will sketch this “Beguine Option” in its varied expressions through Christian history. Having presented something of the persistent past of the Beguine Option, I will then present an introduction to forms of life exhibited in many of the expressions of what some have called “new monasticism” today, highlighting the similarities between movements in the past and new monastic movements in the present. Finally, I will suggest that the Christian Church would do well to foster the development of such communities in the future as I believe these forms of life hold much promise for manifesting and advancing the kingdom of God in our midst in a postmodern world.

AbstractThis article traces the role of the desert fathers in the creation of the late medieval Augustinian Myth. It argues that the major problem facing members of the Order of Hermits of Saint Augustine (OESA) was how to appropriate the tradition of the desert fathers and that of Augustine's monasticism for the tradition of the Order. In this light, special attention is given to the Pseudo-Augustinian Sermones ad fratres in eremo and the central importance of John Cassian and Paul of Thebes. Of particular importance are the works of Jordan of Quedlinburg, which shaped the identity of the OESA from the mid-fourteenth to the early sixteenth century. The desert fathers provided the model of the eremitical life, and thus Jordan "mythified" the desert fathers as he had Augustine himself. This was not an issue of historical identification, but of mythic creation in an attempt to provide the foundation of the late medieval OESA.

AbstractThe article examines the enduring phenomenon of double monasticism, the type of religious organization whereby a single monastic unit combined a male and a female community that followed the same rule, recognized the authority of the same superior, and functioned within the boundaries of the same monastic compound or in close proximity to each other, but not in shared quarters. After centuries of evolution since late antiquity, double monasteries effectively ceased to exist in the Latin West by the high middle ages, but demonstrated remarkable staying powers in the sphere of historic Byzantine cultural influences, particularly in Orthodox Eastern Europe and Christian Middle East, where this archaic type of monastic institution survived into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Based on previously unexplored archival material from the Orthodox lands of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and later the Ukrainian Hetmanate, a semi-autonomous state ruled by elective officers who recognized the tsar of Muscovy as their suzerain, the article analyses the place of kinship structures, economic and political factors, legal frameworks, and the role of the imperial state in the evolution and ultimate decline of the double monastery.

Designed to be comprehensive in its scope, this set covers major religious events from remote prehistory (ca. 60,000 BC) to the highly contemporaneous (AD 2014). Taken together, the editors have done an admirable job in choosing topics to cover and in compiling a highly readable, informative, and thought-provoking compilation. The first volume covers the period of prehistory to AD 600 and includes entries for topics as diverse as the first burials that indicate a belief in an afterlife found in Shanidar Cave, Iraq (ca. 60,000 BC), the discovery of the oldest human-made place of worship at Göbekli Tepe in modern Turkey (tenth millennium BC), the ritual use of alcohol (ca. third millennium BC), the founding of Buddhism (sixth to fourth centuries BC), the Roman conquest of Judaea in 63 BC, the conversion of Saul (Saint Paul) in AD 34, the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451, and the papacy of Gregory the Great (reigned AD 590–604). Volume 2 covers from AD 600 to 1450, thus encompassing the Middle Ages in the West, the rise of Islam in the Middle East, the growth of Christian monasticism, the crusades, the development of the first universities in Europe, and the lives of Joan of Arc and Jan Hus. The final volume covers from 1450 to the present, starting with the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks and ending with the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh) in 2014.

Notes an Hospitaller Sisters in Central Europe (outside Frisia) during the later Middle Ages The military-religious orders were supposed to fight and shed blood for the faith. Nevertheless, the Hospitallers included women, similar to the Teutonic Order. This should not be a surprize because both military-religious orders upheld caring for the needy and sick as important tasks. In Upper Germany, however, there were no convents of Hospitaller sisters. This was different from Frisia, where special socio-political conditions produced Hospitaller nunneries, and it was also different from other European countries where there had been enough female Hospitallers to concentrate them in special houses. Yet according to a list of 1367 the southern part of the Priory of Alamania had four commanderies where, in each case, seven sisters were supposed to live alongside with knights and priests: Heimbach, Dorlisheim, Freiburg im Breisgau and Villingen. From documents it is known that in many other commanderies married couples, widows or single women bought for themselves life-rents from and maintenance in Hospitaller houses. The legal status of such females was not always clear. Some of them may have hoped to be recognized as fully-professed sorores, in order to enjoy the privileged status of religious persons, whereas others may only have been consorores or donate. Others may have been female servants or just members of ecclesiastical fraternities.

This article explores thinking and practice regarding property at houses of canons from the mid-ninth to mid-eleventh centuries, through a case study of the charters of Saint-Hilaire-le-Grand in Poitiers. Since Late Antiquity, Christian orders debated the legitimacy of private property, with most rejecting it in favor of exclusively common holdings. For houses of canons, property became a defining issue in the Central Middle Ages: Carolingian legislation in 816 asserted that canons (unlike monks) could hold private property, while the order of regular canons, which emerged in the eleventh century, rejected it as corrupt. The role of property at houses of canons in the interim period, meanwhile, has been largely neglected by scholars. This essay argues that Saint-Hilaire embraced Carolingian acceptance of private property among canons, but that that stance did not preclude protection of joint property and interest in the common life. The resulting detailed understanding of both the quotidian functioning of property at a tenth-century house and the ideals that drove its regulation inform my concluding comments on two broader topics: the role of wealth and property in a dedicated religious life, and the nature of reform movements in the church of the Central Middle Ages.

Schedule 1 to the Juries Act 1974 provides that ‘[a] man in holy orders; a regular minister of any religious denomination [and] [a] vowed member of any religious order living in a monastery, convent or other religious community’ is ineligible to serve on a criminal (and also a civil) jury. This has been the law since 1972. For the remainder of this century members of the clergy have been eligible, but not compellable, jurors. In practice they did not serve. The change effected in 1972 is a reversion to the position which probably prevailed in the Middle Ages. Aside from the occasional official report, the liability of religious functionaries to serve on juries in criminal trials has been rarely written about. The last time it happened was in 1882. The object of this article is to fill the lacuna by tracing the history of the clergy's ineligibility for jury service in criminal trials and the reasons for it.

Invented in China and brought to Europe by Muslim merchants across the Silk Road, the use of paper in the West took off in the Mediterranean towards the end of the Middle Ages. Overshadowed in cultural and media history by the invention of print, paper has played a fundamental role as the media infrastructure for innumerable processes involving the registration and communication of knowledge and value in communities and institutions, from religious orders, mercantile societies, to global empires. This thematic section of Cromohs features four essays. Three essays examine particular cases of paper as a medium for the codification and exchange of knowledge, information and value, whereas the fourth outlines the state of the art on the history of the so-called paper revolution and methodological issues illustrated with relevant case studies. These essays exemplify the research conducted by the Paper in Motion workgroup within the People in Motion COST action.

The history of teaching and study at the Parisian convents of the mendicant orders has largely been viewed and written as part of the history of the university of Paris. The Parisian doctors of theology at the Dominican, Franciscan, Augustinian, and Carmelite convents, from the time of Bonaventure, Albert, Thomas, and Giles of Rome until the end of the Middle Ages, were regent masters, or professors, at the university, at least for a year or more after inception as masters. And presumably mendicant students sent to Paris for theological study were being sent there for university studies; the brightest of them would be expected to complete the university degree in theology. The connection between the mendicant masters and the intellectual history of the university of Paris in the second half of the thirteenth century is so strong that it is almost impossible to think of these convents except as religious colleges attached to the university of Paris.

Abstract In between ‘vandalism’ and ‘la manie de tout conserver’. Limburg’s archives in revolutionary timesThe history of the Dutch province of Limburg during the French period from approximately 1795 to 1815 is more like that of Belgium and the Rhineland than the north of the Netherlands. The province itself, in a border region of the Netherlands, is a creation of the nineteenth century with a very complex geopolitical history going back to the Middle Ages. So Limburg, located at the edge of several countries, is a region which has never received much attention at a national level. The same is true for the Limburg archives of the Ancien Régime. This is of particular note because the Limburg archives contain the oldest original sources in the Netherlands. Despite this, consulting the archives of the Ancien Régime was not attractive to historians until well into the twentieth century. In the past many records of institutions dating to the Middle Ages were deliberately destroyed or lost as a result of war, or taken abroad, or they were accidentally ‘forgotten’ and ended up in the attic. Not unjustly the revolutionary government during the French period has been regarded as bearing directly or indirectly a great responsibility for this loss. But this is not the whole picture, and the account must be more nuanced. Owing to secularization, records from religious orders were lost in the decades leading up to the French period; and after 1815 there was little interest in archives, except perhaps for financial reasons. Documents previously sent for safe-keeping abroad disappeared from circulation. However, sometimes by coincidence, sometimes by the concerted actions of lovers of old documents, a number of extremely important historical documents have been preserved. The largest part of these has over time been acquired by the State Public Record Office of Limburg. As a result of this collecting of archives from abroad, Limburg has a richer collection from this period than is found in the rest of the Netherlands.

A new step in the history of Christian monasticism in eastern Georgia is associated with thirteen Syrian monks, led by John, who came to Iberia (K‘art‘li) in the mid-sixth century C.E. They were the bearers of a Syrian tradition that implied the combination of an heroic ascetic endeavor and an apostolic mission. They came as spiritual heirs of St. Nino, a Cappadocian virgin who converted Georgia to Christianity in the beginning of the fourth century. Their vitae were first composed by a certain hagiographer named John-Martyrius, but this work does not survive. In the tenth century, the head of the Georgian Church and the distinguished ecclesiastical writer Arsenius II (955–980) depicted their lives and deeds based on different oral and written sources. Later, other unknown authors also wrote additional hagiographical works about these Syrian ascetics. At the beginning of their ascetic and ecclesiastical careers, the thirteen Syrian monks settled on Zedazeni mountain with their spiritual supervisor, John. John later sent them to different corners of the Iberian kingdom in opposition to paganism and Zoroastrianism. They founded monasteries and became influential religious leaders during the second half of the sixth century. Through their vitae, composed by Arsenius and other unknown authors, it is possible to trace the process of transforming the small ascetic communities established by Syrian monks into great feudal organizations. These monasteries had an important impact on the Georgian social and cultural landscape during the Middle Ages.

Целью статьи является рассмотрение последовательно сменявших друг друга форм аскетического идеала в Египте, способствовавших переходу от античных социокультурных ориентиров к новой системе христианских общественно значимых ценностей и норм. Во II в. до н.э. парадоксы крайних воплощений религиозной аскезы, чуждые традиционной египетской ментальности, вызывали негативную реакцию со стороны приверженцев общепринятых мировоззренческих стереотипов, которая проявлялась в актах варварской агрессии. По мере смещения мировоззренческих парадигм к христианству смещался и вектор агрессии: в III–IV вв. ее объектами становились уже сторонники прежних стереотипов. Являясь, с одной стороны, выражением экзистенциального кризиса своего времени, египетские аскезы в то же время несли в себе мощный цивилизационный потенциал, включивший механизм перехода общественного сознания от Поздней Античности к Раннему Средневековью. Инверсия варварства и цивилизации в оценках этих исторических процессов современниками и последующими поколениями была неизбежна. В сплаве идей, представлений, общественных ориентиров и ценностей выкристаллизовывался вектор развития будущего христианского культурного сообщества, породившего в качестве своего стержня явление монашества с его социальной ролью «патрона», «заступника» и «посредника», характерной для позднеантичного сознания и перепереосмысленной в рамках новой системы ценностей. Однако без ранней формы аскезы катохов, воплотивших первоначальный аскетический идеал, эволюционный скачок в истории мировоззрений был бы невозможен. Ни в российской ни в зарубежной научной литературе не освещалась историческая роль катохов и не рассматривались египетские аскезы в аспекте их взаимосвязи. The purpose of the article is to consider the successive forms of the ascetic ideal in Egypt, which contributed to the transition from ancient socio-cultural guidelines to a new system of Christian socially significant values and norms. In the second century BC, the paradoxes of extreme embodiments of religious asceticism, alien to the traditional Egyptian mentality, caused a negative reaction from adherents of generally accepted ideological stereotypes, which was manifested in acts of barbaric aggression. As the worldview paradigms shifted to Christianity, the vector of aggression also shifted: in the III–IV centuries its objects were already supporters of the previous stereotypes. Being, on the one hand, an expression of the existential crisis of their time, Egyptian asceticism at the same time carried a powerful civilizational potential, which included a mechanism for the transition of public consciousness from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. The inversion of barbarism and civilization in the assessments of these historical processes by contemporaries and subsequent generations was inevitable. In the fusion of ideas, ideas, social guidelines and values, the vector of development of the future Christian cultural community was crystallized, which gave rise to the phenomenon of monasticism as its core, with its social role of “patron”, “intercessor” and “mediator”, characteristic of the late Antique consciousness and reinterpreted within the framework of a new system of values. However, without the early form of asceticism of the Catholics, who embodied the original ascetic ideal, an evolutionary leap in the history of worldviews would have been impossible. Neither Russian nor foreign scientific literature has covered the historical role of the Catholics and has not considered Egyptian asceticism in the aspect of their relationship.

The article examines the ethical system of Jainism on the example of the lifestyle of ascetic monks and lay householders. The disciplinary rules for lay followers (both Digambara and Śvetāmbara branches of Jainism) are fixed in the texts of the śrāvakācāra genre compiled by ascetics. This reflects the hierarchical distribution of “roles” within the Jain community. Ascetics represent the most advanced part of the community on the spiritual Path of Liberation, while lay people have only just entered this path. The author focuses on the fact that in Jainism monasticism is considered as a spiritually higher stage, and not just a different (but equally significant) way of salvation. Only monks of certain ranks have the right to preach publicly, interpret the Scriptures, and instruct the laity. Householders can only do this in the absence of monks. At the same time, ascetics are almost completely dependent on the laity for their everyday life, since householders are obliged to provide them with everything necessary for life. The introduction of an intermediate, quasi-monastic way of life in the form of the bhaṭṭārakas (Digambra) and śrīpūjya (Śvetāmbra) in the middle ages allowed the Jain community to survive and even have a direct impact on the political and economic situation in various regions of India. The author emphasizes that written in all-India paradigm of the life regulations (artha, kāma, dharma and mokṣa), Jain system of domestic rituals, coupled with the practice of vows and limitations focused on training of householders to move towards self-improvement and eventually achieve the main religious goal – realization the nature of one’s own soul.

Liberalism can be understood in considerable part as a reaction against the religious wars of Europe from the end of the Middle Ages through the early modern period. Unfortunately, liberalism itself was so profoundly shaped by the conditions of its birth that it became a perpetuator of the same narrow fanaticism that fueled the fires of the Spanish Inquisition and burned Servetus in Calvin's Geneva. Eamonn Callan's article, “Political Liberalism and Political Education,” is a forceful reminder that liberalism is still a carrier of the same virus of fanaticism that insisted on celebrating masses of Reason in Notre Dame de Paris while setting up guillotines to behead the members of religious orders who refused to disband. That is the same virus of fanaticism that manifested itself in the claim to grasp scientifically the laws of history, a claim that led to the liberation of man via Gulag. Oh, I know, Gulag and the guillotine are out of fashion with rationalistic liberators at the moment. Nevertheless, it is the coercive power of the modern sovereign state produced by the same rationalism that Callan wants to use to force us all to be free.From the perspective of liberalism as the religion of immanent divinity, the Reason of rationalism, Callan sees that John Rawls, in Political Liberalism, is a backslider, objectively a traitor to liberalism, even if not subjectively so. In Political Liberalism Rawls tried to move further away from his roots in rationalistic dogmatism and further toward his roots in pragmatism. Callan shows there is no tenable halfway house of the kind Rawls imagines.

Stefan Schiwietz (Stefan Siwiec), 1863-1941 – a Roman Catholic priest, Doctor of Theology, historian of the Eastern Orthodox Church, pedagogue – was born in Miasteczko Śląskie (Georgenberg) on 23th August 1863. He studied theo­logy at the University of Wrocław for 3 years (1881-1884) under H. Laemmer, F. Probst, A. König and M. Sdralek, among others, and then continued his theo­logical studies in Innsbruck (1884-1886), where he was a pupil of J. Jungmann and G. Bickell. The seminarist spent two years (1885-1886) in Freising in Bavaria, where in 1886 he took his holy orders. Siwiec published his doctoral thesis in Wrocław in 1896, so at the time when Sdralek took the chair of Church History. The subject of the Silesian scholar’s dissertation concerned the monastic reform of Theodore the Studite De S. Theodoro Studita reformatore monachorum Basilianorum. Siwiec combined his didactic work as a religious and mathematics teacher in the public middle school in Racibórz with his academic studies on the history of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, especially on monasticism. The results of his research were published both in German and in Polish. His most significant work is a three-volume monograph Das morgenländische Mönchtum (Bd. 1: Das Ascetentum der drei ersten christl. Jahrhunderte und das egyptische Mönchtum im vierten Jahrhundert, Mainz 1904; Bd. 2: Das Mönchtum auf Sinai und in Palästina im 4 Jahrhundert, Mainz 1913; Bd. 3: Das Mönchtum in Syrien und Mesopotamien und das Aszetentum in Persien vierten Jarhundert, Mödling bei Wien 1938) on the history of the beginnings and development of Oriental monas­ticism in Egypt, Palestine, Syria and Persia, until the 4th century, which up to the present day has been cited in the world Patristic literature. Yet, Siwiec’s academic work still remains little known, especially in the circle of historians of antiquity and Polish patrologists. The equally little known figure of Max Sdralek, another Silesian (coming from Woszczyce) priest and academic, Rector of University of Wrocław, provides a significant context with the research methodology which this eminent scholar initiated, developed and tried to pass down to his pupils, among whom was also Stefan Siwiec. Sdralek strictly demanded that the principle of the priority of Church history over history of religion and psychology should be kept. In his works a description of socio-cultural factors and natural conditions determining the process of development of Christianity enables to see in a much clearer way how God’s plan has unfolded in history. The mutual dependence of Sdralek and Siwiec, the similarities and differences in their ways of studying and understanding Church history still remains an issue worth further exploration.

According to the American Medical Association, ‘Health care is a fundamental human good because it affects our opportunity to pursue life goals, reduces our pain and suffering, helps prevent premature loss of life, and provides information needed to plan for our lives.’ Christianity is the world’s largest religion and most widely diffused of all faiths stemming from the life teachings of Jesus Christ. Religion, medicine, and healthcare have always been intertwined from history. Dating back throughout the Middle Ages and up to the French Revolution, physicians were often clergy. The first hospital in the West was started by a religious organization and staffed by religious orders. Researchers at the Mayo Clinic have concluded that, “Most studies have shown that religious involvement and spirituality are associated with better health outcomes, including greater longevity, coping skills, and health-related quality of life (even during terminal illness) and less anxiety, depression, and suicide. Several studies have shown that addressing the spiritual needs of the patient may enhance recovery from illness.” Jesus Christ in his teachings instructed his followers to heal the sick and since then the early church and Christians practiced practical charity that gave a basis to nursing homes and hospitals. Jews and Christians believed that human worth was predicated on the fact that each person was created in the image and likeness of God, which—for Christians—was directly stated in Matthew 25:40 “Whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me.” In recent times, when people are faced with many health issues that medical professionals do not seem to have an answer for, looking outside of the traditional health setting and up to a divine power for healing has been on the rise. A 2018 survey of American physicians and patients suggests that about 64% of physicians believe in the existence of God or a higher power, and more than 90% of patients claimed the same. Jesus in his teachings emphasized the need of treating every human with love, which is why Christian hospitals were established with the main aim of practicing the teachings of Jesus and alleviating suffering of the sick. It is also noted that there is an increase in modern western medicine with the importance of patient spirituality in treatment and healing which must be considered by healthcare professionals while providing care. As for physicians who are rooted in the Christian faith, they would provide care to their patients keeping in mind that they are made in the image of God. Since healing is an art which is personal and human, there is only a limited amount of human intervention which can contribute to its success. When modern medicine and Christian faith is intertwined in patient care, the provider and patient feel a sense of spiritual calmness that contribute to the total healing journey

AbstractThis paper traces back the sources of our present legal system and of market economy to Medieval Europe which itself benefited from Hellenistic and Roman legal culture and commercial practices. Roman provinces placed Rome in the wider Greek cultural and commercial world. If Aristotle was already transcending the narrow polis-based conceptions of his predecessors, after him Hellenistic Civilization saw the emergence of a new school of philosophy: Stoicism. The legal thought in the Latin West will hence be characterized by Cicero’s writings and its Stoic sources. The Roman legal system was similar to the later northern European customary law and the English common law; Roman law was evolutionary and customary. The rise of Western individualism, whether it dates back to St. Augustine in the fifth century, or to the two Papal Revolutions of Gregory I (establishing the nuclear family as the core of individualism) and of Gregory VII, also played a crucial role in shaping the western legal tradition. The paper describes the main forces that led to this second (Gregorian) revolution. Monasticism is one of them. Benedictine monasticism plaid a leading role in the Peace of God Movement. Hence collective oath-taking by groups in the name of peace was essential in the founding of cities and in the formation of guilds. Europe’s economic resurgence in the Eleventh Century was on the basis of the creation of the rule of law by the Peace of God movement. This movement also allowed for Europe’s agricultural economy to progress. Indeed, the European Middle Ages is one of the major periods of technological innovation in the history of the world. The Gregorian Revolution itself was supported and financed by the Commercial Revolution: Italian bankers sustained Papal reformers against the Emperors. The independence of the Italian cities and provinces reveals one of the most important consequences of the Gregorian Revolution: the polycentricism of Western Europe. This Revolution also witnessed the first large number of political pamphlets in European history; the Gregorian clergy emphasizing a compact theory of government. Soon after, the order of Cistercians was founded (1098) and underwent spectacular growth during the next two centuries. The Cistercians accepted no rents or labor services from feudal donors but would take only full possession of land to do with it as they wished.These monasteries were the most economically effective units that had ever existed in Europe, and perhaps in the world, before that time. Finally, the Magna Carta (1215) that will be so influential on modern political thought can be seen as a direct consequence of the Gregorian Revolution.

Objectives The depiction of a rabbit with a urinary matula on the same page with the Virgin Mary and the Christ child in a medieval text, the Book of Hours, has raised interests among art and medical historians. We will describe the complex interplay between the rabbit, the matula, and the Virgin Mary. Methods We studied the original illuminated texts from the medieval (ca. 1475) Book of Hours archived in the Morgan Library, New York. We reviewed articles and historical publications from art history and medical literature. Results The Book of Hours was composed for use by lay people who wished to incorporate elements of monasticism into their devotional life. There was often an amalgamation of religious and secular themes within these illustrated texts. The use of uroscopy to diagnose ailments was prevalent and popular during the Middle Ages and the depiction of a matula was not uncommon in medieval manuscripts. As a result, the urine flask came to be identified with and used as a symbol of the physician, much like the caduceus is today. From the fourth century to modernity, the rabbit has been an averter of evil and bringer of good luck. Rabbits functioned as motifs in many medieval manuscripts. The physician rabbit in the Book of Hours depicted charity, healing, and scholarship. Conclusions The bespectacled rabbit holding a ‘matula’ is utilized in this Christian religious text as a symbol of the healing properties and resurrection attributed to Jesus, potentially contributing to the reader’s religious experience.

The multiple similarities between the Greek and Syriac eucharistic liturgies of Antioch and its hinterland on the one hand and the Jerusalem Liturgy of Saint James on the other hand situate Jerusalem within a single cultural area as regards liturgical life. Compared with Antioch, however, we have much more early evidence for the Liturgy of the Hours in Jerusalem. Main sources, which are briefly presented in the paper, are a) the Itinerary of Egeria, who in the 380s produced extensive liturgical notes on celebrations in the Anastasis cathedral and the related stational sites;b) the Armenian Lectionary, 5thcentury, which gives more specific detail of the services held in Jerusalem;c) the Georgian Lectionary, 6thcentury, which gives a slightly later stage of the material described in the Armenian Lectionary;d) the Old Iadgari, or first Jerusalem Tropologion, entirely preserved in Georgian. It is clear from these documents that the Anastasis Cathedral was officiated by monastic communities of different ethnic origins who used their own languages for their liturgical offices. We also have considerable evidence for this period for the Lavra of Saint Sabbas in the Judaean desert, where several ethnic communities prayed separately in their own languages, coming together only for the Eucharistic synaxis (in Greek). This multi-ethnic situation continues today on Mount Athos and continued throughout the Middle Ages on Sinai. The vast library of manuscripts at Saint Catherine’s monastery is well known. It contains manuscripts in a very wide variety of Christian languages, including numerous liturgical texts. The Manuscript Sinai Arabic 232 (13th century) contains a complete Psalter, a complete Horologion and other texts. It can be shown to be of Alexandrian Melkite origin, used by Arabic-speaking monks who were part of the Sinai community. There are archaic and specifically Egyptian, and even Coptic, elements that are of special interest.

El artículo despeja varios errores historiográficos atribuidos a la fundación del convento de la Orden de Predicadores asentado en la ciudad castellana de Chinchilla, esclarece algunas de sus circunstancias fundacionales y profundiza en la influencia que la formación de bandos políticos durante el siglo XV ejerció sobre tal comunidad religiosa. Asimismo, se expone la función que los frailes desempeñaron como elemento de atracción de flujo monetario continuo desde el campo circundante a la ciudad de Chinchilla.

The Silk Route Between Past and Present. A Paradigm Beyond Space and Time. On the threshold of the third millennium, in an atmosphere of anachronisms and contradictions, dominated and conditioned by scientific and technological discoveries, new ideas seem to take flight whilst regional barriers and territorial boundaries are collapsing to give way to a new form of comprehensiveness. Sharing ideas and intellectual stimuli, amalgamating cultural elements circulating along its intertwining branches, the Silk Route has more than once given life to new scientific forms, cultural and intellectual systems and, amongst these, artistic shapes and religious syncretism. The “Silk Route”, which, with its articulated network of twisting routes and sub-routes, even now well represents the challenging paradigm of a new age yet standing at its threshold. A paradigm beyond time and space. The following paper aims at focusing on the Silk Route’s Religious-Cultural dimension in the middle-inner Asia of the 13th-15th Centuries, when, whatever may have happened regarding local realms and rulers, it played the role of junction and meeting point of different worlds and their civilisations. Even now we are confronted with a political trend that is at once and the same time a cultural current; emanating from the past, it is re-linking Europe and Asia and, re-uniting territories with their individual and traditional cultural forms, is shaping a renewed kaleidoscopic framework. We are confronted with new forces deeply rooted in the past, which, emanating from the far eastern fringes of Asia, by the second decade of the 21st century have reached the far western fringes of Europe, dynamics that are not only ‘economics’ and ‘scientific technologies’ but also thought, religion, and other intellectual values. These forces are heir of past times, nevertheless they endure in the present and are the active lively projection of a future time…though still largely to be understood and matured. A vision of life and universe where speculative and religious values coexist with astounding technological and scientific discoveries in a global dimension without space and time. At the verge of this millennium, the Information and Communication Revolution has given life with its advanced technologies to a new space conditioned and dominated by no-distances. And this space with its always-evolving scientific discoveries today involves the society in its entirety (what is commonly named as “global space” actually symbolised by the Silk Route), endeavours to amalgamate it creating new links between civil and political society and positioning them in a new military dimension. New forms and structures that are rapidly evolving in search of some balance between technological development and preservation of ancient traditions, which might make possible social and economic justice, yet an utopia more than a reality. However, both (social and economic justice) form the ideological basis of order and stability, anxiously pursued by the young generation in search of an economic and speculative order where stability, security (hard and soft security) and religious structures should in their turn become the platform of new political-institutional structures. Be that as it may, this is not a new phenomenon. Technological advancements are astoundingly new, but not the process and its aims. We are confronted with a phenomenon that has already occurred in more than one historic phase. Epochal phases. That is the human search for economic and social justice, and their framing into new conceptual schemes. And within this ratio, it would be unrealistic to ignore an additional key-factor. It would be unrealistic to deny that Religion has always been a major player. It has been at the basis of more than one revolution, it has represented the culturalpolitical response to foreign challenges, it has legitimised military action, it has given life to new spaces and political systems, it has filled with its pathos cultural and political voids. It has given to Mankind and Universe a new centrality, creating a new space within which Man and Mankind, History and Philosophy, Cosmos and Universe with their laws meet and merge in new systems and structural orders. The World and its Destiny, core of lively debates, conditioned by the eternal dialectic between economics and society, between society and religion, between science and technology on the one hand, and religion on the other, between formal ratio and ideologies or myths, which underline with their voice the eternal antithesis between cultures and civilisations. At the verge of the third millennium, the intellectual world is facing a new historiographical debate, into which the Religious Factor has also entered. Knowledge and the vision of the world and its new order/disorder are translated into a new philosophy of culture and history, of society and religion. Rationality, historicity of scientific knowledge, nature and experience, nature and human ‘ratio’, science and ethics, science and its language, science and its new aims and objectives are amongst some of the major themes of this debate. But not only this: which aims, which objectives? And within which new order that might ensure security and stability, social and economic justice? Thence, revolution and power are coming to the fore with another factor: Force and its use…a stage that, however, does not disregard dialogue and tolerance, or, as recently stated by Francesco Bergoglio, more than tolerance, “reciprocal respect”. These are only ‘some’ amongst the main issues discussed and heard of also in the traditional culture of ordinary people. Undoubtedly, the end of the Cold War and the well-known “global village” dealt with by Samuel Huntington, the global village with its technological revolutions, have induced to re-think our own speculative parameters, traditional paradigms and models of society and power, mankind and statehood. And once again we have been confronted with elements that might bring to new forms of sharp opposition and a global disorder. However, beyond and behind the Huntingtonian cliché of the “clash of civilizations”, a new cultural current seems to take flight spurring from the roots of a traditional past, which however has not yet disappeared. The Silk Route stems out emanating from the far-eastern lands of Asia as the conceptual image, the paradigm of a conceivable new order. By merging the material, scientific-technological and economic dimension of life with a new cultural (or neo-cultural) vocation it seeks (and seems to be able) to give life to a new social body and new systemic-structural answers, a comprehensive order capable of tackling the challenges opened by the collapse of the traditional cultural parameters and the dramatic backdrop of a mere clash of civilisations. Middle-Inner Asia of the 13th -15th Centuries: the Silk Route and its Reflection on Painting and Architectonic Forms. As just pointed out, nothing is new in the course of History. Professor Axel Berkowsky has authoritatively lingered on the Silk Route – or better “the New Silk Route” – with specific regard on practical aspects of these last decades. In the following text, I wish to linger on a past historic period, particularly fertile when confronted with the collapse of traditional values and the challenges posed by new fearful forces and their dynamics: the Mongols with their hordes (ulus) and, some later, Tamerlane with his terrible Army. Sons of the steppe and its culture, these people suddenly appeared on the stage, raced it from Mesopotamia to the north-eastern corner of Asia with their hordes and their allied tribal groups, shattered previous civilisations and imposed a new dominion, a new political-military order and new models of life. But, with their Military superiority, they also brought the codes and the ancient traditional knowledge of the nomadic world. It is misleading to watch to this epochal phase only as a phase of devastation and horrors. With their codes, Mongols and Timurids brought with them the Chinese algebraic, mathematical and scientific knowledge, and fused it with Mesopotamian mathematical and medical sciences reaching peaks of astronomical, arithmetical, numerical, geometric, algebraic theoretical and practical knowledge. They also brought with them from vital centres of religious scholarship and life a large number of theologians, pirs, traditionists and legal religious scholars with their individual religious features and systems. Shamanism, Buddhism, Muslim forms, Nestorianism and other cults vigorously practised in the mobile world of the steppe gave life to an important phase of religious culture and multifarious practices largely imbued with mystic feelings and traditional emotional states. Then, and once again, within the global space created by the military conquests of the new-comers, the Silk Route – or more precisely, the Silk and its Routes – reorganised and revitalised trades and business, gave life to close diplomatic connections and matrimonial allegiances reinforced by a vigorous traditional chancery and official correspondence, that tightly linked Asia with Europe. Within this new global order, the Silk and its routes played the crucial role, shaped new political, institutional, scientific and intellectual formulae, gave life to new conceptual forms that – at their core – had Man and Mankind as centre of the entire Universe. We are confronted with a cultural development begun at a time when the sons of the steppe were taking over lands of the classical Arabic civilisation (like Syria, Iraq and al-Jaszīra), at a time when the Iranian world was still centre of intellectual life and its social norms were still spreading over large spaces of Inner Asian territories. Visual Arts wonderfully mirror this phenomenon. We witness a process that renovated itself ‘from within’ in the course of three centuries and did not stop even when the arrival of the European Powers on the Asian markets seemed to sign, with the decay and end of the traditional market economy, also the closing of the cultural interactions created by the Silk Routes of the time. Once again, Visual Arts wonderfully mirror this phenomenon: a dramatic transitional, fluid period, marked by a distinctive timeless reality, which had no longer territories well delimited by frontiers to conquer or defend. Herewith I have dealt, as an example, with the reflection of the new conceptions of Life and Universe on visual Fine Arts in the 13th-15th centuries, specifically painting and architectonic forms. Ideological values that aimed to forge new relationships among different peoples and their individual human values, religious thinking, moral codes…and economic, scientific, technological achievements. ‘Fine Arts’. Visual fine arts, in my case painting and architecture, are the mirror of feelings shared by the Lords of the time, registered by painters and architects in plastic forms, the signal of these stances to an often confused Humanity. Here, I linger on two pictorial themes: Nature and Landscape on the one hand, and Religion with its very images on the other. With regard to architectonic forms, these reflect the same conceptual paradigm shaped through technical features. By those ages, Nature and Landscape were perceived by contemporary painters and architects with formal, stylistic and technical characteristics which strongly reflected the impact with a world which lived its life in close, intimate contact with nature, a world and a culture which observed Nature and the Cosmos, and perceived them in every detail over the slow rhythmical march of days and nights, of seasons and the lunar cycles. These artistic features depict a precise image, that of a world which lives its life often at odds with nature for its very survival, a world which conditions nature or is conditioned in its turn. At that time, it was a world and a cosmic order which were often perceived by the artist in their tension with uncertainty and the blind recklessness of modern-contemporary times. However, to a closer analysis, these same artistic forms shape a celestial order which was at one and the same time a culture and a religion. In the vast borderless space of the Euro-Asiatic steppes, cut by great rivers, broken by steep rocky mountainous chains and inhospitable desert fig.aux, the Silk succeeded in building and organising its own network of twisting routes and sub-routes, along which transited (albeit, yet still transit) caravans with their goods…but also cultural elements and their conceptual-philosophical forms. Of these latter and their syncretic imageries and dreams, the fine arts have left evocative pictures and architectonic images, which depicted a world that is the projection of a precise social and political reality and its underlying factors, such as the restlessness of a nomadic pattern of life and the culture of the Town and its urban life. Little is changed today despite the collapse of the Soviet empire and its order. Features and forms change, but in both cases they announce a different world with its order built on a robust syncretism, which is at the same time science, knowledge, harmony and religion (divine or human, or both). A world that is the projection of a precise political, social and economic reality. A reality that, at one and the same time, is the silent voice of a humanity often disregarded by contemporary writers, an ‘underground world’ that echoes traditional forms and their dynamics, and a no less authoritative de facto power that politically, economically and militarily conditions and dominates its times. A reality that finds an authoritative voice through the Silk Route.

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(Nadir Weber, Berlin) Richter, Angie-Sophia, Das Testament der Apollonia von Wiedebach. Stiftungswesen und Armenfürsorge in Leipzig am Vorabend der Reformation (1526 – 1539) (Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte der Stadt Leipzig, 18), Leipzig 2019, Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 313 S. / Abb., € 34,00. (Martin Dinges, Stuttgart) Faber, Martin, Sarmatismus. Die politische Ideologie des polnischen Adels im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (Deutsches Historisches Institut Warschau. Quellen und Studien, 35), Wiesbaden 2018, Harrassowitz, 525 S., € 88,00. (Damien Tricoire, Trier) Woodcock, Matthew / Cian O’Mahony (Hrsg.), Early Modern Military Identities, 1560 – 1639. Reality and Representation, Woodbridge / Rochester 2019, D. S. Brewer, VI u. 316 S., £ 60,00. (Florian Schönfuß, Oxford) Henry Pier’s Continental Travels, 1595 – 1598, hrsg. v. Brian Mac Cuarta SJ (Camden Fifth Series, 54), Cambridge [u. a.] 2018, Cambridge University Press, XIII u. 238 S. / Karten, £ 44,99. (Michael Maurer, Jena) Scheck, Friedemann, Interessen und Konflikte. Eine Untersuchung zur politischen Praxis im frühneuzeitlichen Württemberg am Beispiel von Herzog Friedrichs Weberwerk (1598 – 1608). (Schriften zur südwestdeutschen Landeskunde, 81) Ostfildern 2020, Thorbecke, XI u. 292 S. / Abb., € 39,00. (Hermann Ehmer, Stuttgart) Scheffknecht, Wolfgang, Kleinterritorium und Heiliges Römisches Reich. Der „Embsische Estat“ und der Schwäbische Reichskreis im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert (Forschungen zur Geschichte Vorarlbergs. Neue Folge, 13), Konstanz 2018, UVK, 542 S. / Abb., € 59,00. (Jonas Stephan, Bad Sassendorf) Stoldt, Peter H., Diplomatie vor Krieg. Braunschweig-Lüneburg und Schweden im 17. Jahrhundert (Veröffentlichungen der Historischen Kommission für Niedersachsen und Bremen, 303), Göttingen 2020, Wallstein, 488 S. / Abb., € 39,90. (Malte de Vries, Göttingen) Bräuer, Helmut, „… angst vnd noth ist vnser täglich brott …“. Sozial- und mentalitätsgeschichtliche Beobachtungen in Chemnitz während der ersten Hälfte des 17. Jahrhunderts, Leipzig 2019, Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 236 S. / Abb., € 29,00. (Ansgar Schanbacher, Göttingen) Brüser, Joachim, Reichsständische Libertät zwischen kaiserlichem Absolutismus und französischer Hegemonie. Der Rheinbund von 1658, Münster 2020, Aschendorff, XI u. 448 S. / Abb., € 62,00. (Wolfgang Burgdorf, München) Albrecht-Birkner, Veronika / Alexander Schunka (Hrsg.), Pietismus in Thüringen – Pietismus aus Thüringen. Religiöse Reform im Mitteldeutschland des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts (Gothaer Forschungen zur Frühen Neuzeit, 13), Stuttgart 2018, Steiner, 327 S., € 55,00. (Thomas Grunewald, Halle a. d. S.) James, Leonie, The Household Accounts of William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1635 – 1642 (Church of England Record Society, 24), Woodbridge / Rochester 2019, The Boydell Press, XLIII u. 277 S., £ 70,00. (Georg Eckert, Wuppertal / Potsdam) Southcombe, George, The Culture of Dissent in Restoration England. „The Wonders of the Lord“ (Royal Historical Society Studies in History. New Series), Woodbridge / Rochester 2019, The Royal History Society / The Boydell Press, XII u. 197 S., £ 50,00. (Georg Eckert, Wuppertal / Potsdam) McTague, John, Things That Didn’t Happen. Writing, Politics and the Counterhistorical, 1678 – 1743 (Studies in the Eighteenth Century), Woodbridge 2019, The Boydell Press, XI u. 282 S. / Abb., £ 60,00. (Georg Eckert, Wuppertal / Potsdam) McCormack, Matthew, Citizenship and Gender in Britain, 1688 – 1928, London / New York 2019, Routledge, 194 S. / Abb., € 120,00. (Saskia Lettmaier, Kiel) Paul, Tawny, The Poverty of Disaster. Debt and Insecurity in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History), Cambridge [u. a.] 2019, Cambridge University Press, XIII u. 285 S. / Abb., £ 75,00. (Martin Dinges, Stuttgart) Fürstabt Celestino Sfondrati von St. Gallen 1696 als Kardinal in Rom, hrsg. v. Peter Erhart, bearb. v. Helena Müller / Christoph Uiting / Federica G. Giordani / Giuanna Beeli / Birgit Heinzle (Itinera Monastica, 2), Wien / Köln / Weimar 2019, Böhlau, 724 S. / Abb., € 75,00. (Volker Reinhardt, Fribourg) Zumhof, Tim, Die Erziehung und Bildung der Schauspieler. Disziplinierung und Moralisierung zwischen 1690 und 1830, Wien / Köln / Weimar 2018, Böhlau, 586 S. / Abb., € 80,00. (Wolf-Dieter Ernst, Bayreuth) Gelléri, Gábor, Lessons of Travel in Eighteenth-Century France. From Grand Tour to School Trips (Studies in the Eighteenth Century), Woodbridge, The Boydell Press 2020, VIII u. 235 S., £ 75,00. (Michael Maurer, Jena) Beckus, Thomas / Thomas Grunewald / Michael Rocher (Hrsg.), Niederadel im mitteldeutschen Raum (um 1700 – 1806) (Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte Sachsen-Anhalts, 17), Halle a. d. S. 2019, Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 235 S. / Abb., € 40,00. (Axel Flügel, Bielefeld) Seitschek, Stefan, Die Tagebücher Kaiser Karls VI. Zwischen Arbeitseifer und Melancholie, Horn 2018, Berger, 524 S. / Abb., € 29,90. (Tobias Schenk, Wien) Köntgen, Sonja, Gräfin Gessler vor Gericht. Eine mikrohistorische Studie über Gewalt, Geschlecht und Gutsherrschaft im Königreich Preußen 1750 (Veröffentlichungen aus den Archiven Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Forschungen 14), Berlin 2019, Duncker & Humblot, VIII u. 291 S., € 89,90. (Nicolas Rügge, Hannover) Polli-Schönborn, Marco, Kooperation, Konfrontation, Disruption. Frühneuzeitliche Herrschaft in der alten Eidgenossenschaft vor und während des Leventiner Protestes von 1754/55, Basel 2020, Schwabe, 405 S. / Abb., € 58,00. (Beat Kümin, Warwick) Kubiska-Scharl, Irene / Michael Pölzl, Das Ringen um Reformen. Der Wiener Hof und sein Personal im Wandel (1766 – 1792) (Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs, 60), Wien 2018, StudienVerlag, 756 S. / graph. Darst., € 49,20. (Simon Karstens, Trier) Kittelmann, Jana / Anne Purschwitz (Hrsg.), Aufklärungsforschung digital. Konzepte, Methoden, Perspektiven (IZEA. Kleine Schriften, 10/2019), Halle a. d. S. 2019, Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 116 S. / Abb., € 10,00. (Simon Karstens, Trier) Willkommen, Alexandra, Alternative Lebensformen. Unehelichkeit und Ehescheidung am Beispiel von Goethes Weimar (Veröffentlichungen der Historischen Kommission für Thüringen. Kleine Reihe, 57), Wien / Köln / Weimar 2019, Böhlau, 437 S. / graph. Darst., € 55,00. (Laila Scheuch, Bonn) Reuter, Simon, Revolution und Reaktion im Reich. Die Intervention im Hochstift Lüttich 1789 – 1791 (Verhandeln, Verfahren, Entscheiden, 5), Münster 2019, Aschendorff, VIII u. 444 S., € 62,00. (Horst Carl, Gießen) Eichmann, Flavio, Krieg und Revolution in der Karibik. Die kleinen Antillen, 1789 – 1815 (Pariser Historische Studien, 112), Berlin / Boston 2019, de Gruyter Oldenbourg, 553 S., € 54,95. (Damien Tricoire, Trier)