Journal articles on the topic 'Mysticism Europe History'

This article examines how and why criminal proceedings were brought against alleged cases of Catholic mysticism in several European countries during modernity. In particular, it explores how criminal charges were derived from mystical experiences and shows how these charges were examined inside the courtroom. To bring a lawsuit against supposed mystics, justice systems had to reduce their mysticism to ‘facts’ or actions involving a breach of the law, usually fraud. Such accusations were not the main reason why alleged mystics were taken to court, however. Focusing on three representative examples, in Spain, France and Germany, I argue that ‘mystic trials’ had more to do with specific conflicts between the defendant and the ecclesiastical or secular authorities than with public concern regarding pretence of the supernatural. Criminal courts in Europe approached such cases in a similar way. Just as in ecclesiastical inquiries, during the trials, judges called upon expert testimony to debunk the allegedly supernatural. Once a mystic entered the courtroom, his or her reputation was profoundly affected. Criminal lawsuits had a certain ‘demystifying power’ and were effective in stifling the fervour surrounding the alleged mystics. All in all, mystic trials offer a rich example of the ways in which modern criminal justice dealt with increasing enthusiasm for the supernatural during the 19th century.

The article considers the views of the German philosopher Ernst Bloch on the problem of the evolution of the idea of the “Third Reich” in the European Christian tradition of the Middle Ages and New Times, as well as its actualization by German Nazism. The author of the paper is the translator of many texts by E. Bloch. He attempts to understand the origins of the popularity of Nazism from a culturological and historical-philosophical point of view E. Bloch in a series of works turns, for the first time in 1924, to the European Christian tradition, to those images and figures that have defined the mental landscape for many centuries. The image of the Third Reich occupies an essential place in the intellectual history of Europe and the European Christian tradition. The influence of this image on the consciousness of the masses cannot be underestimated. Bloch reveals the inconsistency of the concept of the Third Reich and the figure of the savior (“Kaiser-liberator”, “leader”), which contains both the origins of the junction of Christianity and anti-fascism, and the grounds for inversion in favor of Nazism. The author also focuses on E. Bloch’s views on the legacy of the theologian Joachim Florsky (12th century), who created a historiosophical scheme that had an impact on many philosophical and religious concepts of history. Bloch enters Joachim Florsky into the historical and philosophical tradition, analyzing the mythologeme of the Savior in the cultural history of Europe. The paper presents an overview of modern research on the legacy of I. Florsky by Russian and foreign scientists, which prove the relevance of the ideas of E. Bloch, who revealed the connection between medieval religious movements and Nazism, opening a discussion with opposing points of view. The author examines the relationship between chiliasm and revolution, the influence of mysticism on the consciousness of German society at the beginning of the 20th century and on intellectuals. The article characterizes the position of E. Bloch, who believed that German Nazism committed an ideological theft of theological Christian concepts. The article highlights Bloch’s call to change the attitude to medieval chiliasm and mysticism in connection with the revolutionary potential existing in these currents.

This paper introduces the notion of “nesting orientalisms” to investigate some of the complexity of the east/west dichotomy which has underlain scholarship on “Orientalism” since the publication of Said's classic polemic, a discourse in which “East,” like “West,” is much more of a project than a place. While geographical boundaries of the “Orient“ shifted throughout history, the concept of “Orient” as “other” has remained more or less unchanged. Moreover, cultures and ideologies tacitly presuppose the valorized dichotomy between east and west, and have incorporated various “essences” into the patterns of representation used to describe them. Implied by this essentialism is that humans and their social or cultural institutions are “governed by determinate natures that inhere in them in the same way that they are supposed to inhere in the entities of the natural world.” Thus, eastern Europe has been commonly associated with “backwardness,” the Balkans with “violence,” India with “idealism” or “mysticism,” while the west has identified itself consistently with the “civilized world.“

Orhan Pamuk’s The White Castle is a historical novel that is set during the Ottoman reign. The novel presents the metaphysical opposition of East and West, self and the other, intuition and reason, mysticism, science and global and local, and the recurring issues of conflict of civilization, identity crisis, and cultural variations. Orhan Pamuk as a postmodern writer tries to bridge the gap between the East and the West through his writings. Although Turkey is at the backdrop in most of his novels, the treatment of themes is universal. The paper proposes the theory of Orientalism by Edward Said, which represents the encounter and treatment of the "Orient." The concept of identity expressed by Pamuk in his wide range of novels also can be related to the “Orient” and “Occident.” The culture of the East has always been portrayed as the binary opposite of Europe in history and fiction. The loss of identity of the East reflected in the works of Pamuk is an outcome of the clash between East and Europe, further leading to chaotic contexts and dilemmatic protagonists. Individuals unable to choose between the traditional self and the fashionable West mourn the lost identity of a country and their self.

This article examines the history of Kabbalah in Sweden. The reader is presented with an overall view to Kabbalah in Sweden: first, the Johannes Bureus and the Nordic Kabbalah, Kabbalah after Bureus, Kabbalistic literature, and last, Kabbalah in Sweden today. When the Kabbalah reached Sweden it was mainly the non-Jewish Kabbalah that gained influence, even if its Jewish roots were acknowledged. Johannes Bureus unites, in a similar fashion as do the Christian Kabbalists in continental Europe, Christian motifs with the symbolic world of the Kabbalah. Bureus, however, adds runes, ancient Norse gods and Gothic ideas in his own unique manner. The Kabbalah invites speculation and the search for correspondences which has caused the Kabbalah in Sweden to be united with a number of other traditions. Bureus combined the Kabbalah with runes and Gothicism; in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries we can find the Kabbalah in Freemasonry and Esoteric societies, while the Kabbalah in the twentieth century and onwards has been associated with New Age, Parapsychology and Indian Mysticism. Apart from Bureus, most Kabbalists in Sweden have followed the trends that flourished in the rest of the world. Bureus was the first to create a specifically Swedish interpretation of the Kabbalah.

ABSTRACT This paper analyzes how the Western concept of minerals evolved over time. Greco-Roman philosophers saw minerals as a form of plant that yielded useful metals or medicines. Most of their data came from mines and focused on ore minerals, but medicinal uses were more highly regarded and were the principal intentional focus of early mineral literature. As mining waned in the early medieval period, the focus of mineral literature shifted to emphasize gemstones rather than ores and mysticism rather than metallurgy, while medicine continued to be prominent. Descriptions from firsthand observation became rare. Starting in the 9th century AD, an inorganic concept of minerals as chemicals began to arise from alchemical experiments in the Middle East. The alchemical mineral literature demonstrated that minerals differed from plants in being separable into constituent ingredients by chemical processes, focusing on ores. The sulfur-mercury model of mineral origin also reflects a strong emphasis on metal ores at the expense of other minerals. As mining rates increased again in Europe after the 10th century, this alchemical concept of minerals caught on. However, the alchemical model acquired a spiritual gloss, leading to a divide in the 16th century between a spiritualized organic model of minerals and an inorganic or mechanical alternative, both focused mainly on ores. Eventually the concept of spiritual or living minerals diverged from the mineral to the alchemical literature in the 16th century, as the mechanical model evolved into the modern chemical identification of minerals.

The author analyzes the prerequisites for the formation of a theological and philosophical school, founded in 990 by Bishop Fulbert in Chartres, which flourished during the years of the Episcopal ministry of Yves of Chartres (1090–1115), a recognized intellectual center of Western Europe. The role of the Chartres Cathedral School as a citadel of metaphysical, cosmological and natural-scientific Platonism in the era of early scholasticism is revealed. The philosophical orientation of the Chartres school (orientation to the ideas of Neoplatonism), as shown in the work, is the result of a combination of the ideas of Plato, aristotelism, stoicism, pythagoreanism, Eastern and Christian mysticism and religion. The body of ideas characteristic of the Neoplatonism tradition is analyzed, the account of which is essential in understanding the specifics of the Chartres school ideological platform: the ideas of a mystically intuitive knowledge of the higher, the stages of transition from “one and the universal” to matter, the idea of comprehension of pure spirituality. The thesis is substantiated that the time of the highest prosperity of the Chartres school, its highest fame is the XII century, which went down in the history of civilization as the era of the cultural renaissance taking place in France. The specificity of the 12th century renaissance, as shown in the study, lies in the growing interest in Greek philosophy and Roman classics (this also determines the other name of the era – the Roman Renaissance), in expanding the field of knowledge through the assimilation of Western European science and the philosophy of the ancient Greeks. The thesis in which the specifics of the entry of Greek science into the culture of Western Europe is also identified. This entry was carried out through the culture of the Muslim world, which also determined the specifics of the cultural renaissance of France of the XII century. Radical changes are revealed that affect the sphere of education and, above all, religious education; the idea of reaching the priority positions of philosophy and logic is substantiated – a situation that has survived until the end of the Middle Ages. This situation, as shown in the work, was facilitated by the rare growth rate of the translation centers of Constantinople, Palermo, Toledo. It is shown that scholasticism in its early version is oriented towards religious orthodoxy. In the teaching of philosophy, the vector turned out to be biased towards natural philosophy, which was due, as shown in the work, to the spread of the ideas of Aristotle and Plato. In its educational program, the school synthesized the teachings of Plato and Aristotle. Elements of natural philosophy are inherent in the works of Bernard of Chartres, Gilbert of Poitiers, Thierry of Chartres representing the Chartres school. Deep studies on the problem of universals ensured the invasion of logic in the field of metaphysical constructions of the Chartres school.

<p>對於多數法語系國家的人來說，遠東地區的重要學說如道家思想，很難嚴謹地被理解。大部份寫過此主題的法語作家都侷限於嘗試將道家與在法國或是歐洲文化中既有的文化元素來作比較。自從啟蒙運動以來，法國傾向給亞洲東北地區貼上「儒家」的標籤，然而這個做法似乎流於簡化。相較於儒家和佛教，道家思想的知名度小，相關研究亦少，這是因為道家常被視為一種神秘且難以理解的文化。本文致力於探究道家在法國的接受度，以及法國學者（作家、詩人、旅行家、哲學家、民族學家、漢學家等）如何看待和詮釋道家思想。本文以法國和歐洲近代道家相關著作中所呈現的多樣且變動的表徵為本，進行跨文化研究。我們從中可以看到道家思想重新被創造:有時是非理性的或反啟蒙的；有時是基督教的姊妹宗教；有時被認為是不道德的或主張消極的，或甚至因其反物質主義或泛神論的反消費主義而受到推崇。道家也被視為是對永恆回歸學說的期待，就像新時代的神祕主義，一種作為後現代主義的精神力量或是作為重新關注自身肉體的源泉。</p> <p>&nbsp;</p><p>For most French/Francophones, the great Far Eastern doctrines, such as Taoism, are difficult to grasp rigorously. Most French-language authors who have written on the subject have generally confined themselves to trying to compare the Taoist doctrine with pre-existing elements of culture in French or European culture. Since the Enlightenment, France has often tended to label the northeast area of Asia as &quot;Confucian&quot;. This is probably a bit of a simplification. Unlike Confucianism or Buddhism, Taoism is generally less known and less often mentioned. It is that Taoism often appears as a mysterious and difficult culture to grasp. It therefore seems interesting to study the reception of Taoism in France and the way in which French scholars (writers, poets, travelers, philosophers, ethnologists, sinologists, etc.) have received and interpreted this doctrine (religious and philosophical). This article necessarily implies an intercultural reflection, based on the study of the diverse and changing representations that have arisen in the recent history of writings on Taoism in France and Europe. This is how certain receptions showed real recreations of Taoism: a Taoism sometimes irrational or anti-enlightenment doctrine, sometimes religion sister of the Christian religion, sometimes considered immoral or advocating passivity, or even praised for its anti-materialism or its pantheistic anti-consumerism. Taoism was also seen as an anticipation of the doctrines of the eternal return, as a new-age mysticism, as a resource for post-modernism or as a source of renewed attention to the body.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p>

Isaac Bashev is Singer cherished the short story because, in his opinion, it provided a considerably greater opportunity for perfection than the novel did. His stories, however, rarely exhibit the meticu-lous craftsmanship of a conscious craftsman; instead, they flow effortlessly, often mindlessly, without any sense of manipulation. Indeed, Singer’s work derives from a rich oral storytelling tradition that has been thriving for generations throughout Eastern Europe. As the de facto historian of the Jewish experience in the twentieth century, Singer opts to ignore the Holocaust and the six million European Jews who were killed by Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. Since he doesn’t think a simple storyteller could ever convey a tale this awful and unintelligible, he instead evokes it by describing the civilization it wiped out in detail and the scattered melancholy it left behind. Singer’s protagonists, like the Jewish people as a whole, face unfathomable atrocities and fight with their identity in a changing world. They must decide whether to give up or endure. The person in their family, neighborhood, and world is eventually the person in their universe, frequently by themselves with the supernatural forces that rule it. Singer uses a variety of Jewish mysticism and demonology to embellish and draw from to personify these forces and their impact on the human condition. In this research paper, I tried to anlyze the element of this Jewish mysticism in some of his popular works. Isaac Bashevis Singer was a Polish-born American Jewish author who first authored and published in Yiddish before translating himself into English with the assistance of editors and collaborators.

AbstractGershom Scholem, the most predominant scholar of Jewish Mysticism in our times, is highly known for his contribution to the field of Jewish history. But his intellectual origins lay in his adolescence, and in his heretical-philosophical criticism of the Judeo-Christian morality and the ideology of the German bourgeoisie. These early impressions and thoughts appeared in one of his first Hebrew articles, “Redemption Through Sin”, published in Palestine in 1937. Scholem’s discussion analyzed the “nihilistic revolution” of the Sabbataeans and Frankists in the seventeenth and eighteenth century in Europe, whose main feature was the rejection of the normative ethics of rabbinic Judaism. The hidden core of the young Scholem, his revolutionary thought, was followed by an early encounter with the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. The dream of young Scholem, as revealed by his diary, to write “Zarathustra for the Jews”, eventually came into being in an original adaptation. His great book Sabbatai Sevi (1957), can be read as a Nietzschean re-reading of “Redemption Through Sin”. The biography of Sabbatai Sevi as a Jewish Zarathustra may provide refreshing insights into the development of Scholem’s thought and an opportunity to challenge him through an analogical perspective.

Classen, Albrecht (Hrsg.), Travel, Time, and Space in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Time. Explorations of World Perceptions and Processes of Identity Formation (Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 22), Boston / Berlin 2018, de Gruyter, XIX u. 704 S. / Abb., € 138,95. (Stefan Schröder, Helsinki) Orthmann, Eva / Anna Kollatz (Hrsg.), The Ceremonial of Audience. Transcultural Approaches (Macht und Herrschaft, 2), Göttingen 2019, V&amp;R unipress / Bonn University Press, 207 S. / Abb., € 40,00. (Benedikt Fausch, Münster) Bagge, Sverre H., State Formation in Europe, 843 – 1789. A Divided World, London / New York 2019, Routledge, 297 S., £ 120,00. (Wolfgang Reinhard, Freiburg i. Br.) Foscati, Alessandra, Saint Anthony’s Fire from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century, übers. v. Francis Gordon (Premodern Health, Disease, and Disability), Amsterdam 2020, Amsterdam University Press, 264 S., € 99,00. (Gregor Rohmann, Frankfurt a. M.) Füssel, Marian / Frank Rexroth / Inga Schürmann (Hrsg.), Praktiken und Räume des Wissens. Expertenkulturen in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Göttingen 2019, Vandenhoeck &amp; Ruprecht, 225 S. / Abb., € 65,00. (Lisa Dannenberg-Markel, Aachen) Korpiola, Mia (Hrsg.), Legal Literacy in Premodern European Societies (World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence), Cham 2019, Palgrave Macmillan, X u. 264 S., € 103,99. (Saskia Lettmaier, Kiel) Stercken, Martina / Christian Hesse (Hrsg.), Kommunale Selbstinszenierung. Städtische Konstellationen zwischen Mittelalter und Neuzeit (Medienwandel – Medienwechsel – Medienwissen, 40), Zürich 2018, Chronos, 391 S. / Abb., € 58,00. (Ruth Schilling, Bremen / Bremerhaven) Thewes, Guy / Martin Uhrmacher (Hrsg.), Extra muros. Vorstädtische Räume in Spätmittelalter und früher Neuzeit / Espaces suburbains au bas Moyen Âge et à l’époque moderne (Städteforschung. Reihe A: Darstellungen, 91), Wien / Köln / Weimar 2019, Böhlau, 521 S. / Abb., € 70,00. (Holger Th. Gräf, Marburg) Bühner, Peter, Die Freien und Reichsstädte des Heiligen Römischen Reiches. Kleines Repertorium (Schriftenreihe der Friedrich-Christian-Lesser-Stiftung, 38), Petersberg 2019, Imhof, 623 S. / Abb., € 39,95. (Stephanie Armer, Eichstätt) Kümin, Beat, Imperial Villages. Cultures of Political Freedom in the German Lands c. 1300 – 1800 (Studies in Central European Histories, 65), Leiden / Boston 2019 Brill, XIV u. 277 S. / Abb., € 121,00. (Magnus Ressel, Frankfurt a. M.) Kälble, Mathias / Helge Wittmann (Hrsg.), Reichsstadt als Argument. 6. Tagung des Mühlhäuser Arbeitskreises für Reichsstadtgeschichte Mühlhausen 12. bis 14. Februar 2018 (Studien zur Reichsstadtgeschichte, 6), Petersberg 2019, Imhof, 316 S. / Abb., € 29,95. (Pia Eckhart, Freiburg i. Br.) Müsegades, Benjamin / Ingo Runde (Hrsg.), Universitäten und ihr Umfeld. Südwesten und Reich in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit. Beiträge zur Tagung im Universitätsarchiv Heidelberg am 6. und 7. Oktober 2016 (Heidelberger Schriften zur Universitätsgeschichte, 7), Heidelberg 2019, Universitätsverlag Winter, VIII u. 276 S. / Abb., € 25,00. (Beate Kusche, Leipzig) Drews, Wolfram (Hrsg.), Die Interaktion von Herrschern und Eliten in imperialen Ordnungen des Mittelalters (Das Mittelalter. Beihefte, 8), Berlin / Boston 2018, de Gruyter, VIII u. 321 S. / Abb., € 99,95. (Elisabeth Gruber, Salzburg) Schmidt, Hans-Joachim, Herrschaft durch Schrecken und Liebe. Vorstellungen und Begründungen im Mittelalter (Orbis mediaevalis, 17), Göttingen 2019, V&amp;R unipress, 770 S., € 90,00. (Matthias Becher, Bonn) Wickham, Chris, Das Mittelalter. Europa von 500 bis 1500. Aus dem Englischen von Susanne Held, Stuttgart 2018, Klett-Cotta, 506 S. / Abb., € 35,00. (Hans-Werner Goetz, Hamburg) Gramsch-Stehfest, Robert, Bildung, Schule und Universität im Mittelalter (Seminar Geschichte), Berlin / Boston 2019, de Gruyter, X u. 273 S. / Abb., € 24,95. (Benjamin Müsegades, Heidelberg) Berndt, Rainer SJ (Hrsg.), Der Papst und das Buch im Spätmittelalter (1350 – 1500). Bildungsvoraussetzung, Handschriftenherstellung, Bibliotheksgebrauch (Erudiri Sapientia, 13), Münster 2018, Aschendorff, 661 S. / Abb., € 79,00. (Vanina Kopp, Trier) Eßer, Florian, Schisma als Deutungskonflikt. Das Konzil von Pisa und die Lösung des Großen Abendländischen Schismas (1378 – 1409) (Papsttum im mittelalterlichen Europa, 8), Wien / Köln / Weimar 2019, Böhlau, 874 S., € 120,00. (Bernward Schmidt, Eichstätt) Baur, Kilian, Freunde und Feinde. Niederdeutsche, Dänen und die Hanse im Spätmittelalter (1376 – 1513) (Quellen und Darstellungen zur Hansischen Geschichte. Neue Folge, 76), Wien / Köln / Weimar 2018, Böhlau, 671 S., € 85,00. (Angela Huang, Lübeck) Pietsch, Tobias, Führende Gruppierungen im spätmittelalterlichen Niederadel Mecklenburgs, Kiel 2019, Solivagus-Verlag, 459 S. / graph. Darst., € 58,00. (Joachim Krüger, Greifswald) Putzer, Katja, Das Urbarbuch des Erhard Rainer zu Schambach von 1376. Besitz und Bücher eines bayerischen Niederadligen (Quellen und Erörterungen zur bayerischen Geschichte. Neue Folge, 50), München 2019, Beck, 318 S., € 56,00. (Wolfgang Wüst, Erlangen) Drossbach, Gisela / Klaus Wolf (Hrsg.), Reformen vor der Reformation. Sankt Ulrich und Afra und der monastisch-urbane Umkreis im 15. Jahrhundert (Studia Augustana, 18), Berlin / Boston 2018, VII u. 391 S. / Abb., € 99,95. (Thomas Groll, Augsburg) Ricci, Giovanni, Appeal to the Turk. The Broken Boundaries of the Renaissance, übers. v. Richard Chapman (Viella History, Art and Humanities Collection, 4), Rom 2018, Viella, 186 S. / Abb., € 30,00. (Stefan Hanß, Manchester) Böttcher, Hans-Joachim, Die Türkenkriege im Spiegel sächsischer Biographien (Studien zur Geschichte Ungarns, 20), Herne 2019, Schäfer, 290 S., € 19,95. (Fabian Schulze, Elchingen / Augsburg) Shaw, Christine, Isabella d’Este. A Renaissance Princess (Routledge Historical Biographies), London / New York 2019, Routledge, 312 S., £ 90,00. (Christina Antenhofer, Salzburg) Brandtzæg, Siv G. / Paul Goring / Christine Watson (Hrsg.), Travelling Chronicles. News and Newspapers from the Early Modern Period to the Eighteenth Century (Library of the Written Word, 66 / The Handpress World, 51), Leiden / Boston 2018, Brill, XIX u. 388 S. / Abb., € 129,00. (Andreas Würgler, Genf) Graheli, Shanti (Hrsg.), Buying and Selling. The Business of Books in Early Modern Europe (Library of the Written Word, 72; The Handpress World, 55), Leiden / Boston 2019, Brill, XXIII u. 559 S. / Abb., € 159,00. (Johannes Frimmel, München) Vries, Jan de, The Price of Bread. Regulating the Market in the Dutch Republic (Cambridge Studies in Economic History), Cambridge [u. a.] 2019, Cambridge University Press, XIX u. 515 S. / graph. Darst., £ 34,99. (Justus Nipperdey, Saarbrücken) Caesar, Mathieu (Hrsg.), Factional Struggles. Divided Elites in European Cities and Courts (1400 – 1750) (Rulers and Elites, 10), Leiden / Boston 2017, Brill, XI u. 258 S., € 119,00. (Mathis Leibetseder, Berlin) Freytag, Christine / Sascha Salatowsky (Hrsg.), Frühneuzeitliche Bildungssysteme im interkonfessionellen Vergleich. Inhalte – Infrastrukturen – Praktiken (Gothaer Forschungen zur Frühen Neuzeit, 14), Stuttgart 2019, Steiner, 320 S., € 58,00. (Helmut Puff, Ann Arbor) Amend-Traut, Anja / Josef Bongartz / Alexander Denzler / Ellen Franke / Stefan A. Stodolkowitz (Hrsg.), Unter der Linde und vor dem Kaiser. Neue Perspektiven auf Gerichtsvielfalt und Gerichtslandschaften im Heiligen Römischen Reich (Quellen und Forschungen zur höchsten Gerichtsbarkeit im Alten Reich, 73), Wien / Köln / Weimar 2020, Böhlau, 320 S., € 65,00. (Tobias Schenk, Wien) Rittgers, Ronald K. / Vincent Evener (Hrsg.), Protestants and Mysticism in Reformation Europe (St Andrews Studies in Reformation History), Leiden / Boston 2019, Brill, XIV u. 459 S., € 156,00. (Lennart Gard, Berlin) Temple, Liam P., Mysticism in Early Modern England (Studies in Modern British Religious History, 38), Woodbridge 2019, The Boydell Press, IX u. 221 S. / Abb., £ 60,00. (Elisabeth Fischer, Hamburg) Kroll, Frank-Lothar / Glyn Redworth / Dieter J. Weiß (Hrsg.), Deutschland und die Britischen Inseln im Reformationsgeschehen. Vergleich, Transfer, Verflechtungen (Prinz-Albert-Studien, 34; Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte Bayerns, 97), Berlin 2018, Duncker &amp; Humblot, X u. 350 S., € 79,90. (Andreas Pečar, Halle a. d. S.) Breul, Wolfgang / Kurt Andermann (Hrsg.), Ritterschaft und Reformation (Geschichtliche Landeskunde, 75), Stuttgart 2019, Steiner, 374 S., € 63,00. (Andreas Flurschütz da Cruz, Bamberg) Niederhäuser, Peter / Regula Schmid (Hrsg.), Querblicke. Zürcher Reformationsgeschichten (Mitteilungen der Antiquarischen Gesellschaft in Zürich, 86), Zürich 2019, Chronos, 203 S. / Abb., € 48,00. (Volker Reinhardt, Fribourg) Braun, Karl-Heinz / Wilbirgis Klaiber / Christoph Moos (Hrsg.), Glaube‍(n) im Disput. Neuere Forschungen zu den altgläubigen Kontroversisten des Reformationszeitalters (Reformationsgeschichtliche Studien und Texte, 173), Münster 2020, Aschendorff, IX u. 404 S., € 68,00. (Volker Leppin, Tübingen) Fata, Márta / András Forgó / Gabriele Haug-Moritz / Anton Schindling (Hrsg.), Das Trienter Konzil und seine Rezeption im Ungarn des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts (Reformationsgeschichtliche Studien und Texte, 171), Münster 2019, VI u. 301 S., € 46,00. (Joachim Werz, Frankfurt a. M.) Tol, Jonas van, Germany and the French Wars of Religion, 1560 – 1572 (St Andrews Studies in Reformation History), Leiden / Boston 2019, Brill, VIII u. 274 S. / Abb., € 125,00. (Alexandra Schäfer-Griebel, Mainz) Lipscomb, Suzannah, The Voices of Nîmes. Women, Sex, and Marriage in Reformation Languedoc, Oxford / New York 2019, Oxford University Press, XIV u. 378 S., £ 30,00. (Adrina Schulz, Zürich) Kielinger, Thomas, Die Königin. Elisabeth I. und der Kampf um England. Biographie, München 2019, Beck, 375 S. / Abb., € 24,95. (Pauline Puppel, Aumühle) Canning, Ruth, The Old English in Early Modern Ireland. The Palesmen and the Nine Years’ War, 1594 – 1603 (Irish Historical Monograph Series, [20]), Woodbridge 2019, The Boydell Press, XI u. 227 S., £ 75,00. (Martin Foerster, Düsseldorf) Bry, Theodor de, America. Sämtliche Tafeln 1590 – 1602, hrsg. v. Michiel van Groesen / Larry E. Tise, Köln 2019, Taschen, 375 S. / Abb., € 100,00. (Renate Dürr, Tübingen) Haskell, Yasmin / Raphaële Garrod (Hrsg.), Changing Hearts. Performing Jesuit Emotions between Europe, Asia, and the Americas (Jesuit Studies, 15), Leiden / Boston 2019, Brill, XIX u. 328 S. / Abb., € 130,00. (Christoph Nebgen, Saarbrücken) Jackson, Robert H., Regional Conflict and Demographic Patterns on the Jesuit Missions among the Guaraní in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (European Expansion and Indigenous Response, 31), Leiden / Boston 2019, Brill, XVII u. 174 S. / Abb., € 100,00. (Irina Saladin, Tübingen) Kelly, James / Hannah Thomas (Hrsg.), Jesuit Intellectual and Physical Exchange between England and Mainland Europe, c. 1580 – 1789: „The world is our house“? (Jesuit Studies, 18), Leiden / Boston 2019, Brill, XIV u. 371 S., € 140,00. (Martin Foerster, Hamburg) Wilhelm, Andreas, Orange und das Haus Nassau-Oranien im 17. Jahrhundert. Ein Fürstentum zwischen Souveränität und Abhängigkeit, Berlin [u. a.] 2018, Lang, 198 S., € 39,95. (Olaf Mörke, Kiel) Geraerts, Jaap, Patrons of the Old Faith. The Catholic Nobility in Utrecht and Guelders, c. 1580 – 1702 (Catholic Christendom, 1300 – 1700), Leiden / Boston 2019, Brill, XIII, 325 S. / Abb., € 129,00. (Johannes Arndt, Münster) Arnegger, Katharina, Das Fürstentum Liechtenstein. Session und Votum im Reichsfürstenrat, Münster 2019, Aschendorff, 256 S., € 24,80. (Tobias Schenk, Wien) Marti, Hanspeter / Robert Seidel (Hrsg.), Die Universität Straßburg zwischen Späthumanismus und Französischer Revolution, Wien / Köln / Weimar 2018, Böhlau, VII u. 549 S. / Abb., € 80,00. (Wolfgang E. J. Weber, Augsburg) Kling, Alexander, Unter Wölfen. Geschichten der Zivilisation und der Souveränität vom 30-jährigen Krieg bis zur Französischen Revolution (Rombach Wissenschaft. Reihe Cultural Animal Studies, 2), Freiburg i. Br. / Berlin / Wien 2019, Rombach, 581 S., € 68,00. (Norbert Schindler, Salzburg) Arnke, Volker, „Vom Frieden“ im Dreißigjährigen Krieg. 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The 4000-year quest for GodSouth Africans live in a time of growing unease amongst Afrikaansspeaking Christians about the traditional God-image of their childhood. As a con-sequence, churches are losing members – which is of concern to the church’s leaders. By referring to Karen Armstrong’s book, A History of God (1999), this article shows that rethinking the idea of God is not new and that healthy iconoclasm is part and parcel of religions as evolving and changing organisms. Over the past 4000 years, each generation created an image of God that worked for them. The article reflects on the God of Judaism, the Christian God, the God of Islam, the God of the philosophers, the mystics, the reformers and the thinkers of the Enlightenment to the eventual eclipse of God in twentieth-century Europe. The purpose of the exercise is to encourage Christians to engage with the process and create a sense of God for themselves by taking heed of the negative and positive moments in God’s long history.

Imam Gazzali is known one of the most prominent and influential philosophers, theologians, jurists, logicians and mystics of the Islamic Golden Age. He is considered to be the 5th century’s mujaddid, means a renewer of the faith, who, according to the prophetic hadith, appears once every hundred years to restore the faith of the Islam and its community. His works were so highly acclaimed by his contemporaries that al-Ghazali was awarded by the honour of the title “Hujjat al-Islam” means “Proof of Islam” Gazzali believed that the Islamic spiritual tradition had become moribund and that the spiritual sciences taught by the first generation of Muslim had been forgotten. This belief led him to write his mugnum opus entitled ‘Ihyaulumad-din’ (The Revival of the Religious Science). Among his other works, the Tuhfat al- Falasifa (Incoherence of the philosophers) is a landmark in the history of philosophy, as it advances the critique of Aristotelian science developed later in 14th century in Europe. Others have cited his opposition to certain stands of Islamic philosophy as a detriment to Islamic scientific progress. Besides his work that successfully changed the course of Islamic philosophy the early Islamic Neo-Platonism that developed on the grounds of Hellenistic philosophy, for example, was so successfully criticized by al- Ghazzali that it never recovered—he also brought the orthodox Islam of his time in close contact with Sufism. It became increasingly possible for individuals to combine orthodox theology and Sufism, while adherents of both camps developed a sense of mutual appreciation that made sweeping condemnation of one by the other increasingly problematic.Al-Ghazzali occupies a unique position in the history of Muslim religious and philosophical thought by whatever standard we may judge him. Al-Subki went so far in his estimation of him as to claim that if there had been a prophet after Muhammad, al-Ghazzali would have been the man. Various spiritual phases developed by him. He was in turn a canon-lawyer and a scholastic, a philosopher and a skeptic, a mystic and a theologian, and a moralist. His position as a theologian of Islam is undoubtedly the most eminent. Through a living synthesis of his creative and energetic personality, he revitalized Muslim theology and reoriented its values and attitudes.His combination of spiritualization and fundamentalism in Islam had such a marked stamp of his powerful personality that it has continued to be accepted by the community since his time. His outlook on philosophy is characterized by a remarkable originality which, however, is more critical than constructive. In his works on philosophy one is struck by a keen philosophical acumen and penetration with which he gives a clear and readable exposition of the views of the philosophers, the subtlety and analyticity with which he criticizes them, and the candour and open-mindedness with which he accepts them whenever he finds them to be true. Nothing frightened him nor fascinated him, and through an extraordinary independence of mind, he became a veritable challenge to the philosophies of Aristotle and Plotinus and to their Muslim representatives before him, al-Farabi and ibnSina. The main trends of the religious and philosophical thought of al-Ghazali, however, come close to the temper of the modern mind. The champions of the modern movement of religious empiricism, on the one hand, and that of logical positivism, on the other, paradoxical though it may seem, would equally find comfort in his works. The teachings of this remarkable figure of Islam pertaining either to religion or philosophy, either constructive or critical, cannot, however, be fully understood without knowing the story of his life with some measure of detail, for, in his case, life and thought were one: rooted in his own personality. Whatever he thought and wrote came with the living reality of his own experience.