Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Religious history of Bohemia'

Numerous studies of anti-Catholicism in America have narrated a long dark prejudice that has plagued American society from the Colonial period to the present. A variety of interpretations for anti-Catholic sentiments and convictions have been offered, from theological to economic influences. Though many of these studies have offered invaluable insights in understanding anti-Catholic rhetoric and violence, each tends to neglect the larger anthropological realities which influence social tensions and group marginalization. By utilizing the theory of human identity needs as developed by Vern Neufeld Redekop, this study offers a means of interpreting anti-Catholicism from an anthropological perspective that allows for a multivalent approach to social, cultural, and communal disharmony and violence. Religion has played an important role in social and cultural tension in America. But by utilizing Redekop's human identity needs theory, it is possible to see religion's role in conjunction with other identity needs which help to form individual and communal identity. Human identity needs theory postulates that humans require a certain level of identity needs satisfaction in order to give an individual a sense of wellbeing in the world. These include, Redekop maintains, 1) meaning, 2) security, 3) connectedness, 4) recognition, and 5) action. By examining where these needs have been neglected or threatened, this study maintains one is better able to assess the variety of influences in the formation of identity, which in turn helps to foster animosity, marginalization, and possibly violence towards those individuals or groups defined as outsiders. Having been relegated as outsiders due to differing identity markers, the in group, or dominant social group, tend to perceive the outsiders as threatening if they are believed to be obstacles to the acquisition of one or more of the five identity needs categories. This study focuses on the bloody Bible Riots of 1844 as a case study for applying human identity needs theory in interpreting social violence in American history.

Catherine of Siena, a 14th-century saint, penetrated the Italian political scene ranging from local politics to the papal seat of Pope Gregory XI. Scholars have depicted her success as a living saint on her relationship with her confessor, Raymond of Capua. However, through analysis of her letters and background texts, it is clear that Catherine created a network of families and individuals even before she met Raymond in 1374. To what extent did this network that she actively created contribute to her success as a public figure in medieval Italy? What impact did this group of people have on Catherine and what impact did Catherine have on the network of followers? What information can be extrapolated from studying Catherine’s letters, hagiography, and testimonial works post-mortem? And, how does Raymond’s miniscule presence in the network change our interpretation of the basis of Catherine’s success?

Upon their arrival in China, priests of the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, quickly began writing their opinions and observations of the Ming Dynasty, of the Manchu invasion, and of the subsequent Qing Dynasty. These priests arrived in China with both secular and religious goals, and these goals created the context for their comments, coloring their writings. However, when the Jesuits praised the Qing Dynasty, they began to use particularly European metaphors in their descriptions of the Manchus, from appearance and mannerisms to policies. While the Jesuit descriptions serve as informative material, they are not objective, detached observations. In terms of their opinions, Jesuit writings offer historians critical information about the Jesuits themselves and about the Manchus as a distinctively non-Chinese dynasty, despite their efforts to Sinofy themselves in the eyes of the Han Chinese majority.

This thesis explores the motivations behind the American and Foreign Christian Union’s missions to Italy during the American Civil War. The AFCU was a missionary organization founded in New York City in 1849 with the ambitious goal of ridding the world of Roman Catholicism. It was born during a time of nativist fervor when American Protestants saw Catholic immigrants as a threat to American democracy. The AFCU believed they could solve the problem of Catholic immigrants by converting the Catholic world to Protestantism, starting with Italy. The leaders of the AFCU believed the world was engaged in a struggle between Liberty and Tyranny. The war against the Confederacy and the fight to free Italians from the tyrannical Pope were different fronts of the same war. The AFCU entire unsuccessful as a missionary organization. They converted virtually no one. However, their publications were essential to helping American Protestants shape their identity.

For eight centuries, from 711 until 1492, a unique combination of political, cultural, and faith traditions coexisted in the mostly southern region of the Iberian Peninsula now called Spain. From the thirteenth century through the fifteenth century, two key production centers of luster glazed ceramics emerged in this region: Islamic-ruled Málaga and Christian-ruled Valencia. Muslim artisans using Islamic decorative motifs on reflective luster glaze ceramics created objects that patrons, including nobility and Christian royalty, clamored to collect. Initially, traditional Islamic decorative motifs dominated luster glazed ceramic production by Muslim artisans in Málaga; eventually, these artisans used combinations of Islamic and Christian motifs. As wars raged near Málaga, Muslim artisans migrated to Valencia—some converting to Christianity. Here, luster glazed ceramics evolved to include combinations of Islamic and Christian motifs, and, in one example, Islamic and Jewish motifs.

This investigation of Iberian luster glazed ceramics examines religious decorative motifs and their meaning by using a methodology that combines material culture studies and art history. Material culture studies seeks: (1) To find value and meaning in everyday objects; and (2) To introduce the understanding that visual motifs communicate in a different way than texts. Additions from art historians augment the conceptual framework: (1) Alois Riegl’s concept of Kunstwollen—that every artistic expression and artifact that is produced is a distillation of the entirety of creator’s worldview; and (2) Oleg Grabar’s definition of Islamic art as one that overpowers and transforms ethnic or geographical traditions. In this dissertation, religious decorative elements on Iberian luster glazed ceramics are categorized as: (1) Floral and vegetative motifs; (2) Geometric symbols; (3) Figurative images; (4) Christian family coats of arms; and (5) Calligraphic inscriptions.

This dissertation will demonstrate how Muslim, Christian, and Jewish artisans used and combined the visual expressions of their respective faith traditions in motifs that appear on luster glazed ceramics created in the Iberian Peninsula under both Islamic and Christian ruled territories. Investigation of objects previously deemed not worthy of scholarly attention provides a more nuanced understanding of how religious co-existence (convivencia in Spanish) was negotiated in daily life.

The project director serves as the director of operations for the New Breed Church Planting Network (NBCPN). A necessity for developing a reproducible disciple-making strategy for the church planters of NBCPN existed. The project exists to develop a reproducible disciple-making practicum to meet the needs of NBCPN.

Within the first chapter, the project director explored the ministry project proposal and purpose. Listing main objectives, limitations, assumptions, term definitions, and a detailed project rationale explain the project process. The project director researched four North American church planting organizations to assess the respective utilization of disciple-making processes, while providing an explanation for NBCPN’s need for a reproducible strategy.

Within the second chapter, the project director examined two separate passages of scripture. The texts of Matt 28:18–20 and Acts 1:8 (ESV) became the foundational basis upon which the project director analyzed and made reproducible disciple-making conclusions. Chapter two consists of exegesis, exposition, and application of the chosen texts and explained the biblical and theological foundation of the ministry project.

Within chapter three, the project director provided research for the ministry foundations aspect of the project. The project director identified and explored past and present ecclesiological disciple-making procedures. The project director’s goal for chapter three provided information concerning the development of historical and 11 contemporary reproducible disciple-making, as well as, examining theoretical and application models.

Within chapter four, the project director described the development of the ministry project. The chapter focused on the project director’s seven-practicum reproducible disciple-making strategy for the church planters of NBCPN. The project director’s compiling of information regarding the utilization of an expert panel, incorporated Great Commission components, integrated research of chapters two and three, and implemented expectation, completed the chapter.

In chapter five, the project director documented an overall summation of the ministry project. The director examined the evaluation of the project process, analysis of the findings, and an overview of the lessons learned. The strengths, weaknesses, and personal reflection of the ministry project offered descriptive insight to the project director and for reader clarity.

This dissertation focuses on religious processions in Athens in the late 6^th and 5^th centuries BCE, when the evidence for processions and festivals first becomes abundant enough to study fruitfully. The built sacred landscape of Athens was beginning to take shape, and Athenian identity was being reshaped under the influence of the Persian Wars, Athens’ imperial ambitions, and the new popularity of Theseus. Processions traced defined routes in this landscape, forming physical links between center and periphery, displaying numerous symbols which possessed special significance for Athenians and which were part of Athenians’ cultural memory and collective identity.

Processions were intense, subjective sensory experiences, full of symbols with deep religious and cultural significance. They were also public performances, opportunities for participants to show off both their piety and their wealth, to perform their membership in the Athenian community, and perhaps to gain social capital or prominence. Not least, processions were movements through a landscape embedded with myths, history, cultural associations, and the connotations of daily lived experience. Previous studies of processions have focused on one of these three aspects—symbols, participants, or route—without fully taking account of the others, failing to provide a comprehensive theoretical framework or analysis of these ritual movements. All of these elements—symbols, participants, and route—were deliberately chosen, designed to impart particular experiences and meanings to participants and spectators. This dissertation will thus ask why particular symbols, participants, and routes were chosen and explore as many of their potential meanings as possible, considering the myths, cultural associations, and areas of daily life where these elements appeared.

The repetition of processions is vital to understanding their cultural resonance. Spectators could see the processions multiple times over the course of their lives, and draw new conclusions or interpretations as they gained life experience, learned new stories or myths, and as the collective discourse around Athenian religion created new meanings—for example, in the aftermath of the Persian Wars. This repetition also reinforced the meanings that these symbols already possessed for Athenians.

François de Polignac’s bipolar polis theory, which inspired many aspects of this dissertation, characterized processions as ritual ‘links’ in the landscape connecting center and periphery. This is essentially correct, but in Classical Athens, there were multiple peripheries and a whole calendar full of processions and sacred travel to festivals, the performance of which constructed and maintained the idea of Athens as a spatially and culturally unified territory. Therefore I propose instead the multipolar polis model, which provides a richer and more comprehensive view of the web of connections which linked Athens to her peripheries. These connections included the state-run festivals put on at the major extraurban sanctuaries; the monumental temples and other facilities constructed with state money; the fortifications constructed at or near the sanctuaries, protecting the strategic interests of the state; and the mythical, historical, and ideological significance of these sacred places and their deities. Whether participants traveled to these sanctuaries in a formal procession or via less-organized sacred travel, their movement through the landscape reinforced their associations with it and with the destination sanctuary.

Processions were complex rituals with many functions. They displayed culturally-significant symbols to participants and spectators, reinforcing their meaning. They provided a stage for participants to perform their status and wealth. They traced a defined route through the landscape of Attica, linking center and periphery, taking participants past a series of meaningful places, buildings, and art. All of these elements—symbols, people, and places—drew their meanings from shared myths, rituals, history, and the experience of daily life. The repetition of processions reinforced these meanings in the minds of Athenians, and allowed them to change as Athenian identity changed (and vice versa). It is these threads of common cultural memory, myths and associations that an Athenian could depend on his or her fellow Athenians to remember and understand, and which Athenians wove together in their writings, speeches, plays, and rituals to form their common identity.

The Roman-Sasanian War of the seventh century CE was the last conflict of late antiquity. Šahanšah Xusrō II nearly conquered the Roman Empire. James Howard-Johnston has studied the war extensively. Walter Kaegi has produced a biography of Xusrō II's opponent, Heraclius, while Geoffrey Greatrex and Touraj Daryaee have written articles focusing on Xusrō II. Scholars, however, have not attempted a major study of him. This dissertation seeks not only to understand how different authors depicted Xusrō II but to understand the man's personality.

Roman authors who witnessed the war sought to highlight only the negative aspects of Xusrō II. He was, according to the Romans, an enemy of God. Fear of Xusrō II was the basis for these depictions. Pseudo-Sebēos, an Armenian historian, depicted Xusrō II as an arrogant, blasphemous ruler. Pseudo-Sebēos, however, did not write anything positive about the Romans, either, because both the Romans and Sasanians wanted to control Armenia.

Christians living under Xusrō II's rulership also seemed to despise him. They portray Xusrō II as wicked because, in an attempt to punish them, he did not let allow them to elect a ruler. A careful reading of these sources, however, suggests these authors were aware of how Xusrō II took care of Christians in his realm. Finally, Arab and Persian sources differ in their portrayals of Xusrō II because both groups, although both Muslim, were competing for legitimacy in the post-Islamic conquest of Iran, due to ethnic tensions. Arab authors emphasized Xusrō II's faults. Persian authors, on the other hand, presented his good qualities.

Ultimately, all of these different depictions of Xusrō II demonstrate that he possessed a fierce will and embraced a vision of how to rule. Xusrō II wanted to conquer the Romans and extend his domain and be remembered forever. Xusrō II's drive might have made him seem arrogant to the authors studied in this dissertation, and they depicted him accordingly. We should not, however, lose sight of the man he truly was: a man who dared to dream.

This dissertation investigates the role of El Censor, the essay periodical published in Spain from 1781 to 1787, in challenging government policies and church traditions during the Enlightenment. It argues that the editors and authors of the 167 discursos (essays) criticized social customs and institutions during the last two decades of the antiguo régimen while remaining firmly in their religious faith. The political and historical context of El Censor is presented against the backdrop of the absolutist policies of King Carlos III and the vigilance of the Spanish Inquisition. El Censor’s editors and publishers were Luis García Cañuelo and Luis Marcelino Pereira, who at first seemed enigmatic because of their political and religious views. Nevertheless, they and their contributors soon identified themselves as veritable enlightened men, who sought to modernize Spain and the Spanish Roman Catholic Church. In the weekly essays, they published their observations of everyday life and the iniquities that existed in the society of their time. Government authorities banned El Censor twice before shutting it down permanently. Afterwards, the Spanish Inquisition placed twenty-three of the discursos on the syllabus of forbidden books. This dissertation presents eight of the banned discursos with English translations and commentaries. More than two-hundred years after El Censor’s prohibition, the discursos continue to speak to twenty-first century readers about the absurdities and injustices of society and power. This dissertation gives credence to the study of the religious Enlightenment; it demonstrates that it was possible to be enlightened and a true Christian. It reveals that El Censor held onto idealist views and moral integrity while facing obstacles from government, church, and angry apologists. In the pages of the discursos, there are recognizable characters like Eusebio the pious hypocrite; Calixto the proud, lazy noble; Candido Zorrilla, the baroque fanatic; and Pedro Camueso y Machuca and el equívoco. This dissertation reveals several unexpected discoveries that challenge long-held notions about the Enlightenment, the Roman Catholic Church, and Spain.

Carl Bear This study considers the ways in which the complex debates about appropriate Christian funeral practices in late fourth-century Antioch indicated some of the ways in which Christians' ritual practices embodied their theological beliefs and enacted their religious identities. Sources used to study Christian funerals include the homilies of John Chrysostom, the orations of Libanius, the church order known as Apostolic Constitutions , the historiographic and hagiographic work of Theodoret, and archaeological remains. The analysis of the sources utilizes methods of liturgical history that focus on the perspectives and experiences of ordinary worshipers, and attends to the biases and limitations inherent in the historical record. It also places Christian funeral practices in the context of larger questions surrounding religious identity and ritual in Antioch, especially within the Christian cult of the saints and eucharistic liturgies.

Ordinary Christians and church leaders in fourth-century Antioch had different ideas about how to Christianize their funerals. Criticism from church authorities that Christians' funeral practices were inconsistent with Christian faith in the resurrection were one-sided. Instead, it seems that ordinary Christians had their own ideas about appropriate ways to care for their dead ritually. Especially in the case of mourning and other contested practices, Christians were giving expression to their human emotions of bereavement, loss, and concern for the dead in culturally prescribed ways. Church leaders, such as John Chrysostom., however, desired Christian funeral practices that exhibited fewer cultural influences and that distinctly demonstrated Christian belief in the resurrection in all aspects of the ritual.

From the inception of the Reformation, Protestants have championed the doctrine of justification as the foundational core of their creed. In fact, it has often been said, then and now, that the doctrine of justification is articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae—the article upon which the church stands or falls. Yet, at the start of the twenty-first century there is strong dissent over this core doctrine. In recent years, this topic has attracted vast attention and stirred immense conflict within evangelical circles. Scholars are increasingly at odds as to how to define the doctrine, while questions abound concerning the role it plays in the soteriological, eschatological, and ecclesiological framework of the evangelical faith. At the center of the dispute are two opposing and well-respected evangelical leaders, John Piper and N.T. Wright.

The purpose of my project is to capture this contemporary debate on justification between John Piper and N.T. Wright—to aid in understanding the details of their debate in better measure. The primary question I will address is, Are John Piper and N.T. Wright on a collision course, or are they two ships passing in the dark of night? A secondary question will guide us towards an answer, “How do two Protestant, evangelical, sola scriptura theologians arrive at such different places in relation to this essential doctrine?”

I will first address how the doctrine of justification has been understood throughout the history of the church, starting with the apostolic fathers, then tracing the doctrine through the medieval church and culminating in the Reformation, as well as the Counter Reformation at the Council of Trent. Thus, this journey will highlight the soteriological views of the patristics, Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Ockham and the nominalists, Luther, Melanchthon, and Calvin. Putting the Piper and Wright debate into historical context is imperative to understanding their dispute. We will also look briefly at what has been termed the new perspective on Paul, a label which has been ascribed to Wright. Finally, we will look at the intricacies of John Piper’s and N.T. Wright’s doctrines of justification before answering the central question.