3. The secularization of superstition

2020 ◽  
pp. 35-55
Author(s):  
Stuart Vyse
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
New Age ◽  
European History ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Age Of Reason ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Witch Hunts ◽  
The Middle Ages

The five centuries beginning with the 14th and ending with the 18th took European history from the Middle Ages, through the Enlightenment, and into the first two centuries of the scientific age, which would mark the final turn in the meaning of superstition. ‘The secularization of superstition’ explains that this passage involved the flourishing of the humanities associated with the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, and great advances in science—as well as deadly wars, plagues, inquisitions, and witch hunts. But the culmination of this period would produce the Enlightenment, a new age of reason, and a different form of attack on superstition and magic.

The Narratives of Medieval Jewish History

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Dan
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
New Age ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Age Of Reason ◽  
History Of ◽  
Jewish Historian ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
The Way

It is surprising to realize that no historian of Judaism wrote a history of the Middle Ages in Jewish history. Between 1923 and 1926 a Jewish historian, Shlomo Bernfeld, wrote a three-volume historical work, consisting mainly of an anthology of sources, entitled Sefer ha-Demaot, ‘The Book of Tears’. These volumes present a history of the Middle Ages up to the ‘Age of Reason’, which the author hoped would be the beginning of a new age in which the fate of the Jews would be different, yet this hope, he states in the end of his work, seems to have been unfounded. This article examines such narratives: the way narratives shape the chronological boundaries of the Middle Ages; their consequences concerning the examination of the relationships between Jews and non-Jews in the medieval world; and the place of history of ideas in the descriptions of the Middle Ages.

Тюркологические и османистические исследования А.Е. Крымского: Бейрут–Москва–Киев

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
R.M. Valeev ◽  
O.D. Vasilyuk ◽  
S.A. Kirillina ◽  
A.M. Abidulin
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
New Age ◽  
Asia Minor ◽  
University Centers ◽  
The Middle Ages

Abstract The study of the Turkic, including Asia Minor sociopolitical, cultural and ethnolinguistic space of Eurasia is a long and significant tradition of practical, academic and university centers in Russia and Europe, including Ukraine. The Turkic, including the Ottoman political and cultural heritage played a particularly important role in the history and culture of the peoples of Russia, Ukraine and modern Turkic states. Famous states and societies of the Turkic world (Turkic Khaganates, Volga Bulgaria, Ulus Juchi, the Ottoman Empire and other states of the Middle Ages and the New Age), geographical and historical-cultural regions of the traditional residence of the Turkic peoples of the Russian and Ottoman empires and Eurasia as a whole became the object and subject of scientific studies of Russian and European orientalists Turkologists and Ottomans of the nineteenth beginning of the twentieth century.Аннотация Исследование тюркского, в том числе малоазиатского социополитического, культурного и этнолингвистического пространства Евразии является давней и значимой традицией практических, академических и университетских центров России и Европы, в том числе Украины. Особо важную роль тюркское, в том числе османское политическое и культурное наследие играло в истории и культуре народов России, Украины и современных тюркских государств. Известные государства и общества тюркского мира (Тюркские каганаты, Волжская Булгария, Улус Джучи, Османская империя и другие государства Средневековья и Нового времени), географические и историко-культурные регионы традиционного проживания тюркских народов Российской и Османской империй и в целом Евразии стали объектом и предметом научных исследований российских и европейских востоковедов тюркологов и османистов ХIХ начала ХХ в.

The Main Stages of the Development of Incense Culture in China

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (10) ◽  
pp. 24-37
Author(s):  
Elena E. Voytishek
Keyword(s):  
Traditional Medicine ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Spiritual Healing ◽  
New Age ◽  
Animal Origin ◽  
Aesthetic Attitude ◽  
Ritual Practices ◽  
The Middle Ages

The article provides an overview of the main stages and trends in the development of the incense culture of China from antiquity to the present day. It covers religious and magical rituals, sanitary and hygiene, traditional medicine, a set of spiritual, healing, artistic, and game practices and rituals of Taoist-Buddhist and Confucian character. In China, over several millennia, a colossal experience has been accumulated in terms of the use of aromatic raw materials of plant, mineral and animal origin: thousands of treatises and reference books have been written, the properties of individual incense and their combinations have been studied, detailed classifications have been drawn up and principles of religious cults and ritual practices have been developed. Along with the applied value of incense, an aesthetic attitude toward incense aromas also developed, which repeatedly ensured periods of rapid flourishing of incense culture in antiquity, the Middle Ages and on the cusp of the New Age. Currently, the traditional aromatic culture in China is experiencing a period of upsurge and revival. This provides ample opportunities for its study in various fields of knowledge, which indicates the relevance and multidimensional nature of the study of this topic.

The Career of Philosophy: From the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment

1963 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 407
Author(s):  
William Gerber ◽  
John Herman Randall
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Middle Ages

Fear, error and death: The abjection of the Middle Ages

2018 ◽  
pp. 70-94
Author(s):  
Thomas A. Prendergast ◽  
Stephanie Trigg
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Medieval Studies ◽  
The Past ◽  
Creative Play ◽  
Historical Accuracy ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
Judicial Systems

As a disciplinary formation, Medieval Studies has long been structured by authoritative hierarchies and conservative scholarly decorums; the associated fear of error in medieval studies dates back to the Renaissance and the Protestant reformation. In contrast, medievalism increasingly celebrates creative play and imaginative invention. Such invention inevitably produces anxiety about historical accuracy. Popular scholarship and journalism in turn are often attracted to the abject otherness of the Middle Ages, especially the torture practices associated with its judicial systems. Such practices are designed to solicit the truth, and so, like illness, mortality and death, they are a useful double trope through which to analyse the relationship between medieval and medievalist approaches to the past.

The Enlightenment’s Paradigm Shift and the Three Impostors

2021 ◽  
pp. 43-62
Author(s):  
Guy G. Stroumsa
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Family Relationship ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
Different Shapes ◽  
Close Family ◽  
The Middle Ages

The preceding chapter dealt with the legend of the three rings, which highlighted the close family relationship between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This relationship, which had been an obvious one up through the Middle Ages, began to be seen as less evident in the eighteenth century. The Enlightenment (or perhaps, rather, the Enlightenments) took many different shapes across Europe. The present chapter is devoted to a paradigm shift, one which reflects a new historicization of European cultural life, at least in the approach to religious phenomena. In France, on which this chapter focuses, the historical transformation started earlier than elsewhere, at the very beginning of the eighteenth century.

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