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Nithard's Histories, a remarkable first-hand account of how the Carolingian Empire built by Charlemagne was ripped asunder by his feuding grandsons, provides more than simply a lens through which to view the events relevant to the political maelstrom battering the Carolingian world in the 840s. The work's basic structure, particular language, and principal concepts reveal a coherent, consistent, and poignant worldview and offer modern scholars a window into the values and perspectives common to the mid-ninth century. This article concentrates on Nithard's analytical tools and brings into sharp focus the work's deep continuity, its internal reasoning, its sophistication, and its audience. Nithard analyzed his world as working according to a sacramental logic and identified lapses in fidelity as the fundamental problem. Basic Christian catechetical ideas profoundly inform Nithard's analysis. The basic consistency of his sacramental logic combined with omnipresent religious concepts illumines a broader elite discourse common to the mid-ninth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jesus's body was visualised in strikingly gendered ways in the Carolingian world. The Jesus of the Carolingian Empire could move deftly between gendered styles, from feminised victim to hyper-masculinised victor; at the same time, he could delicately dance between these two modes of gendered existence and do so within the space of one manuscript page. Three manuscripts produced in the ninth century contain bold images of a fleshly Jesus: the Stuttgart Psalter ( c.820s), the Sacramentary of Gellone ( c.800) and the acrostic poem produced at the abbey of Fulda, In Honour of the Holy Cross ( c.810/830s). These codices are associated with a period of cultural flourishing known as the Carolingian renovatio, or the renewal of classical and patristic culture within the reforming agenda of the Frankish church. Each manuscript presents a Dark Age Jesus within distinct, interpretative backdrops - tortured, fecund and imperial - a divergence in style underscoring how the evangelical portrait of Jesus's body and its fluctuating gender were staged in the pastoral North for different audiences. The Carolingians did impart a series of images that defy the stereotypes of early medieval Christianity, including the idea that intimacy with a human saviour is the spiritual legacy of subsequent eras. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article seeks to develop a theoretical framework for interpreting social rituals and the notion of social and cultural imitation, specifically concerning the connections between religion, religious rituals and liturgy, and society. It draws on theories and scholarship from the fields of evolutionary biology, cognitive science, anthropology, social theory, and history. The model is developed with illustrative examples of Europe in the Middle Ages, especially reforms of religious practice and liturgy in the Carolingian Empire and the religious movement of the Cathars, and Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries, especially the Zulu-Christian syncretistic religious groups of the Nazareth Baptist Church of South Africa and the Church of Saints.

This article deals with the use made by Christian people of the image of a chosen people for national and political purposes, while identifying a specific Christian nation or kingdom as the "New Israel." It begins by describing the idea of "New Israel" as a pan‐Christian idea that underwent a fundamental change when its use began with reference to a specific nation. The article continues with a detailed mapping of the phenomenon in Ethiopian Christianity, in the Catholic world in the Middle Ages, in the Russian Orthodox world, and in the Protestant countries in the early days of the modern era. The article describes the broad context of the phenomenon in the framework of ethnocentric imagery in different cultures and the continuation of the research required for its full description. This phenomenon is interesting because it indicates the importance that many people attributed in the premodern period to the formulation of a national narrative and the centrality of religion in formulating a national narrative during this period. It emphasizes the political inspiration that Europe drew from the Bible in the formulation of national narratives, as well as the prominence of the national idea in the Bible itself, which made it an accessible source of inspiration for national ideas of Christian people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Where does the state come from? Two canonical answers have been interstate wars and contracts between rulers and the ruled in the early modern period. New scholarship has pushed back the historical origins of the European state to the Middle Ages, and focused on domestic institutions such as parliaments, universities, the law, inheritance rules, and cities. It has left open questions of the causes of territorial fragmentation, the structural similarities in state administrations, and the policy preoccupations of the state. One answer is a powerful but neglected force in state formation: the medieval Church, which served as a rival for sovereignty, and a template for institutional innovations in court administrations, the law, and the formation of human capital. Church influence further helps to explain why territorial fragmentation in the Middle Ages persisted, why royal courts adopted similar administrative solutions, and why secular states remain concerned with morality and social discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Several useful multi-volume reference works have been published during the past 2 years. This review essay profiles several of these resources and introduces them to theological librarians and their patrons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introductory article orients the reader to the topic of this volume – the religious hermeneutics of violence – and situates the individual articles within the wider discussion of the role of religion in acts of violence. Summarising the state of modern scholarship on key debates concerning religion and violence, this article encourages the careful study of how individuals or groups in peculiar historical circumstances interact with their sacred texts and beliefs in a way that facilitates violence or oppression. Though the relationship between sacred texts and violence is complicated, few subjects so demand our attention and require our careful thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 824 the monk and teacher Wetti of Reichenau experienced a terrifying vision in which an angel led him through an afterlife where monks, clerics and laypeople experienced a variety of temporal and eternal punishments. Only the intercession of saints, martyrs and virgins saves Wetti, who would have been irrevocably doomed because he had corrupted his students through his teaching, his bad example and his deeds. Wetti's fellow monk Heito wrote a widely circulated prose version of this vision, which the Carolingian scholar Walahfrid Strabo later turned into an apparently metric version. Both versions extensively address the scelus sodomiticum (the crime of sodomy) but express fundamentally different viewpoints on the nature, the moral assessment and the dangers of same-sex sexuality in a monastic context. Heito implies that Wetti exposed himself and his students to the danger of eternal damnation through practising or at least facilitating sodomy. Walahfrid manages through a number of subtle alterations to acquit Wetti and his school from allegations of sodomy and to turn the scelus sodomiticum into an individual fault rather than a threat to the community and to monastic purity in general. Comparing the two versions of the Visio Wettini provides new insights into the medieval monastic classroom as a queer space, medieval assessments of same-sex desire, the role of classical learning in the monastic curriculum and the construction of monastic purity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While it is well known that many of Charlemagne's wars had a strong religious element, Frankish campaigns against the Muslims of Spain in his reign have generally been understood as secular exercises in power politics. This article presents evidence contemporary to Charlemagne's reign to argue against this, using a diverse range of sources to conclude that many observers of the Frankish invasions of the Iberian Peninsula understood them as religious wars aimed both at the defending of Christian communities in Francia and protecting and expanding the worship of Christianity in Spain. Further, although the prosecution of these wars was politically opportunistic, the sources suggest that Charlemagne and his court encouraged interpretations of these campaigns in religious terms and that they might be considered examples of religious war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of ancient empires coincided with that of ancient civilizations. It is interesting that the civilization of the historical period emerged from the beginning in the form of a dictatorial empire. This study approaches an understanding of ancient civilizations from the perspective of the indices of civilization. Ethnicity, religion, and nationality cannot individually stand as a necessary and sufficient index of civilization; in historical reality, these factors combine and overlap with one another in a complex way. Civilizations can be categorized according to groups of regional communities with a homogeneous culture, regardless of nationality. Besides this, there is also the form of empire. It would not be incorrect to say that empire is an extended version of nation that attempts to absorb, integrate, and legislate other regions in the name of civilization. If we look into the actual use of the word "empire" in the case of historical empires, we can see that it is used in an extremely complex and diffuse way. A closer look into the formation of primitive ancient empires can lead us to a clearer understanding of the original form of empire. The formation of empire was possible under the following circumstances. The origin of the nation as political community can be located in chengshi (...), the walled city. Though a nation transformed into an empire when the city-state expanded itself through conquest, the transformation also happened as a natural consequence of the growth of society. Meanwhile, in ancient China, the advent of empire was based on the idea of dayitong (...), the ideology which professed that the whole world should be united as a single nation under the rule of the Son of Heaven (...). Specifically, the ancient Chinese Empire's long-term survival was made possible by the early unification of its writing system, which in turn enabled that empire's Confucian unification of thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religious beliefs and creeds have contributed to define identities and a sense of belonging for both individuals and entire communities over the centuries, generating in some cases unsurpassable social barriers. This also applied to the situation of the Iberian Peninsula in the Middle Ages: a melting pot within which Muslims, Christians and Jews interacted, not always without animosity and friction. The questions which I endeavour to answer in this study are how did Christian powers consider and interact with Muslim rulers and subjects? What were the motivations behind the agreement of such relationships? To what extent were they morally and officially accepted? What were the differences, if any, from the customary vassal bonds? These are the main objects of scrutiny of my analysis which will focus on the fragile borders which existed between personal and political inter-faith relationships, examined through the perspective of the historiographical and poetic production attributed to the scriptorium of Alfonso X of Castile (1252–1284). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following study presents a new solution to the question of the context and date of the treatise De picturis et imaginibus of Archbishop Agobard of Lyon (archbishop 816–40). Scholars have previously associated De picturis with a group of texts addressing questions on religious images linked to controversies surrounding the iconoclastic policies and actions of both Bishop Claudius of Turin and the Byzantine emperors in 824–5, most often interpreting Agobard’s work as a response. Rather than a response to these controversies, I argue, by analysing a series of distinctively edited patristic quotations, that De picturis was a pre-existing resource for the composition of Claudius of Turin’s Apologeticum and the Libellus of the Paris colloquy of 825. Ultimately, this revised interpretation allows the three texts to serve as a case study in processes of locating authorities in Carolingian doctrinal controversies. Analysis of Claudius’ and the Libellus authors’ uses of De picturis provides concrete evidence for the location and use of a local resource on an imperial stage by bishops of geographically distant sees, illuminating some of the pathways by which authorities both personal and textual were sought and received in the Carolingian world. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Ottonian kings of Germany (919-1024) inherited from their Carolingian predecessors a tripartite system of pastoral care for the army. At the most basic level, the Ottonian kings provided chaplains to their soldiers to hear their confessions before battle. At the army-wide level, priests and bishops serving with the army celebrated intercessory masses to gain divine favour for the army, preached to the soldiers in order to encourage bravery in the face of battle and carried sacred relics onto the field. Finally, priests and bishops also helped to mobilise the 'home front' on behalf of the army, by leading the population as a whole in intercessory prayers, as well as in fasts and other acts of penitence that were intended to gain God's favour for their fighting men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trust enables us to simplify and understand complicated realities and orientate ourselves in them, which we do through symbolic systems, including myth and religion. Terrorism results when those systems generate extreme distrust, especially between ethnic or religious groups. Within nation-states pre-conditions of trust include normative coherence, stability, openness and accountability. In international relations these pre-conditions are more difficult to establish. But it is still possible. The process usually includes reaction to a crisis, the creation of good personal relationships between leaders, mutual concessions, well-documented agreements with provision for verification, and opportunities for populations to get to know each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the conflictive role of religion in post-1989 Europe. Three major reasons for this are addressed: first, the restoration of structural and cultural pluralism of European civilization since the breakdown of communism entails the reconstitution of the full diversity of European religion. Second, international migration as a crucial part of globalization has intensified, contributing to the transformation of Europe into a complex of multi-cultural and pluri-religious societies. Third, the wave of contemporary globalization has been accompanied by an intensification of inter-civilizational and interreligious encounters and conflicts -- particularly between Christianity and Islam. As a result, European integration and enlargement as a secular and humanist mode of cultural integration and religious governance are basically challenged by this three-fold revitalization of religion. The growing tendency is to respond to this challenge by enhancing the Christian foundations of Europe rather than, as this article argues, to follow a more cosmopolitan, secularist and religious pluralist mode of European cultural integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sometime in the first six months of 838, Bodo, a palace deacon at the court of Louis the Pious, converted to Judaism, changed his name to Eleazar and removed himself to Muslim Spain. The incident is well attested in various sources although the reasons for his abandonment of Christianity are not clearly given. In 840, a year after arriving in Spain, Bodo, now Eleazar, engaged in a debate withÁlvaro of Córdoba, a Christian writer and scholar living in Muslim territory who claimed to be of Jewish ancestry. Their correspondence provides illuminating insights into the framework of cultural and religious experience of this period. Bodo's self-imposed exile from Christian society is also an important rejection of the Carolingian cultural programme, a voice of protest that was probably more widespread than Carolingian society would have us believe. What follows is partly an analysis of the main textual sources that brings into relief personal, social and political themes seen to lie behind the theolo-gical debates of the period. There is also an attempt to uncover aspects of Bodo's earlier life before his conversion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I argue that during the High Middle Ages definitions of the female as distinct from the life led by women played a crucial role in defining social boundaries and solidifying new systems of power. I suggest that there were two female figures that were crucial to these definitions: the mother and the virgin. While the mother image was invoked to describe the internal functioning of the Christian community, the virgin metaphor drew the external boundaries and defined the Christian community's relation to the non-Christian other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After September 11, 2001, conversations about the relationship between religion and violence entered public discourse in a new way. But many of our political, military, and even religious leaders lacked the in-depth personal experience or scholarly authority to provide sophisticated answers to religiously motivated violence. God requires that Christians love everyone, including friends, family, and enemies. He also demands that love is consistently given, regardless of circumstances. The spirit of power bestowed by God is not military strength, but rather a provision of resources and relationships. Finally, a sound mind is predicated by a deep knowledge of Scripture so that Christians may not be ashamed of nor shame the Gospel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]