Search

Purpose:A casual look at the phenomenaaround us gives us a certain image, a certain perspective. When we have an insight into the same through a prism of investigation a new image, a new perspective emerges. The epic Mahabharata is so full of players who mesmerise the casual and serious readers alike. The plot is thick with kings, ministers, commanders, courtesans, mentors, soldiers, etc. Birth, lineage, warfare techniques have a role to play in deciding one's status in that setting. A character in Mahabharata that has been wronged vehemently from the social perspective and of relative deprivation is Karna. Design / Methodology/Approach: The Review of Literature is carried out with the secondary data gathered from educational websites and written publications. The research will be conducted using Research Journals, Doctoral Theses, and websites. This qualitative research is carried out by examining and interpreting existing knowledge on the subject utilising the keywords “Adroitness, Deprivation, Karna, Kunti, Values” found in online articles, peer-reviewed journals, publications, and a range of related portals. Findings/Result: Karna had asked his mother to officially identify him as her son even in his final moments. During his funeral, the Pandavas learned the heinous truth about their kinship. Krishna tells Kunti that Karna was a hero who died as a hero. Despite the fact that the world is full of greed, power, and betrayal, only Karna has chosen the path of righteousness. The only way to kill Karna was to take away all of his righteousness. Karna received legitimacy during his death, something he had desired his entire life. He'd finally earned his rightful place. Originality/Value: This paper makes a sincere study of Karna a major character in The Mahabharata, the of whom is not available anywhere else in the world in any literature as Ramdhari Singh Dinakar opines. He exemplified the finest attributes of courage, honesty, friendship, benefaction, austerity, oblation, and emancipation of the oppressed. When pushed to their limits, all of these characteristics combined and manifested in Karna. Karna cultivated all his attributes by acquiring balanced knowledge in meditation, weaponry, and scriptures. Karna sprouted in secret, like a forest flower. Paper Type: Exploratory research paper.

In the Byzantine anaphoras of Basil and John Chrysostom, at the transition from the anamnesis to the epiclesis, one finds a formula of offering the eucharistic gifts. This formula is absent from the anaphoras of the Antiochian tradition, from which the two Byzantine anaphoras derive. This article clarifies that the formula is neither an offertory formula nor a sacrificial formula, as some authors have attempted to sustain. Its origins are to be found in the custom of dedicating objects, buildings, and boats. Every gift is a restitution to God of what has already been given by him, including the offering of the bread and wine for the Eucharist. This formula of offering the eucharistic gifts was imposed simultaneously upon the two Byzantine anaphoras sometime before the end of the fifth century.

Childhood studies in the late-ancient world have always been related to family history. Such integration ended up launching analyzes on the participation of children in legal and patrimonial terms into oblivion, something that both the civil and ecclesiastical legislative documentation contradict. In addition to the issues surrounding heritage and which are of essential socio-political importance in the context of the Hispanic-Visigoth kingdom of Toledo in the seventh century, we highlight the offering action on the part of parents or relatives of their children, a practice known as monastic oblatio. When offered to monastic communities at an early age, oblates did so without their consent, which ended up causing future problems, such as the attempt to abandon monastic life, something completely prohibited by ecclesiastical and secular authorities. In this study we sought to observe an interesting change in the legal paradigm that allowed the oblate to choose whether he wanted to remain in the monastic condition, an innovation that presents Hispano-Visigoth legislation as updated in that historical context in relation to the Roman legal and cultural tradition. Os estudos sobre a infância no mundo tardo-antigo sempre estiveram relacionados com a história da família. Tal integração acabou lançando as análises sobre a participação das crianças em termos jurídicos e patrimoniais ao esquecimento, algo que tanto a documentação legislativa civil como a eclesiástica contradizem. Além das questões que envolvem a herança patrimonial e que têm uma importância sociopolítica essencial no contexto do reino hispano-visigodo de Toledo do século VII, destacamos a ação de oferta da parte dos pais ou parentes de seus filhos, prática conhecida como a oblatio monástica. Ao serem oferecidos, na mais tenra idade, às comunidades monásticas, os oblatos o faziam sem o seu consentimento, o que acabava gerando problemas futuros, como a tentativa de abandono da vida monástica, algo completamente vedado pelas autoridades eclesiástica e laica. Nesse estudo, buscamos observar uma interessante mudança de paradigma jurídico que permitia ao oblato optar se queria manter-se na condição monástica, uma inovação que nos apresenta a legislação hispano-visigoda como atualizada naquele contexto histórico em relação à tradição jurídica e cultural romana.

This Introduction to a special issue on “The Sacramental Text Reconsidered” provides a brief genealogy of the practice of describing texts, performances, and poetics as sacramental, eucharistic, and incarnational. It also offers a critique and clarification of such reading practices by differentiating between the real divine presence theologically understood to dwell in a proper sacrament and the “disincarnation” enacted by sacramentally laden literary texts and performances. Drawing on the writings of Emmanuel Levinas, Rowan Williams, and St. Paul, I demonstrate the disincarnate as a poetic of ritual and oblation in an extended reading of Herbert’s poetry.

Çok tanrılı antik çağda hastalıklarına vesıkıntılarına çare bulmak isteyen insanlar iyileştirici güçleri olduğunainanılan tanrı ve tanrıçalar adına yapılan tapınaklara gitmişlerdir. Hastalarbu tapınaklarda tanrılara şifa dilemek veya şifa bulduktan sonra teşekkür etmeküzere çeşitli adaklar sunmuşlardır. Bu adaklar içinde de adak sahibinin sağlıksorununu ifade eden adak örnekleri çok özel örnekler olarak dikkat çekmiştir.Bu yazıda, Antik Yunan Dönemine ait, bilinmeyen bir tapınaktakeşfedilmiş pubik bölge cildinde lezyonlara işaret eden bir erkek genital adak ele alınmıştır., In ancienttimes, people who wanted to find remedies for their illnesses and troubles havegone to temples in the name of gods and goddesses who are believed to havehealing powers. In these temples, patients offered a variety of voters to thankgods for healing or to thank them after healing. The votive examples whichexpress the health problem of the voters have attracted attention as veryspecial examples.In this article, we have considered amale genital votive with lesions on the pubic region skin which has discoveredin an unknown temple of the ancient Greek period.

While it is specified in the Shipman's Tale as a loan, the hundred francs that the St. Denis merchant gives to Daun John bear structural and functional affinities to a tithe, the mandatory oblation offered by medieval Christians in recognition of God's bounty. This article shows how the tale develops these affinities to comment on several late-fourteenth-century controversies surrounding tithe, including the issue of monastic tithing and Wycliffite resistance to tithe. More centrally, it demonstrates how Chaucer uses the sum paid by the St. Denis merchant to align the “curious bisynesse” (VII 225) of international finance with traditional modes of agrarian increase, such as agriculture and animal husbandry.

The Hindu Brahmanas record that God’s reply to the question ‘Who are you?’ was simply ‘Who’: ‘Who is the God whom we should honour with the oblation’: an indicative, as well as interrogative! Might this also be what Aeschylus intended by his reference to ‘Zeus hostis pot’estin’ (Zeus, whoever He is): not an expression of doubt, but of acknowledged mystery? The name by which He is to be called, perhaps (‘if it pleases Him’), is not ‘Zeus’ but, exactly, ‘Whoever’. And most famously the God that Moses encountered, asked who He is, answered only ‘I am’. What does this apparently evasive response imply for worship and theology in the light of David Hume’s enquiry, how an unknowable God differs from an equally unknowable non-God? Rather than asking what God is we can investigate instead what worship is, perceiving our response to the Unknown as itself a revelation. In Orthodox terms, what we can share with God is not His Essence, but His Energeiai: not what He Is, but what He does.

John Wesley in America: Restoring Primitive Christianity. By Geordan Hammond. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. xvii + 237 pp. $85.00 (cloth).John Wesleys 1730s sojourn in Georgia ended badly: he fled the colony less than two years after arriving, his heart broken and a clutch of colonial magistrates pondering various charges against him. This story is typically narrated as Wesleys spiritual nadir, best known for prodding the young cleric into his "Aldersgate" experience of the assurance of his salvation, which in turn helped to enflame the successful evangelical mission that Wesley and his fellow Methodists would undertake in the decades to come. However, Geordan Hammond, Director of the Manchester Wesley Research Centre and Senior Lecturer in Wesley Studies at Nazarene Theological College, Manchester, England, believes there is more to be gleaned from this chapter in Wesleys life. John Wesley in America, based on Hammonds doctoral dissertation, argues that Wesley used his mission in Georgia to test his views of primitive Christianity. The colony, says Hammond, became Wesley's "laboratory" for introducing to a parish community what he believed to be the practices of the earliest Christians. While Wesleys attraction to Christian antiquity has been previously probed by scholars, and his Georgia mission is famous (or infamous), Hammonds approach is unique in interrogating the Georgia experience in light of Wesleys consuming passion for Christian primitivism. The result is an engaging work that offers a new lens for interpreting this difficult period in John Wesleys long and colorful life.The first chapter sets Wesleys devotion to primitive Christianity in the context of the priority assigned to apostolic Christianity by some eighteenthcentury Anglicans, particularly High Church Non-Jurors (clergy who had refused to swear an oath to William and Mary, having sworn allegiance to the deposed James II). Wesleys parents instilled a deep reverence for the early church in their children. John was determined to practice an authentic faith and, influenced by a radical wing of Non-Jurors, became an eager student of primitive Christianity. He studied the ante-Nicene theologians and pored over early ecclesiastical handbooks, especially the Apostolic Constitutions, which he took to be of apostolic origin (they have since been dated to the late fourth century). He began to pray the hours, to fast two days per week, and to include a prayer of oblation in his eucharistie celebrations.The next three chapters take us along on Wesleys Georgia mission, beginning with his four-month journey across the Atlantic with three fellow Oxford Holy Club members, and tracing his relations with Moravians and Lutheran pietists in Georgia. …

Maurice de la Taille's Mysterium Fidei (1921) was, as one of its reviewers remarked, a veritable ‘theological event’, both in terms of its methodology and its overturning of post-Tridentine theology on eucharistic sacrifice. De la Taille's work has been long overlooked in the history of theology in the early twentieth century. The paper demonstrates that de la Taille's work on the Eucharist proves an early example of nouvelle theologie and a catalyst for the the liturgical movement. Conciliar and pre-Conciliar documents presuppose his Mysterium Fidei. Through the retrieval of a patristic and medieval teaching about sacrificial oblation, de la Taille disperses the web of immolationist theories about the sacrifice of the Mass that had dominated baroque and early modern theology.

The chapter examines several important early Buddhist tantric texts in this study. The chapter focuses on what it calls the “psychosomatic fire-oblation,” which is an internalized means of performing the ritual within the practitioner’s body. This employs the system of esoteric physiology (cakras, winds, and channels) that provided a basis for much of tantric and yogic practice. As a consequence of this close study of several early medieval Buddhist tantras, the chapter is able to establish a chronological sequence of the texts. This sequence corresponds to a trajectory from the actual performance of sexual rites to symbolized forms. The latter, internalized practices involve a psychophysiological symbolism of fire burning up the obscurations (kleśas).

Practices derived from the ‘vita contemplativa’ and other spiritual sources are drawn upon by management, but as the power of human resources management (HRM) is extended so the relationship between ‘contemplation’ and the surrender of self-identity required by HRM demands critical examination. The conscious construction of the individual has become a social and political goal. Subjects are required to strip away attributes of their identity that might impede protocols that cascade down from the executive. Total transparency becomes a condition of the re-creation of individual identity. Practices drawn from religious and spiritual traditions that enact the surrender of the self facilitate submission to the demands of the Performative Absolute, the immanent sublime, Demiurge or dieu caché articulated by HRM. The informed passivity of the employee precedes oblation, the sacrificial offering of the self that facilitates the donation by HRM of the attuned identity that ensures the organisational survival of the individual.

What are older Korean immigrants' cultural conceptions of home arrangements and environments? Does aging affect their family relationships? Why do they decide to move to public housing? How do they adapt to and re-create a feeling of home in public housing? This research in the field of aging-and-environment focuses on these questions. Based on a naturalistic field research of older Korean immigrants to the USA this paper details the transitions from loss of feeling of home in their pre-move life, the decision to move to senior public housing, to settling into the new apartment. The themes delineated are: 1) shifting roles in multigenerational households, 2) altered conceptualizations and changing environments, becoming dut-bang no-in (guest in own home), 3) detachment from prized objects, and 4) re-creation of meaningful environment. Revealed are the complex and interwoven nature of the decision to move involving experiences, events, and nested mini-decisions, as well as the emotional disruptions, loss of sense of self, and detachments that occur. The adjustments made by these older adults to the culturally inappropriate design in order to regain feeling at home are described. Several socio-physical phenomena and concepts identified are: a) spatial oblation, b) environmental and object detachment, c) object meaning linked to persons, and d) planned surrender or disposal of cherished objects.

The practice of making votive offerings into fire dates from the earliest periods of human history and is found in many different religious cultures. Throughout the tantric world, this kind of ritual offering practice is known as the homa. With roots in Vedic and Zoroastrian rituals, the tantric homa was formed in early medieval India. Since that time, it has been transmitted to Central and East Asia by tantric Buddhist practitioners. Today, Hindu forms are also being practiced outside of India as well. Despite this historical and cultural range, the homa retains an identifiable unity of symbolism and ritual form. This collection of chapters is the first to provide a series of detailed studies of a variety of homa forms. These provide an understanding of the history of the homa from its inception up to its use in the present. At the same time the chapters cover a wide range of religious cultures, from India and Nepal, to Tibet, China, and Japan. The theoretical focus of the collection is the study of ritual change over long periods of time, the longue durée, and across the boundaries of religious cultures. The identifiable unity of the homa allows for an almost unique opportunity to examine ritual change with such a broad perspective.

Christianity has often seemed a very comfortable religion, applying flattering unction to souls. The Church universal has adapted well to diverse environments. It has rendered unto Caesar, leaving in decent obscurity those biblical passages that expressed misgivings about worldly power. Adaptive strategies included picking up preChristian customs and reusing them: peregrinatio pro Christo (becoming an exile for Christ’s sake) continued older forms of political exiling; child oblation was in some respects a revamped version of aristocratic fostering, whereby young nobles were customarily brought up away from their natal homes in the households of great men; convents of royal and noble women solved their families’ problem of limiting the supply-side of the marriage-market, while at the same time affirming the perfect match of moral with biological nobility; noble warriors’ swords and helmets were adorned no longer with lucky swastikas but with Christian symbols and invocations.1

The article examines the activity of writing case-notes. For this purpose, case-notes are broadly defined as textual records of encounters between mental health practitioners and their clients. The primary focus is on psychotherapy notes, written for private use. It suggests that note writing is potentially a lively addition to the dialogue within the therapy room, an essential part of the unique relationship that grows between practitioner and client. In particular, it looks at the possibilities of representing intersubjectivity, the third voice, emerging from the dialogue between two subjectivities, in ways that forward both theoretical understanding and the therapeutic endeavour. It will argue that serious engagement with case-notes must of necessity tackle questions of voice, speaking rights, a variety of deafnesses, power, the inscription or oblation of race and gender in professional discourses, and reclamation of knowledge colonized by patriarchal and colonial structures of authority. It is feminist in its orientation. It speaks from a postcolonial African context, and a psychoanalytic approach, and draws on psychotherapy experience saturated with those foundational identities.

Motherhood, Religion, and Society in Medieval Europe, 400-1400: Essays Presented to Henrietta Leyser. Edited by Conrad Leyser and Lesley Smith. [Church, Faith, and Culture in the Medieval West.] (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing. 2012. Pp. xvii, 369. $149.95. ISBN 978-1-409-4315-9.)Medieval motherhood is not perhaps quite such a neglected topic as the editors of this volume claim. Nonetheless, a collection devoted to it is very welcome, not least one dedicated to Henrietta Leyser, whose own work on medieval women remains a constant inspiration. The preface highlights the paradox of medieval motherhood-power and vulnerability-and the themes of the volume: survival (meaning recovery history, mortality, and loss), social agency (preparing children for life, the fight for property rights, maternal protection, and-more rarely, at least in the sources-rejection), and institutionalization (detaching the concept of motherhood from biological mothers). The collection is overtly social history, but its editors-if not all its authors-are also concerned with motherhood and its paradoxes in the context of Christian discourse and practice.It is a truism of medieval motherhood (and fatherhood, for that matter) that we see it largely through the eyes of adult, male clerics. Kate Cooper's excellent consideration of St. Augustine and Monica warns how far our Monica is Augustine's mother: not only idealized but also a vehicle for thinking through his own development and particularly his route to God. Augustine and his Monica, became in turn models for later clerical (self-)reflection-as Brian McGuire notes-for twelfth-century celibates like Guibert, St. Bernard, or St. Anselm. That renewed significance raises questions about the intervening centuries. The twelfth century saw a return to adult choice of the religious life; did that breathe new life into the Augustine/Monica story, while child oblation of the early Middle Ages had little space or need for it? A history of parenting in hagiographical texts would make interesting reading, although it would tell us less about flesh-and-blood mothers than we might expect.Its picture of mothers and daughters also might be different, given Christina of Markyate's conflicts with her mother over her vocation. Mothers and daughters are an especially elusive topic, given the nature of the sources. Augustine's sister is completely lost to history, as is his elder brother-although, as Cooper reminds us, it was this son who was at Monica's deathbed. Sethina Watson shows us the development of three hospitals as Augustinian-and thus more liturgical-foundations, through the lens of maternal response to the deaths of children. …

"Professing Religion: From Liturgy to Law“. This paper traces the "juridification" of an act that was paradigmatic for medieval society, the professing of religion. From the beginnings into the twelfth century, joining a religious house was primarily a ritual act of quasi-sacramental importance. It was irrevocable, even when, as often, parents arranged it for their children, offered up to a saint as oblates. Canon lawyers became involved in the twelfth century on essentially two fronts: sewing contested cases of profession (usually when individuals wished to leave), and determining the binding quality of child oblation. Without openly disparaging the ritual acts, the lawyers insisted upon an act of willed and present consent by an adult who chose to join a house or a child upon reaching the age of majority (initially twelve for girls and fourteen for boys). The decisive legal language, effectively hollowing out the received ritual traditions, came from a decretal letter addressed by Pope Innocent III to J...

Incorporating solo organ music in Roman Catholic liturgy may constitute a challenge for some organists. The very issue may raise some doubts and problems. “This usually results from insufficient education of professional organists”27. Fortunately, this is an invalid myth, easy to refute, bearing in mind the years of work and impact made by numerous Organist schools operating within dioceses, as well as Institutes of Church Music. Great numbers of broadly educated church musicians graduate from these schools every year. Unfortunately, constant rush and marginalization of the organist’s position in liturgy tend to discourage young organists. The majority of employers seem to be focusing on singing with the people, small choirs with the accompaniment of guitar or, possibly, parish choirs themselves.It is true that we “should intently urge churchgoers to actively participate in liturgy in the form of singing”28. This is probably why the church organist is usually considered the person to set the proper tone and keep up the singing in the church! For churchgoers, however, a good organist is the one who sings well…This is true, but only partially. The Second Vatican Council reminds us of the importance of the organ, an instrument “adding a grandeur dimension to church ceremonies, raising the souls and minds of believers to God and heavenly matters”29. How should we then consider the role of the organ in the liturgy of today, in the light of post-council documents? It may be assumed that the very participation of this majestic instrument in the liturgy adds grandeur, although pipe organ accompanying churchgoers singing tends to perform a secondary role.It is rather solo organ music which could make the Eucharist more dignified and grandly. It could also bring God’s people closer to God. Church documents are, however, very rigid in this matter – “solo music shall only be possible in the beginning, before the chaplain attends the altar, during the oblation, during the Communion and in the end of the mass”.Organ music performances during the Lent seem to be a separate issue since they are strictly prohibited by some church documents. In the opinion of priest I. Pawlak “fasting” from music reduces the liturgy in its integral substance, and a heartless or fanatic approach to fasting undermines the essence of liturgical activities”. Therefore, all church musicians are optimistic to witness the changing stance of the Polish Episcopal Conference, which, in its new Instructions issued in 1979, adopted a more liberal approach.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-07-25T15:52:13Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 moreira_a_tmp310.pdf: 844081 bytes, checksum: 8632c426d71a0f169d350869a691ead7 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-08-23 What is oblation? This question appears as the moving force of this dissertation. To ask about oblation is to ask about its meaning and the meaning it had in the sacrificial ritual in the Israel of the Old Testament and what meaning it gives to the origin and the expression of sacrifice and worship in the land of the ancient civilizations. Oblation is the starting point but it is also the point of arrival. Oblation is a question but it is also the answer. Oblation is surrender but it also is receptivity. Oblation is exodus, going out of oneself to enter the sacredness of the other s terrain. Oblation is fraternity, solidarity, relationality, it is being-for-the-other, it is unconditional love, and being thus, it also becomes an eschatological sign. With the intent of delving into this comprehension the work follows in three parts. The first part permits investigating that such origin and expression took place through the worship of the earth, bloody and bloodless sacrifices and also human sacrifices. All peoples express themselves religiously. Within these expressions, are the rite and the sacrificial rites. The second part verifies that in the Old Testament the term minhah (= oblation) appears, technically used to express gifts in general. Later, the term was reserved for meaning vegetable/plant offerings. The minhah is connected with the offering of breads, incense, holocausts and sacrifices of slaughter and of communion. The ritual, which initially was celebrated popularly, with the Josiah Reform it came to be administered by the legally instituted priests. The sacrificial religious culture of the Israel of the Old Testament comes between the worship of the earth of the ancient civilizations and the sacrifice of the New Testament: the oblation of Jesus on the cross. The third part focuses on the theme of oblation. In Jesus, the oblation par excellence, we have the superiority of the priesthood, of the sacrifice and of the covenant which is established once and for all. It is the new sacrifice. And the covenant is also new, which bursts forth in a movement of continuity, rupture and overcoming. From the comprehension of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, oblation comes to have as its theological place the human experience. Oblation is following, is listening to the will of God, is liberation, is grace, and is giving meaning of fullness of one s own life and of that of the other. O que é oblação? Esta pergunta aparece como força motriz deste trabalho dissertativo. Perguntar pela oblação é perguntar pelo seu sentido e pelo sentido que possui no ritual sacrificial no Israel do Antigo Testamento e que sentido dá à origem e à expressão do sacrifício e do culto da terra nas civilizações antigas. Oblação é ponto de partida, mas é também ponto de chegada. Oblação é pergunta, mas é também resposta. Oblação é entrega, mas é também receptividade. Oblação é êxodo, é saída de si mesmo, para entrar na sacralidade do terreno do outro. Oblação é fraternidade, é solidariedade, é relacionalidade, é ser-para-o-outro, é amor incondicional e, assim sendo, passa a ser também sinal escatológico. No intuito de esmiuçar esta compreensão o trabalho segue-se em três partes. A primeira parte permite apurar que tal origem e expressão se deram por meio do culto à terra, sacrifícios cruentos e incruentos e, também, sacrifícios humanos. Todos os povos se expressam religiosamente. Dentre estas expressões, está o rito e o rito sacrificial. A segunda parte verifica que no Antigo Testamento aparece o termo minhah (= oblação), utilizado tecnicamente para expressar a dádiva em geral. Posteriormente, o termo foi reservado para significar oferendas vegetais. À minhah está ligada a oferenda de pães, de incenso, holocausto, sacrifício de abate e de comunhão. O ritual que, inicialmente, era celebrado popularmente, com a Reforma de Josias passa a ser administrado pelos sacerdotes legalmente instituídos. A cultura religiosa sacrificial do Israel do Antigo Testamento está entre o culto à terra das civilizações antigas e o sacrifício do Novo Testamento: a oblação de Jesus na cruz. A terceira parte foca o tema da oblação. Em Jesus, o oblato por excelência, dá-se a superioridade do sacerdócio, do sacrifício e da aliança que é estabelecida uma vez por todas. É o novo sacrifício. E é nova também a aliança que irrompe num movimento de continuidade, ruptura e superação. Da compreensão da vida, morte e ressurreição de Jesus, a oblação passa a ter como lugar teológico a experiência humana. Oblação é seguimento, é escuta da vontade de Deus, é libertação, é graça, é dar sentido de plenitude para a vida própria e de outrem.

The degree of cultural variation from one part of Lugbara to another is so great that there appears to be no fixed forms of ritual behaviour associated with sacrifice, nor many generally accepted views as to the aims of these behaviours. The Lugbara construct a great many shrines in and near their homesteads, at which offerings are made to the dead and to many kinds of spirits. Herein the problem of the relationship between forms of ritual offering, sickness, sin, and the continual restructuring of ordered social relations is addressed. Since living persons (save rainmakers or prophets) cannot directly contact Divine Spirit, they must request the dead to do so. There is a clear action of identification by a rite of encirclement of the sacrifier’s head or homestead or, in the case of a ceremony performed by a rainmaker, of the group’s territory. In all these rites, there is the consecration of an offering by means either of words or the laying on of hands. La variation culturelle à l’intérieur du pays lugbara est si grande qu’il ne semble y avoir ni de formes fixes de comportements rituels associés au sacrifice, ni d’avis communément partagés sur les finalités de tels comportements. Les Lugbara construisent beaucoup d’autels à l’intérieur et à proximité de leurs maisons où ils font des offrandes aux morts ou à plusieurs sortes d’esprits. Le problème adressé ici est celui du rapport entre les formes d’offrande rituelle, la maladie, le péché et le restructuration continuelle de l’ordre des liens sociaux. Comme les vivants (hormis faiseur de pluie ou prophète) ne peuvent pas entrer directement en contact avec Dieu, ils doivent se tourner vers les morts. On constate une rite d’identification qui s’accomplit par l’encerclement de la tête du sacrifiant ou de sa maison ou, dans le cas d’un rituel exécuté par un faiseur de pluie, par l’encerclement du territoire du groupe. Dans tous ces rites, il y une consécration d’une offrande par des mots ou par l’imposition des mains.

La littérature africaniste offre peu d’exemples d’étude aussi systématique sur le code sacrificiel d’une ethnie que celle entreprise ici à propos des Bobo de Haute-Volta. Sont analysées de façon minutieuse toutes les corrélations repérées à l’échelle d’un village entre les « entités » auxquelles on sacrifie et les différentes variétés de victimes et d’offrandes. L’apport de cet article est essentiel sur le symbolisme des couleurs, sur la façon dont est mise en jeu la différence sexuelle des victimes et sur le problème de la substitution. Writings about Africa provide few examples of a study as systematic on the sacrificial code of an ethnic group as the one presented herein of the Bobo in Upper Volta. All the correlations between the beings to whom sacrifices are made and the varieties of sacrificial victims and offerings observed at the level of a village are minutely analyzed. This article makes essential contributions on: color symbolism, the uses of the sexual difference between victims and the problem of substituting one victim for another.

The question of the relationship is a theme of current researches. Nevertheless, the spiritual relationship is very often viewed only under the theological angle of the divine affiliation or the relationship created around the fosterage. Yet, an essential relationship to the medieval Christian society is forgotten: those created around the holy abbot and his disciples, in the monastic world. The birth of this new family is established by a rite of oblation, described in written sources and represented in the Benedictine iconography, privileged medium for the understanding of this social phenomenon. The understanding grows rich by a crossed methodology, between study of texts and analysis of the pictorial images., La question de la parenté est une thématique d’actualité. Pourtant, la parenté spirituelle n’est bien souvent envisagée que sous l’angle théologique de la filiation divine ou celle du parrainage et du compérage. Or, une parenté essentielle à la société chrétienne médiévale est l’oubliée : la parenté créée autour du saint abbé et de ses disciples, dans le cadre monastique. La naissance de cette nouvelle famille est constituée du rite d’oblation, décrit dans les sources écrites et représenté dans l’iconographie bénédictine, support privilégié pour la compréhension de ce phénomène social. Sa compréhension s’enrichit des données recueillies par une méthodologie croisée, entre étude des textes et analyse de l’image picturale.

The practice of oblation, the giving of children to a religious community to be brought up and educated, is as old as monasticism itself. Oblation was a means by which parents were able to dispose of unwanted offspring and be fairly confident that they would be cared for by others. However, there were never any clear guidelines laid down by the Church with respect to oblation, and the confusion over the status of an oblate was never to be satisfactorily settled. Even the great effort put into removing ambiguities in canon law in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries failed to clarify the technicalities of oblation. This was because there was no agreement on the nature of oblation from the start.The practice of the Eastern Church with respect to oblation is best summed up by St Basil the Great, in his Regulae Fusius Tractatae. He took oblation for granted, noting that a child was easily moulded to the religious life, and stipulated no minimum age at which a child should be received, but he did insist that those under the care of their parents were to be received before witnesses. More importantly, Basil was anxious that a child oblate should be questioned strictly when he reached the age of sixteen or seventeen as to whether he wished to be professed. He then had to demonstrate perseverance in the religious life and was only to be professed after much pleading. This final profession was irrevocable. Clearly the tradition of the Church was in favour of the oblation of children, but the giving of a child was not considered a definitive act. Certainly with St Basil we can see that the abbot of a community was to have the final say as to whether or not a child oblate should be professed when he came of age. This was very much in the spirit of early monasticism. The abbot was not to be forced to retain unsuitable monks in his monastery.

Dans chaque civilisation, l'art de la bonne chère met à contribution les ressources vivrières potentielles afin d'assurer la satisfaction des besoins nutritionnels. Mais elle est aussi au service de préoccupations d'ordre symbolique plus ou moins conscientes qui ne sont pas réductibles à sa fonction nourricière. Comme l'atteste l'œuvre protéiforme de Claude Levi-Strauss , la convivialité alimentaire est un fait social global qui traduit involontairement les lignes de force d'une culture donnée à la croisée de nombreux domaines d'activité où cette culture se manifeste. Aussi peut-on voir dans les rituels culinaires d'une société un langage offrant une formulation de sa structure interne où transparaissent à la fois sa cohérence et ses contradictions. Sur le plan matériel, c'est l'apparition du système agro-pastoral dans le croissant fertile mésopotamien qui est à l'origine du régime alimentaire de l'ensemble des sociétés occidentales jusqu'à nos jours. Pas plus que les autres, le domaine de l'alimentation humaine ne peut se réduire à la satisfaction de besoins naturels. Dans l'espace européen où les trois religions du livre se sont souvent côtoyées et affrontées au cours des siècles, le domaine culinaire et la culture de la convivialité ont été utilisés avec vigueur afin d'affirmer une culture et de définir une identité. Savoir ce qu'il est permis ou prohibé de manger et avec qui il est licite de le consommer à la même table a longtemps constitué la pierre de touche permettant de distinguer et de séparer les membres d'une communauté fidèle à ses commandements des infidèles appartenant au monde extérieur.