When the Fighting Has to Stop: The Arguments About Escalation

1967 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 692-707
Author(s):  
Fred Charles Iklé
Keyword(s):  
A Minor ◽  
Do So ◽  

In a great many wars—perhaps in most wars since the Middle Ages—one or both of the belligerents could have done significantly more to fight his enemy but chose not to do so. Whether we want to call all these wars “limited,” or only those in which both sides hobbled their military effort, is perhaps a minor matter of terminology.

Antiquity ◽  
1953 ◽  
Vol 27 (105) ◽  
pp. 15-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Humphrey Humphreys

Though everyone now agrees that the unicorn never existed, this unanimity is quite recent. All through the 19th century there were periodic reports of its presence in darkest Africa or on the Asiatic steppes, and hopes that it would turn out to be a reality died hard. But if there never was such a creature why did the men of the Middle Ages believe in it so firmly and depict it so often? As Christians it was incumbent on them to do so, for it was mentioned in the Old Testament and, therefore, must be real. Its presence there was due to the authors of the Septuagint, the Hellenised Jews who, at Alexandria, in the centuries between the city's foundation and the Christian era, translated their sacred books from Hebrew into Greek and on seven occasions used the word μονόκερως (Greek for unicorn).


1998 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Thomas H Connolly

Heading the list of horizons unexplored when my study of the cult of St Cecilia appeared in 1995 was a strong suspicion that music's mysterious patroness sprang from a Jewish milieu, and that traces of Jewish influence persisted in her cult well into the Middle Ages. But the evidence was cloudy, and no discussion of my suspicion found its way into the book beyond the bare statement that Cecilia may have belonged to an early Jewish-Christian community.1Now that the evidence is clearer, and the suspicion better founded, it is time to set forth that evidence. I do so here, and at the outset point to my brief corollary suggesting that if indeed Jewish-Christian influence persisted in Rome rather longer than is generally supposed, then we need to think in a new way about the origins of Western chant. Rather than thinking simply about transfer from Synagogue to Church, we should ponder what might have happened within communities that were in some sense churches and synagogues at the same time.


Antiquity ◽  
1944 ◽  
Vol 18 (70) ◽  
pp. 72-77
Author(s):  
J. W. Shilson
Keyword(s):  
Do So ◽  

In the Middle Ages wool was so valuable that it was necessary to have an accurate means of weighing whereby the merchant, in the presence of the farmer at the farm, could weigh the wool to the satisfaction of all concerned.The method described below was used all throughout the Middle Ages and until quite recently, and as I am one of the last of those who were brought up from boyhood in the use of this system and in conforming to some of the ancient customs of the country Wool-Staplers, it seems only right that I should prepare this record before it is too late to do so.


2022 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-158
Author(s):  
Susana Villaluenga de Gracia ◽  
Inmaculada Llibrer-Escrig ◽  
Fernando-Gabriel Gutiérrez-Hidalgo

The change in the accounting method from single entry to double entry in the 15th century has been tried to explain by the influence of some different issues such as the appearance of capitalism or by the contact of Italy with other peoples. However, none of them has been able to do so satisfactorily. That is why this work, tries to show how this accounting change could be pushed by a paradigm shift: the philosophical and religious perception of the world and its passed from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will be seen using a qualitative methodology which helps to know how the methods of charge and discharge and double entry respond to the prevailing ways of thinking in which they developed. The first one, can be associated with a Theocentric thought, typical of the Middle Ages, and the second one, double entry bookkeeping, philosophical viewpoint that are the are the most important entity in the world, which is characteristic of the Renaissance. El cambio del método contable de la partida simple a la doble en el siglo XV se ha intentado explicar por la influencia de diferentes factores como la aparición del capitalismo o por el contacto de Italia con otros pueblos. Sin embargo, ninguno de ellos aisladamente, lo ha podido hacer de forma satisfactoria. Por lo tanto, utilizando una metodología cualitativa, este trabajo intenta arrojar luz indagando cómo este cambio contable se pudo deber a un cambio en la percepción filosófica y religiosa del mundo, al pasarse de la Edad Media al Renacimiento. Se verá cómo los métodos del cargo y descargo y de la partida doble responden a las formas de pensamiento imperantes en el que se desarrollaron. En consecuencia, que partida simple se puede asociar a un pensamiento Teocéntrico, propio de la Edad Media, y que la partida doble se puede relacionar con el Antropocéntrico característico del Renacimiento.


Author(s):  
John Tolan ◽  
Gilles Veinstein ◽  
Henry Laurens

This chapter delineates all the forms of antagonism that, at the ideological level, irremediably pitted the Christians and Muslims against each other. The Christians had rejected Islam from its first appearance and continued to do so throughout the Middle Ages. Initially, they even denied it the status of religion, seeing it only as a heresy or a form of paganism or idolatry. When they had to consider Islam a religion, they could only denounce it, given that Christianity alone was true. In addition to being false, Islam was also a mortal danger: as a universal religion, it claimed to be superior to Christianity and intended to take its place. It was thus imperative to stand up to Islam and combat it by every means. The very survival of Christianity was at stake, and therefore humanity's salvation.


Traditio ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 127-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernhard W. Scholz

Eadmer of Canterbury, companion for many years and biographer of St. Anselm of Canterbury, is best known for his two intimate records of Anselm's episcopate and personality: the Historia Novorum in Anglia and the Vita Anselmi. He is also the author of various devotional works, among them a minor classic on the Immaculate Conception, and of several saints' lives. As a hagiographer he recorded the lives and miracles of saints whose relics were preserved in his house, Christ Church, Canterbury, or the priory of the Holy Trinity, as it was known in the Middle Ages. Apart from his longer lives of St. Wilfrid, St. Oda, St. Dunstan, and St. Oswald, Eadmer wrote some shorter hagiographical works, one of them on Bregwine, archbishop of Canterbury in the eighth century. The life of Bregwine has never been printed in its entirety. It is my purpose in the following pages to edit the complete text of this work.


1968 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
David C. Lindberg

Attempts in antiquity and the Middle Ages to determine the mathematical law of refraction are well known. In view of the movement toward the mathematization of physical laws, which has made great gains since the beginning of the seventeenth century, and of the efforts of Hariot, Kepler, Snell, and Descartes to determine the true mathematical ratio between the angles of incidence and refraction, it is understandable that historians of pre-seventeenth-century science should concentrate on the quantitative aspects of refraction. But to do so is to gain a distorted picture of early optical thought, for as much effort was actually devoted to understanding the cause of refraction as to finding the mathematical law of refraction.


1985 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 409-429 ◽  
Author(s):  
L.R. Poos ◽  
R.M. Smith

English manorial-court documentation, in many respects unique among European countries for its information pertaining to the bulk of rural dwellers in the middle ages, has long provided the most voluminous evidence for studying many aspects of medieval society. We have no doubt that it will continue to do so; yet, as the metaphorical title of our original essay was intended to convey, the ‘window’ through which we may view this society has finite dimensions. It was our intention to suggest some ways in which these dimensions can be more clearly understood. At its most basic level, then, our concern was with one of the most fundamental questions of legal as well as social history: the relationship between the scope of a legal arena's purview and the society in which that arena operated. Our focus was, however, squarely upon Zvi Razi's attempts at demographic inference from the Halesowen court material because he has made the boldest claims to date for the ability of manorial courts’ recorded transactions to reflect the whole of their communities’ populations and activities.


Author(s):  
Jan Marsh

Successively renowned as poet, designer, calligrapher, businessman, architectural conservationist, pioneer socialist, utopianist, and typographer-printer, William Morris (1834–96) based his life’s work on his passion for all things medieval. Almost every aspect of William Morris’s career, indeed his whole life, may be seen as an endeavour to valorize and revivify medieval culture in preference to that of the centuries from 1600 to 1900. His achievement was to do so without nostalgia or antiquarianism, despite his fervent love of old things for their own sake. His signature method was not to describe or copy the Middle Ages, but to imaginatively inhabit them—preferably his favoured fourteenth century—and then to make new things in the same spirit. He views of the past created practical pathways for future enterprises in literature, building, decoration, and, possibly, political action. No revivalist, he aimed to develop archaic forms to serve the aesthetic, material, and political needs of the present and future.


1991 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 361-370
Author(s):  
Kevin L. Morris

Though Kenelm Henry Digby, a romantic convert, is a minor figure within the story of the development of nineteenth-century English Catholicism, his name is recalled in passing in many of the text books; and so, perhaps, some seventy years after Bernard Holland’s sketchy biography of him, there is room for a reassessment of his place within Victorian Catholicism, in which milieu his name was well-known, his books widely read, and his person much-loved. In W. G. Roe’s estimate, his writings ‘made a considerable contribution, if not to the thought, at least to the atmosphere of the Catholic revival.’ He was interesting as the first man to use the widespread fascination with the Middle Ages for the purpose of Catholic apologetic. When so distinguished a figure as Lord Acton noted his influence, and a contributor to the Dublin Review suggested in 1843 that Digby’s writings had helped to reduce anti-Catholic prejudice, it is of interest to reconstruct his views on, and his contribution to, English Catholicism. The task is difficult, for he was and remains an elusive figure, somewhat isolated, uncontroversial, obsessively restless and given to writing numerous volumes of poor prose and terrible meditative poetry, which, despite their autobiographical nature, are frustratingly unrevealing.


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