scholarly journals Czech Protestant Printed Books from the Toleration Period (1781–1861)

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 9-15
Author(s):  
Zdeněk R. Nešpor

The issue of the Edict of Toleration legalised Protestants of Lutheran and Reformed confessions in Bohemia and Moravia. Their religious life required the support of printed materials in the form of religious literature of the corresponding confession approved by the state. Relatively high production of Protestant books, both original and translated, began to emerge. They anchored both Protestant denominations but simultaneously became mutually competitive and sometimes came into controversy with Roman Catholic authors. The author of this article monitors all printed Protestant literature in Bohemia and Moravia of the so-called toleration period, i.e. the period when the believers of the two Protestant confessions did not have full-fledged positions and were affected by numerous restrictions. In terms of book culture, it is divided into: 1) the period of early toleration (1781–1800), 2) the period of established toleration (1800–1848) and 3) the period of late toleration (1848–1861). In this framework, he provides an overview of Protestant literature in terms of its typological, authorial and publishing development and also evaluates the readership of this literary production.

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 279-300
Author(s):  
Magdalena Koźluk

Copies of early-printed books have been of interest to to-day’s collectors and researchers not only for their material aspects (names of publishers and places of printing, fonts and composition, number of known copies etc.), but also because they bear signs of their often erratic history following their publication. The path followed by a particular copy of an early-printed book is reflected in its general state as an object (for instance the state of its binding), but also in its internal aspect. On the pages of a copy of an early-printed book, annotations, drawings doodles or graphics testify to the intimate relationship that its owners entertained with it. To better understand how owners dealt with copies of the books they possessed, this paper examines the annotations found in copies of some books that belong to the Carmelite convent in Cracow. We hope to bring to the attention of scholars, copies of works of Galen housed in this library, and primarily to set a perspective on how books were read by cultured individuals of in the 16th century period. To do so, we analyse copies of the 1507 Venice edition of the Articella and a copy of Latin edition of Galien (Iuntae, Venice, 1531). We attempt to identify the intellectual perspectives from which cultured readers approached such texts in the 16th century.


Author(s):  
Jeff Eden

God Save the USSR reviews religious life in the Soviet Union during the Second World War and shows how, as the Soviet Red Army was locked in brutal combat against the Nazis, Stalin ended the state’s violent, decades-long persecution of religion. In a stunning reversal, priests, imams, rabbis, and other religious elites—many of them newly released from the Gulag—were tasked with rallying Soviet citizens to a “Holy War” against Hitler. The book depicts the delight of some citizens, and the horror of others, as Stalin’s reversal encouraged a widespread perception that his “war on religion” was over. A revolution in Soviet religious life ensued: soldiers prayed on the battlefield; entire villages celebrated once-banned holidays; and state-backed religious leaders used their new positions to not only consolidate power over their communities but also petition for further religious freedoms. As a window on this wartime “religious revolution,” this book focuses on the Soviet Union’s Muslims, using sources in several languages (including Russian, Tatar, Bashkir, Uzbek, Persian, and Kumyk). Drawing evidence from eyewitness accounts, interviews, soldiers’ letters, frontline poetry, agents’ reports, petitions, and the words of Soviet Muslim leaders, the book argues that the religious revolution was fomented simultaneously by the state and by religious Soviet citizens: the state gave an inch, and many citizens took a mile, as atheist Soviet agents looked on in exasperation at the resurgence of unconcealed devotional life.


Worldview ◽  
1982 ◽  
Vol 25 (5) ◽  
pp. 18-21
Author(s):  
J. Bryan Hehir

The philosophical discussions about the nature and origins of human rights are learned, complex and fascinating; it can certainly be argued that before a statesman decides to make a national goal of their promotion he should have a firm moral theory about their essence and their foundations. But much of the literature has a tendency to overcomplicate what is already a formidably difficult subject.—Stanley Hoffmann, Duties Beyond BordersHeeding this cautionary note from a perceptive theorist who has explored the philosophical dimensions of rights policy, my limited purpose here is to examine three concepts from Roman Catholic theory that structure the Church's participation in the human rights debate. These concepts are: (1) the foundation of human rights; (2) the range of human rights claims; and (3) the conception of the state in international relations today.


1948 ◽  
Vol 6 (22) ◽  
pp. 83-100
Author(s):  
Patrick J. Corish

Europe in the seventeenth century was a land of mar and confusion because the great political problems raised by the religious disruption of the preceding century had not yet been solved. Chief among these was the problem of the relations between the Roman catholic church and a protestant state. The teaching of the pope's indirect power in temporal matters in any problem involving a breach of the moral order (ratione peccati) had been strongly re-stated by Bellarmine, and was the official attitude of the church. A protestant prince had committed a grave sin, that of heresy, and so it was the pope's right and duty to depose him and absolve his Catholic subjects from their allegiance. But this political theory was becoming impractical as the seventeenth century progressively demonstrated that Europe was permanently divided. As might be expected, juridical forms lagged behind the development of events; but by the middle of the century the Roman curia, while not prepared to give antecedent approval to a peace with protestants, might be said to be ready to acquiesce once it had been concluded, if the position and rights of the Catholic church could be assured. Yet this assurance was, in the circumstances, almost impossible. The Catholic church could not rest satisfied with toleration as a sect, but demanded recognition as an organised society with a source of jurisdiction illdependent of the state.


Itinerario ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 375-402
Author(s):  
D. L. Noorlander

Catechisms, Bibles, and other printed works were critical for the successful plantation and growth of Dutch religion and culture in the seventeenth-century Atlantic world. This essay examines the provision, regulation, and various controversies surrounding religious books and pamphlets in that period. Under the joint supervision of the West India Company and the Dutch Reformed churches of the Netherlands, colonial clergy were supposed to teach everyone from Company soldiers and officers to European settlers, from Africans and African slaves to Native Americans. And the clergy certainly had some missionary achievements, especially where the Company’s power was greatest. However, colonial clergy and churches also faced tremendous difficulties and fell short of their original plans and goals. Studying the different tools they had at their disposal—studying the creation (and destruction) of their printed materials—helps us see the church’s own culpability in these difficulties and failures. Early seventeenth-century Dutch Calvinism was restrictive enough and the churches of the Netherlands worried enough about deviance and heterodoxy that they unintentionally undermined their own mission and reduced the Dutch footprint overseas.


2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 263-285
Author(s):  
Heather Bailey

Abstract In the mid-nineteenth century it was typical for French Roman Catholic publicists to allege that the tsar was the supreme head or “pope” of the Russian Church and that consequently, the Russian Church was completely enslaved to the state. While this idea was largely created by Catholic publicists, some Russian Orthodox individuals contributed intentionally or unintentionally to exaggerated notions of the Russian emperor’s spiritual authority, demonstrating that the Orthodox publicists who wanted to defend Russian interests did not always agree about what those interests really were or about how best to defend them. Following Italy’s national unification (1859–1860), French public figures used these narratives about the Russian tsar-pope to promote specific policies towards Rome and the papacy. For French Roman Catholic publicists, the tsar-pope myth proved that it was vital to preserve unity between the French Church and Rome and to defend the papacy’s temporal power as a guarantor of the Roman Catholic Church’s independence.


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