scholarly journals Diocesan Codices Unveiling Local History: First Presentation of The 'Codex of Gjirokastër' (S. Albania)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Konstantinos Giakoumis

The present paper presents a first set of conclusions drawn from the study of the “Codex of Gjirokastër”. Compiled upon the accession of Bishop Dositheos of Dryinoupolis and Gjirokastër, the codex extends from 1760 to 1858, namely well beyond the end of his prelacy (1760-1799). Kept in the Metropolis of Gjirokastër until shortly before the Italian bombardment of the city, the codex was transferred to Tirana. Previously thought to be lost, it is now held in the Archives of the State, under the classification number F. 139, D. 2. It is written in Greek, the official language of the Church at that period, and records several documents that reflect the competences and privileges that Christian prelates enjoyed at least in issues of ecclesiastical administration and civil law. The focus here is first on the role of laymen in the accession of Bishop Dositheos in the Diocese of Dryinoupolis, then on the issue of divorces in the regions of Gjirokastër between 1786 and 1858. Placing the “Codex of Dositheos” in its context, the study underlines the importance of diocesan codices as documents of religious, cultural, social, economic, educational, administrational and juridical history.

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lufuluvhi Maria Mudimeli

This article is a reflection on the role and contribution of the church in a democratic South Africa. The involvement of the church in the struggle against apartheid is revisited briefly. The church has played a pivotal and prominent role in bringing about democracy by being a prophetic voice that could not be silenced even in the face of death. It is in this time of democracy when real transformation is needed to take its course in a realistic way, where the presence of the church has probably been latent and where it has assumed an observer status. A look is taken at the dilemmas facing the church. The church should not be bound and taken captive by any form of loyalty to any political organisation at the expense of the poor and the voiceless. A need for cooperation and partnership between the church and the state is crucial at this time. This paper strives to address the role of the church as a prophetic voice in a democratic South Africa. Radical economic transformation, inequality, corruption, and moral decadence—all these challenges hold the potential to thwart our young democracy and its ideals. Black liberation theology concepts are employed to explore how the church can become prophetically relevant in democracy. Suggestions are made about how the church and the state can best form partnerships. In avoiding taking only a critical stance, the church could fulfil its mandate “in season and out of season” and continue to be a prophetic voice on behalf of ordinary South Africans.


Author(s):  
Kamran Asdar Ali

The second afterword to the book by Kamran Asdar Ali returns us to the city, and to the lives of Karachi’s working women and working classes. He draws on women’s poems, diaries, and memoirs to capture some more ephemeral qualities of everyday living and dying. These contrast with the violent suppression of an underclass of trade unionists and labor activists by a coalition of the state, military courts and industrialists, since the fifties. Given the long, progressive erosion of peace in Karachi how, he asks, might we imagine a therapeutic process of social, economic and cultural healing? Through an image of citizens “at work” creating citywide networks and connections, we are offered finally some possibilities of dreaming. Namely, through increased understandings, not of conflict, but also of each other’s intimate everyday lives, the dream emerges of a new political space or public where even intractable disagreements can be managed through gestures of kindness, compromise, and fresh vocabularies of how to carry on and get by.


This interdisciplinary volume presents nineteen chapters by Roman historians and archaeologists, discussing trade in the Roman Empire in the period c.100 BC to AD 350, and in particular the role of the Roman state, in shaping the institutional framework for trade within and outside the Empire, in taxing that trade, and in intervening in the markets to ensure the supply of particular commodities, especially for the city of Rome and for the army. The chapters in this volume address facets of the subject on the basis of widely different sources of evidence—historical, papyrological, and archaeological—and are grouped in three sections: institutional factors (taxation, legal structures, market regulation, financial institutions); evidence for long-distance trade within the Empire, in wood, stone, glass, and pottery; and trade beyond the frontiers, with the East (as far as China), India, Arabia, and the Red Sea, and the Sahara. Rome’s external trade with realms to the east emerges as being of particular significance to the fisc. But in the eastern part of the Empire at least, the state appears, in collaboration with the elite holders of wealth, to have adapted the mechanisms of taxation, both direct and indirect, to support its need for revenue. On the other hand, the price of that collaboration, which was in effect a fiscal partnership, in slightly different forms in East and West, in the longer term fundamentally changed the political character of the Empire.


2017 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-111
Author(s):  
Florian Mazel

Dominique Iogna-Prat’s latest book, Cité de Dieu, cité des hommes. L’Église et l’architecture de la société, 1200–1500, follows on both intellectually and chronologically from La Maison Dieu. Une histoire monumentale de l’Église au Moyen Âge (v. 800–v. 1200). It presents an essay on the emergence of the town as a symbolic and political figure of society (the “city of man”) between 1200 and 1700, and on the effects of this development on the Church, which had held this function before 1200. This feeds into an ambitious reflection on the origins of modernity, seeking to move beyond the impasse of political philosophy—too quick to ignore the medieval centuries and the Scholastic moment—and to relativize the effacement of the institutional Church from the Renaissance on. In so doing, it rejects the binary opposition between the Church and the state, proposes a new periodization of the “transition to modernity,” and underlines the importance of spatial issues (mainly in terms of representation). This last element inscribes the book in the current of French historiography that for more than a decade has sought to reintroduce the question of space at the heart of social and political history. Iogna-Prat’s stimulating demonstration nevertheless raises some questions, notably relating to the effects of the Protestant Reformation, the increasing power of states, and the process of “secularization.” Above all, it raises the issue of how a logic of the polarization of space was articulated with one of territorialization in the practices of government and the structuring of society—two logics that were promoted by the ecclesial institution even before states themselves.


2007 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-208
Author(s):  
Alan Gregory

ABSTRACTUnderstanding Coleridge's classic work On the Constitution of Church and State requires paying close attention to the system of distinctions and relations he sets up between the state, the ‘national church’, and the ‘Christian church’. The intelligibility of these relations depends finally on Coleridge's Trinitarianism, his doctrine of ‘divine ideas’, and the subtle analogy he draws between the Church of England as both an ‘established’ church of the nation and as a Christian church and the distinction and union of divinity and humanity in Christ. Church and State opens up, in these ‘saving’ distinctions and connections, important considerations for the integrity and role of the Christian church within a religiously plural national life.


2015 ◽  
Vol 795 ◽  
pp. 24-30
Author(s):  
Andrzej Chluski ◽  
Dorota Jelonek ◽  
Cezary Stępniak ◽  
Tomasz Turek ◽  
Leszek Ziora

In the contemporary economy the more and more greater role is played by state and local government institutions. Offices of public administration not only create law, but more and more often become initiators of the different type of investments undertaken on the ground of their jurisdiction. Often neighbouring administrative units begin to compete between themselves in gaining of investments and resources for the purpose of its own development. In the functionality of mentioned offices the greater role is performed by IT systems building the architecture of a given unit, clearly expressed among other things in the idea of intelligent city. Applied by offices of public administration IT systems are more often opened for suppliants creating e-government tools [1]. In this paper was presented the role of e-government tools in the business activation of the region on the basis of IT systems made available by Czestochowa Municipal Office. The review of potential directions of the e-government tools usage in different areas of social-economic life of the city will be presented


1999 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 384-395
Author(s):  
R. W. Ambler

In February 1889 Edward King, Bishop of Lincoln, appeared before the court of the Archbishop of Canterbury charged with illegal practices in worship. The immediate occasion for these proceedings was the manner in which he celebrated Holy Communion at the Lincoln parish church of St Peter at Gowts on Sunday 4 December 1887. He was cited on six specific charges: the use of lighted candles on the altar; mixing water with the communion wine; adopting an eastward-facing position with his back to the congregation during the consecration; permitting the Agnus Dei to be sung after the consecration; making the sign of the cross at the absolution and benediction, and taking part in ablution by pouring water and wine into the chalice and paten after communion. Two Sundays later King had repeated some of these acts during a service at Lincoln Cathedral. As well as its intrinsic importance in defining the legality of the acts with which he was charged, the Bishop’s trial raised issues of considerable importance relating to the nature and exercise of authority within the Church of England and its relationship with the state. The acts for which King was tried had a further significance since the ways in which these and other innovations in worship were perceived, as well as the spirit in which they were ventured, also reflected the fundamental shifts which were taking place in the role of the Church of England at parish level in the second half of the nineteenth century. Their study in a local context such as Lincolnshire, part of King’s diocese, provides the opportunity to examine the relationship between changes in worship and developments in parish life in the period.


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. e1806 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kari Tove Elvbakken

This article explores the role of food control in the professionalization of veterinarians in Norway. Veterinarians became engaged in public health through food control and market inspection, which were the responsibility of Norway’s city boards of health from the 1860s. Food inspection served a double purpose: to ensure honest trade and to maintain the safety of food. I argue that food control, which was associated with cities’ efforts to secure public health and order, was important to the legitimacy of the veterinarian profession. This activity is not what one today sees as a core practice of veterinarians, which is the prevention and curing of animal sickness. Exploring boundary activities at the fringes of a profession, and especially activity connected to the city and the state, may shed light on the more general sources of professional influence and legitimacy in the Norwegian profession state.


2019 ◽  
pp. 176-191

The article states the necessity of creating an economic chronicle of Alexander Pushkin’s life. His economic life includes four aspects: publishing activity, estate management, playing cards, and life in the city. It is mentioned that the existing literature lacks accurate data on Pushkin’s incomes and expenses. The article studies a notorious episode concerning Pushkin’s loan received from the Moscow Savings Treasury. It is shown that there are certain questions connected with distribution of the money received and with Pushkin’s deposit in the Moscow Savings Treasury. Besides, the article analyses Pushkin’s loans from the State Treasury. The role of Egor Kankrin, Minister of Finance, in providing to Pushkin his credit conditions, and the attitude of Emperor Nicholas I towards the poet are emphasized. They resulted in the lending conditions being extremely soft: the loans were long-term and interest-free. However, Pushkin still needed money and had to borrow large sums from private persons. After his death, debts to the State Treasury and to private persons amounted to 138,988 rubles 33 kopeks. The author raises the question: did Pushkin have a real opportunity to repay his debts? Data from a Pushkin Trust report concerning incomes collected from the posthumous edition are analyzed. The article provides calculations confirming that Pushkin’s financial bankruptcy was far from being inevitable. Had he survived after the duel with d’Anthès, Pushkin would have been exiled to his village. He would have continued his literary work and, according to the optimistic estimate, could have repaid his debts within approximately four years.


2009 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Van Oort

The article explores how Augustine of Hippo (354-430) deals with the Jews and Judaism. First it investigates the occurrence and meaning of the word �Iudaeus� in Augustine�s works. It turns out that Augustine, unlike many a predecessor, does not make a sharp distinction between �Hebrew�, �Israelite�, and �Jew�. Mainly on the basis of The City of God the role of the Jews in history is discussed. According to Augustine, all true believers (even those living before the time of Jesus) are �Christ believers� and are considered to belong to Christ�s body, the Church. The diaspora of the Jews is evaluated both negatively and positively: negatively as a consequence of �their putting Christ to death�; positively since through the dispersion of the Jews their Scriptures have been dispersed as well and so provide �testimony to the truth taught by the Church�. The so-called �mark of Cain� can not be interpreted as a predominantly positive sign: it provides protection indeed, but this divine protection is, once again, �for the benefit of the Church�. Contrary to some current opinion, it is stressed that Augustine knew contemporary Jews in Roman North Africa quite well.


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