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The essays examine how the study of facial features or expressions as indicative of character or ethnicity, has evolved from the crossroad of magic, religion and primitive medicine to present-day cultural concern for wellness and beauty. In this context, the discoveries of cranio-facial neurophysiology and psychology and the practice of cosmetic and reconstructive surgery have a centuries-old relationship with physiognomy. As the study of outward appearances evolved from its classical roots and self-representations through 18th- and 19th-century adaptations in fiction and travelogues, it gradually became a scientific discipline. Along the way, physiognomy was associated with phrenology and c...
Der Band bietet 94 Briefe aus der Korrespondenz Bucers von Januar bis Juli 1534. Hier setzt sich die internationale Perspektive fort, die seit Mitte 1533 zu beobachten ist. Die evangelischen Korrespondenten betrachten die europapolitische Bündnispolitik skeptisch: Bucer rechnet im Januar 1534 damit, dass Papst Clemens VI. den englischen König Heinrich VIII. an sich binden wird, während die evangelischen Fürsten im Reich noch versuchen, mit Heinrich ein Bündnis zu schließen. Anfang Februar schätzt Bucer den französischen König milder ein, mit Sorge sieht er jedoch die Bemühungen Philipps von Hessen um Franz I. Im Blick auf die Schweiz versucht Bucer in Schaffhausen auch 1534 im Aben...
Anders als im Briefwechsel des ersten Halbjahres 1533 begegnen nun internationale Perspektiven: Der Konzilsinitiative Karls V. begegnet Bucer wegen der vom Papst gestellten Vorbedingungen skeptisch. Er verfasst aber eine Fürbereytung zum Concilio, die zusammen mit Desiderius Erasmus’ entsprechenden Schriften den Weg zur Einheit weisen soll. Im Blick auf die Schweiz hat Bucers Reise (April bis Mai 1533) die Beziehungen gefestigt, und die Korrespondenz aus den besuchten Orten wächst an. Auch an den Ereignissen im Reich nimmt Bucer regen Anteil: Sein Interesse gilt der Lage Konstanz’ im Zinsstreit mit dem Bischof. Ulm sucht einen Nachfolger fur den verstorbenen Prediger Konrad Sam; Bucer ...
In the late eighteenth century, Catholic priest Johann Joseph Gassner (1727-1779) discovered that he had extraordinary powers of exorcism. Deciding that demons were responsible for most human ailments, he healed thousands, rich and poor, Protestant and Catholic. In this book H.C. Erik Midelfort delves deeply into records of the time to explore Gassner's remarkable exorcising campaign, chronicle the official efforts to curb him, and reconstruct the sufferings of the afflicted. Gassner's activities triggered a Catholic religious revival as well as a noisy skeptical reaction. In response to those who doubted that he was really casting out demons, Gassner marshaled hundreds of eyewitness reports that seemed to prove his exorcisms really worked. Midelfort describes the enormous public controversy that resulted, and he demonstrates that the Gassner episode yields important insights into the German Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment, the limitations of eighteenth-century debate, and the ongoing role of magic and belief in an age of scientific enlightenment.
This book provides a fresh and exciting perspective on the religious and political history of seventeenth century Europe by focussing on the life of the German prophet Ludwig Friedrich Gifftheil. Between 1624 and 1661, Gifftheil travelled across Europe, petitioning rulers to bring an end to the continent's endemic warfare. When these requests fell on deaf ears, Gifftheil decided to wage a holy war to establish a divine peace through violence.
Evangelicalism contributed to the great transformation of ideas in the modern world. This book represents a pioneering study of discussions within the evangelical movements from Central Europe to the American colonies about what constituted evangelical identity and of the basis of the fraternity among evangelical leaders of strikingly different backgrounds. Through a global study of the major figures and movements in the early evangelical world, W. R. Ward aims to show that down through the eighteenth century the evangelical elite had coherent answers to the general intellectual problems of their day and that piety as well as the enlightenment was a significant motor of intellectual change. However, as the century wore on the evangelicals lost the ability to state a broad intellectual setting for their case, and when they entered on their period of greatest social influence in the nineteenth century their former cohesion disintegrated into acute partisan wrangling.
A Poisoned Chalice tells the story of a long-forgotten criminal case: the poisoning of the communion wine in Zurich's main cathedral in 1776. The story is riveting and mysterious, full of bizarre twists and colorful characters--an anti-clerical gravedigger, a hard-drinking drifter, a defrocked minister--who come to life in a series of dramatic criminal trials. But it is also far more than just a good story. In the wider world of German-speaking Europe, writes Jeffrey Freedman, the affair became a cause célèbre, the object of a lively public debate that focused on an issue much on the minds of intellectuals in the age of Enlightenment: the problem of evil. Contemporaries were unable to ascr...
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In this definitive study, the author accomplishes two important tasks. First, he contrasts the theological perspectives of earlier biographies with the results of more modern research into Luther's socio-economic context, psychological relationshps, late medieval and humanist thought, university curricula, and political factors. Second, in keeping with his theory that the historical discipline "must make its results accessible to a wider audience" unless it wishes to encourage the "historical amnesia which it so often laments", the author communicates the findings of technical Reformation scholarship to the public in a comprehensible style. -- Book jacket.