Central Europe In The High Middle Ages : Bohemi... [NEW]

Many people in the region embrace religion as an element of national belonging even though they are not highly observant. Relatively few Orthodox or Catholic adults in Central and Eastern Europe say they regularly attend worship services, pray often or consider religion central to their lives. For example, a median of just 10% of Orthodox Christians across the region say they go to church on a weekly basis.

Central Europe in the high Middle Ages : Bohemi...

On some questions throughout this report, median percentages are reported to help readers see overall patterns. The median is the middle number in a list of figures sorted in ascending or descending order. In a survey of 18 countries, the median result is the average of the ninth and 10th on a list of country-level findings ranked in order.

There is, however, another, deeper, more serious connection between artistic Bohemia and freethinking, one that goes back to the late middle ages and is known principally as the Rosicrucian Enlightenment of the 17th century. The study of this occult movement -- strongly rooted in Central Europe and especially in the historical Bohemia -- was the life's work of the remarkable scholar Dame Frances A. Yates, reader in the History of the Renaissance at the University of London, fellow of the British Academy, fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, honorary fellow of the Warburg Institute and of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. Almost single-handedly Yates recovered for English scholarship the underground stream of philosophy, religion, science and magic that begins in the syncretic period of late antiquity and matures during the "transition from the Renaissance to the seventeenth century which is one of the fundamental turning points in the history of thought."

The builder of the castle, Villem Rozmberk, or Rosenberg, had long ago sheltered John Dee, a model for Shakespeare's Prospero, when he was being pursued as a necromancer along with his companion the crusty cozzener Edward Kelly. They were in Bohemia because it was a center of alchemical studies and they hoped to persuade the Bohemian lords to support them in their labors. It is a sad and somewhat ridiculous tale: the blind magus listening with belief to the crop-eared Kelly as the con man describes the angels he "scrys" in the crystal glass. A farce? Indeed the notion of the ludibrium, or farce is part of the appeal. It is said that when the fool hears the truth he laughs; if fools did not laugh, it would not be true. The alchemical practice of lowering the highest and raising the lowest, so that we meet in the middle, is a perspective many find appealing.

The AHRC-funded project 'The cult of saints in Cistercian monasteries in the later middle ages: regionalism and pan-European trends'. (2012-2013) and Humboldt-Stiftung funded 'The Cult of the "Founding Fathers" in Late Medieval Monastic and Mendicant Orders'. (2015-2016). A monograph, in preparation, examines the forms of the cult of saints in Cistercian monasteries from the 14th to the early 16th century to show how Cistercian communities became rooted in their regions and localities and how they took up new religious fashions but also how the filiation networks continued to be an important route for the transmission of ideas across Europe. The project combines case studies (from Bavaria, Franconia and the Rhineland) with an extensive survey of Cistercian houses across European Christendom to show degrees of regionalisation and trans-regional network and the nature of cult-adoption within the Cistercian environment. The creation of the figure of Bernard of Clairvaux as the 'founding father' of the order is examined in both textual and visual sources as well as wider process in late medieval culture. By doing so, I explain how the white monks adopted elements of popular religiosity to their relationship with the outside world, built it into their own institutional identity and their bonds with the Cistercian family and within the local context.

The Toleranzpatent of *Joseph ii for Bohemian Jewry was issued on February 13, 1782. As an outcome, Jewish judicial autonomy was suspended, Jewish schools with teaching in German were opened, and the use of German was made compulsory for business records. Jews were permitted to attend general high schools and universities, and were subject to compulsory military service. These measures were supported by adherents of the *Haskalah movement in Prague, including members of the *Jeiteles family, the *Gesellschaft der jungen Hebraeer, Peter *Beer, Naphtali Herz *Homberg, and Raphael *Joel, among others. They were resisted by the majority of the Jews, led by the rabbis Ezekiel *Landau, Eleazar *Fleckeles, Samuel *Kauder, and Bezalel Ronsburg. The legal position of the Jews of Bohemia was summarized in the Judensystemalpatent issued in 1797. Bohemian Jews were entitled to reside in places where they had been domiciled in 1725. They were permitted to pursue their regular occupations, with some exceptions, being prohibited from obtaining new licenses for the open sale of alcoholic beverages or from leasing flour mills. New synagogues could only be built by special permission. Rabbis were obliged to have studied philosophy at a university within the empire. Only Jews who had completed a German elementary school could obtain a marriage license or be admitted to talmudic education. The *censorship of Hebrew books was upheld.

The best level of consistency is found among samples with high Zn content from the phase R B1, i.e. a period around the turn of the Era and the following five decades of the first century AD. Already the artefacts from the late Iron Age do not fall outside the range of Pb isotope ratios of the Massif Central deposits. Therefore, it can be assumed that the brass production might have started in the Massif Central as early as around the middle of the first century BC. The existence of Gallic brass coins from the time of Caesar's military campaigns in Gaul supports this hypothesis67. Also, there is evidence of large-scale exploitation of Au in the Massif Central that took place already prior to the Roman conquest89,90. It is generally accepted that the Romans benefited from the developed tradition of local Gallic mining91. The importance of natural resources in the Massif Central for the expanding Roman Empire is underlined by the intensive Fe production around the Montagne Noire area that became significant in the first century AD. According to archaeometric analyses, local Fe was distributed widely via long-distance trade and served as a vital source of material for the Roman army92,93.

So what, then, do we actually find in the volume at hand? To begin with, unlike its predecessor (NOHM 3), this volume has only two geographically circumscribed essays. One, by Amnon Shiloah, is on the musical cultures of Muslims and Jews in Spain over the eight centuries from the conquest in the year 711 to the successful conclusion of the Reconquista and expulsion of the Jews in 1492. The other, by Tom R. Ward, deals with the development during the fifteenth century of institutions and musical activities devoted to high musical culture in that part of south central Europe which encompassed Germany, Austria, Poland, Bohemia, and Moravia. 041b061a72