Dealings with God Loetz, Francisca
2009, 20160513, 2009-11-01, 2016-05-13, 2016-05-16
eBook
Early modern European society took a serious view of blasphemy, and drew upon a wide range of sanctions - including the death penalty - to punish those who cursed, swore and abused God. Whilst such ...attitudes may appear draconian today, this study makes clear that in the past, blasphemy was regarded as a very real threat to society. Based on a wealth of primary sources, including court records, theological and ecclesiastical writings and official city statutes, Francisca Loetz explores verbal forms of blasphemy and the variety of contexts within which it could occur. Honour conflicts, theological disputation, social and political provocation, and religious self-questioning all proved fertile ground for accusations of blasphemy, and her contention - that blasphemers often meant more than they said - reveals the underlying complexity of an apparently simple concept.
This innovative approach interprets cases of verbal blasphemy as 'speech actions' that reflect broader political, social and religious concerns. Cases in Protestant Zurich are compared with the situation in Catholic Lucerne and related to findings in other parts of Europe (Germany, France, England, Italy) to provide a thorough discussion of different historical approaches to blasphemy - ecclesiastical, legal, intellectual, social, and cultural - in the Early Modern period. In so doing the book offers intriguing suggestions about what a cultural history of religiousness could and should be.
By linking a broad overview of the issue of blasphemy, with case studies from Zurich and Lucerne, this book provides a fascinating insight into a crucial, but often misunderstood aspect of early-modern society. The conclusions reached not only offer a much fuller understanding of the situation in Zurich, but also have resonance for all historians of Reformation Europe.
In Johann Froben, Printer of Basel, Valentina Sebastiani presents a detailed account of Froben's life and career and offers the first comprehensive bibliography of the 329 Froben editions published ...in Basel between 1491 and 1527.
Bern Book Carter, Vincent O; McCarthy, Jesse
2022
eBook
The Bern Book is a travelogue, a memoir, a "diary of an isolated soul" (Darryl Pinckney), and a meditation on the myth and reality of race in midcentury Europe and America. In 1953, having left the ...US and settled in Bern, Switzerland, Vincent O. Carter, a struggling writer, set about composing a "record of a voyage of the mind." The voyage begins with Carter's furiously good-humored description of how, every time he leaves the house, he must face the possibility of being asked "the hated question" (namely, Why did you, a black man born in America, come to Bern?). It continues with stories of travel, war, financial struggle, the pleasure of walking, the pain of self-loathing, and, through it all, various experiments in what Carter calls "lacerating subjective sociology." Now this long-neglected volume is back in print for the first time since 1973.
Based on a tradition of political innovation, Swiss citizens recalibrated their understanding of liberty and republicanism through public political debates, during the revolutionary transformation to ...a rights-based society. The resulting hybrid political culture enhances our understanding of the international Age of Revolution.
Basle, in the time of Erasmus, had a reputation for tolerance and liberalism rare in the sixteenth century. This book captures the intellectual climate of the city in Erasmus' time and after his ...death. It shows the gradual spread and modification among the French-speaking public of humanist attitudes and ideals associated with the Erasmian Basle. Based on extensive bibliographical research and perusal of much correspondence, published and unpublished, of the early humanists, the study investigates the contracts between the city of Basle and the French-speaking regions of sixteenth-century Europe. It is not primarily a political history, for the political influence of the town was insignificant, not is it a history of ideas in the usual sense. Rather than analysing the contexts of the books produced in Basle, Professor Bietenholz studies the people who produced them and distributed them in France. He examines their reading habits and motives for writing and printing, and their personal contacts. The volume includes biographical information about Francophones in Basle: students, professors, political agents, merchants, doctors, ministers, and printers. Many were religious exiles and participated in the various theological controversies of the Reformation. In addition, the book includes a bibliography of over 1200 books and dissertations published at Basle by Francophone authors, editors, and translators.
The nineteenth century was a period of intense religious conflict across Europe, as people confronted the major changes brought by modernity. In Zurich, one phase of this religious conflict was ...played out in a struggle over revisions to the ritual of baptism. In its analysis of the Zurich conflict, Liturgy Wars offers a strategy for understanding the links between theology, ritual, and socio-politics. Theodore M. Vial offers a new perspective on contemporary ritual studies - and critiques the cognivist approaches of Lawson and McCauley, as well as Catherine Bell's analysis of power and the body - by reintergrating the imporatance of speech acts into considerations of ritual.
The global success story of the Basel architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron has local roots. This book traces these origins while identifying the essential ideas, professional ethics, and ...development of their architectural practice, established in 1978. The biographies of both architects and the activities of their practice are intimately bound up with the town of Basel. With this embeddedness in Basel as a point of departure, the authors elucidate central themes of their architectural oeuvre: from habitat to monument. With reference to exemplary buildings, they analyze the motifs, constructive principles, and spatial design of the architectonic works of Herzog & de Meuron. In addition, Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron lead us on tours through Basel and its surroundings: statements by the architects, along with photographs taken especially for this volume by George Dupin, present the locales and buildings that have played key roles for the work of these architects. The book is rounded out by an intensive exchange of ideas between the architects and Jean-François Chevrier.
Der globale Erfolg der Architekten Jacques Herzog und Pierre de Meuron ist eng mit Basel verbunden. Von dieser Verankerung ausgehend, analysieren die Autoren Motive, Prinzipien und Raumgestaltung ...ihrer Architektur. Darüber hinaus führen Herzog und de Meuron in Rundgängen durch Basel und die Umgebung: Fotografien von George Dupin und persönliche Kommentare stellen Orte und Gebäude vor, die eine Schlüsselrolle für die Architekten spielen.
There has been a tendency amongst scholars to view Switzerland as a unique case, and comparative scholarship on the radical right has therefore shown little interest in the country. Yet, as the ...author convincingly argues, there is little justification for maintaining the notion of Swiss exceptionalism, and excluding the Swiss radical right from cross-national research. His book presents the first comprehensive study of the development of the radical right in Switzerland since the end of the Second World War and therefore fills a significant gap in our knowledge. It examines the role that parties and political entrepreneurs of the populist right, intellectuals and publications of the New Right, as well as propagandists and militant groups of the extreme right assume in Swiss politics and society. The author shows that post-war Switzerland has had an electorally and discursively important radical right since the 1960s that has exhibited continuity and persistence in its organizations and activities. Recently, this has resulted in the consolidation of a diverse Swiss radical right that is now established at various levels within the political and public arena.
