北方丧葬面具与萨满教灵魂观念

面具是一种世界性的文化现象,丧葬面具亦如是.我国北方葬俗中使用丧葬面具由来已久,并经历了由覆面到盖面的过程.这种风俗与北方民族信仰的萨满教观念密切相关,并因此而形成了特定的表现形式.     

Cover it! The Protection of a Merovingian Burial Ground in Borgharen (Municipality of Maastricht), the Netherlands

A Merovingian burial ground in Borgharen was threatened by development. Plans however could be changed so the site could be preserved. The initial research however showed the bone material was at risk of severe degradation in the near future. In order to determine whether in situ preservation was feasible three campaigns were carried out. This led to the conclusion that the burial conditions were excellent and there was little risk that severe degradation will reduce archaeological information of the site over the coming decades. The remaining threat concerned illegal excavators with metal detectors and spades. To protect the site it was covered with a series of different materials to prevent the site from being looted.     

Showing the Poor a Good Time: Caring for Body and Spirit in Bologna's Civic Charities

As poor relief in Christian Europe was being reformed through the sixteenth century, tensions emerged between a traditional charitable culture that allowed for occasional festivity, and the newer charitable culture that emphasized discipline, restraint, and efficiency. An undated document relating to a dispute that broke out in the main civic welfare agency of Bologna (Opera Pia dei Poveri Mendicanti) shows that gender and class were key dimensions of these two cultures, and underscores that the two should not be seen as sequential but as co-existing and competing. This study examines the dispute and proposes a dating for the document in the 1590s.     

“疗灵”与“疗身”:近代加拿大传教士在卫辉的借医传教

1889年至1947年间,加拿大基督教新教长老宗在卫辉一带借医传教。根据不同时期政局、民情状况及传教士自身特点,他们先后经历了用药品"裹挟"其福音的谨慎发展阶段,边行医边传教、"疗灵"与"疗身"互为手段、互为目的、交叉渗透的"黄金"发展阶段,以及行医与传教貌离神合的深入推进阶段。"疗灵"与"疗身"始终既存冲突又相互渗透。     

Fighting for the Afterlife: Spiritists, Catholics, and Popular Religion in Nineteenth-Century France

This article examines the position of nineteenth-century French spiritism in relation to the Catholic Church. Spiritism offered an alternative "religion" to French Catholics dissatisfied with the church's traditionalism in a modernizing world. I begin by describing the spiritists' position on Catholic dogma and the movement's place as an urban popular religion. Spiritist critiques of heaven and hell incorporated liberal and republican values, thus making it appealing to these groups who were often hostile to the church. I move next to conflicts between the adversaries. Spiritists, unfettered by dogma or even logic in some cases, freely incorporated the supernatural into the nineteenth-century acceptance of Enlightenment values such as reason and science. The church, unable to deny the reality of supernatural phenomena claimed by the spiritists, limited itself to asserting the devil's hand in these phenomena. It thus could not fully address the challenge of spiritism. Spiritism as a popular religion complicates the assumption by many folklorists regarding the disappearance of popular beliefs in the face of the modern. The article concludes with a call to modify these theories in order to understand an evolving, often urban, popular culture which integrated "tradition" and "modernity" and continually created new forms of the marvellous.     

Rewriting Merovingian history in the tenth century: Aimoin of Fleury's Gesta Francorum

Aimoin of Fleury's Gesta Francorum has mostly been ignored apart from its importance as a source for the Grandes Chroniques de France. Aimoin's editorial techniques in reworking his Merovingian‐era sources deserve more attention, however. Through a process of selective editing, strategic silence, and rhetorical invention he compiled a history that would appeal to its probable target audience, King Robert II of West Francia. The most noteworthy changes wrought by Aimoin are the assignment of a divinely appointed imperial and evangelizing mission to the Franks and the transformation of Clovis into an exemplary Christian king.     

Caring for the Elderly in Kuwait

This article is based on the author's research investigation titled “Toward visualizing a proposal from a general practice perspective in social work to reach the social adjustment in the elderly residing the social nursing home: applied study on the old-age home (asylum) in Sulaibikhat area in the city of Kuwait.” Caring for the elderly is a humane issue encountered by many developed and developing nations. This dilemma of caring for the elderly has increasingly spread throughout the world. United Nations statistics reveal that there are over 200 million people who were over 60 years of age in 1950. The number increased in 1975 to 350 million, and further increased to 950 million in 2000. It is expected that the number will exceed 1,100 million people by the year 2025. In Kuwait, the number of elderly people has increased rapidly. Table 1 shows the number of elderly people in the last three years, according to gender and nationality. It is clear from the data displayed in Table 1 that there is a continuous annual increase in the number of elderly people residing in Kuwait. In light of this continuous increase and the government's interest in providing full care for the citizens, there is a great need to reconsider the status of this helpless group once again to fulfill their basic needs in accordance with the latest scientific and social development that is carried out by the country. The needs of the elderly are considered an important necessity, resulting from psychological and biological factors, as well as the nature of social relations associated with aging. Satisfying these needs will ensure the social adjustment of the elderly, while at the same time, accomplish the societal goals. Satisfying these and other emotional needs has given impetus to establishing comprehensive nursing homes in Kuwait, and shed more light on the social adjustment of the elderly residing in these homes.     

Heavenly Visions: Otago Colonists’ Concepts of the Afterlife

This paper explores popular beliefs about heaven and hell in the largely Presbyterian colony of Otago, New Zealand, during the second half of the nineteenth century. The heresy trials of two prominent clerics resulted, in large part, from the questioning of traditional doctrines on hell, particularly as they related to the fate of dead infants. Although fierce debate surrounded these trials, the diaries, letters, and headstones of Otago residents reveal a pervasive popular belief in heaven as the afterlife destination of all children and most adults. This reflected a growing focus on the innocence, rather than the original sin, of children, coupled with an increasing emphasis on the loving, rather than judgmental, characteristics of God. While clergy emphasized God's presence as the great pleasure of the afterlife, popular visions of heaven clung instead to the hope of joyful reunions with family and friends.     

Handmaids of God: Images of Service in the Lives of Merovingian Female Saints

Merovingian hagiographies make extensive use of the metaphor of service to demonstrate the sanctity of their subjects. These religious images emerged from a society in which slaves and servants were both ubiquitous and demeaned, and the metaphors were embedded in the social realities of service. This article examines the Lives of three elite female saints who were depicted as slaves, or engaged in acts of servitude: Radegund, Balthild, and Austreberta. It argues that although service as a religious motif was central to each of these texts, the authors engaged with the image in strikingly different ways and to quite different ends, depending on the social world of the text.