The regular canons and the liturgy of the Latin East

ABSTRACT

The present paper examines liturgical rites practised in the crusader states from the perspective of its agents, introducing the monastic and institutional framework in which the liturgy was commissioned and performed, that is, the history of canons regular in the Latin East. The first part identifies the normative basis of the Augustinian canons’ vita communis and looks into the relationship between the clerics’ monastic customs and their liturgical observances. The second part investigates how the canons’ spiritual ideals influenced particular components and features of their liturgy, focusing on the mimetic highlights of the church year and their importance for the way in which the canons strove to impersonate the Apostles and the primitive Christian community of Jerusalem.     

Rewriting the Latin liturgy of the Holy Sepulchre: text,ritual and devotion for 1149

ABSTRACT

An extraordinary reform of Jerusalem’s liturgy took place under the patriarchate of Fulcher of Angoulême (1146–57). The refocusing of Jerusalem’s rite positioned the commemoration of Easter as its central theological theme. This was effected to a level unparalleled in the liturgical traditions of the West. However, rubrics from extant twelfth-century liturgical books from Jerusalem further reveal how this reform was made to coincide with the 1149 rededication of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the 50-year celebration of the capture of Jerusalem. From this newly discovered perspective, this study argues that liturgy, through its active rewriting, formed an integral part of a hitherto unexplored religious programme carried out by Patriarch Fulcher. Liturgy, alongside architecture and civic festivities, was used as a central tool to reshape the devotional identity of Jerusalem and the Latin East.     

Holy Fire and sacral kingship in post-conquest Jerusalem

ABSTRACT

In 1101 the Holy Fire failed to appear in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Holy Saturday, as tradition and liturgy dictated. Less a failure and more a deliberately precipitated crisis born of a political struggle of wills between Patriarch Daimbert and King Baldwin, the resolution of this event enabled the kings of Jerusalem to establish dominance over the ecclesiastical sphere for most of the kingdom’s history. A reading of the narrative sources against liturgical sources casts light on the intersection between liturgy and government and on how the simulation of miracles could be used to advance political causes.     

Civic Sacrament and Social Imaginaries in Transition: The Case of the South African Churches and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Abstract

This article reflects on a seminal moment within South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC): the appearance of the African Initiated Churches (AICs) before the Commission in 1997. It demonstrates how this moment brought into relief divergent contestations of the public within South African Christianity in three ways: first, by situating the TRC within the liturgical performance of a reimagined South African nationality, making it a "civic sacrament" of reconciliation; second, by highlighting the formative role churches themselves played within this liturgy, deploying theological language to create a healed, secular body politic; third, by displaying the different social imaginary of the AICs—a social imaginary which interrupted the TRC's liturgical recreation of time and space, as well as challenging the historical relations between church and state in South Africa. The paper concludes with the question posed in this "interruption," a question that challenges the broader church with regard to fulfillment of the liturgy not in the secular nation-state, but in that City which is to come.     

An overview of Caribbean and Latin-American cultural heritage studies

Abstract

This review analyzes, through three recently published books that talk about cultural heritage in Latin America, how the Cultural Heritage Studies have allowed us to understand the current situation in the region characterized by the growing tendency to promote declarations of heritage as part of a plan for the use of culture as a resource for sustainable development. Likewise, those books analyze how responses from local communities are generated to hegemonic definitions of heritage, which indicates that cultural heritage in Latin America is not something given but something in constant construction and dispute.     

Adventus in Jerusalem: the Palm Sunday celebration in Latin Jerusalem

Themes of continuity and innovation in the rituals of the church of Jerusalem in the early twelfth century, following the crusader conquest of the city, are examined with a focus on the Latin Palm Sunday procession. Based on the Ordinal of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which was produced for the use of the patriarch and the religious community of the Holy Sepulchre, and which contains the yearly ritual cycles and major processional celebrations, the study reveals the original characteristics of the Jerusalem liturgy, as well as its components incorporated from pre-crusade practice. It speculates on the earliest organisers of the liturgy, their identity and the sources of their inspiration, as well as the orientations of the early monastic community in Frankish Jerusalem.     

Producing African-descent: afro-peruvian music,intangible heritage,authenticity and bureaucracy in a Latin American music compilation

ABSTRACT

Policy and actions for the safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) are laced with politics of representation and meaning-making of expressive culture within and outside communities. This article explores how ICH experts, practitioners, activists, and other actors negotiate and re-construct ideas of racial identity and authenticity in one such initiative. Sponsored by CRESPIAL in 2012, the album Cantos y Música Afrodescendientes de América Latina is a compilation of music of Afro-descendant communities in Latin America. Conceived as a project for safeguarding the musical ICH of these communities, it involved participation from thirteen Latin American governments. This paper, centered on the Peruvian participation in this project, studies the bureaucratic intricacies of this project, exploring how ideas on racial identity and authenticity overlap with political agendas and administrative requirements in order to produce a unified representation of ‘Afro-Latin American’ music. My analysis highlights 1) the local knowledge systems that inform the ideas of racial identity and authenticity advanced by the project’s actors; 2) their adopted strategies within Peru’s bureaucratic network of heritage management; and 3) the positionality, capacity and agency of each actor for achieving their particular goals in this collaborative project.     

Mendicant orders in the Principality of Achaia and the Latin communal identity, 1204–1453

Abstract

Despite the fact that the Franciscan and Dominican Orders arrived in Latin Greece well armed with a specific mandate to engage and evangelize the Orthodox population in order to facilitate the implementation of Church union, little if any effort was made in this regard by the members of either order. Rather, reliant as they were on the Latin secular authorities for protection, support and sustenance, they appeared content to spend their tenure in Greece ministering almost exclusively to the Latin segment of the population, becoming deeply involved in the political, economic and cultural life of the Latin states. This was to the utter detriment of their original mission to the Orthodox. Thus, this article examines the role of mendicants in Achaia as contributors to the Latin cultural identity, especially in the episcopal context.     

Base Ecclesial Communities and Community Ministry: Some Freirean Points of Comparison and Difference

Abstract

This article will expound the influence of Paulo Freire on Base Ecclesial Communities (BECs) in Latin America, and will examine if and how his work might be appropriated by middle-class Christians in the UK. Recognizing that the majority of churchgoers in Britain are middle-class, the article explores the idea that, if they really wish to ‘love their neighbour’, these Christians need to learn to dialogue in a Freirean manner with the marginalized, but in so doing they must be prepared to have their own thoughts and faith challenged, and must be prepared, with the poor and marginalized, to ask political questions of society, aware that such questioning is likely to invite conflict.     

Dancing to Different Tunes: Conveying Latin American realities to composite classes

Students are often attracted to courses about Latin America by media images of the region with their aura of danger and unpredictability. Such stereotypes must be addressed in teaching, but the means is far from clear when the participants stem from different disciplinary backgrounds and academic traditions. The method adopted here was to tackle development through discourse construction through an appreciation of positionality. This approach enabled students to draw on their respective backgrounds and experience critically; it also ensured that students appreciated the core concepts embedded in the discipline, while engaging in a challenging way with the issues raised by Latin American development.     

Democracy and the Criminal Justice System

Abstract

This paper explores the difficulties faced by European secularism in dealing with a Muslim diaspora of unprecedented size in the continent's history. It shows how this presence has highlighted contradictions in European conceptions of the religious and of the public-private divide. The paper does this by comparing Europe to Latin America where a quite different process of secularization seems to have taken place.     

The Tames of Fairford

Abstract

Based on evidence collected by surveying a sample of Norfolk churches, this paper presents a reappraisal of the presumed ubiquity of chancel screens in late medieval parish churches. Building on this foundation, evidence is presented and discussed regarding the supposed homogenous form of chancel screens, and the relationship of these screens to other elements such as lofts and beams. By considering the broad period of c. 1330–1537, during which chancel screens were being constructed or renewed, this paper sets out the major changes in their structure, decoration and patronage. Whilst perhaps not ubiquitous, chancel screens did achieve and retain a widespread popularity during a protracted period. The paper offers explanations for their prevalence and argues that, in being representative of the gates of heaven, chancel screens were an important element in the setting of the medieval liturgy at parish level. It concludes with a discussion of patronage which is intended to reinforce the points made about the symbolic and physical centrality of these furnishings in Norfolk parish churches.     

Trade and culture: the ongoing debate

ABSTRACT

The debate over how to reconcile trade liberalization with cultural policy is a long-standing one. There is great variation in how countries have navigated this debate. Furthermore, evolving individual policy approaches show noteworthy dynamism, largely in response to domestic politics, shifts in the international trading system and technological developments. This special issue explores different approaches to the trade and culture debate across geographic space, as well as the evolution across time through analysis of six cases – Canada, the European Union, South Africa, Latin America, the United States and China.     

Bereavement from afar: transnational grieving and the emotional geographies of migration

ABSTRACT

This exploratory article aims to contribute to scholarship on migrants’ experiences of bereavement and grief through the loss of a parent in their country of origin. It considers how transnational bereavement and grieving relate to the ever changing emotional geographies of migration and transnational families. Empirical material is drawn from a research project conducted with Latin American and Latino-British families living in the north of England, particularly from narratives presented by sons and daughters who had experienced such bereavements. Middle generation migrants may express: a continuing bond with a deceased parent as part of their emotional support network; regret at missing the death of the parent and the reinforcement of ambivalent emotions regarding their migration project; boundary ambiguity towards the transnational family; and a sense of physical distance from the family home as a geographical cure which allows working through the grieving process and troubling changes in family configurations.     

Promoting a Different Type of North–South Interactions: Québécois Cultural and Religious Paradiplomacy with Latin America

ABSTRACT

The historiography on Canadian–Latin American relations states that economic incentives, along with geopolitical concerns during the Second World War, have always been the chief reason behind Canadian interests in the region. This article argues that social groups from Quebec had other incentives to establish connections with Latin America. Quebec’s civil society became well connected with Latin American groups before the North American Free Trade Agreement facilitated economic and political cooperation, thanks mostly to the intensive Catholic missionary effort in the region, and positive representations of Latino culture in French Canadian sociopolitical circles in the 1940s and 1950s. As a result, Francophones’ interests diverged from Canada’s main objectives in the region; Quebec’s civil society’s engagement was distinctly more cultural and social in nature. Because of the difference of objectives, this article shows that social groups from Quebec attempted to influence Canadian–Latin American relations to suit their interests.     

Albert the Great's interpretation of neuropsychiatric symptoms in the context of scholastic psychology and physiology* 1

Abstract

Albert the Great (ca. 1193–1280) serves as an example to show how the Latin West successfully integrated Greco‐Arabian psychology with Galenic physiology. He divised a model of perceptive, cognitive and mnestic powers located in different areas of the “brain cells”; and interacting with the immaterial and man‐specific intellect. He managed to describe anmesis, epileptic seizures and psychotic states as results of disturbed brain fuction. Finally, further aspects of Scholastic theorizing on mental disorders are discussed.