论17、18世纪德意志地区的宫廷犹太人

在17、18世纪,由于欧洲及德意志地区政治经济状况的变化、犹太人特殊的历史经历以及对居住地表现出来的“忠诚”和“弱民”地位等原因,在德意志地区出现了一个特殊的犹太人群体——宫廷犹太人。他们利用其经济方面的影响,积极参与在宫廷的军事斗争、政治生活和日常生活,受到宫廷的信任,取得了较高的社会地位。虽然他们与犹太社团有着一些冲突,但他们并没有忘记自己的犹太人身份,在管理犹太社团事务、形成新的犹太社团、传承犹太文化等方面发挥着独特的作用。这个时期宫廷犹太人的活动为犹太启蒙运动和犹太人的解放准备了条件。     

临汾方志传记中的灾害体验1600—1900

中国灾害史的研究视野,受到中国王朝更迭-灾害增加的互动范式以及中华帝国注定失败论范式的双重影响,从社会史及文化史层面深入探索中国灾害史的实证性研究尚不多见.本文选取史料特征不太显著的方志传记入手,研究其中隐含着的灾害体验的社会文化内容,并进而探讨中国灾害史的研究方法.     

Naturwissenschaft und Religion in den Niederlanden um 1600

Dutch science flourished in the late sixteenth and in the seventeenth century thanks to the immigration of cartographers, botanists, mathematicians, astronomers and the like from the Southern Netherlands after the Spanish army had captured the city of Antwerp in 1585, and thanks to the religious and the socio-economic situation of the country. A strong impulse for practical scientific activities started from the Reformation, mainly thanks to its anti-traditional attitude, which had an anti-rationalistic tendency. Therefore, in the Northern Netherlands there was no ‘warfare’ between science and religion and the biblical arguments leading to Galileo's condemnation were not used. Although the growth of the exact sciences and of technology in the late sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries in Protestant cirles may be partly attributed to the expansion of trade, industry, navigation and so on, this does not explain why there was also at the same time a great interest in subjects as botany and zoology, which had no immediate economic utility. There were discussions about Copernicanism and Cartesianism. So a number of astronomers and theologians rejected the earth's movement on scientific and religious grounds, but there were also those who did not reject the Copernican system on biblical grounds. In the seventeenth century there was much discussion between science and religion in the Northern Netherlands, but that discussion was not followed by censure by the Church of the State. In the Republic there was a large amount of intellectual freedom in the study of the natural sciences, thanks to practical and ideological considerations. In the eighteenth century the seventheenth century tension between science and religion changed into a physicotheological natural science. It was believed that investigations into the workings of nature should lead to a better understanding of its Creator. So Bernard Nieuwentijt in his well-known book: The right use of-world views for the conviction of atheists and unbelievers (1715) intended to prove the existence of God on the basis of teleological arguments.     

Imperial Rome and Britain's Language of Empire 1600–1837

Britain's pre-Victorian overseas expansion stimulated Roman comparisons. But imperial Rome was a warning as much as an inspiration to future empires, a harsh and uncomfortable model for Britain as a former Roman colony. Roman dignity was claimed for British monarchs and achievements by Dryden and others. But there were mixed feelings about identifying expanding Britain as a second Roman Empire. In the eighteenth century the British freedom-fighter Caractacus, defeated by the Romans, appealed far more to popular taste than Virgil's Aeneas or the Emperor Augustus. Sustained unease about imperial Rome, going right back to Tacitus, anticipated the liberal critique of imperialism of some Victorian and Edwardian commentators.     

Adipocere withstands 1600 years of fluctuating groundwater levels in soil

An extraordinarily well-preserved skeleton of a child, interred in a stone sarcophagus in the Late-Roman era, was discovered in the city of Mainz (Germany) in 1998, covered with a puff pastry-like substance assumed to be adipocere. It is the first time that this substance, which is derived from fat under oxygen-deficient conditions and prevents corpses from decaying, has been discovered on corpses buried under conditions described in the present paper.     

The Low Countries' connection: landscape and the struggle over representation around 1600

In Anglophone geography, the concept of landscape is often defined in visual terms as the expression of a spatial rationality. Historically, the strongly visual qualities of landscape tend to be related to early capitalist developments in Italy and the Low Countries. Yet, recent scholarly interventions have asserted that landscape in early modern Europe also animated so-called ‘platial’ (or place-oriented) practices and ideologies of political representation, justice, and custom. This paper seeks to bring these diverging platial and spatial approaches together through an examination of political and visual representation of landscape in the northern Low Countries around 1600. It is argued that the tensions between platial notions of landscape and spatial rationality were unceasingly pertinent to the protracted struggles over political representation in the Low Countries during the revolt against Spain. Visual representations of landscape provided ways to take in, reflect upon, and codify those struggles. The Dutch landscape remained entangled in a double dialectic in which spatial and platial modes of political and visual representation mutually shaped each other.     

Osseous talocalcaneal coalition in a medieval skeleton (ca. 1050 AD)

Tarsal coalition (TC) is defined as an abnormal fusion of two or more tarsal bones. The fusion may be fibrous, cartilaginous or osseous and can be congenital or acquired in response to infection, articular disorders, trauma, neoplasm or surgery. We report a case of a talocalcaneal (TCC) type of tarsal coalition in a medieval skeleton from Northwest Germany dating to ca. 1050 AD. The fusion is of osseous type. Plain AP radiographs and computed tomography confirmed the macroscopic diagnosis. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.