Late Modern & Contemporary history (1801 to present ) : local & regional European history

The Nordic welfare state of the 20th century has been hailed around the world as a model of how to build democratic and egalitarian societies. It has often been described as a project of social democracy often following a narrative of secularization and rationalization of society. However some of the most important actors and ideas of the "Scandinavian Sonderweg" had their roots in Protestant often Pietist and revivalist milieus that dreamed of creating an egalitarian community. The present volume explores these often forgotten roots in several case studies of phenomena from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century focusing primarily on questioning the function of aesthetics in the creation of the welfare state model. We argue that aesthetics and what Friedrich Schiller called aesthetic education played an important unifying role for Nordic societies. These aesthetics were shaped by Protestant ideas and practices. Through references to the then widespread circulation of educational texts based on Luther's catechism the later pietistic catechism of Erik Pontoppidan Nordic hymnbooks and practices such as communal singing and preaching in church church coffee reading circles and conventicle meetings a common aesthetic language emerged that unified different social groups and their competing goals and claims. Civic actors and movements learned specific ways to engage in society to develop practices of internalizing responsibility (self)critique and accountability and to communicate and develop a more democratic modern civic sphere. We therefore propose to look at this history from the perspective of a historically changing aesthetic as an integrating principle for understanding the political social cultural economic and many other aspects of the Nordic welfare state.

Roman wooden writing tablets known in Latin as tabulae ceratae have been found by archaeologists in various locations around the former capital of the civitas/municipium Tungrorum or Roman Tongeren (now the Belgian city of Tongeren-Borgloon). These rare and delicate finds are remarkable not only due to the excellent state of their preservation but also because they are inscribed with the remnants of texts once etched into an overlying wax layer that can to the discerning eye still be deciphered. The tablets not only provide concrete information about religious judicial and administrative practices but they also enhance our understanding of the complex processes of Romanisation and Latinisation in the northwestern civitates and municipia of the Roman Empire.

Unearthed in the first half of the twentieth century with a second group discovered in 2013 the Roman tablets housed in the Gallo-Roman Museum of Tongeren-Borgloon and in the city’s municipal heritage depository became the object of an in-depth study by an international team of specialists piloted by the Gallo-Roman Museum. It is the results of this project that are presented here in this volume for the first time. The painstaking process of deciphering and interpreting the script marks and text fragments is explored via analysis of palaeography philology and onomastics along with key scientific techniques such as wax analysis wood species identification and script visualisation by Multi-Light Reflectance Imaging. Rich detail is also provided about other associated wooden finds that shed light on how and where the tablets were produced.

The result is a beautifully illustrated and insightful volume that introduces the lost world of Roman Tongeren and its writing tablets to professionals and the general public alike.

17 septembre 1946 : devant les membres de la 29e congrégation générale des Jésuites Pie XII évoque la « nouvelle théologie » qui vise – du moins d’aucuns le croient – en particulier les maisons de formation des jésuites français.  Cela ne manque pas d’alarmer les autorités de l’Ordre à commencer par le P. Jean-Baptiste Janssens nouveau général.  Face à l’agitation que suscitent les débats à propos de cette « nouvelle théologie » le 25 janvier 1949 Janssens nomme un visiteur le P. Édouard Dhanis professeur au scolasticat des jésuites belges chargé d’examiner le contenu de l’enseignement dispensé dans les scolasticats français.  Le 4 octobre 1949 Dhanis remet son rapport au Général : il pointe ce qu’il considère comme des défaillances graves par rapport à la scolastique officielle.  Cette expertise sera rapidement suivie de mesures sévères prises par Janssens : notamment plusieurs professeurs sont relevés de leur enseignement ou soumis à un contrôle strict dans leurs publications en particulier à Fourvière.  Suite à diverses interventions en janvier 1950 à la demande du Saint-Office Dhanis transmet à celui-ci un second rapport (daté du 26 novembre 1949).  Fort semblable au premier il sera une source importante de l’encyclique Humani generis (15 août 1950).  Replacés dans le cadre des remous ayant précédé la visite du P. Dhanis et de ses suites et édités ici ces deux documents se révèlent être des pièces majeures sur une des crises importantes de l’Église du XXe siècle.

Le 9 octobre 1943 neuf membres de la résistance belge et néerlandaise étaient exécutés à Rhijnauwen (près d’Utrecht). Parmi eux deux moines de l’abbaye du Val-Dieu. En suivant le parcours de ces deux ecclésiastiques le livre retrace de façon précise l’histoire des groupes d’espionnage et des lignes d’évasion. Ces lignes de secours étaient utilisées par des prisonniers de guerre évadés par des pilotes alliés abattus par des personnes d’origine juive et des ressortissants néerlandais en fuite vers l’Angleterre. La ligne d’évasion partait d’Allemagne et des Pays-Bas pour rejoindre Eijsden puis Mouland et Visé. Une fois arrivés au pays de Herve ou de Liège les réfugiés étaient conduits à Givet ou à Bruxelles où d’autres groupes de résistance les prenaient en charge. En 1942 le contre-espionnage allemand infiltre les groupes au départ de Groningue et de Liège : l’Hannibalspiel. L’issue sera dramatique.

En cherchant à comprendre pourquoi dans la région de Liège ces deux moines se décident à entrer en résistance l’enquête met en lumière le rôle joué par l’Église et par l’abbaye du Val-Dieu mais aussi par leurs familles.

Résistance sans frontières est la première recension ayant trait à la résistance de chaque côté de la frontière belgo-néerlandaise pendant la deuxième guerre mondiale.

Reapproaching Conques from new contexts is the basis of the present volume a product of the international project “Conques in the Global World. Transferring Knowledge: from Material to Immaterial Heritage” (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research and Innovation Staff Exchange H2020). Although it is an important location of cultural heritage and has been consequential historiographically and in the formation of art history there has never been a comprehensive interdisciplinary approach to this momentous site. Thus this volume publishes the first results of the interdisciplinary and international project which were initially presented at a conference and enriched by workshops held in New York City in the summer of 2022. The collected essays open with reflective and historiographic work on Conques in the nineteenth century. These segue into essays reconsidering specific integral elements of extant medieval materials at the site. Finally the volume concludes with a series of essays devoted to placing Conques in a broader context. The entire volume aims to open to as yet unaddressed questions in scholarship on Conques with the hope that this work will provide a foundation for future studies.

The Enlightenment has often been used as a fundamental reference point for understanding the evolution of societies. Nevertheless the broad nature of this term hides great inequalities between different historiographical traditions with some countries considered to have ‘ownership’ of this intellectual and cultural current which arose in the eighteenth century while other lands have been considered at best peripheral or at worst have been wholly disregarded. This is particularly true of the Ottoman Empire and of the Balkan states founded in the first decades of the nineteenth century which have often been studied only through their relationship with France Great Britain and German. This however is not sufficient for understanding how these countries entered modernity. The studies gathered in this book seek to question the invention of the National Enlightenment the history of representations of the European Enlightenment and their variations in Balkan space and time and the phenomena of acculturation and rejection that can be identified in the histories of these lands in order to offer new insights into the contradictory aspirations of nations that have often been torn between several different models of society.

The purpose of this volume is to explore re-interpret and re-contextualise the various natures of practices performed by the Orthodox and Catholic pilgrims in Balkan countries in their devotional ʽpath to touch the sacred and holyʼ through the prism of pilgrimage contents and their articulating using and handling strategies. Inter- and transdisciplinary perspectives constitute a strong point for exploring the essence of this collective practice of worship which is theoretically and critically interpreted and chronologically and diachronically analysed. Therefore the various visions of the authors formed on the basis of qualitative and critical analysis of primary (ethnographic and folkloric data from field interviews archive documents samples etc.) and secondary sources come to fill a gap in research on pilgrimage in southeast Europe and especially on pilgrimage practices in Eastern Orthodoxy. Particularly the ritual practices sacred places in contemporary Balkan societies religious folklore divine intervention stories miracle-working icons relics and reliquaries as part of the structure of pilgrimage are discussed.

The authors explore the context in which the Christian shrines in the Balkans are spaces where the ethnic and denominational patterns in pilgrimage are revealed openly on multiple levels; they delve into how the correlative effects between politics and religion are manifested. In this volume which is the result of a project initiated by the Balkan History Association the authors focus on theoretical analysis stressing the historical and contemporary behaviour performed by the Christian pilgrims and highlighting the fact that the motivations for going to the sacred places can vary from seeking and obtaining Divine help to leisure religious/faith tourism etc.

Johannes Elith Østrup (1867-1938) son of a Danish farmer philologist of Turkish and Semitic languages and later Vice Chancellor of Copenhagen University spent 1891-1893 travelling by horse around Syria Lebanon and Anatolia. Unlike most European travellers his language skills allowed him to chat with locals in cafés stay in people’s homes and travel with the Bedouin. A curious young man Østrup travelled with eyes ears and mind open to the unknown and recorded his journey in this lively travelogue Skiftende horizonter (1894). His writing offers a vivid account of his time in the region and dwells with equal interest on both the region’s broader political ethnic and religious struggles and the day-to-day concerns of those who lived there.

Now for the first time this text is available to English-speaking readers thanks to this translation by Cisca Spencer Østrup’s great granddaughter and a former Australian diplomat. With a foreword by Rubina Raja Professor of Classical Archaeology at Aarhus University together with Østrup’s own photographs and new maps this volume captures all the charm and enthusiasm of the original in bringing this nineteenth-century travelogue to a modern readership.

Plus vivaces que jamais les traditions musicales et dansées du Pays basque peuvent parfois donner l’impression d’une intemporalité qui aurait traversé les siècles. Or ici comme ailleurs les traditions ont une histoire et seule l’analyse du temps long permet de restituer l’épaisseur des permanences mutations emprunts qui émaillent l’histoire de la musique et des danses sur ce territoire. Ce livre s’attache à résoudre l’énigme du recours contemporain à la tradition en analysant l’historicité de la musique à danser et de ses usages sociaux. Des ménétriers rehaussant les corporations urbaines d’Ancien régime jusqu’aux usages sociopolitiques contemporains de la farce charivarique en passant par la relecture de la musique par le mouvement culturel basque au xix e siècle ce livre propose un voyage à la fois musical et sociohistorique qui bien au-delà du cas basque informe sur notre rapport sélectif aux héritages culturels.

Between 2002 and 2004 archaeological excavations took place on Powroźnicza Street in the city of Gdańsk Poland. Twelve burghers’ plots located in the centre of this former medieval metropolis were investigated and yielded a rich collection of archaeological finds among them ceramics and items of wood metal and glass from a period stretching from the fourteenth to the twentieth century. These finds are presented here for this first time in this richly illustrated bilingual volume published in both English and Polish which lays out a detailed catalogue of all the items together with a discussion of the site its settlement phases and its most significant discoveries.