A Retrieved Reformation

Power and privilege: How and why is a social group represented in a particular way? Oscar Wilde’s Salome, published in French in 1893 and translated to English the following year, is a biblical one-act play that revolves around the central themes of gender roles, institutionalized misogyny, as well as the ‘the gaze’ and its effect. Being a somewhat controversial play, it was denied the right to be staged in Britain until 1931 (Price & Tydeman, 1) as it was illegal to depict biblical figures in…

The Renaissance is a phenomenon which is considered to be the beginning of the modern age. The literal meaning of the word is “Re-birth”, which is exactly what it was. It was a period of spiritual and cultural awakening for the whole of Middle East. It stretched over three centuries, from the 14th to the 17th. It is thought to have originated in Florence, Italy at the end of the 13th century but quickly spread to the whole of Europe. What started out as a cultural movement soon transformed into…

The Reformations that produced the Lutheran, Calvinist, Catholics, English and Anabaptists faiths was not only brought upon a change in doctrine, but also a change in the role of secular authority. Originally, it was the Roman Catholic Church, specifically the Pope, which controlled the lives of the people. However, Luther’s reform set the path for change. As people separated from the church, they developed the roles they believed the secular authorities should have in religious matters. In the…

Res Publica Christiana: The Latin phrase for the Christianity during the middle ages, combining the ideas of public affairs and Christianity, the meaning of Christendom. Through the word Res Publica Christiana we get an excellent insight of the Christian world during the middle ages. After the Roman Empire collapse the only things left was the catholic church which took much control over the different counties and towns throughout the year. Two of the major figures who took over religions and…

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s writing is consistently noted and acclaimed, especially for his recurring themes that assume a prevalent role in the downfall of his ancestral religion, Puritanism. Puritans were a religious group during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries who, after oppression from the King of England, sought to reform the Church of England from its Catholic traditions. Nathaniel Hawthorne was born to a Puritan family in 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts. From his experiences, Hawthorne…

Populorum Progressio is an encyclical written by Pope Paul VI in 1967. The title of this encyclical means “One the Development of People”. In this encyclical, Pope Paul VI highlights urgent problems that must be dealt within weaker, undeveloped nations. The injustices that Pope Paul VI addresses include widespread hunger, poverty, disease and ignorance. Populorum Progressio is split into two sections; humankind's complete development and humankind’s common development. The development progress…

In the early 17th century names like Francois Viete and Bartholomeo Pitiscus were still ringing through the mathematical community’s ears. Viete had blown everyone away with his book Canon Mathematicus in 1579. The book contained a collection of trigonometric formulas and tables. Viete was also responsible for trisecting an angle and the construction of the regular pentagon. Bartholomeo Pitiscus had coined the term trigonometry in the title of his 1595 book, Trigonometria. This book was split…

Ghostology has a long and vivid history. Ghosts were first heard of in the sixteenth century until now. The word “ghost” originated from an ancient term, “gast”, in the evolved modern German language. As time went on, “ghost” became a significant for the disembodied spirit of a deceased person. The people of the ancient time where culturally brought with the understanding that the soul of a human's being survived bodily death and deserved a kind of sustenance in the afterlife based on the kind…

planning to break away from the pope in Rome and the Catholic church. Dinteville had little to do in English court of Henry VIII other than wait for the pregnant Anne Boleyn to marry and become queen of England, which brought about the English Reformation in following year. In the spring of 1533, when spirits were low, Dinteville’s friend Georges de Selve, a bishop and ambassador who had represented France to the Holy Roman Empire, came to visit him. Dinteville commissioned the German and Swiss…

1. Why has it been difficult to research the earliest popular music? Answer- It has been difficult to research the earliest popular music because, many centuries ago, music was unclear and poorly documented. Additionally, it wasn’t even until the sixteenth century that people became literate enough to document music. However, most literate people of the time were clergy men and students of universities run by the church, so as a result, the vast majority of recorded music was religious.…