Tracing the Tradition of Medieval Parochial Peace-Making

I presented my paper, “Tracing the Tradition of Medieval Parochial Peace-Making,” as part of a three-person session on medieval war and peace during the annual meeting of the Canadian Society of Medievalists. My paper questioned the assumption of earlier scholars about the importance of the parish priest in encouraging peace among his parishioners. It looked at the surviving instructions given to priests (manuals for confessors and episcopal statutes) and found few that insisted that priests demand that enmities be forgiven as part of penance. A theological tradition connecting peace-making to penance was found in the thirteenth century diocese of Salisbury, England. It could be connected to the eleventh-century instructions of German Bishop Burchard of Worms, and to his source, a ninth-century Carolingian Frank, Bishop Theodulf of Orleans. Nevertheless, all these sources betray an ambiguity towards the Gospel injunctions to make peace. This ambiguity can be linked to the influential interpretations of Augustine of Hippo in the early fifth century. At best, therefore, medieval Christians were encouraged to change their hearts towards their enemies as a preparation for forgiving them. Although parochial charity and concord remained an important ideal, nevertheless, the prescriptive literature did not closely associate penance with peace-making. These findings contribute to a current revision of historical thinking about the role of medieval clergy in conflict and conflict resolution, and efforts to understand peace-making in pre-modern and pre-state Europe more broadly.My paper questions a persistent paradigm in the history of Catholic confession that argues for a medieval shift, beginning with the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, from the reconciliation of community members towards greater emphasis on the reconciliation of individual sinners to God. The older tradition, it has been argued, demanded that sinners re-establish charity with their enemies before seeking forgiveness from God—especially as a prerequisite for Easter communion. This paper focuses on strongly-articulated theology of communal reconciliation that is closely associated with Diocese of Salisbury, especially in Bishop Richard Poore’s statutes and Thomas of Chobham’s Summa confessorum. However, a closer examination of these texts and their Ottonian, Carolingian and Patristic sources reveals that medieval instructions for confessors were ambiguous about the penitential reconciliation of penitents and that communal reconciliation was not universally demanded, even in the pre-Lateran IV era. It turns out, that, through the early and late Middle Ages, the literal force of Biblical injunctions to seek peace with one’s neighbour before making peace with God was tempered by Augustine’s spiritualizing interpretation: an inward, psychological preparedness to forgive or ask forgiveness was considered sufficient as reconciliation. This, no doubt, accounts for the lack of evidence for widespread penitential reconciliation that has often been considered characteristic of medieval Christianity. It also reveals that a concern for the psychological disposition of the penitent was not an innovation of the 16th century (John Bossy) let alone the 18th century (Foucault)

Museu secret. Llocs comuns de la crítica antinaturalista al 'Diari de Barcelona'

Cassany planteja genèricament com s'ha dut a terme el debat art-moral al llarg del segle XIX i tot seguit se situa en el darrer terç d'aquest segle per veure com aquestes qüestions generen una crítica de rebuig al realisme i al naturalisme. Concretament, se centrarà en la crítica de Miquel i Badia al 'Diario de Barcelona' com a representativa d'un nucli de crítics més general marcats per la ideologia conservadora de Milà i Fontanals

La protesta social de diciembre de 2001 en la Argentina

La protesta social que Argentina vivió el pasado diciembre concentró el repudio de la nación hacia el modelo económico vigente, originado en el agudo proceso de degradación paulatina de los derechos sociales de la población. La sostenibilidad de la democracia reclama urgente atención sobre tres cuestiones: la violencia política, la fragilidad institucional y los derechos sociales, que guardan una estrecha relación entre sí. De como se encare su solución dependerá la vida democrática regional en los próximos años

Dinàmica de l’acumulació temporal de sediment fi al llit del torrent de na Borges (Mallorca)

Aquest article avalua la magnitud i variabilitat espaciotemporal de l’acumulació temporal de sediment fi al torrent de na Borges (319 km2), Mallorca, amb l’objectiu d’elucidar les causes dels problemes de sedimentació i contribuir a la construcció d’un balanç integrat de sediments. L’índex de la resuspensió de sediment fi a partir de l’agitació de l’aigua i el llit varià espacialment i temporalment, oscil·lant entre 0 i 13 kg m-2, amb una mitjana de 2,4 kg m-2, mentre que l’emmagatzematge total fou de 515,2 t i l’específic de 20,6 t km-1. Aquests resultats foren comparats amb les exportacions de sediment en suspensió al llarg del torrent, i va resultar que les dinàmiques d’acumulació prevalgueren sobre les d’exportació per mor de les pèrdues per transmissió i la baixa energia condicionada per l’escàs pendent. Tot en un sistema fluvial amb baixa competència de transport com és na Borges, un riu mediterrani temporal on predominen les aportacions d’aigües subterrànies i afectat pels sistemes tradicionals de conservació dels sòls que limiten la transferència de sediments

Anger in Thomas of Ireland's Manipulus florum and in Five Texts for Preachers

The article questions the conventional classification of Thomas of Ireland's medieval Latin florilegium, the Manipulus florum, as a manual for common preaching by comparing its entry on anger with corresponding entries in five texts for preachers: William Peraldus's Summa de vitiis, the Distinctiones Mauritii, Gilbert of Tournai's Liber Pharetrae, Bartholomew of Pisa's De documenta antiquorum, and the Tractatus moralis de oculo by Peter of Limoges.  Drawing on traditional commonplaces, these texts for composing sermons consistently warn a broad audience against the dangers of wrath. The Manipulus florum provides a more nuanced analysis of the emotion and legitimizes the zealous anger of those authorized to correct. Thomas's entry on anger seems better suited for edifying students preparing for an ecclesiastical career involving the correction of others

Why say sorry: on the ambiguities of official apologies

In the last decades, government officials seem increasingly inclined to apologize for atrocities and injustices perpetuated in the past. In 2008, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologized in Parliament for laws and policies that inflicted "profound grief, suffering, and loss” to Aboriginal peoples. His successor, Julia Gillard, offered government apologies in 2013 for past policies that encouraged unwed mothers to give up their babies for adoption to married couples. In 2010, Hillary Clinton, the American Secretary of State, apologized to Guatemalans for a medical experiment conducted by the US Public Health Service in the 1940s, in which Guatemalan soldiers, prisoners, and people with mental disabilities had been injected with syphilis without their consent. These are just a few examples on the growing list of official remorse: more and more, government representatives take up apology as a tool to address historical wrongdoing. And with good reason: apologies can highlight "possibilities of peaceful coexistence” and remove obstacles to more productive relations among individuals and communities (Barkan 2006, p.7). They have the potential to rehabilitate individuals and restore social harmony (Tavuchis, 1961, p. 9), and they seem to be humane and efficient devices for curtailing conflict (Cohen, 2004, p. 177). [Continues.

Researching the use of force: The background to the international project

This article provides the background to an international project on use of force by the police that was carried out in eight countries. Force is often considered to be the defining characteristic of policing and much research has been conducted on the determinants, prevalence and control of the use of force, particularly in the United States. However, little work has looked at police officers’ own views on the use of force, in particular the way in which they justify it. Using a hypothetical encounter developed for this project, researchers in each country conducted focus groups with police officers in which they were encouraged to talk about the use of force. The results show interesting similarities and differences across countries and demonstrate the value of using this kind of research focus and methodology

Tsunami preparedness of coastal Sri Lankan schools

Over 230,000 people across the Indian Ocean lost their lives on December 26th , 2004, as the Boxing Day tsunami swept away entire coastal communities (Pomonis et al., 2006; Rossetto et al., 2007). The tsunami claimed 35,000 victims in Sri Lanka and inflicted a catastrophic blow to the education system. Overall, the tsunami affected over 200,000 students and 3,000 teachers. It destroyed and damaged 182 schools, and affected a further 287 schools, which served as temporary shelters for the hundreds of thousands made homeless (Bitter & Edirisinghe, 2013; The Education Rehabilitation Monitor, 2009). There remains a risk of another tsunamigenic earthquake either along the Sunda Arc, from Northern Andaman to Southern Sumatra, or along the Arakan and Makran seismic zones propagating a tsunami onto Sri Lankan shores (J. Wijetunge, 2010). The question for the highly exposed schools along the Sri Lankan coast is thus – are they prepared for such an eventuality? This paper uses insights from 25 semi-structured interviews with school principals to evaluate whether Sri Lankan schools are better prepared for a tsunami now than in 2004. The interviews reveal that several key measures have been adopted since 2004 but that fundamental gaps in school tsunami preparedness persist. As expressed by the school principals, an oncoming tsunami is the threat they are least prepared for

App educativa de programació HTML5

Treball de fi de grau - Curs 2021-2022Aquest treball de fi de grau mostra la creació i desenvolupament d’una aplicació Android per aprendre a programar en llenguatge HTML5, amb els objectius d’obtenir un coneixement base sobre aquest llenguatge, donar accessibilitat a l’aprenentatge Mlearning i fomentar el creixement de la informàtica. Per fer-ho, s’ha utilitzat el entorn de desenvolupament integrat oficial anomenat Android Studio en Java juntament amb el sistema de base de dades remot MongoDB. S’ha seguit una metodologia de desenvolupament de software àgil i al llarg del document, s’observen les eines, investigació, guies i tècniques que s’han utilitzat per duu a terme la aplicació