This book examines the historical context of the earliest Christian martyrs, and anchors their grisly and often willful self-sacrifice to the everyday life and outlook of the cities (mostly Greek) of the Roman empire. By exploring the remains of contemporary documents of martyrdoms in the centuries before Constantine, it provides a historical explanation of why martyrdom occurred when and as it did, and thereby tries to expose the fundamental assumptions of a radical new form of religious and political dissidence that has been a powerful influence down to our own times.
This book examines the historical context of the earliest Christian martyrs, and anchors their grisly and often willful self-sacrifice to the everyday...
Peter Burke explores major themes in the social and cultural history of the languages spoken or written in Europe between the invention of printing and the French Revolution. One theme is the relation between languages and communities and the place of language as a way of identifying others, as well as a symbol of one's own identity. A second, linked theme is that of competition: between Latin and the vernaculars, different vernaculars, dominant and subordinate, and different varieties of the same vernacular.
Peter Burke explores major themes in the social and cultural history of the languages spoken or written in Europe between the invention of printing an...
Peter Burke explores major themes in the social and cultural history of the languages spoken or written in Europe between the invention of printing and the French Revolution. One theme is the relation between languages and communities and the place of language as a way of identifying others, as well as a symbol of one's own identity. A second, linked theme is that of competition: between Latin and the vernaculars, different vernaculars, dominant and subordinate, and different varieties of the same vernacular.
Peter Burke explores major themes in the social and cultural history of the languages spoken or written in Europe between the invention of printing an...
This book is the first to investigate the problems that committed Catholics allegedly faced if they sought careers in state employment under the Third Republic in France. Using ministerial, Masonic, and ecclesiastical archives, including Vatican papers hitherto unused, it examines the factors underlying these discriminatory attitudes--notably the claims of Catholic involvement in the right-wing subversive activities of the late 1890s--while later chapters explore the degree to which these attitudes evaporated under later regimes, despite the traumas of the Vichy years.
This book is the first to investigate the problems that committed Catholics allegedly faced if they sought careers in state employment under the Third...