Suchergebnisse

This study analyzes the ways in which a variety of cultural manifestations were the necessary preconditions for (religious) policy and power in the Rome of Urban VIII (1623-1644). Precisely their interaction created what we now call 'Baroque Culture'.

From the late 15th until the late 18th century, 15 Italian men shared a particular occupational life course, by becoming prime minister as well as cardinal to the Church of Rome. Some became prime minister after having been cardinal; others had a reversed career of becoming prime cardinal after having been prime minister. It is obvious that personal experiences will have influenced the policies they set out, especially when a prime minister had been a cardinal before. But, on the other hand, the impersonal cultural life script of being a cardinal or being a prime minister may have predominated personal inclinations.

Perhaps, the story of Europe's views of Asia should begin with the question of when the term 'Asia', 'Açu', was introduced into what one must call the European perspective of the world. Meaning the 'sunrising' in its original, Assyrian usage, it always seems to have denoted that part of the world which lay to the East. Once the Greek had adopted it to identify those lands which, precisely because they were threatening and near, they wanted to denote as 'not theirs', it became part of the dichotomy in which Europe was created as the geographical context for Greek civilisation, Hellas, while Asia -jealously viewed and, consequently, negatively judged - was the territory of the other, the enemy. From that time onwards, 'Europe' was part of the vocabulary the peoples of the Mediterranean used to structure the shores of their sea geographically.

L'influence réelle de l'image religieuse est un phénomène qui n'est plus aisément accepté et compris. Même les historiens de l'art spécialistes de l'art religieux des premiers temps, le plus grand comme le mineur, sont souvent déroutés quand ils essaient de traduire la fonction et la signification véritables des fresques, peintures et sculptures qui ornaient fréquemment les murs des chapelles et des églises de toute la chrétienté. Il semble que l'on ait perdu la clé de la mentalité qui investissait les objets de cette époque — forme et contenu — d'une fonction, d'un message et par conséquent d'une influence et d'un pouvoir. Pour comprendre cette influence, il faut admettre que ce langage soit à la fois verbal et visuel.