Republished in 1949, Jacob Burckhardt’s brilliant study, first published in Germany in 1852, has survived all its critics and presents today perhaps a more intelligible and a more valid picture of events, their nexus, and their relevance than any later study. This English version is apt to the moment. No epoch of remote history can be so relevant to modern interests as the period of transition between the ancient and the medieval world, when a familiar order of things visibly died and was supplanted by a new. Other transitions become apparent only in retrospect; that of the age of Constantine, like our own, was patent to contemporaries. Old institutions, in the sphere of culture as of government, had grown senile; economic balances were altered; peoples hitherto on the peripheries of civilization demanded attention, and a new and revolutionary social doctrine with an enormous emotional appeal was spread abroad by men with a religious zeal for a new and authoritarian cosmopolitanism and with a religious certainty that their end justified their means. For us, contemporary developments have made the analogy inescapable, but Jacob Burckhardt’s insight led him to a singularly clear apprehension of the meaning of the transition almost a century ago, and the analogy implicit in his book is the more impressive as it was unpremeditated.
The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine offers students a comprehensive one-volume survey of this pivotal emperor and his times. Richly illustrated and designed as a readable survey accessible to all audiences, it also achieves a level of scholarly sophistication and a freshness of interpretation that will be welcomed by the experts. The volume is divided into five sections that examine political history, religion, social and economic history, art, and foreign relations during the reign of Constantine, who steered the Roman Empire on a course parallel with his own personal development.
In a lively challenge to mainstream history, Michael Parenti does battle with a number of mass-marketed historical myths. He shows how history's victors distort and suppress the documentary record in order to perpetuate their power and privilege. And he demonstrates how historians are influenced by the professional and class environment in which they work. Pursuing themes ranging from antiquity to modern times, from the Inquisition and Joan of Arc to the anti-labor bias of present-day history books, History as Mystery demonstrates how past and present can inform each other and how history can be a truly exciting and engaging subject. "Michael Parenti, always provocative and eloquent, gives us a lively as well as valuable critique of orthodoxy posing as ‘history.’"—Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States "Deserves to become an instant classic." —Bertell Ollman, author of Dialectical Investigations Those who keep secret the past, and lie about it, condemn us to repeat it. Michael Parenti unveils the history of falsified history, from the early Christian church to the present: a fascinating, darkly revelatory tale." —Daniel Ellsberg, author of The Pentagon Papers "Solid if surely controversial stuff."—Kirkus Michael Parenti, PhD Yale, is an internationally known author and lecturer. He is one of the nation's leadiing progressive political analysts. He is the author of over 275 published articles and twenty books, including Against Empire, Dirty Truths, and Blackshirts and Reds. His writings are published in popular periodicals, scholarly journals, and his op-ed pieces have been in leading newspapers such as the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. His informative and entertaining books and talks have reached a wide range of audiences in North America and abroad.
Not much has happened in the Roman Empire since 1994 that required the first edition to be updated, but Bunson, a prolific reference and history author, has revised it, incorporated new findings and thinking, and changed the dating style to C.E. (Common Era) and B.C.E. (Before Common Era). For the 500 years from Julius Caesar and the Gallic Wars in 59-51 B.C.E. to the fall of the empire in the west in 476 C.E, he discusses personalities, terms, sites, and events. There is very little cross-referencing.
Contrary to his usual portrayal as a disinterested aesthete, Swiss cultural historian Jacob Burckhardt is characterised as an original social and political thinker in Richard Sigurdson's timely book Jacob Burckhardt's Social and Political Thought. Burckhardt's thinking on a number of ideas - including the relationship between the individual and the mass, the tension between the ideals of equality and human excellence, and the role of the intellectual in the modern state - is the subject of insightful analysis, thus providing a rare investigation into Burckhardt's culture-critique of the nineteenth century. Other important aspects of Burckhardt's life that undoubtedly influenced both his historical and political thought, such as his ambiguous relationship with Friedrich Nietzsche, are carefully scrutinised in this groundbreaking analysis of the Swiss historian. Known primarily as an historian, Burckhardt's historical writings provide not only a powerful critique of his own times, but also a broad ranging political philosophy that can be placed within the larger German tradition of evaluating politics according to the values and standards of art and culture. Although Burckhardt himself expressed his scepticism towards general theories and claimed to be devoid of a personal philosophical position, through an examination of his works Sigurdson argues that both implicit and explicit political reflections and theories are recognisable.
Global Christianity has been experiencing an unprecedented historical transition from the West to the non-Western world. The leadership of global Christianity has taken on a new face since the twentieth century. Christendom in Europe and America has experienced a great decline while there has been a rise in Majority World Christianity. Churches in the Global South have given their voices to global Christianity through their leadership, world mission movements, and theology. The phenomenal church growth has risen from the Pentecostal and Charismatic movement. Pentecostalism has become the dominant force in global Christianity today. The Rise of the Global South examines the significance this shift has had on global Christianity by going through the history of Christianity in the West and the causes of the shift.
This sharp, engaging biography details the life and achievements of Constantine the Great who unified the Roman Empire, adopted Christianity as its official religion, and transferred the capital of the Empire from Rome to Constantinople.
In the minds of many Christians today, the church is not holy; it is difficult. Yet J. Alexander Sider argues that it is precisely when the church acknowledges its many faults and frailties when it patiently confronts its own capacity to betray the gospel that its true holiness is made manifest. In To See History Doxologically Sider probingly examines John Howard Yoder s eschatology and ecclesiology in conversation with Oliver O Donovan, Ernst Troeltsch, Miroslav Volf, and others. Sider shows how Yoder s thought redefines the church s holiness not as something earned or possessed by its own virtue but as the ceaseless and ever-new gift of God throughout all time.