Nikolaus Gengenbach's Musica nova: Newe Singekunst ("New Music: New Art of Singing") is a school music textbook that was published in 1626 during Gengenbach's tenure as cantor of the Zeitz city schools. Gengenbach was one of the most progressive educators of the early seventeenth century, and in his textbook he utilized new methods for teaching musical skills. Gengenbach was also one of the first educators to point his students toward the new Italian or Italian-influenced composers, such as Viadana, Schein, and Schutz, for models, rather than looking back at the masters of an older generation. / Musica nova is divided into three sections: theoretical, in which the fundamental elements of music are explained; practical, which consists of a series of graduated practice exercises keyed to the material in the first section; and terminological, which is a glossary of Greek, Latin, and Italian musical terms. Progressive features of the treatise include Gengenbach's advocacy of two new solmization methods, bobization and bebization, and his use of octave equivalence to teach intervals larger than the sixth. / The dissertation is a complete translation of Gengenbach's work, along with a transcription of the original text into modern German characters. The commentary describes Gengenbach's career as a cantor and educator, and examines his pedagogical methodology as revealed in Musica nova. Other chapters discuss bobization and bebization, Musica nova's place in the history of Protestant school music texts, and the musical content of the treatise. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-08, Section: A, page: 2933. / Major Professor: Jeffrey Kite-Powell. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1995.

This dissertation focuses on the secular painting of Photis Kontoglou (1895-1965). Although Kontoglou is best known for leading a revival of Byzantine religious painting, he also produced a number of secular paintings which were rendered in the style of religious icons. In the course of my study, I suggest that these "secular icons" can only be understood by exploring his conception of the sacred. I show that the sacred for Kontoglou was not limited to the life of the Greek Orthodox Church but included a Romantic conception of Greek nationalism grounded in folk culture. I argue that Kontoglou's view of the sacred was broad enough to encompass numerous instances of pre-modern life and society, many of which were not confined to the Greek nation. The dissertation is organized in the following way. In Chapter 1, I explore the meaning of the term 'icon' within the theoretical framework of discussions about the categories of 'sacred' and 'secular,' especially those of Mircea Eliade. In the next section, I examine the wider context out of which Kontoglou's artistic views took shape. Chapter 3 explores Kontoglou's theory of Greek national continuity. Chapter 4 focuses on Kontoglou's conception of icon painting. Finally, Chapter 5 includes an analysis of five of Kontoglou's so-called 'secular icons' and seeks to account for the resemblance of these works to conventional religious icons.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of History, 2006. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-04, Section: A, page: 1490. Adviser: James D. Le Sueur. "Title from dissertation home page (viewed March 22, 2007)."

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Brown University, 2008. / Vita. Advisor: Tim Harris. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 316-346).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Brown University, 2008. / Vita. Advisor : Tim Harris. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 286-310).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Brown University, 2008. / Vita. Advisor : Tim Harris.

This dissertation considers the relationship between religious policy and liberal reform in Italy after the Congress of Vienna in 1815 by examining how the royal and civic administrations in the newly restored kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont grappled with the enforcement of religious policies governing the Jewish corporate community in the 1820s. It argues that modern state formation in Restoration Piedmont was the product of struggles between the state and various corporate interests over the direction and enforcement of Jewish policies designed to expropriate Jewish-owned properties. The failure to implement Jewish policies, including among other laws, prohibitions against property ownership and enforced ghettoization, resulted in as series of legislative debates that eventually culminated in Jewish emancipation by 1848. First, this study considers negotiations between the papacy and the Savoyard state over the forced sale of Jewish-owned property and the secularization of formerly ecclesiastical properties. Related issues discussed include debates surrounding the forced baptism and kidnapping of Jewish children in Genoa, revealing ways in which the church attempted to assert its power in the neo-absolutist state. Second, this dissertation examines processes involved in state-directed ghettoization, demonstrating that "ghetto" policies served as a means to expand Jewish real estate investment in Piedmont rather than confine and restrict Jewish business activities. Jewish family firms emerge as allies of the state as revealed in a case study of the Jewish silk manufacturing firm of David Levi e figli. Evidence relating to the study Jewish-Christian relations in Piedmont include debates over the hiring of female Christian servants in the ghetto and Christian tenants leasing from Jewish landlords suggest that the revival of ancien regime Jewish laws were inapplicable. In the end, by exploring specific patterns within the Jewish legal appeal process and debates that ensued, these research findings provide a new way of modelling the constitutional and institutional transformations that emerged in the Savoyard state as it struggled to establish hegemony in the decades following French Imperial rule.

This study investigates the relationship between apocalypticism, criticism of the church and ecclesiastical reform at the beginning of the sixteenth century. It focuses on Berthold Purstinger (1465-1543), bishop of Chiemsee (reg. 1508-1526), and forms a commentary on his apocalyptic treatise Onus ecclesiae (1519, 1524, 1531), about a demon-infested world in perilous times. Apocalypticism was more than a theological doctrine about the end of the world. It was a terrifying reality, the vestiges of which appeared in monstrous births, blood-red comets and horrific fires. Historians are only beginning to recognize the significance of apocalyptic thinking in late-medieval and early-modern Europe. This study challenges the assumption that apocalypticism grew deepest on the margins of society among radical sectarians. Purstinger was a conservative theologian and a respected bishop, at home in the heart of the church yet convinced of his place in the last days. Secondly, it shows that Purstinger's idea of reform was different from its late-medieval antecedents. He did not think of reform as the dawning of a "new era" before the end of time, nor as the healthy transformation of Christendom "in head and members." For Purstinger, reform and apocalypse were one an the same. He awaited the return of Christ, who, at the end of time, would reform the militant church as the triumphant church. Thirdly, this dissertation argues that anticlericalism in Purstinger's apocalyptic world was a preparation for reform, not only, as hitherto conceived, a manifestation of discontent that sparked reform efforts in reaction. Purstinger criticized the world because Christ was coming to judge it, and because God directed the faithful during the last days to criticize the abysmal lapse. The watchword admonition on the title-page of Onus ecclesiae is the bellicose statement from Ezekiel: "Go make war ... and start at my sanctuary" (Ezek. 9:5). That is to say, on the eve of the apocalypse, anticlericalism fed in part on God's injunction to the forerunners of Christ. Their criticism was a prelude to judgment--to the reformatio Christi.

This dissertation considers the social memories of Maltese-origin pieds-noirs, or former colonists of Algeria. Over half of the French colonists of Algeria came to the colony from Spain, Italy, or Malta, among other European countries, during the nineteenth century. Naturalized as French citizens, they "returned" primarily to France at Algerian decolonization in 1962. As "liminal colonists," interstitially situated between colonized and colonist, the Maltese were subject to considerable discrimination in the colony, a discrimination which has had lasting repercussions and which is revealed in the Maltese social memory today. This project was based on nineteen months of ethnographic research conducted among elderly pieds-noirs of Maltese origin, now living in southern France, and archival research on colonial Algerian history. From these two distinct methods, I developed two versions of the Maltese experiences in colonial Algeria: that recorded in archival sources, and that reported in conversations about the past. These two versions of the past were then contrasted and compared. Through this method, I have uncovered what I call "domains" in Maltese social memory. These include the carefully silenced domain of the French-Algerian war; the ambivalent and compound domain concerning family histories and assimilation to French culture, often summarized through the employment of a version of the melting-pot metaphor; the nostalgic iteration of the colonial past; and the related and open-ended domain of memories of difficult or painful encounters with the Metropolitan French.

The British invasion and occupation of Egypt in 1882 has long been a subject of interest for British Empire and Middle Eastern historians. This action by the Gladstone government is considered central to any discussion of the British in the Middle East and North Africa. As a result, its causes and major personalities have been examined in detail and discussed at length. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (1840-1922), however, has generally been overlooked, ignored, or dismissed as inconsequential by historians of these events. While words like "naive," "gadfly," "romantic" and other less charitable terms have been used by historians and others to characterize him, it is the contention of this paper that Blunt's attempts to mediate the crisis did have an impact on the course of events. Moreover, recent research, in particular that of Alexander Scholch in his Egypt for the Egyptians! The Socio-Political Crisis in Egypt 1878-82 , has shown that Blunt's The Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt: Being a Personal Narrative of Events is a generally reliable and accurate resource concerning what took place in Cairo and London in 1882. Furthermore, Blunt was the victim of a government coverup aided and abetted by a jingoist London press at the time. Thus, his cause was considered treasonous in some quarters and his integrity questioned. The subsequent publication of the memoirs of others involved in the events supported the government's story (and their own involvement) only added to the negative perception of Blunt. As a result, his attempts to bring about a peaceful resolution of the Egyptian crisis in 1882 have generally been ignored by historians and Blunt considered to be of little consequence in the outcome of the entire episode. This paper will show that this attitude towards Blunt is unwarranted and unjustified. Furthermore, his attempts to mediate the crisis were a factor in the British invasion and occupation of Egypt. Finally, it will show that omission of Blunt and his activities, as well as his Secret History as a source, in any discussion of the British invasion and occupation of Egypt in 1882 makes that work incomplete.