This paper explores the framing of Christianity through Old Norse religion via material culture as exhibited by the iconography of the façade of the stave church at Urnes, Lustrafjord, Norway. This paper addresses fluidity between belief systems while considering the geographical origins of the façade’s carvers, the performativity of the structure’s imagery in relation to its proximity from the hamlet at Urnes, Eddic poetry, and the inherently religious social practices of Old Norse religion. It suggests that although the carvings have been interpreted as Christian imagery that is executed in a Viking Age or Late Iron Age style, they are more believably read as pagan in content. This is explored through analysis of the interoperability of Christianity and Old Norse religion during the early years of Norwegian conversion.

Orientador: Luiz Carlos da Silva Dantas / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-04T17:50:28Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Macario_PaulaGomes_M.pdf: 1318158 bytes, checksum: 70d5b81d80da11159db1418e6069b098 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2005 / Résumé: L¿objetive de cet travail est identifier, recueillir et commenter une série de textes que forment une tendance particulier devant le conjoint de la producion littéraire brésiliene des premiers decades du vingtième siècle. Cette tendance se definit pour la utilisation de la thématique de la antiguité grecque e du paganisme pour exprimer idées de libéralisation morale. Idées que se mettait d¿accord avec le moment de transformation pour que passait une société en procés de modernisation. Pour fair cette lecture il a été nécessaire analyser come l¿universe de la antiguité grecque represéntait une référence symbolique de excellence esthétique et, en même temps, de une sensualité eloigné de la notion chétiene de péché. Aborder, puis, la notion historique de une société que s¿abouchait avec nouveaus et modernes usages, que donnaient visibilité a le cops. Finalement considérer come ces références ont été rassemblé pour un groupe de auteurs pour produire une littérature de face ornemental et sensuel, avec un sens de libéralisation / Resumo: O objetivo do trabalho é identificar, reunir e comentar textos que configurem uma tendência literária particular no panorama da literatura brasileira do início do vigésimo século. Tendência que se define pela utilização da temática da Grécia antiga e do paganismo como campo de explanação de ideais de liberalidade moral. Ideais que condiziam com o momento de transformação vivido por uma sociedade em processo de modernização. Para tanto coube analisar de que maneira o universo da antiguidade e do paganismo representara uma referência simbólica de tradicional sublimidade estética e, ao mesmo tempo, de uma sensualidade afastada da noção cristã de pecado. Abordar em seguida a noção histórica de uma sociedade em relação com novos e modernos hábitos, que conferiam destaque à corporalidade. E, por fim, considerar de que maneira tais referências foram reunidas e apropriadas por uma série de autores na construção de uma literatura hedonista e sensualizada, de feições ornamentais e sentido moralmente libertário / Mestrado / Literatura Brasileira / Mestre em Teoria e História Literária

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Purification, which involves ceremonial acts or customs employed to gain purity in order td create sacred spaces, represents a vital aspect of religious practice both historically and cross-culturally (Cunningham 2003.(1988]:48). Preparations for passing into sacred spaces of worship are important elements of ritual life for nearly all faith communities. Mt thesis has two important research goals: (1) to examine the purification practices of contemporary Paganism; and, (2) analyze the degree to which contemporary Pagans have adapted a syncretic approach to these cleansing rituals. With regards to the former goal, I address the following three questions: what is the significance of religious purification rituals historically and cross-culturally?; why is purification especially important to contemporary Pagans?; and how have different forms of Paganism varied in their purifying methods? With regards to the latter research goal, I critically review diverse cultural traditions and belief systems variously integrated into contemporary Pagan practices of purification. The influence of Native American, European, and other Old and New World traditions and techniques are all considered in the context of this thesis. Taken as a whole, this type of overview is significant as the scholarly literature on contemporary Paganism and Pagan purification rituals remains sketchy and incomplete at this stage.

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Review of Anthony F. D’Elia. Pagan Virtue in a Christian World: Sigismondo Malatesta and the Italian Renaissance. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016. x + 355 pp. $39.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-674-08851-1.

This essay presents the result of a quantitative study made among contemporary pagans in Sweden. The study, which is based on an Internet survey, examines which types of pagan practices that are most common and what kind of troubles pagan faith could cause in the practitioners daily life. The study also examines whether the historical tradition and the archaeological facts behind a contemporary pagan movement serves as a pattern or an inspiration for the practitioners way of leading their lives or performing rituals. It also examines the correlation between the participants sex and their pagan tradition. The study shows that a vast majority of the 132 participants claimed to belong to an Old Norse tradition, but also believed in different beings of nature and nature religion. A majority of the participants viewed historical and archaeological facts with a connection to their faith more as an inspiration to their religious practices than actual religious rules.

of the paper The goal of the submitted work is to compare extensively the first hagiographical concerning the process of Christianization in the Central Europe. By paralleling these texts across the national rounds and comparing their image with the current state of the historical research the author tries to understand the role of legend in the Christianization and in particular their possible use as a source for this period. The hagiographical image of paganism, the baptism of the state units, of the ruler and the usual way of the institutional spread of the faith with regard to the image of the lower social classes in the process are all examined in the thesis. Further, attention is paid to the coherence of the Central-European area observable in the typology and the content of examined hagiography.

O objeto de investigação deste trabalho é a atuação dos missionários jesuítas junto aos reinos do Congo e de Angola durante a segunda metade do século XVI. A hipótese metodológica é que o conceito de mediação cultural (tal qual proposto por Paula Montero) pode ser útil para a leitura da documentação em questão. Dessa maneira, procura-se entrever como a atuação dos jesuítas na África Centro-Ocidental compreendeu um esforço de dupla tradução. Por um lado, os jesuítas tiveram de traduzir o referencial das missões no Congo e em Angola para o destinatário ocidental de suas cartas, valendo-se da dicotomia entre religião e civilização para justificar a suposta necessidade de aqueles povos serem sujeitos a um reto poder secular antes de poderem ser evangelizados. Por outro lado, os jesuítas também procuraram verter o que seria a religião cristã para seus interlocutores locais: argumenta-se aqui que os missionários cristãos valeram-se de uma estratégica sobreposição ortoprática com os feiticeiros do Congo e de Angola para não serem insignificantes naquele contexto. Busca-se, por fim, demonstrar que esse percurso na leitura das fontes resulta em uma definição histórico-comparativa para a religião do Congo e de Angola, próxima ao gênio do paganismo descrito por Marc Augé. / The object of this investigation are the Jesuit missions in the kingdoms of Congo and Angola during the second half of the 16th century. I argue these missionaries can be conceptually understood as mediators (as proposed by Paula Montero). Thus, I try to demonstrate how their missions comprehended a double effort of translation. On the one hand, the Jesuits had to translate the local reality to their peers in Europe. According to this perspective, the people from Congo and Angola first had to be subjected by a proper civil power in order to be converted to Christianity afterwards. On the other hand, the Jesuits also tried to translate the Christian religion to their local interlocutors. Not to be insignificant in that context, I argue the missionaries had to strategically face and be confused with the local witches. In conclusion, this reading of the sources results in a historical and comparative definition for the religion of Congo and Angola, as the characterization of the genie of paganism (as proposed by Marc Augé).

Denna text tar sin utgångspunkt i frågan om moralisk pluralism i dagens Sverige är möjlig. Forskning visar på att en grupp präglad av mångfald kan drabbas av samarbetssvårigheter, men det motsatta är inte garant för ett gott resultat. Enligt Fredrik Gregorius anpassar sig religiösa minoriteter ofta till det omgivande samhällets ide om etik och moral. Denna text undersöker om det finns något som skulle kunna benämnas hednisk etik i Samfundet Forn Seds egen tidning. Källmaterialet består av ett flertal artiklar från #20 respektive #35-36. De teoretiska begrepp som använts är antropocentrism samt universalism, vilka härrör från judisk och kristen etisk idétradition. Materialet har studerats med en metod för argumentationsanalys framtagen av Stephen Toulmin, vilken lämpar sig väl för att lyfta fram implicita antaganden om exempelvis människan. Det huvudsakliga resultatet pekar på att det finns minst två olika typer av hednisk etik en värdeontologisk och en dygdetisk. Båda antas ha sin grund i en föreställning om förnuft och därmed betraktas som universella värden/dygder. Naturen antas dock ha värde och rättigheter oberoende av människan i och med sin helighet, vilket innebär att exempelvis värden som frihet begränsas av naturens existensberättigande. Antropocentrismen är således inte lika framträdande som inom kristendomen och judendomen, men det finns andra beröringspunkter såsom en föreställning om en naturlig lag och att etiken är förnuftsbaserad, dessa likheter sammanfaller dock inte med samtliga judiska/kristna traditioner. / This paper starts with the question whether moral pluralism is possible in Sweden or not. Research shows that a group characterized by diversity is subjected to difficulties in cooperation, but the opposite is not a guarantee for a good result. According to Fredrick Gregorius, religious minorities often adapt to the surrounding societies' idea of ethics and moral. This text investigates if there is something that can be called pagan ethics in the community Forn Seds own newspaper. The source material consists of several articles from #20 and #35-36. The theoretical concepts that have been used are anthropocentrism and universalism, which is derived from Jewish and Christian ethical traditions. The material has been studied with a method of analysis of argumentation formed by Stephan Toulmin, which is suitable for highlighting implicit assumptions. The main result shows that there are at least two different types of pagan ethics, a value ontological and a virtuous theory. Both are assumed to have their foundation in the notion of reason and thus are regarded as universal values/virtues. However, nature is believed to have values and rights independent of humans because of nature's sanctity, which means that values for example, such as freedom, is limited because of the rights of nature to exist. Anthropocentrism is not as prominent as in Christianity and Judaism, but there are points of reference such as a notion of a natural law and that ethics is based on reason, these similarities, however, do not coincide with all Jewish/Christian traditions. Keywords