Papal power and protection in the Shebet Yehudah

The sixteenth-century Shebet Yehudah is an account of the persecutions of Jews in various countries and epochs, including their expulsion from Spain in the fifteenth century. It is not a medieval text and was written long after many of the events it describes. Yet although it cannot give us a contemporary medieval standpoint, it provides important insights into how later Jewish writers perceived Jewish–papal relations in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. Although the extent to which Jewish communities came into contact either with the papacy as an institution or the actions of individual popes varied immensely, it is through analysis of Hebrew works such as the Shebet Yehudah that we are able to piece together a certain understanding of Jewish ideas about the medieval papacy as an institution and the policies of individual popes. This article argues that Jews knew only too well that papal protection was not unlimited, but always carefully circumscribed in accordance with Christian theology. It is hoped that it will be a scholarly contribution to our growing understanding of Jewish ideas about the papacy's spiritual and temporal power and authority in the Later Middle Ages and how this impacted on Jewish communities throughout medieval Europe.

The lay of the trilobite: rereading May Kendall

The impact of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection on the culture of late Victorian England and on the development of Western thought at large is at once widely acknowledged and hotly contested. In this essay, I revisit the question of what difference an understanding of Darwin's ideas, their reception and their afterlife within evolutionary biology makes to how we read Victorian poetry. I suggest that there are three distinct ways of approaching poetry after Darwin. The first is to examine poems in their own cultural context, considering how they respond to the scientific discourses of their time in the light of internal and external evidence as to the specific sources of each poet's knowledge of those discourses. The second is to ground an interpretative framework in Darwinism's insights into human biology itself. The third is to explore how a given poem's responses to the philosophical issues raised by Darwin's thinking, including questions of ethics and theology, give its readers a possible model for their own responses to the same concerns today. I suggest too that the limitations of each approach may be best overcome by bringing them together. I go on to explore the potential of the first and third approaches through a reading of May Kendall's poem 'The Lay of the Trilobite' in a series of different contexts, from its first appearance in 'Punch', through her first collection Dreams to Sell, to her essays on Christian ethics from the 1880s and 1890s

Theology and politics in Richard Hooker's thought

Although Richard Hooker’s private attitudes were clericalist and authoritarian, his constitutional theory subordinated clergymen to laymen and monarchy to parliamentary statute. This article explains why his political ideas were nonetheless appropriate to his presumed religious purposes. It notes a very intimate connection between his teleological conception of a law and his hostility towards conventional high Calvinist ideas about predestination. The most significant anomaly within his broadly Aristotelian world-view was his belief that politics is nothing but a means to cope with sin. This too can be linked to his religious ends, but it creates an ambiguity that made his doctrines usable by Locke.

Christian Gottlob Heyne and the changing fortunes of the commentary in the age of Altertumswissenschaft

This chapter discusses the pedagogic and scholarly priorities that informed Heyne’s commentaries on Tibullus (1755), Virgil (1767-75) and Homer (1802), as well as their initial critical reception. Like those of his teachers, Gesner and Ernesti, Heyne’s works eschew detailed textual scholarship in favour of aesthetic and historicizing appreciation of literary works as wholes. Their formal innovations – most notably the relegation of advanced philological discussions to endnotes and the inclusion of excursuses on significant historical and cultural questions – are an attempt to tailor a traditional format to the demands of an Enlightened age and the cultural-historical interests of the new Altertumswissenschaft. The chapter discusses their contrasting critical receptions in order to raise questions about the viability of Heyne’s endeavours to make a traditional medium fit new concerns.

Winckelmann in the perspective of Altertumswissenschaft: Christian Gottlob Heyne and Friedrich August Wolf

Winckelmann's writings hold an interest for modern classical studies which is not restricted to the subfield of classical archaeology. Considered in terms of methodology, his writings dramatise problems and questions which attend any attempt to provide a comprehensive account of ancient culture and society. The Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums provided an influential model of what such a reconstruction might look like in a period when classical philology was undergoing a significant reconfiguration as „Alterthums-Wissenschaft" at the hands of scholars such as Christian Gottlob Heyne and Friedrich August Wolf. Investigation of their critical responses to Winckelmann’s works aims to contribute to understanding both of the early reception of his works and of questions which are still relevant today. Im Rahmen der modernen Altertumswissenschaften kommt den Werken Winckelmanns eine Bedeutung zu, die nicht auf den Bereich der Klassischen Archäologie beschränkt ist. Methodologisch betrachtet, dramatisieren seine Schriften Probleme und Fragen, die jedem Versuch einer umfassenden, erklärenden Rekonstruktion der antiken Kultur und Gesellschaft zugrunde liegen. Die Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums hat ein einflussreiches Modell dafür geliefert, was eine solche Rekonstruktion in einer Zeit leisten konnte, in der die klassische Philologie einer erheblichen Umstrukturierung als „Alterthums-Wissenschaft“ durch Gelehrte wie Christian Gottlob Heyne und Friedrich August Wolf unterzogen wurde. Die vorliegende Untersuchung ihrer kritischen Reaktionen auf Winckelmanns Schriften soll dazu beitragen, sowohl die frühe Rezeption seines Werkes als auch Fragestellungen, die heute noch aktuell sind, besser zu verstehen.

Students’ perception of privacy risks in using social networking sites for learning: a study of Uganda Christian University

Although social networking sites (SNSs) present a great deal of opportunities to support learning, the privacy risk is perceived by learners as a friction point that affects their full use for learning. Privacy risks in SNSs can be divided into risks that are posed by the SNS provider itself and risks that result from user’s social interactions. Using an online survey questionnaire, this study explored the students’ perception of the benefits in using social networking sites for learning purposes and their perceived privacy risks. A sample of 214 students from Uganda Christian University in Africa was studied. The results show that although 88 % of participants indicated the usefulness of SNSs for learning, they are also aware of the risks associated with these sites. Most of the participants are concerned with privacy risks such as identity theft, cyber bullying, and impersonation that might influence their online learning participation in SNSs.