Rethinking the Sacred and Secular Divide. Accounting and Accountability Practices in the Diocese of Ferrara (1431-1457)

Purpose – Informed by the work of Laughlin and Booth, the paper analyses the role of accounting and accountability practices within the 15th century Roman Catholic Church, more specifically within the Diocese of Ferrara (northern Italy), in order to determine the presence of a sacred-secular dichotomy. Pope Eugenius IV had embarked upon a comprehensive reform of the Church to counter the spreading moral corruption within the clergy and the subsequent disaffection with the Church by many believers. The reforms were notable not only for the Pope’s determination to restore the moral authority and power of the Church but for the essential contributions of ‘profane’ financial and accounting practices to the success of the reforms.
Design/methodology/approach – Original 15th century Latin documents and account books of the Diocese of Ferrara are used to highlight the link between the new sacred values imposed by Pope Eugenius IV’s reforms and accounting and accountability practices.
Findings – The documents reveal that secular accounting and accountability practices were not regarded as necessarily antithetical to religious values, as would be expected by Laughlin and Booth. Instead, they were seen to assume a role which was complementary to the Church’s religious mission. Indeed, they were essential to its sacred mission during a period in which the Pope sought to arrest the moral decay of the clergy and reinstate the Church’s authority. Research implications/limitations – The paper shows that the sacred-secular dichotomy cannot be considered as a priori valid in space and time. There is also scope for examining other Italian dioceses where there was little evidence of Pope Eugenius’ reforms.
Originality/value – The paper presents a critique of the sacred-secular divide paradigm by considering an under-researched period and a non Anglo-Saxon context.

Books on the border land : a Mennonite woman's memoir of reading and remembering the sacred

This arts-based thesis, written from my perspective as a Manitoba Mennonite woman and English Language Arts educator, is a memoir of books and reading. As a voracious reader, I am dismayed by the general perception of literacy in public schools as being a set of measureable tasks, and I have found that reading, in particular, has become divorced from its traditional link to life-giving and sacred things. In this thesis, I used life writing to share some of my reading history to illustrate, in part, the degree to which books may enrich our lives by helping us understand the past, present, and future - but only if we allow them to do so.

The formation of conscience : pedagogy of the sacred

This qualitative study explores Thomas Green's (1999) treatise, Voices: The Educational Formation of Conscience; for the purpose of reconstruing the transformative usefulness of conscience in moral education. Conscience is "reflexive judgment about things that matter" (Green, 1999, p. 21). Paul Lehmann (1963) suggested that we must "do the conscience over or do the conscience in" (p. 327). Thomas Green "does the conscience over", arguing that a philosophy of moral education, and not a moral philosophy, provides the only framework from which governance of moral behaviour can be understood. Narratives from four one-to-one interviews and a focus group are analysed and interpreted in search of: (a) awareness and understanding of conscience, (b) voices of conscience, (c) normation, (d) reflexive emotions, and (e) the idea of the sacred. Participants in this study (ages 16-21) demonstrated an active awareness of their conscience and a willingness to engage in a reflective process of their moral behaviour. They understood their conscience to be a process of self-judgment about what is right and wrong, and that its authority comes from within themselves. Narrative accounts from childhood indicated that conscience is there "from the beginning" with evidence of selfcorrecting behaviour. A maturing conscience is accompanied by an increased cognitive capacity, more complicated life experiences, and individualization. Moral motivation was grounded in " a desire to connect with things that are most important." A model for conscience formation is proposed, which visualizes a critical path of reflexive emotions. It is argued that schools, striving to shape good citizens, can promote conscience formation through a "curriculum of moral skills"; a curriculum that embraces complexity, diversity, social criticism, and selfhood.

Influence de l'iconographie duchampienne dans Les Célibataires, vingt ans plus tard, de Roberto Matta

L’alchimie, science de la manipulation des influences spirituelles par une métallurgie sacrée, et la pataphysique, esthétique pseudo-scientifique associant l'ésotérisme à l'humour, sont les deux principaux fondements idéologiques qui unissent Marcel Duchamp et Roberto Matta. Tandis que Duchamp s'intéresse déjà à l'ésotérisme dès 1910, soit près d'une vingtaine d'années avant sa rencontre avec Matta. Ce dernier aborde, dans sa production, des thèmes propres à la littérature alchimique, soit les opérations occultes, les états merveilleux de la matière et les appareils de laboratoire. De plus, les écrivains symbolistes et pseudo-scientifiques, lus par Duchamp, puis par Matta, influencent l'humour pataphysique, teinté d'ésotérisme, qui s'exprime dans la production de ces deux artistes. Ainsi, Les Célibataires, vingt ans plus tard, est une huile sur toile, réalisée en 1943, par Roberto Matta, qui représente un paysage cosmique, composé d'astres et de trous noirs, de trois alambics et d'une grande machine noire. Dans cette œuvre, Matta réinterprète très librement certains éléments du Grand verre, une peinture sur verre de Marcel Duchamp, laissée inachevée en 1923. Le présent mémoire de maîtrise étudie l'influence de l'alchimie et de l'iconographie duchampienne sur Les Célibataires, vingt ans plus tard. Dans un premier temps, cette étude vise à mettre en exergue et à examiner les influences alchimiques et pataphysiques dans l'œuvre de Matta. Dans un deuxième temps, notre mémoire vise à démontrer comment l'œuvre de Matta s'intègre dans le projet surréaliste de création d'un mythe nouveau, dans la continuité du projet duchampien.

Imágenes locales y retórica sagrada: una visión edificante de Quito en el siglo XVII (Dossier: Historia del Arte)

El artículo analiza la realización entre las imágenes y la oratoria sagrada durante el siglo XVII en Quito. Examina, de un lado, cómo los sermones hacían uso de un canon oficial cristiano para definir y legitimar los cultos religiosos locales, y, de otro lado, las disposicions urbanas de las imágenes milagrosas de la Virgen María, estratégicamente ubicadas en santuarios, constituyendo el paisaje local de una cartografía sagrada. Estos elementos contribuyeron a forjar una visión edificante de la urbe, presentada como una Nueva Jerusalén escogida por Dios. Este gesto aparece ligado con la consolidación de la identidad criolla y el fortalecimiento de un incipiente patriotismo local.