Una sociedad legalista: Abogados, procuradores de causas y la creación de una cultura legal colonial en Lima y Potosí, 1540–1670

This study deals with the formation, reproduction, and the role in litigation of two branches of the legal profession, lawyers and procurators. They were the experts in charge of civil, criminal, and ecclesiastical litigation during the Old Regime. While the lawyers provided erudite legal advice, procurators oriented and drove the procedure as legal representatives of their clients. The European legal revolutions of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries forged a new legal culture in which the lawsuit was reputed to be the best way to settle disputes. Likewise, that legal culture conferred an important place to specialists as legal facilitators of the contending parties. When Castilians exported their legal system to the New World, they spread a complex and bureaucratic framework, contributing to the reproduction of a class of experts in urban spaces. Lima and Potosi, two urban centers created in the sixteenth century, quickly became significant ‘legal cities’. This dissertation explores how the legal markets of these cities operated, the careers of their specialists, their professional options, social images regarding them, and litigation costs. This study examines the careers of 267 facilitators and demonstrates that they constituted a class of distinctive legal professionals. Legal culture embodies the representation and use of law. The closeness of specialists with litigants, in particular of procurators familiarized the parties with litigation and its complex processes. These specialists forged dominant legal discourses and manipulated juridical order. Litigants were not passive agents of their specialists. Caciques and members of the Hispanicized communities appropriated the law in a visible way as the growing litigiousness illustrates. Colonial law (of a pluralistic basis) was an arena of assertion and discussion of rights by different social actors, encomenderos, leading citizens, widows, native chieftains, artisans, and commoners. This study concludes that this struggle and manipulation served to legitimate the role of those legal experts and gave birth to a complex legalistic society in the Andes under Spanish Habsburg rule.

Negotiating identities, striving for state recognition: Blacks in Córdoba, Argentina 1776–1853

Race in Argentina played a significant role as a highly durable construct by identifying and advancing subjects (1776–1810) and citizens (1811–1853). My dissertation explores the intricacies of power relations by focusing on the ways in which race informed the legal process during the transition from a colonial to national State. It argues that the State’s development in both the colonial and national periods depended upon defining and classifying African descendants. In response, people of African descendent used the State’s assigned definitions and classifications to advance their legal identities. It employs race and culture as operative concepts, and law as a representation of the sometimes, tense relationship between social practices and the State’s concern for social peace. This dissertation examines the dynamic nature of the court. It utilizes the theoretical concepts multicentric legal orders that are analyzed through weak and strong legal pluralisms, and jurisdictional politics, from the late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries. This dissertation juxtaposes various levels of jurisdiction (canon/state law and colonial/national law) to illuminate how people of color used the legal system to ameliorate their social condition. In each chapter the primary source materials are state generated documents which include criminal, ecclesiastical, civil, and marriage dissent court cases along with notarial and census records. Though it would appear that these documents would provide a superficial understanding of people of color, my analysis provides both a top-down and bottom-up approach that reflects a continuous negotiation for African descendants’ goal for State recognition. These approaches allow for implicit or explicit negotiation of a legal identity that transformed slaves and free African descendants into active agents of their own destinies.

The words of God: Religious texts and the Counter -Reformation in the Spanish world

This dissertation analyzes a variety of religious texts such as catechisms, confession manuals, ecclesiastical legislation, saints' lives, and sermons to determine the definitions of orthodoxy held by the Spanish clergy and the origins of such visions. The conclusion posited by this research was that there was a definite continuity between the process of Catholic reform in Spain and the process of Catholic expansion into the New World in that the objectives and concerns of the Spanish clergy in Europe and the New World were very similar. This dissertation also analyzes sources that predated the Council of Trent and demonstrates that within the Iberian context the Council of Trent cannot be used as a starting date for the attempts at Catholic reform. In essence, this work concludes the Spanish clergy's activities were influenced by humanist concepts of models and model behaviour which is reflected in their attempt to form model Catholics in Spain and the New World and in their impulse to produce written texts as standards. ^

O teatro musical enquanto prática pedagógica no meio eclesiástico: ressignificando o fazer artístico na Igreja Batista da Esperança, Natal-RN

The churches in Brazil have shown themselves as a very important space in the musical training of many individuals. However, we perceive in many of them an excluding and merely performatic musical posture. Their argument is the fact that they want to give worship to the Divine Being and, for that, they must always offer their best. Besides that, the culture of the talent and the gift has provoked the selection of people in the ecclesiastical musical practices. The musical theatre, also practiced in this context, has been following the same principles. Understanding that musical practices must be accessible to all people, we have seen, through the studies of Amelia Santa Rosa, 2006 and 2012, the musical theatre, for its various possibilities, as an important tool for the music teaching in this context in an integrating, motivating, interdisciplinary and liberating way. For this reason, through an action research, this work has aimed to investigate the applicability of the musical theatre as a pedagogical practice in the context of the Igreja Batista da Esperanca (Hope Baptist Church), in Natal-RN, verifying the impact of this experience to the ones involved. In order to accomplish this, we carried out the construction of a musical with all of the ones who wanted to be a part of this research, having or not having previous musical experiences. The data collection was made through the field diary, semi-structured interviews with the cast of the musical and pictures and videos of rehearsals and presentations. The main issues highlighted were categorized and properly analyzed, which showed us how much the musical theatre can be used as a musical pedagogical tool also effective in the ecclesiastical context. Thus, another conception of artistic endeavor could be brought to churches, contributing to the inclusion of new participants in their musical practices, expanding the studies on the musical theatre and the presence of music in these spaces a bit more, causing other future studies.

"Porta do Céu": o processo de cristianização da Freguesia de Nossa Senhora da Apresentação (1681-1714)

This study aims to analyze the process of Christianization space in the different areas of the Parish of Our lady of Presentation between 1681 and 1714. To accomplish this goal, the main primary sources researched was the parish records of baptism. Thus, areas of the parish were designed based on two fundamental concepts: Christianization of the locations (and souls), based on the study of Claudia Damasceno, who worked with the notion of ecclesiastical circumscription, adapted for the case of Parish of Our lady of Presentation, and the concept of local experimentation, by Yi-Fu Tuan. Christianization the areas was the process of transformation of spatial logic, found previously by the Portuguese, by overlapping the ecclesiastical logic over Indigenous perception, through buildings construction, to initiate people to Catholicism. The experiment, in turn, would be made by the local residents studied and by religious themselves, making these areas, in places, in the sense of achieving new local meanings. It was verified, therefore, that Parish of Our lady of Presentation had at least three distinct places, the City of Natal, the villages around and the parish missions. Then, the focus of this thesis is to analyze how settlers used these different places as religious meanings.

Embodied Prayer: the practice of prayer as Christian theology

This dissertation attempts to retrieve the integration of prayer and theology in the life of the church. Prayer is a spiritual and bodily theological activity that forms Christian identity and virtuous character. The bodily dimension of Christian prayer plays an essential role in theological understanding and moral formation. However, the embodiment of prayer has been mostly neglected in modern academic theology. This study highlights the significance of the body at prayer in theological studies and spiritual formation.

Chapter 1 presents Karl Barth’s theology of prayer as a model of the integration of prayer, theology, and Christian life (lex orandi, lex credendi, lex agendi). However, Barth’s attempt to overcome the dichotomy between theory and practice in theology did not pay much attention to embodiment of prayer. Through ritual studies and phenomenology (Marcel Mauss, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Pierre Bourdieu), chapter 2 shows why the bodily dimension of the practice of prayer should be recovered in theology and ministry; then it explains how Christians in the early and medieval church actually prayed with the body, how their bodily actions were understood in their theological paradigms, and how their actions contributed to the formation of Christian character. Chapter 3 narrows the focus to the formation of the heart in the making of Christian character. The practice of prayer has been emphasized not only as an expression of the inner heart of pray-ers but also as a channel of grace that shapes their affections as enduring dispositions of the heart. Furthermore, historically the bodily practice of prayer gave theological authority to the devout Christians who were marginalized in academic theology or ecclesiastical hierarchy, and Chapter 4 presents the lex orandi of praying women who gained their theological knowledge, wisdom, and authority through their exemplary practices of prayer (Catherine of Siena, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, and Teresa of Avila). These historical examples reveal how Christian communities appreciated and celebrated the theological voices from the margins, which developed from theological embodiments in prayer.

This dissertation concludes that academic theology needs to heed these diverse theological voices, which are nurtured through everyday practice, as an integral part of theological studies. Therefore, it calls for a new paradigm for understanding the relationship between theory and practice in theological education. The integration between theory and bodily practice is necessary for both academic theology and spiritual formation. A more holistic understanding of Christian practices will not only enhance the training of scholars and clergy but also give the laity their own theological voices that will enrich academic theology.

The Capital Sculpture of Wells Cathedral, c. 1184-1210

The understudied capital sculpture of Wells Cathedral in Somerset, England (c. 1184-1210) provides ample opportunity of expanding the current scholarship and understanding of interior ecclesiastical sculpture in a West Country cathedral. While the Gothic style of architecture is typically understood as, according to Paul Binski (2014), rational in execution and reception, the capital sculpture at Wells Cathedral has been considered illogical in terms of both its iconography and location within the nave, transepts, and north porch. Utilizing Michael Camille’s post/anti-iconographical approach, this project examines the Wells figural capitals in five case studies: labour, Old and New Testament Scenes, animals and beast fables, busts, and monsters and hybrids. Each group of capitals will be approached with an understanding that this type of art was viewed by people of different classes and professions, with each viewer bringing their own personal experiences and abilities into how they could have read and understood these types of images. Therefore, the capitals at Wells must be read through layers of meaning and interpretation while also considering their locations within the cathedral and how they react and respond to surrounding figural capitals.

English Cathedrals: Events and Spiritual Capital

This paper investigates the recent trend for cathedrals in England to develop a wider and more ambitious scope to their event and activity programmes. It sets out to explore the types of events now hosted at cathedrals, to consider barriers to such ambitions and the opportunities presented by event programming to develop new audiences and grow attendances. The research focuses on the 42 Anglican cathedrals of England and has involved a review of recent reports published by church and cathedral organisations, supported by an in-depth review of event activity and objectives at five selected cathedrals in southern England. Despite declining general church attendance in England, cathedrals have enjoyed two decades of attendance growth both as places of worship and as tourist attractions, partly a reflection of a more complex contemporary search for multi-faceted types of spirituality. The paper explores how events can tap into the realm of individual spiritual capital and demonstrates the rich diversity of events now being hosted by cathedrals. The paper offers a new categorisation of ecclesiastical/liturgical events, cultural and community events and openly commercial event activity. Barriers remain but key facilitating factors have been new investment in event expertise and professionalism, encouragement to experiment by key funding bodies such as the Heritage Lottery Fund and the embracing of new forms of spirituality. The diversity of cathedral events reflects a new found growth in the nurturing of “spiritual capital” amongst both worshippers and tourists.

“Esto es lo que me gusta y lo que voy a estudiar”: Un estudio cualitativo sobre la toma de decisiones académicas en bachillerato

Durante la educación secundaria los estudiantes comienzan a explorar las ocupaciones y expectativas profesionales, forman sus creencias de autoeficacia y consolidan sus intereses académicos. En este contexto, el artículo presenta los resultados de una investigación realizada en el Principado de Asturias para conocer las percepciones y opiniones que tienen los estudiantes de bachillerato y sus progenitores sobre las elecciones académicas realizadas en la educación secundaria, haciendo especial hincapié en los factores contextuales que pueden ayudar u obstaculizar el desarrollo de la carrera. Se ha usado una metodología cualitativa fundamentada en el uso de la técnica del grupo de discusión. Se han organizado cinco grupos de discusión con estudiantes y dos grupos con progenitores. El total de personas que participó en las entrevistas focales fue de 51 estudiantes y de 14 padres/madres. Los resultados obtenidos nos permiten concluir que el bachillerato sigue siendo considerado la puerta de acceso a la universidad y no a la formación profesional de grado superior. También se concluye que los estudiantes fundamentan sus decisiones académicas sobre la base de la preferencia y gusto personal por determinada opciones y esta razón prevalece sobre otras como las salidas profesionales o el rendimiento académico previo. Respecto a la influencia de distintos agentes sociales en el proceso de decisión académica, los resultados son concluyentes al afirmar que el principal apoyo de los estudiantes son sus progenitores, por encima del que perciben encontrar de docentes y grupo de iguales. El artículo finaliza con algunas sugerencias para mejorar la práctica de la orientación educativa en las instituciones de educación secundaria.

Governance, Governments and Legislation

The mandate for policy action on ocean acidification falls under the remit of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate change (UNFCCC) since, like climate change, ocean acidification is a result of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. The international community dealing with climate change must play a decisive role in encouraging national and local governments to scale-up efforts to mitigate CO2 emissions thereby reducing the impact of both climate change and ocean acidification. The annual UNFCCC meeting, Conference of the Parties (COP) represent pivotal opportunities for the ocean science community to provide the international community dealing with climate change with information and recommendations leading to informed solutions and policy guidelines that address ocean acidification. The objective is to develop a comprehensive message about the relevance of ocean acidification in current and future governance agendas. The target audiences include the international community dealing with climate change, climate negotiators, national leaders, UN agencies and Non-governmental Organisations, as well as the parties involved in the UNFCCC process.

Governance, Governments and Legislation

The mandate for policy action on ocean acidification falls under the remit of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate change (UNFCCC) since, like climate change, ocean acidification is a result of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. The international community dealing with climate change must play a decisive role in encouraging national and local governments to scale-up efforts to mitigate CO2 emissions thereby reducing the impact of both climate change and ocean acidification. The annual UNFCCC meeting, Conference of the Parties (COP) represent pivotal opportunities for the ocean science community to provide the international community dealing with climate change with information and recommendations leading to informed solutions and policy guidelines that address ocean acidification. The objective is to develop a comprehensive message about the relevance of ocean acidification in current and future governance agendas. The target audiences include the international community dealing with climate change, climate negotiators, national leaders, UN agencies and Non-governmental Organisations, as well as the parties involved in the UNFCCC process.

Renta feudal, ejercicio del poder y diferenciación social campesina en el marco del señorío del cabildo salmantino en la Edad Media

El presente trabajo analiza la evolución del señorío eclesiástico en el largo plazo, para sumar al conocimiento de las formas señoriales de la Extremadura leonesa. Consideramos específicamente el caso del cabildo catedralicio salmantino entre los siglos XII y XV. Buscamos demostrar que no poseyó idéntica estructura durante todo el período y que sus transformaciones se explican por una compleja conjunción de variables. Dichas transformaciones incidieron sobre las estructuras sociales del agro, en especial sobre el desarrollo de procesos de diferenciación social campesina. Demostramos que la forma concreta en que se realizaba la renta podía alterar las estructuras sociales de las comunidades y que el desarrollo de las relaciones sociales asalariadas se encontraba muy vinculado a las coyunturas económicas y a las posibilidades y límites de la gestión señorial. Finalmente, ponemos de relieve que la transformación social no siempre fue irreversible y que su consolidación dependió de la incapacidad de los señores de ejercer sus poderes políticos.

Between "uxor", "mater" and "concubina". Profile and identity of the Emperor Constantine in Late Roman legislation

We aspire to shape the Constantine’s personality in particular by analyzing his loving relationship, first with Minervina and then with Fausta, and not forgetting the bond with his mother Helena, hence the reference to uxor, mater and concubina in our title. We will analyze if these women exercised any influence on the composition of his production rules and, if so, to what extent they were able to determine the historical development of the following decades. From this point of view we must consider in general the emperor had to combine their political claims and government with these relationships, showing great skill in handling times and ways, always putting the first to the second.

"Et occidetur virtute Domini Antichristus a Mikaele arcangelo". Paisaje y escatología en Sant Miquel de Llíria (s. XIV d. C.)

El presente articulo intenta determinar las razones por las que el santuario de Sant Miquel de Llíria, uno de los más importantes de la actual provincia de Valencia, se consagró al arcàngel guerrero. Se estudia para ello la historia de su culto en Occidente, haciendo hincapié en aspectos como su relación con los lugares elevados y la frecuente proximidad de sus santuarios con aquellos dedicados a la Virgen. Atenderemos también a aspectos fundamentales del contexto histórico, como los movimientos de renovación espiritual medievales, la influencia del médico y teólogo Arnau de Vilanova en la Valencia de principios del siglo XIV y las profecías escatológicas vinculadas a la llegada del Anticristo.

Controversy over the Taxation of Recogidas in the Philippines in the mid- 18th Century. The Case of Santa Rita de Pasig’s Spiritual Absorption

This article studies the house of seclusion established for devout Indian and mestizo laywomen in the town of Pasig in 1740, and the dispute over tribute obligations that affected retreated or “pious” women. Founded outside of the Royal Patronato, this house of seclusion was extraordinarily attractive as a place for voluntary retreat and as an educational center. The dispute over tribute payments brought to light misgivings and conflicts of interest between the parties involved, while revealing the fundamental problem: the traditionally undefined juridical status of this type of establishment on the Islands. The solution given to the problem (tribute exemption) was to be extended to other similar centers in the Philippines. This article, realized with the use of unpublished documentation from the General Archives of the Indies, contributes therefore to our knowledge of the world of women in the Philippine archipelago; an ambit of great complexity that, as of yet, has been insufficiently studied.