4 research outputs found
University and History. The Lesson of the Middle Ages (An Introduction)
Full text linkThe following text has two main objectives: on the one hand, it intends to introduce the reader in a very cursory manner to some of the most important contributions made by the medieval university not only to the general development of higher education, distinguishable up until today, but also to the history of pre-modern European society. On the other hand, acknowledging the importance of university for the transformation (and “Europeanization”) of Transylvania from the second half of the 14th century until the 1550s, the author reflects briefly upon significant investigations concerning university, academic life and intellectuals in the Middle Ages conducted by scholars and research groups (especially during the last two decades) of the Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca.
Rezumat: Universitate și istorie. Lecția Evului Mediu (O introducere). Textul care urmează are două obiective majore: pe de o parte își propune să-i reamintească cititorului, într-o manieră succintă, cele mai de seamă contribuții ale universității medievale, vizibile până astăzi, nu doar la evoluția generală a învățământului superior, ci și la istoria societății europene de dinainte modernității. Pe de altă parte, atrăgând atenția asupra importanței universității pentru transformările în sens european din Transilvania de la mijlocul veacului al XIV-lea până în jurul anului 1550, autorul trece în revistă cele mai semnificative investigații referitoare la universitate, viața academică și intelectuali în evul mediu întreprinse de cadre didactice și grupuri de cercetare (îndeosebi în ultimele două decenii) ale Universității Babeș-Bolyai din Cluj-Napoca.
Cuvinte-cheie: Evul Mediu, Universitate, Transilvania, Cluj-Napoca, Universitatea Babeș-Bolyai
Biserici paleocreştine din spaţiul românesc în evul mediu timpuriu / Paleo-Christian churches in the Romanian area in the early Middle Ages
No full textBased on the research of many rock-hewn churches of the Romanian region, located in the Dobruja andaround the Carpathian mountain range, the author notes the existence there of a number of Christian churches belonging to the early Christian period and the early Middle Ages. According to the author, the religious buildingswere created for the most part of very strong material because of the highly volatile external environment, due to the pressure of the migratory and nomadic peoples. On the basis of new archaeological data it can be argued that in the territory of the future Moldova there was a diocese under the guidance of a chorbishop (bishop of rural settlements).
The presence and discovery of a very valuable exhibit, which is a rare example of art, iconography and folklore heritage of Romanians in early Middle Ages (red brick with depictions), gives us the first written evidence of the presence of Christianity in this area
BOOK REVIEW: Alexandru Ciocîltan, „Comunitățile germane de la sud de Carpați în Evul Mediu (secolele XIII-XVIII)” [“The German Communities from South of the Carpathians in the Middle Ages (13th-18th Centuries)”], Brăila, Editura Istros a Muzeului Brăilei, 2015, 517 p., ISBN: 978-606-654-121-3
No full textThe result of a daring doctoral research, Alexandru Ciocîltan’s volume contributes to the historiographical debate through a subject less familiar to the Romanian historical writing, though very rich in first-hand sources – the history of an ethno-confessional community surveyed throughout its entire existence, which had lasted for about five centuries. Put under the sign of several paradigms of historical research – covering local, minority or urban perspectives – the present work is a genuine milestone in this historian’s career, more and more specialized in decrypting the medieval and early-modern history of the German communities in Wallachia.
The particularity of the subject allowed the author to undertake a rather exponential approach throughout the seven chapters of his book, which resulted in a linear yet convincing historical monograph, sometimes strongly polemic and demanding when confronting historiographical blunders. In this regard, Ciocîltan resorted to the latest contributions of present-day historians, without ignoring the previous and more or less valuable works, to the results of older or newer archaeological excavations, but also to a multitude of written sources of diplomatic and epigraphic nature, chronicles or reports of Catholic missionaries. From this point of view, perhaps the biggest problem faced by the less-initiated reader in the space, the periods and the themes under scrutiny, is the absence of a critical and broad survey of the primary sources in a distinctive part of this work, afar from the few such aspects mentioned in the introduction
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The European Union, state of exception and state transformation - Romania, Turkey and ethnic minority politics
No full textThe dissertation argues that the modern national sovereignty is the political expression of modern subjectivity and it dominates as such the contemporary discourse of human life, ethnic minorities included, in world politics. The analytical mechanism is grounded in social constructivist theorisations of discourse analysis. It evaluates whether and to what extent the enlargement of the European Union (EU) and its accession conditionality affect the discursive mechanisms of the national, sovereign subjectivity and its relations with national minorities. The cases studied here have been chosen because of the two states being inscribed in the recent past (Romania) and currently (Turkey) in the enlargement process. The dissertation builds methodologically on Agamben’s understanding of sovereignty as state of exception, interpreted here originally qua exception from the temporality of human life and therefore apt to author political time. In national form, this is understood as the production of the national time of politics, with a double ontological consequence: it constitutes the political nation, while concomitantly and inherently excluding non-national human life from political possibilities. The method of research develops this methodological perspective to analyse national sovereignty, drawing also on Heidegger, as factualisation of two purely theoretical constructs: the nation and the principle of sovereignty
