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The Homily “On the Passover” is included in the second part of Aphrahat’s “Demonstrationes” and it begins with the lōmad, the twelfth letter of the Syriac alphabet. The Persian Sage refers clearly to the preceding homily (De circumcisione) and consistently applies the biblical argumentation. In his discourse on the Passover, Aphrahat opposes the Jews, charging them with disregard for the Law and the prophets. According to him, the Chosen Nation and its teachers rejected the God’s command to celebrate the Passover in Jerusalem only. In effect, the Jews lost their exclusive choseness and became defiled as the Gentiles. Moreover, Aphrahat accuses the Jews of deliberate forgery of the God’s law. Exclusiveness of the Chosen Nation in the Old Covenant has been replaced by the „universalism of the peoples” in the Covenant of Christ. In the teaching of the Sage the idea of Sabbath is strictly connected with the Christian Passover, which in Mesopotamia was celebrated not as a day of Christ’s resurrection, but as a remembrance of His death.
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The paper focuses on the subject of time in the writings of the 4th century theologian Ephrem the Syrian, regarded as the most remarkable poet- theologian of the patristic era. After introducing Ephrem’s basic distinction between historical and sacred time, it examines some examples of the theologian’s understanding time in terms of God’s activity towards humanity, where its different levels apparently located in a long span of time strikingly converge into single unit. In the later part it embarks upon exploration of the possibility of entering into sacred time by any human being. In Ephrem’s conception this presupposes a constant co-operation between God and human being that is a real human engagement. Within the framework of this attempt it specifically takes into consideration the mystery of Christ’s Passion through which humanity can acquire access to a different epistemic level. It argues using a technical term key as a useful device allowing the goal to be attained. As a conclusion it claims the sacramental life of the Church, notably the Eucharist, to be a re-presentation of what happened historically at Golgotha, thus standing for a visible element of sacred time which may be experienced whilst living within historical time.
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The article undertakes theological interpretation of the ancient texts of the Synod at Sirmium (Hrvatska Mitrovica in today’s Bosnia), which took place in 351 A.D. On account of the fact that some of the synodical statements may seem controversial, the author of the article attempts at evaluation of the orthodoxy of those statements, his final intention, though, is theological reinterpretation of the synodical document with a view to presenting its topicality. Contemporary theology may draw new inspirations from the theology of the ancient Synod, first of all in the theology of the Incarnation and in the theology of the Trinity. The inner life of the Triune God presents itself as an orderly hierarchical Communion. The teaching of subordination of the Son may arouse reservations, or even border on heresy, if it is understood in the sense of obedience and humbleness of the Son according to synodical thought, then it allows us to perceive the Mystery of the Triune God in a new light
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The aim of the article is an attempt to describe the liturgy of baptism celebrated by St. Augustine in his cathedral in Hippo. Various writings of Augustine, especially his Sermons addressed to candidates (catechumeni and competentes) for baptism, contain information enabling us to describe, albeit in a generic way, the particular stages of the preparation of catechumens for baptism and the rite itself. The preparation consisted principally of catecheses, exorcisms and a kind of examination. The rite clearly contained a personal and individual renouncement of Satan, followed by a profession of faith in each of the Persons of the Most Blessed Trinity and either immersion in the pool or the pouring of water on the head of the baptised. It is not possible to state exactly the formula of baptism employed; it is surprising that Augustine, who discusses many themes associated with baptism in various works, does not present the words spoken by the one administering baptism, although he does speak of the necessity of water and the words for the sacrament itself.
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In every age, theology on one hand grows from certain conditions of the era, but on the other hand it influences the lives of the Christians. Theologies of various periods are different in character, which is connected not only with the philosophical context, but also with the existential one. What is more, various theological models originated in different periods. One of the most prominent examples of this phenomenon is the medieval coexistence of scholasticism and monastic theology. A closer look at the monastic theology, which is less known than scholasticism, may provide us with some important indications as to the formation of such theology which would resist the domination of philosophical patterns of thought, highlight the experience and foster the integration of Christian practice with the content of professed faith. In fact, these aspects seem to characterize the Cistercian monastic theology, but simultaneously they constitute some kind of catalogue of disorders of contemporary theologies.
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The Second Vatican Council in the Dogmatic Constitution Dei Verbum provided exegetic guidelines on the interpretation of Scripture. The “analogy of faith” is one of the mentioned above theological principles. Exegetical practice perceives this principle only as a negative criterion. Unfortunately, such an understanding of this principle does not allow to use it in the so called “Chalcedonian hermeneutics”. Benedict XVI postulated the coexistence of scientific and theological principles during the whole exegetical process. The article focuses on the relation between the analogy of faith and the sense of faith. It is sensus fidei that allows the analogy of faith to reveal its positive character. Therefore, it becomes a proper tool used to interpret divine and human inspired books.
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The article presents three phases in evolution of the argumentation for the credibility of the Church. The first stage includes the apologetic ecclesiology’s arguments. However, they were methodologically inadequate and in the Second Vatican Council's perspective they required reconstruction. At the next stage, it was done by fundamental ecclesiology, which also formulated new arguments that are methodologically consistent with its subject. Third stage is a proposition of the author of the article. He presents a project of the structural credibility of the Church. This argumentation is based on genetic and functional relationship between the Church and the Revelation. The author’s purpose is to present fundamental ecclesiology’s arguments as a whole with the help of the dimensions of the Church’s catholicity: height, length, width, depth.
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Spiritual theology deals with the spiritual experience of individual persons. As a branch of theology, it builds on the assumption that every person is an image of God, and thus every human life contains a spiritual dimension. The sources of spiritual theology include any texts describing spiritual life, especially the works of the great Masters, but also the liturgy of the Church. The texts of the magisterium of the Church are also considered as a source, but, unlike in dogmatic or moral theology, their importance is limited. Spiritual theology aims to profoundly understand the inner structure of spiritual life in its various forms and demonstrate their mutual relations. The ultimate goal is to describe spiritual life in a way that helps to “discern the spirits”, to discriminate between the right and the erroneous paths of such life. The nature of the subject matter suggests that phenomenological method should be given priority in the research. Various methods of hermeneutics can also be helpful in the study of the texts. Spiritual theology is closely related to dogmatic and moral theology, but the nature of their mutual relationships is complex. Spiritual theology should maintain a distance towards the modern human sciences: it must not assume their perspective of human being.
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Although almost all over Poland instead of the hymn Te Deum laudamus, Ciebie, Boga wysławiamy is used, in Upper Silesia Ciebie, Boże wielbimy is performed. The aim of this article was to answer the question whether by public saying Ciebie, Boże wielbimy, it is possible to gain plenary indulgence. The research material were regulations from the decree Enchiridion Indulgentiarum, Code of Canon Law from 1983 and common law. The method used in the research was mainly a legal exegetic-dogmatic method. The results showed that for the public saying of the mentioned version of the hymn by virtue of the common law it is theoretically possible to obtain the plenary indulgence, although the practice limits this possibility to partial indulgence. The research perspective is a hymn Veni Creator Spiritus, which in Upper Silesia is also performed in a different version than in the other parts of Poland.
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The Basilian monasteries in the south-eastern part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth were covered by the reduction ordered in the Inter plures brief issued on 2 May 1744 by Pope Benedict XIV. Under the brief, the monasteries with fewer than eight monastics were to be merged. In 1745 the authorities of the order formulated a plan to merge smaller houses with larger ones. They also decided to close down houses with too modest endowments. The parishes run by some of the monasteries were to be taken over by the diocesan clergy. Monastics from the closed monasteries took with them the movables to the houses they were transferred or gave them to the nearest larger monasteries. The authorities of the province sought to obtain funds to support the endangered monasteries and delay their closure or to give them over to the diocesan clergy. The enforcement of the provisions of the papal decree lasted until 1780. In that period 52 monasteries were dissolved and 20 houses were subordinated to larger monasteries. Thus by 1780 nearly 54% of the monasteries existing in 1745 in the Care of the Blessed Virgin Mary province were either dissolved or deprived of their independence.
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Founded in the 17th century, the Bernardine Monastery in Hvizdets (Gwoździec) found itself under the Austrian Habsburg rule in 1772. The Austrian authorities required frequent inventory taking, even every few years. The Hvizdets Bernardines did compile such inventories, but they have not survived in the Bernardine archives. What has survived is an 1855 inventory commissioned by the Bernardine provincial. In subsequent years the monks only added to it losses and acquisitions. The inventories were taken personally by the Bernardines from the monastery. Next, a commission made up of representatives of the order’s authorities verified the compliance of the inventory with the actual state affairs, with the commission members putting their signatures and seals to the document. The inventories were used by Bernardine provincials to control the financial status of the various monasteries. In addition, the inventories were presented and approved during provincial chapters.
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The article is a biographical-bibliographic compilation presenting the biographies and publications of 16 monastics – seven Piarist Fathers, two Dominicans, Refomati and members of the Apostolic Union of Secular Priests, and one Bernardine Father, one Jesuit and one Pauline Father – who after leaving their orders worked in the Dioceses of Kielce and Sandomierz in 1773–1900. Most of them left their monasteries as a result o-f dissolutions or patriotic activities. Only in some cases was a decision to abandon the order taken independently and was perhaps motivated by a desire to undertake scholarly work. The clergymen from the analysed group differ significantly when it comes to the number of their publications and topics they tackle. Some of the writings are undoubtedly scholarly (dealing with matters concerning philosophy, history, social or natural sciences) and their authors were members of scholarly societies in Cracow and Warsaw. A separate group of works by the analysed clergymen is made up of sermons, homilies (interesting among them being those by Father Adam Burzyński written in Arabic during his missionary work in the Middle East), occasional speeches, catechisms and prayer books. Their writings also include translations into Polish of collections of sermons by Italian and French authors, translations that gave a large group of priests an insight into Western European preaching.
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Monasteries of the Canons Regular of St. Augustine were subordinated to the jurisdiction of diocesan bishops; there were no bonds on an ecclesiastical-administrative level and central control of the order was absent. The absent formal legal bonds were replaced to some extent with confraternal bonds, through which canonries formed a liturgical and prayer community. The author presents an unpublished document by the provost and monastery of Canons Regular of St. Augustine in Prostějov dated 29 November 1403 and addressed to St. Mary’s Monastery in Wrocław. The document, kept in the State Archives in Wrocław, does not differ from other documents written in the Roudnice circle of monasteries of Canons Regular of St. Augustine; it bears a textual similarity to most of the other documents.
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The article is a general overview of source documents which have survived to this day and which illustrate the various areas of the monastery’s activity. The foundation documents constitute a valuable source for the study of the history of the monastery and monasticism in the region. The time and place of the compilation of the reports and the register as well as biographies of the compilers are known. The author of the article carries out a comparison of the visitation reports for different years in order to determine changes in the status of the monastery, and to determine the course of its dissolution. In addition, he distinguishes and provides a general description of the structural parts of the documents. On the basis of the visitation reports he reconstructs the layout of the monastery buildings. We can be certain as to the monastery’s sources of income. The article also contains a typology of financial and property-related documents. Information from the reports is confronted with information from other documents, in particular inventory descriptions. The sources presented in the article constitute valuable material for the study of the history and culture of Basilian monasteries.
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The first part of transliterations of records concerning the painting collection from the Royal Museum of Art and Antiquities in Wrocław, brought together in one bound volume by Johann Gustav Gottlieb Busching (1783–1829) and currently kept in the Manuscript Department of the Wrocław University Library as Busching. Verzeichnisse die Gemalde Sammlung betreffend (no. Akc. 1948/862), was published in the previous volume of “Hereditas Monasteriorum”. We are now publishing the second and final part encompassing the remaining leaves from the bound volume, which originated in 1811–1822 (with additions from 1929). The documents concern a collection of paintings kept in the University Library in Wrocław, which at that time was located in the former Monastery of Canons Regular of St. Augustine on the Sand Island. The paintings were part of the royal collection and came mainly from Silesian monasteries dissolved by the edict of the King of Prussia, Frederick William III, of 30 October 1810. Painting was entrusted to Busching, who added works selected during the secularisation to the painting gallery opened at the university on 29 June 1815. This was the first museum in Wrocław regularly making its collections available to the public once a week. The exhibition, encompassing several hundred paintings, was divided by Busching into three main thematic parts: Medieval and Renaissance painting from German-speaking countries, European painting, and works of the Silesian Baroque master Michael Leopold Willmann (1630–1706). The most extensive of the records in the volume are two inventories of paintings from the Royal Museum of Art and Antiquities in Wrocław of 22 March and 19 October 1821. The following leaves contain tables, correlated with the inventories, which sum up the decision to reduce the painting gallery holdings in 1821. Another table in the volume contains a price list of the various painting themes. The volume ends with a list containing information about the origin of the works exhibited in the gallery.
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The bull Ex imposita Nobis, issued on 30 June 1818 by Pope Pius VII, was a response of the Holy See to earlier drafts sent to it by the Government Commission for Religious Denominations and Public Enlightenment. It provided for an abolition of simple benefices and reduction of the number of chapter members by half, reform of monasteries and establishment of new diocesan boundaries. The pope appointed the Bishop of Cuyavia and Pomerania, Franciszek Skarbek-Malczewski, Archbishop of Warsaw since 2 October 1818, his apostolic delegate and executor of the bull. After familiarising himself with the financial situation of religious orders, on 22 February 1819 Archbishop Malczewski submitted to the Commission a financial report, separately for each diocese, and indicated eight monasteries that could be suppressed. The property of several monasteries was to be partially suppressed and several monastic houses were to be merged. In early March 1819 the primate sent a report to the Holy Father on the execution of the bull Ex imposita Nobis, in which he pointed to the difficulties involved in the suppression and said that he would not be able to report on its completion for a long time to come. The archbishop’s illness enabled Stanisław Kostka Potocki, the minister for religious denominations, to act. The minister realised that the primate would not agree to a general dissolution (excluding only mendicant orders). Yet he could not exclude Malczewski completely from the management of the former monasteries’ property. That is why in early April 1819 he persuaded the archbishop to agree to the establishment of a Deputation for the management of the property of former monasteries, with the archbishop being one of its members. Potocki enlisted Father Szczepan Hołowczyc, appointed bishop of the newly established Diocese of Sandomierz, to formulate new assumptions for the suppression decree. Hołowczyc undertook the task, although he had not been authorised by the pope to act in this manner. On 17 April 1819 Primate Franciszek Skarbek-Malczewski, on his deathbed, signed a suppression decree submitted to him, putting an end to the existence of 25 male and 5 female monasteries.
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The author of the article presents some of the most important Muslim holy sites and pilgrimage centres, with a focus on Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in Central Asia. He starts with the description of the obligatory pilgrimage (hajj) to the most sacred sites of Islam in Mecca, visit to the grave (zijara) of the Prophet in Medina and the holy city of Jerusalem. Many Muslims pilgrim to numerous holy places of the classical Sunni Islam and related Sufism, as well as Shiism, to venerate their saints or remarkable historic figures. Both Sufists and Shias call their saints “friends of God” (wali Allah), like Imam Ali and other imams. Their graves are marked with magnificent mausoleums and shrines. The most famous Sunni and Sufist mausolea are the Shrine of Rumi in Konya, the Tomb of Ibn al-Arabi in Damascus, the Shrine of Qadir al-Jilani in Baghdad, the Mausoleum of Hazrad Nizamuddin Auliya in Delhi, the Tomb of Ahmadou Bamba in Touba (Senegal), the Mausoleum of Ahmed Yasawi Khoja in Turkestan (Kazakhstan) and the Mausoleum of Baha-ud-Din Naqshband near Bukhara (Uzbekistan). For the Shia Muslims there are the Imam Ali Holy Shrine in Najaf, the Shrine of Imam Husayn in Karbala (Iraq) and the Imam Reza Shrine in Mashhad (Iran).The author points to the growing popularity of travelling to the graves of the Muslim saints despite its criticism by the reformers from the Salafi and Wahhabi quarters.
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Present tensions and incidents from the times of the crusades cannot obscure the common spiritual and civilizational heritage of Muslims and Christians. Every religion has had to face modernism and examine the relationships between science and faith, politics and religion. Some Muslim thinkers have tried to combat the attempts to modernise Islam through colonisation by resorting to the islamization of modernism. Islamism, appealing to the original community in Medina, is in fact a synthesis of western modernism and contemporary Islam. It is not the only form of the islamization of modernism. Millions of Muslims have settled in the West, in countries which promote civil values and secular institutions. In this way history shows the path to the Muslim-Christian dialogue. Coexistence of communities with different religious beliefs may contribute towards building just, free and equal societies.
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The theme of this article – God’s hospitality at the centre of the Christian and Muslim encounter - may be viewed from two perspectives: from the point of view of the exceptionality of the believing subject, and from the theologically informed, universal nature of the religious message.God’s hospitality in Christianity belongs to the domain of faith, as the personal relationship with the loving God, revealed in Jesus Christ. In Christianity, every interreligious encounter may generate its own, specific expression of that hospitality. It may prompt a religious and spiritual action, which in turn may be projected into social and political life. The idea of God’s hospitality should be analysed in the context of the theology of history and the history of religions.
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