Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was one of the most eloquent 20th-century voices for religion in an increasingly secular world. As a distinguished paleontologist and a Jesuit priest, he tried to synthesize evolutionary science with the incarnation of Christ.

His ideas were new, speculative, and bold enough to figure into deliberations as diverse as the founding of the United Nations and the formulation of several Vatican Council documents. Even today his name is cited for a spiritual perspective on the convergence of human communication due to the Internet.

He was born in France into a devout Catholic family of 11 children in 1881. His father was an intellectual and a farmer, and his mother was a great-grand-niece of Voltaire. Teilhard’s father provided his son a keen interest in science, and his mother an inclination toward mysticism.

He received a top-notch Jesuit education and entered their novitiate aktivitas by 1899. By 1911 he was ordained a priest after doing assignments in England and Egypt. World War I interrupted further studies in geology, and he saw action on the front lines. His close calls with death prompted him to consider a more speculative approach to science.


After the war he brilliantly defended his doctorate at the Sorbonne in 1922. Soon thereafter he accepted the chair of the geology department at the Institut Catholique. From this platform he now began to publicize ideas about the synthesis of science and religion, and the resulting controversy cost him his license at the Institut and forced him abroad to do his research and study.

For almost the rest of his career he lived abroad, almost as in a self-imposed exile. Most of that time he spent in China (1926–46), and there he collaborated with the Chinese Geological Survey and helped to discover the Peking Man skull. He wrote his important books, The Divine Milieu and The Human Phenomenon, during these years.

For one brief time after World War II he returned to France, but the Jesuits refused to allow him to take an academic position lest he receive more critical scrutiny. He was banned from lecturing in public or publishing his writings. He decided to go to New York in 1951. Lonely and suffering, he died on Easter Sunday, 1955, and is buried in a Jesuit cemetery there.

From a scientific point of view it is difficult to establish the methodology and provability of Teilhard’s ideas. He has clearly advanced the fields of geology, stratigraphy, and paleontology, with a supreme competence in the areas of China and the Far East. However, his dominant interest and the source of his infamy was in "anthropogenesis", a new study focusing on the evolutionary position of humanity.

He proposed that evolution had entered a new phase with the emergence of humanity, whereby complexity and consciousness converged and spiritualized evolution. The selesai development of humanity he termed the "Omega Point", and he connected this perfection with Christ.

In 1962 the Catholic Church issued a warning against the uncritical acceptance of Teilhard’s theories, though it did not question his scientific contributions or his integrity of faith. The best way of categorizing his unsystematized though eloquent speculation is as process theology, or perhaps even as a form of Christian pantheism.

Satanic Ritual Abuse

Satanic Ritual Abuse

Conspiracy-infused accusations of satanic ritual abuse (SRA) came to the forefront inwards U.S. civilization inwards the mid-1980s through intense media attention, too spread to United Kingdom of Great Britain too Northern Ireland too Australia, too most lately continental Europe.

Those believing inwards SRA, unremarkably known equally truthful believers, maintained that secretive groups were involved inwards forcing people, mainly children, to receive got gender activity too engage inwards satanic rituals such equally the sacrificing of babies too drinking their blood. In the USA the principal menstruum of SRA accusations is from 1984 to 1994, but this is non an precisely recent trend.

In early on Christian cultures those idea to last inwards allegiance alongside the devil were believed to last involved inwards forms of satanic abuse. This reached its zenith inwards the Middle Ages alongside witch trials too the publication inwards 1481 of Malleus Maleficarum yesteryear Heinrich Kraemer too Johann Sprenger, known inwards English linguistic communication equally The Witches’ Hammer.


During the 1960s U.S. Christianity became focused on the personal too obsessed alongside personal evil, typified inwards Roman Polanski’s 1968 celluloid Rosemary’s Baby. In 1969 Anton Szandor La Vey wrote The Satanic Bible too those looking for clear prove of occult activeness across the USA believed they had flora it. This was followed yesteryear other texts such equally The Satan Seller yesteryear self-declared ex-satanic high priest Mike Warnke inwards 1972, claiming that occult too SRA activeness was proliferating.

In 1973 William Friedkin’s celluloid The Exorcist shockingly depicted the results of demonic possession, too was supposedly based on fact. Personal stories, such equally Michelle Remembers yesteryear Michelle Smith too Lawrence Pazder published inwards 1980, were taken equally prove of the existence of SRA, alongside no substantial proof given.

Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 major incident inwards 1984, known equally the McMartin case, sparked accusations of SRA. At McMartin Preschool inwards Manhattan Beach, California, 360 children were diagnosed alongside existence abused via SRA. Child abuse allegations were besides levied at other schools inwards the area, such equally St. Cross Episcopal Church inwards Hermosa Beach, too inwards all, 100 teachers were defendant of belonging to a satanic cult involved inwards ritual molestation.

The bulk of charges were dropped too the illustration led to farther investigations into faux retentiveness syndrome, a belief that inwards such cases psychologists working alongside the victims of alleged abuse house faux memories through suggestion, hypnosis, too other techniques.

However, this itself is frequently considered closed to other conspiracy: faux retentiveness syndrome or recovered retentiveness scheme is non a clinical medical term too was, it is alleged yesteryear believers of SRA, invented yesteryear those parents charged alongside abuse.

Groups such equally Breaking Free, an SRA survivors’ organization, receive got linked SRA rings to other conspiracy theories relating to disparate groups from the Jesuits to the Freemasons, seeing SRA equally closed to other means of bringing almost the New World Order.

To truthful believers 60,000 people are killed each yr via SRA. Numerous cases may be but prove of a to a greater extent than substantial conspiracy is lacking. After the 1980s receive away from liberalism too the rising of the Christian Right during the Reagan era, inwards 1994 the U.S. saw a backlash against belief inwards SRA.

The full general public, too thus juries, became skeptical of accusations made of SRA, seeing it equally the production of bright imaginations imbued alongside stories from pop U.S. Christianity rather than a reality, making prosecution inwards such cases problematic.

Oda Nobunaga - Japanese General

Ashikaga Shogunate and took control of half of Japan, becoming the virtual dictator in the 1570s. He ended a number of civil wars that had been waged throughout Japan, but his early death ensured renewed fighting.

Oda Nobunaga was born in 1534 in Owari Province in Honshu. His father was a government official who served under the Ashikaga Shogunate and became wealthy.

After his father’s death when he was 17, he grew the family landholdings and made himself lord of Nagoya Castle, which became his first headquarters, where he raised and trained a loyal band of military retainers. Oda began his conquests in 1555. Meeting with success, he decided to lead his men to reunify Japan.

Nobunaga’s first aim was to secure his flanks from attack, and he formed an alliance in 1562 with Matsudaira Motoyasu, who later became Tokugawa Ieyasu, that secured his heartland of Owari, a fertile region of Japan, with Nagoya as an important trading city. Next he moved his army toward Kyoto, the imperial and shogunal capital. Nobunaga used new military technology, including the arquebus and muskets, to great advantage.


In 1568, Nobunaga started to involve himself in Kyoto politics, first by supporting the new shogun Ashikaga Yoshiaki. He would later oust him in 1573, thus ending the Ashikaga Shogunate. To protect his position, Nobunaga then built the mighty Azuchi Castle on Lake Biwa.

With the reins of government in his hands, Nobunaga was determined to make important changes. One of his first acts was to remove road tolls, to help increase domestic trade and diminish the wealth and control of the local daimyo (nobles) who collected them.

Azuchi Castle

Another of his targets was the powerful Buddhist Tendai sect, headquartered at Enryakuji. Nobunaga was successful and destroyed most of the Enraykuji monastery. Another Buddhist sect, the Ikko sect, however, proved to be more of a problem.

Nobunaga began to battle them from 1570. After bitterly fought campaigns, he finally prevailed in 1580, capturing their headquarters near Osaka and massacring the rest of the remaining defenders.

Nobunaga was a harsh and vengeful ruler who forced many of his opponents to commit suicide. But he was generous to his supporters and rewarded them with confiscated farms and land previously owned by the temples. Nobunaga was friendly toward Christian missionaries and allowed Jesuits to build a church in Kyoto. His motives included the belief that Christianity would erode the influence of the Buddhist sects.

By 1582, Nobunaga had defeated many of his opponents, had unified much of the country, and had nearly half the provinces of Japan under his rule. On June 21, 1582, Nobunaga was ambushed while at Honnoji, a temple of the Nichiren sect located near Kyoto, by Akechi Mitsuhide, an aggrieved vassal.

Oda Nobunaga began the work of establishing a unified government in Japan after power had slipped away from the declining Ashikaga Shogunate. His career was cut short, but his goals were continued by his greatest general, Toyotomi Hideyoshi.

Viceroyalty of New Spain

For 300 years (1521–1821), the Viceroyalty of New Spain, the richest and most important political jurisdiction in Spain’s American holdings, expanded from its original boundaries in central Mexico south and west to the Pacific Ocean; south and east to include the Yucatán Peninsula, Florida, the Caribbean, northern South America, and Central America to contemporary Panama (the latter in a jurisdictional subdivision called the Kingdom of Guatemala); and north to include significant portions of what later became the U.S. Southwest.

At the political, economic, and demographic center of this vast colony was the Basin of Mexico, at the heart of which lay Mexico City, built atop the ruins of the aztec capital of Tenochtitlán.

Consequences of Colonial Rule

Three hundred years of colonial rule bequeathed to New Spain an enduring legacy whose consequences remain amply apparent in Mexico and Central America today. Most fundamentally, the new colonial order created new social and racial hierarchies, with Spaniards dominant, Indians subordinate, and, as time passed, mestizos (“mixed-race” Spaniards and Indians) occupying a widening middle ground.

During the first century of colonial rule, the colony’s major social institutions can be identified as the following: the colonial state and its byzantine administrative apparatus; the Roman Catholic Church, both its “regular” and “secular” branches; encomienda; Indian communities; and the patriarchal family.


From around the mid-1600s, hacienda, generally accompanied by debt peonage, displaced encomienda as the principal institution governing land-labor relations between Spaniards and Indians, largely in consequence of steep population declines among Indians resulting from the ravages of epidemic diseases, which effectively rendered encomienda obsolete.

Secular Church's Power Grows

During the same period, the so-called secular church (the ecclesiastical hierarchy emanating from Rome, with the pope at its head) grew in power relative to the regular church (composed of quasi-independent missionary or “mendicant” orders such as the Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, Jesuits, and others, each governed by specific reglas or rules).

This growing power of the secular church, densely entwined with the colonial state, was especially apparent in the most densely populated core regions, while the missionary orders remained strong in the colony’s peripheral zones, such as Yucatán, the northern deserts, and elsewhere.

The overall animo of the colonial period was for the regular church to initiate the process of conversion in peripheral areas, and, over time, as populations grew and the state extended its reach, to cede ecclesiastical authority to the encroaching secular church.

Far from a monolithic institution, the colonial church was wracked by division and conflict, both within and between its major branches. By the end of the colonial period, the Roman Catholic Church, both regular and secular, was not only one of the colony’s most important social institutions, but also far and away its largest landowner.

Contrary to a popularly held view, surviving Indian communities in New Spain and elsewhere retained various forms of collective (or “corporate”) landownership throughout the colonial period. This too became a crucial colonial legacy, especially evident in liberal efforts to privatize landownership in the decades after independence in 1821, efforts fiercely resisted by both the church and Indian communities.

Industry

The Basin of Mexico became and remained the colony’s breadbasket and major source of grain, meat, and other foodstuffs, as well as domestic industry such as obrajes, with expanding market relations especially important in the fertile and well-watered zones north and west of Mexico City.

In the 1540s, the discovery of large deposits of silver northwest of the Basin of Mexico, centered on the province of Zacatecas, provided the colonial state with a steady supply of silver bullion, fueling a price revolution in Iberia and the rest of Europe and transforming the regional colonial economies of Zacatecas, Guanajuato, and other mining regions.

By the mid-1600s, the sprawling colony sank into what one scholar dubbed “New Spain’s century of depression,” though the nature and extent of that “depression” remain the subject of scholarly debate. Compared to the thriving colonies of British North America and elsewhere, however, New Spain did experience a prolonged period of relative economic stagnation.

The imperial state’s efforts to redress its colonies’ relative economic decline, launched after the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–13), are known collectively as the Bourbon Reforms, named after the ruling dynasty that assumed power in Spain after the fall of the Habsburgs.

In a process similar to that unfolding elsewhere in the Americas, as time passed, the “creoles” (or criollos, i.e., Spaniards born in the Americas) became an increasingly important and powerful group, despite its relatively small size—a gradual shift that by the late 1700s led to a growing sense of American identity and the first stirrings for independence from Spain.

Indian and “mixed-race” rebellions and uprisings occurred throughout the colonial period, but most remained local and regional and focused on redress of specific grievances relating to colonial governance or perceived abuses by individual authorities.

Demographics

The demographic makeup of the colony changed markedly over time, from its initial overwhelming preponderance of Indians and tiny number of Spaniards, to steep Indian population decline, to increasing number of mestizos and others of “mixed race,” Africans, and a small but growing number of creoles.

New Spain’s population at the end of the colonial period is estimated at around 6 million—around 50 percent Indian, 30 to 40 percent “mixed race,” 10 to 20 percent Spanish and creole, and less than 1 percent African.

In sum, 300 years of colonial rule left a profound and lasting legacy across New Spain, in every realm of society. Grappling with the nature of that legacy remains one of the most challenging and central tasks facing scholars of postconquest Mexico and Central America.

New France

New France

Although arriving late to the European scramble for North America, France for a time claimed the largest portion of today’s United States and Canada, stretching from Newfoundland to Louisiana and including the Great Lakes and Mississippi Valley. However, New France failed to attract a large population and, by 1750, France was near losing much of its territory to an ascendant British North America.

In 1524, Italian explorer Giovanni di Verrazano was hired by France’s King Francis I to find a passage through North America to Asia, a route that, after many nations failed to find this “Northwest Passage,” was eventually confirmed to be mythical.

However, Verrazano did bring back information about Atlantic coastal regions from Carolina to Nova Scotia. A decade later, seeking gold and the elusive sea passage to the Orient, Jacques Cartier, who may have been part of Verrazano’s expedition, commanded three voyages.


He sailed into the St. Lawrence River, planting a cross bearing the king’s coat of arms to claim a region that included sites that became Québec and Montreal. Returning in 1541, Cartier and his crew established the tiny and short-lived colony of Charlesbourg-Royal, near Montreal, causing tension with the Iroquois and other local tribes.

Scurvy and fierce winter weather soon ended the colonial experiment. After a series of exploratory trips, Cartier returned to France carrying what he believed were gold and diamonds; his booty proved to be iron pyrite (fools’ gold) and common quartz.

Although Crown-sanctioned explorations faded after Cartiers’s inauspicious akibat voyage, fishermen from France (and many other European countries) maintained a robust presence in North America as did traders in furs who dealt with local native tribes. It was these opportunities that reawakened French interest in North America.

New France Beginnings

Samuel de Champlain was a map maker employed by a fur-trading company, not a military man, but his leadership abilities during renewed French explorations in the early 1600s made him New France’s “father” and its first governor. In 1608, Champlain and his associates chose a location on the St. Lawrence River at Québec as their fur-trading settlement.

Champlain forged alliances with many Indian tribes, including the Huron of the Great Lakes, and also championed the idea of more permanent French settlement along the St. Lawrence. In 1633, two years before his death, Champlain was appointed New France’s governor by Cardinal Richelieu, top minister to King Louis XIII.

Eastern Canada was not the only focus of French interest in North America. As fur traders penetrated deeper into the continent in search of the best pelts and cooperative native suppliers, their efforts led to further exploration and land claims.

In 1673, Canadian-born Louis Jolliet and French Jesuit missionary Père Jacques Marquette used information from natives to trace the oceanward course of the Mississippi River in hopes, soon dashed, that it flowed into the Pacific Ocean.

Father Marquette, who was a missionary to tribes in what is now Michigan, died soon after this exhausting expedition on the banks of a river later named the Père Marquette in his honor. Jolliet, who had early on given up the priesthood for fur trading, later explored Hudson Bay and mapped the Labrador coast.

Four years after this Mississippi expedition, French-born René-Robert Cavelier, sieur de LaSalle, who had relocated to New France in 1667, pushed French territorial claims yet further. Arriving at the huge river’s mouth in 1682, LaSalle claimed the vast Mississippi Valley for France, naming this territory Louisiana, for King Louis XIV.

LaSalle’s ambitions, fueled by greed and possible mental illness, did not stop there. Promising to claim Spanish Mexico for France, the adventurer ran out of supplies and was murdered in 1687 by his own hungry men.

Born into a wealthy Montreal family, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, sieur de Bienville in 1701 became acting governor of France’s new southern claims and for 40 years fought to keep his small French colony safe amid Indian, Spanish, and British hostility. In 1718, Bienville spearheaded the creation of New Orleans as an administrative center and port.

Unlike the British in their early colonial years, France did not have excess population at home and provided little incentive for its citizens to brave a stormy Atlantic and face a harsh climate and often-hostile Native population in the New World.

Early on, the tiny French presence in Canada was 80 percent male and consisted mainly of fishermen, fur traders, and Franciscan and Jesuits priests. Known by the Indians as the “Black Robes,” the priests intended to convert Indians to Catholicism.

An early religious mission, called Sainte-Marie, among the Hurons, was built in 1615. Located on Ontario’s Wye River, by 1639, it was home base for 13 priests. When fighting broke out in 1648 between the Huron and their Iroquois enemies, the priests set fire to their mission, fearing its desecration.

From 1627 to 1663, a centralized commercial company created by Cardinal Richelieu struggled to squeeze profits out of New France, succeeding only with furs. There were barely 3,000 colonists in 1663, when King Louis XIV intervened, making New France an official French province.

Troops were sent to protect settlements with fortifications, and to project French power to native tribes and European rivals. A royal shipment of 850 prospective brides, known as filles du roi, or “the king’s young women,” helped to stabilize the colony and assure natural increase in its population. By 1700, New France had 19,000 white inhabitants.

Under this new regime, St. Lawrence River estates were set aside for nobles and military officers. A near-feudal setup, it was called the seigneurial system. New France’s habitants, or ordinary settlers, mostly farmed land owned by some two hundred seigneuries granted by the Crown. This tenant farming system of rents and allotments outlasted French control (and the French monarchy), surviving into the 19th century.

Although agriculture would occupy the energies of the great majority of French Canadians, the voyageurs—fur traders who traveled to French outposts like Detroit (founded in 1701 by Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac) and Prairie du Chien (Wisconsin)—had a more romantic image.

Generally, voyageurs were licensed by the authorities; their rivals were the socalled coureurs de bois, unlicensed traders who aggressively explored the farthest reaches of French America, including New Orleans, in pursuit of valuable furs, especially beaver pelts, and markets for their animal skins and other goods.

Challenges to French

Compared to the British and Spanish in this era, French colonists treated Native Americans with great respect. Friendly relations with local Indian tribes were crucial to French success in the fur trade; colonists were also well aware that their numbers were too small to deter major attacks. From the Indian viewpoint, the fact that Frenchmen were not arriving in huge numbers assured some tribal leaders that they could coexist with these interlopers.

On the other hand, good intentions on both sides did little to spare the Indians from deadly smallpox and other European diseases. Jesuit pressure on Indians to adopt Catholicism, along with European clothing and behavior, although attracting quite a few converts, was generally met with suspicion. There was a significant level of intermarriage, mostly between French men and Indian women, creating a group known as Métis.

The Huron and other Great Lakes and eastern tribes began forging strong alliances with the French in 1615, but wars with the powerful Iroquois Confederacy, allies of Britain, punctuated the history of New France.

New France’s huge landholdings were a noose that encircled Britain’s Atlantic Seaboard colonies, leading to a number of altercations between the two European superpowers, both at home and in North America.

The 1713 Treaty of Utrecht that ended the 12-year-long War of the Spanish Succession gave Britain dominion over a large sector of eastern French Canada including the rich agricultural lands of Acadia and destroyed much of France’s overseas trade.

By the time war again broke out in 1754, the population of British North America was 20 times larger than New France’s and France’s grip on North America was near its end. When French emperor Napoleon I sold Louisiana to the new United States in 1803, New France was a memory, although its French Canadian and Cajun cultures would survive and flourish.

Late Ming Dynasty

Late Ming Dynasty

The Ming dynasty of China (1368–1644) was founded by a commoner, Zhu Yuanzhang (Chu Yuan-chang), who ruled as Emperor Hongwu (Hung-wu), 1368–98. He expelled the Mongols and began the recovery of China.

His son, Emperor Yongle (Yung-lo), ruled from 1402 to 1424 and was also a capable general and administrator. Together they expanded China’s borders, strengthened the defenses, and pursued policies that led to economic recovery and agricultural revival.

The schools that they founded and the examination system that they revitalized to recruit government officials would serve the empire well during long decades when minors and weaklings occupied the throne. However a succession of capricious and weak rulers eventually led to eunuchs’ controlling power and massive corruption that resulted in domestic revolts, unwise foreign wars, and dynastic collapse.


Emperor Hongwu instituted an autocratic style of government and both he and Yongle exercised their power vigorously and effectively. However while Hongwu treated eunuchs as mere palace servants, Yongle began to entrust them with administrative duties, but under his firm control.

Yongle died leading his fifth campaign against the Mongols. His son was already ill and died within a year, passing the throne to his son, who ruled for 11 years as Emperor Xuande (Hsuanteh). Xuande was succeeded by his eight-year-old son in 1436.

Such short reigns were damaging in an autocratic system of government where continuity in leadership was an asset. Minors on the throne required regencies by empress dowagers, who notoriously relied on eunuchs rather than ministers for advice.

Most Ming dynasty eunuchs came from poor families in northern China and were noted for their greed and extortion. Boy emperors who were isolated from normal human contacts grew up dependent on them as friends and advisers.

For example Emperor Zhengtong (Cheng-t’ung) appointed his eunuch Wang Zhen (Wang Chen) commander in chief and the two men set out together in 1494 with a large army against the Mongol Esen Khan. The army was cut to pieces, Wang died, and Zhengtong was taken prisoner.

Although the Mongols were too weak to take the offensive, this disaster ended Chinese military superiority over the nomads and put the Ming government on the defensive on the northern frontier. In the mid-16th century, Mongol chief Altan Khan would raid China’s northern borders at will for two decades.

At the same time, Japanese pirates and Chinese renegades raided and looted the southern coast inflicting huge damage. In the 1590s, Japanese warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi invaded Korea. Suzerain China had to send a huge army to aid the Koreans for six years, at enormous cost.

Two long reigns in the 16th century (Jiajing or Chia-ching between 1520 and 1566, and Wanli (Wan-Li) between 1572 and 1620) brought a measure of stability, largely due to able ministers in the early part of each reign.

However both monarchs were grossly negligent of their duties, isolating themselves from government officials and relying on power-hungry palace eunuchs, with the result that the bureaucracy became increasingly demoralized. A government that was unresponsive to social and economic problems would eventually be brought down by peasant rebels from northwestern China led by Li Zicheng (Li Tzuch’eng) in 1644.

Ming China prospered, however, despite inept political leadership. The population increased from about 60 million at the beginning to possibly 200 million by 1600. In addition to great metropolitan centers such as Suzhou (Soochow) and Hangzhou (Hangchow), many intermediate-sized market towns emerged.

Society was egalitarian and the flourishing printing industry facilitated the spread of education so that the sons of millions of families could realistically aspire to obtain an education, pass the state exam, and join the elite.

Popular culture represented by the theater and opera flourished in the cities. In addition, a new genre of literature developed during the Ming. It was the novel, written in the vernacular and depicting men and women of all social classes.

The government’s principal source of income was the land tax, assessed on land owned by farming families and not on the number of males in a household. This system of taxation gave farmers greater freedom to choose employment and allowed the development of industries. Silk and cotton manufacturing prospered, as did the porcelain industry, which led the world.

While China had traded with South and Southeast Asia and beyond for over a millennium, the Portuguese entered the trading scene in 1516, opening direct seaborne Sino-European commercial relations.

Portuguese merchants were followed by men from the Netherlands, England, France, and other European nations. Westerners brought European products, but more significantly New World crops such as maize, sweet potatoes, and tobacco, with enormous impact on Chinese agriculture and diet.

More immediately European demand for Chinese silks, porcelain, and tea brought an influx of silver to China. In 1581, the first Jesuit missionary landed in China. Jesuits would be important during the late Ming and early Qing (Ch’ing) as cultural ambassadors between China and Europe.

They introduced Western sciences, mathematics, astronomy, cartography, and firearms to China and the ideals of Chinese philosophy to Europe, laying the foundations of Sinology, or study of Chinese civilization in Europe.

The 16th century was an kurun of great changes in Europe and China, where modern societies were beginning to develop. Despite inept Ming emperors the educational system and civil service continued to provide for a prosperous and advancing civil society.

However by the beginning of the 17th century, many signs pointed to the fact that the country was exhausted. An ineffective government could not simultaneously deal with internal rebellions and border incursions by nomads.

The last Ming emperor hanged himself as rebels swarmed into the capital; a beleaguered frontier general then invited the Manchus, a minority ethnic group living on the northeastern borders of the Ming empire, to help him put down the rebels. Astute Manchu leaders seized this opportunity to ascend the throne and founded a new dynasty.

Lebna Dengel - Ethiopian Ruler

 Emperor Lebna Dengel of Ethiopia

Emperor Lebna Dengel of Ethiopia, also known as Dawit II, or David II, was one of the celebrated Christian kings of Ethiopia. Lebna Dengel succeeded to the throne of Ethiopia at the age of 12, partly through the maneuverings of his grandmother, the empress Eleni.

The empress was the daughter of King Hadiya, a Muslim, and she officially served as Lebna Dengel’s regent. Eleni had begun her rise to power when she became one of the four wives of Zara Yakob (1438–68) in 1445, thereby joining her prominent Muslim family with the Christian family of Zara Yakob.

As one of the celebrated evangelizing emperors of Ethiopia, along with Amda Tseyon (1314–44) and Sayfa Arad (1344–72), Zara Yakob holds a unique place in Ethiopian history. When he built a new royal residence at Debre Berhan, Eleni, who had converted to Christianity, established a church on the grounds.


Zara Yakob died after designating his young son Ba’eda Maryam (1468–78) as his heir, and Eleni became even more prominent in Ethiopian politics. Since his mother was dead, Ba’eda Maryam designated Eleni, to whom he was close, as the queen mother and chose her to serve as his regent.

Eleni also served in this capacity during the troubled reign of her son Na’od (1494–1505), who had succeeded his half brother Ba’eda Maryam to the throne. When Na’od was killed in a battle against the Muslims, his son Lebna Dengel was only seven years old.

Throughout much of the late 15th and early 16th centuries, Eleni served as the power behind the Ethiopian throne, essentially serving as the reigning monarch. As a devout and active Christian, Eleni is credited with founding the modern church of Ethiopia. Although her exact birth date is unknown, Eleni was born sometime in the 1430s and died in the early 1520s in her 90s.

While Christians and Muslims coexisted in Ethiopia during Lebna Dengel’s reign, it was far from a peaceful relationship. In 1516, when the emir Mahfuz of Haran invaded the Ethiopian highlands, Lebna Dengel ambushed the invaders and continued to press his advantage by killing the emir and following them back to Haran, where he again attacked.

Lebna Dengel returned to his home a hero, convinced that the Muslims would no longer threaten Ethiopian Christians. He was fatally wrong. Suspecting that a Muslim attack was imminent, Eleni sent out a plea for assistance from Portugal. Consequently, in 1520, a Portuguese expeditionary force arrived in Ethiopia, led by Dom Ridrigo da Lama.

Despite the presence of the Portuguese in Ethiopia, in March 1529, Muslim forces under Ahmed Ibn Ghazi (c. 1507–43), popularly known as “the Gran,” triumphed over Lebna Dengel’s forces. By 1531, Muslim forces were in control of Ethiopia and remained so until 1543.

During the period of Muslim dominance, Emperor Lebna Dengel actively resisted all efforts to make him renounce his faith. When Ahmed ibn Ghazi demanded the hand of Lebna Dengel’s daughter in marriage, warning Lebna Dengel that he had no other course than to comply, the emperor summarily refused.

Assuring the Gran that he would not allow his daughter to marry a nonbeliever, Lebna Dengel wrote to him that he was determined to retain his trust in the Lord rather than in the Gran. Afterward, Lebna Dengel’s faith was repeatedly tested as he was forced to flee for his life. For the rest of his life, he was often hungry, uncomfortable, and in physical danger.

Lebna Dengel was still hiding from Muslim forces when he was killed in battle on September 2, 1540, near the monastery of Dabra Dam in Tigre. Subsequently, the tide turned for Christian Ethiopians. Lebna Dengel had appealed to Portugal for assistance in 1535, but help did not arrive until after his death.

The emperor Galawdewos (Claudius) succeeded to his father’s throne, and the Ethiopian Empire was restored with the help of the Portuguese who arrived in Ethiopia in 1541. This force of 400 Portuguese musketeers was led by Cristóvão da Gama, the son of the celebrated explorer Vasco da Gama.

After Lebna Dengel’s death, his son Galawdewos, assisted by the Portuguese musketeers, led an attack in which the Gran was killed in 1543 in a battle near Lake Tana. Once the Muslims were ousted, the Christians performed a penitential and reinstatement ceremony and proclaimed the return of Christianity to Ethiopia.

Although the Muslims had been ousted from Ethiopia, the Gran’s widow, Bati Del Wambara, continued raids on the Christians. Galawdewos was killed in battle in 1559, and the Muslims triumphantly displayed his head on a stake.

Many of the Portuguese who survived the various battles remained in Ethiopia when the troops pulled out of Ethiopia in 1547. They were soon joined by a group of Jesuit missionaries. The presence of the Portuguese was evident in Ethiopia in a number of ways since the Portuguese government fully intended to retain a certain amount of power in the country The Portuguese taught the Ethiopian soldiers how to use firearms and converted a number of locals to Western Catholicism.

By the mid-17th century, however, the Ethiopian government had expelled the Jesuits and denied other missionaries admission to the country. For the next two centuries, Ethiopia rejected all foreign overtures, preferring to exist in isolation.

Niccolò Machiavelli

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Machiavelli was born in Florence on May 3, 1469. His parents provided him with a humanistic education, with a stress on Latin grammar, rhetoric, and history. As he matured, he deepened his knowledge of the works of the philosophers and historians of ancient Greece and Rome and became familiar with the comedies of Plautus.

Machiavelli was head of the Second Chancery and secretary to the Ten of War of the Florentine Republic from 1498 to 1512. His duties included diplomatic missions to heads of state on the Italian peninsula and elsewhere in Europe.

Especially noteworthy are those missions to Louis XII of France, Emperor Maximilian I, Caterina Sforza of Forli, Pope Julius II, and Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI. When the Medici overthrew republican rule in 1512, Machiavelli was suspected of a conspiracy against them, imprisoned, and tortured. After his exoneration and release under a general amnesty in 1513, he turned to writing.

Machiavelli’s literary output is extensive. His History of Florence, commissioned by the Medici, begins with the city’s origins and ends on a pessimistic note with the death of Lorenzo de’ Medici in 1492. The Art of War is a technical look at military preparations and makes a plea for a citizen militia.


Machiavelli’s best known work, The Prince, is based on his diplomatic experience and his reading of ancient history. It is a complex assessment of the qualities needed for political leadership by a new prince.

Although the book is modeled on the “mirror for princes,” advice books common to the Renaissance era, many of its recommendations are the inverse of the princely virtues advocated by that literature. Its meaning has often been reduced to the trite phrase “The end justifies the means.” Some critics have deemed the book an advice manual for would-be autocrats.

As early as the century in which he lived, Machiavelli and The Prince were condemned and demonized in French Protestant circles and in Elizabethan English literature. Leading Jesuits also attacked him, and his works were placed on the Index of Prohibited Books of the Roman Catholic Church in 1559.

his statue

Although criticism of Machiavelli and The Prince continues, recent scholarship has modified these negative assessments. Greater stress is now placed on his advocacy of republicanism, especially as expressed in the Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy. Modern scholars also recognize Machiavelli’s literary creativity.

His play Mandragola presents a comic as well as ironic look at Renaissance marriage patterns and offers an astute analysis of desire and ambition. Another, Clizia, revolves around an aged married man’s attempts to gain the love of a young woman. The fable Belfagor recounts the experiences of a fiend who is delegated by the devil to spend time in marriage on Earth.

His Tercets on Fortune is an extended study of Fortune, whom he personifies as a woman and associates with discord and unpredictability in human affairs. Machiavelli died on June 21, 1527, and is entombed in the basilica of Santa Croce in Florence.

Jesuits in Asia

Jesuits in Asia

The missionary enterprise of the Jesuits in Asia is comprehensible only against the background of three foundational principles. The first two are from the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the order: Following Jesus as a Jesuit entails missionary outreach, and being a missionary implies cultural adaptation because Jesus adapted himself to the human condition.

The third theological principle is that missionary activity should reflect the shared life of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) as documented in the Formula of the Institute and Constitutions.

The nascent Society of Jesus was yet to receive full papal approbation (September 27, 1540) when a request arrived from João III the Pious, king of Portugal, for Jesuits to work in the Portuguese domains of Asia. Ignatius of Loyola chose two of his first companions, Simão Rodrigues and Nicolas Bobadilla, for the mission.


However, before they could leave for Portugal, Bobadilla fell ill. Providentially, Francis Xavier was then in Rome and Ignatius decided to send him instead. The king of Portugal, impressed by the two Jesuits, decided to keep Rodrigues in Lisbon. Xavier, accompanied by Micer Paul, a secular priest recently admitted into the Society of Jesus, and Francisco Mansilhas, a Jesuit aspirant, set sail for India.

They finally reached Goa in India on May 6, 1542. Xavier would labor in Asia for 10 years as a missionary, baptizing and catechizing the inhabitants of the Fishery Coast of southern India; Malacca on the western coast of the Malay Peninsula; the Moluccas, also known as the “Spice Islands”; and Japan.

While in Japan, Xavier heard about China and resolved to preach the Christian message there. While awaiting Chinese government permission to land, he died on the island of Sancian in 1552, unable to fulfill his dream of converting the Chinese to Christ.

That dream would be partially realized not much later as thousands of Jesuits of various nationalities followed Xavier in the Asian missionary enterprise. Missions were conducted in West Asia, for example, with the appointment of Jesuits as papal legates in establishing relations with the Maronites and in negotiating church unity with Orthodox, Nestorian, and Monophysite Churches. But the majority of Jesuit missionaries worked farther afield, chiefly in South Asia and in East Asia.

After India, Jesuits would find themselves laboring in places in peninsular (Malacca, Indochina) and insular (Indonesia, the Philippines) Southeast Asia, and in Japan and China. The primary goal was of course the spread of Christianity, but the diverse cultures who populated the huge continent called for various missionary strategies and tactics.

The chief architect of the Asian missionary enterprise was an Italian Jesuit named Alessandro Valignano. He called for cultural adaptation to Asian ways where this was legitimate and did not compromise the Christian message.

Perhaps the most significant cultural adaptation was the use of Asian languages in the preaching of Christ and teaching of doctrine. They also extended this cultural adaptation to the manner of dress, civil customs, and ordinary life of their target audience.

His principles were put to good use by such as Matteo Ricci and Michele Ruggieri. Aside from exploiting European sciences and arts of their day to gain entrance into the educated elite of China, Ricci and his companions decided to study the Confucian classics esteemed by the Mandarin ruling class.

In a similar way, the Jesuits working in the south of India decided on a two-pronged strategy that enabled them to reach out to both the higher and lower social castes, tailoring their manner of living to gain initial acceptance from their respective audiences.

“Dressed in cloth of red-ochre, a triangular sandal mark on his forehead, high wooden sandals on his feet,” Roberto de Nobili lived in the manner of a Hindu man of God (sannyasi), learned Sanskrit, and memorized the Vedas so that he could share the message of Christ and his church with the Indian people.

In other Asian places not as highly developed in civilization and culture, the Jesuits were animated by the same principles of cultural adaptation. In the Philippines, they creatively replicated strategies that were used elsewhere.

Because local populations were dispersed far and wide, the Jesuits encouraged people to set up permanent communities in planned settlements (a method they used in Latin America called reduction), thus laying the foundation of many towns and cities that exist today. They also set up schools wherever these were needed and constructed churches and other buildings that transformed European architectural designs to suit Asian artistic sensibilities.

They learned the various local languages and dialects and produced grammars, vocabularies, and dictionaries, thus systematizing the study not just of the languages themselves but of the cultures of the peoples that they were seeking to convert. They wrote books that mapped the ethnography of Asia and were keen observers of Asian ways and traditions, including their interaction with the natural environment.

The Jesuit missionary enterprise in Asia met with obstacles along the way. Some of these obstacles arose from European ethnocentric fears and prejudices that burdened the church of their times. Cultural adaptation was denounced as syncretism, and the missionaries themselves were often at loggerheads on the appropriate strategies to use in mission work.

It was not always clear for example whether Chinese categories used to translate Latin ones were without ambiguity, but a lack of understanding, trust, and generosity created a poisoned atmosphere that did not produce the requisite witness to Christian charity.

The distance between Rome and Asia proved to be not only a geographical dilema but also a psychological barrier that prevented church authorities from being more sympathetic to the needs of the missionary enterprise in Asia. Furthermore the political, economic, and social burden imposed by Portuguese and Spanish royal patronage of the church in the Indies proved too heavy at times to carry.

Rome itself would be forced to set up the Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith in 1622 to loosen the viselike grip of the European monarchs who wished to manipulate the missionary enterprise for political and economic gain. Also, Jesuits allowed themselves to be caught in political controversies of their host countries, thus inevitably creating enemies for themselves among members of the ruling classes.

In 1759 the Portuguese king expelled all Jesuits working in Portugal and Portuguese Asia. In Spain, the Spanish king followed suit and banished the Jesuits from his domains in 1767. Finally, in 1773, Pope Clement XIV, under extreme political pressure from the Bourbon monarchs of Europe, could no longer prevent the inevitable from happening.

Through the bull Redemptor ac hominis, the pope suppressed the Society of Jesus, thus bringing an end to their missionary work in Asia. This work would be resumed only in the 19th century, when Jesuits would return to their former mission fields now besieged by new historical forces.

Ignatius of Loyola and the Society of Jesus

Ignatius of Loyola

Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) and author of the spiritual classic The Spiritual Exercises, holds a place among the most influential people of his time. Such a claim says a great deal about his impact, for Loyola lived in an age of many powerful and influential personalities.

Ignatius was born one year before Columbus discovered America into a noble family in the Basque country of northern Spain. The youngest of 13 children, he dreamed of making his fame and fortune as a valiant knight in the service of his king, and he pursued the swashbuckling life of a soldier until he reached the age of 30. Then, in May of 1591, he found himself heading a small garrison of Spanish troops in the fortress of Pamplona when it was attacked by a vastly superior French army.

Although the city’s leaders wished to surrender without a fight, the zealous Loyola convinced them to defend their walls, and he bravely rallied his troops in battle until a French cannonball shattered his right leg. Pamplona promptly fell to the French, and Ignatius was transported by stretcher to his family’s castle at Loyola, where he endured excruciating operations aimed at repairing and straightening his leg.


He nearly died under the surgeon’s knife, and his recovery process was long and slow. During his lengthy recuperation, a profound change took place in him that would totally alter the course of his life. As he lay in bed day after day, he grew extremely bored and asked for something to read.

He was an avid reader of the stories of gallant knights, who performed daring deeds in the service of their lady, and he craved such books to help him pass the time. But in his family’s castle, there was only a book on the life of Jesus Christ, and another on the lives of the saints.

In his desperation for something to occupy his mind, he would read from these books as he lay in bed and then daydream about knightly exploits. Yet, the more he read about Christ and the saints, the more impressed he became by their heroic virtue and goodness.

His daydreams began to alternate: At times he would envision himself as a valorous knight of the king of Spain; at other times, he would dream of becoming “a knight of Christ,” and of heroically following Jesus Christ as the great saints of old had done. After a period of serious deliberation, he became utterly convinced that he must leave behind his former way of life and dedicate himself completely to the cause of Christ.

A Hermit, Pilgrim, and Student

Over the following 13 years, Ignatius investigated various ways of responding to his new calling. His early attempts were not highly successful. First, he lived for many months as a poor hermit, begging for his food and spending his days in prayer. Then he took ship and went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, hoping to offer himself in lifelong service there.

When he was denied permission to remain permanently in the Holy Land, he returned to Spain and began a long process of study, which would take him from Barcelona, to the Spanish university town of Alcalá, and ultimately to the University of Paris, where he studied theology and was ordained a Catholic priest.

During his years at the University of Paris, by force of his virtuous character, his strength of personality, and his other powerful leadership qualities, he gathered around himself a group of extremely talented younger men from Spain, France, and Portugal, who were also studying for the priesthood.

He led each of them through The Spiritual Exercises, his life-changing 30-day retreat, which he had by that time developed. As their numbers and their friendship grew, this impressive band of men dreamed of doing something together in the service of God.

Founding of the Jesuits

In August 1534, Ignatius of Loyola and several others joined together in Paris to make promises to remain permanently single for God (chastity) and to live in poverty, in order to place their lives as completely as possible at the service of God. Their first ambition was to sail together to the Holy Land, and to preach the Gospel of Christ in Jerusalem.

When this proved impossible, they journeyed to Rome and placed themselves at the disposal of the pope, ready to serve in whatever way he should direct. The small group continued to grow, attracting many other young and gifted men who were inspired by the lives of Ignatius and his companions, and by the scope of their vision.

Although numerous religious orders of men already existed in the Roman Catholic Church, Ignatius’s company was utterly new: a bold and dynamic missionary band of highly gifted men who were prepared to go anywhere in the world, and to do anything that would advance the cause of Christ. In 1540 the new order, called the Society of Jesus, was officially established by Pope Paul III.

In the following year, Ignatius was elected the first superior (“general”), and he remained in that role until his death 15 years later, in 1556. Throughout these years, Ignatius remained in Rome, crafting the Constitutions of his order and directing his far-flung society through his extensive correspondence. A gifted leader of men and an able administrator, he was also revered by his men for his personal holiness and his profound life of prayer.

Under his direction, the Society of Jesus became a powerful force in the Counter-Reformation, exercising enormous impact through their dominance in the field of education, through their popular preaching and their theological disputations, and through their worldwide missionary activity. The order continued to grow rapidly throughout his life, and by the time of his death numbered nearly 1,000 men.

Society of Jesus

The Jesuit order exploded onto the European scene in the decades following their official establishment in 1540. Their growth in numbers was rapid, and within 25 years after Ignatius’s death, 5,000 Jesuits were at work all over the world. They played a major role in educating the youth of upper-class European society and had established nearly 150 colleges by 1580.

As time went on, they enjoyed enormous popular appeal through their creative use of preaching, drama, music, extensive use of the recently invented printing press, and promotion of baroque art and architecture. In the highest echelons of society, Jesuits became confessors and counselors to many of Europe’s kings and queens and leading statesmen.

Over the next 200 years, hundreds of intrepid Jesuit missionaries followed in the footsteps of the first Jesuit foreign missionary, Francis Xavier. They journeyed from Europe to many parts of North and South America, Africa, and Asia. Many of them would die on the journey itself, the hazards and hardships of sea travel at that time being so great.

Many others would die a martyr’s death in the land of their mission. Jesuits were known to be outstanding in developing creative missionary methods for different cultural settings, and in respecting the indigenous cultures within which they sought to adapt the preaching of the Gospel.

The work of such men as Valignano in Japan, Matteo Ricci in China, Di Nobili in India, and the Jesuit reductions in Paraguay continue to be studied today by missionaries seeking to adapt the Gospel effectively to new cultures with respect and sensitivity.

All was not smooth sailing for the Society of Jesus, however. Their unprecedented success in so many of their endeavors, their massive influence at all levels of society, and serious doubts that were raised about some of their methods all contributed to making the Jesuits a storm center of controversy.

Although they won many influential friends over the years, they also accumulated a long list of powerful and dedicated enemies, who considered them a dangerous force to be eliminated. Some of their implacable foes came from within the Catholic Church itself, others from among the Protestants of Europe, and many more from among Europe’s Enlightenment intellectuals and rulers.

By the mid-1700s, fierce opposition to the activity and influence of the Jesuits had coalesced into strong pressure from different quarters for the complete suppression of the order. The society was first driven out of Portugal, then out of France and Spain, and finally in 1773, the pope was prevailed upon to suppress the entire order. The suppression was not lifted by Rome until 40 years later, in 1814.

The restored Society of Jesus flourished in many parts of the world in the 19th and 20th centuries, including in the United States, and became especially well-known for its excellent high schools and universities. Today the Society of Jesus ranks as the largest Catholic religious order in the world, with more than 20,000 members serving in 112 nations on six of the world’s continents.