Religion

E.R. Chamberlin recounts the Babylonian captivity, as Petrarch described it, which lasted in Avignon for seventy-four years.

S.G.F. Brandon describes how the earliest representatives of mankind were concerned with three fundamental problems— birth, death and the supply of food—which they attempted to solve by magico-religious means.

In the mid 1570s, writes R.C. Morton, the plantation and settlement of Ulster were undertaken by the Elizabethan Government.

Founded by Saint Francis Xavier, the Roman Catholic Mission in Japan was formally abolished by the Shogun in 1614.

J.H.M. Salmon shows how spiritual values and political objectives were deeply in conflict throughout the long reign of Louis XIV.

S.G.F. Brandon shows how the idea of a posthumous moral judgment, when the sheep will be divided from the goats, is deeply rooted in our cultural history.

Four centuries ago the title of Dalai Lama was conferred on a Tibetan abbot by a Mongol sovereign, writes George Woodcock. Fourteen incarnations of the Compassionate Bodhisattva have since ruled Tibet as priest-kings.

According to the ancient religions of the Near East, every man possessed a double nature, compounded of physical and psychical elements, each an essential adjunct of his life.

S.G.F. Brandon suggests the influence of the idea of the Devil in Christian culture has been profound, inspiring both noble works of art and the most degrading superstitions.

S.G.F. Brandon explains how, from the religious conceptions of the ancient Hebrew people, sprang the traditional idea of how mankind originated.