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Encyclopedia - Britannica Online Encyclopedia
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  • “Christ II” (work by Cynewulf)
    author of four Old English poems preserved in late 10th-century manuscripts. Elene and The Fates of the Apostles are in the Vercelli Book, and The Ascension (which forms the second part of a trilogy, Christ, and is also called Christ II) and Juliana are in the Exeter Book. An epilogue to each poem, asking for prayers for the author, contains runic......
  • Christ, imitation of (religion)
    ...also does not appear—as in Buddhism—as suffering simply under the general conditions of human existence in this world; it is instead coupled with the specifically Christian idea of the imitation of Christ. Individual Christians are called to follow the example of Christ; incorporation into the body of Christ is granted to those who are ready to carry out within themselves Christ...
  • Christ in the House of His Parents (painting by Millais)
    ...the result of the example set by Raphael and which had dominated the schools and academies since his time. At the next year’s academy, the novelist Charles Dickens led a violent attack on Millais’s “Christ in the House of His Parents” (1850; Tate Gallery, London), which many considered blasphemous because of its lack of idealization and seeming irreverence in the use...
  • Christ in Theology (work by Bushnell)
    ...for man’s punishment for sin) and considered problems of language, emphasizing the social, symbolic, and evocative nature of language as related to religious faith and the mysteries of God. Christ in Theology (1851) amplified and defended his attitude toward theological language, giving special attention to metaphoric language and to an instrumental view of the Trinity. In Natu...
  • Christ, John the Baptist, and the Apostles (work by Thorvaldsen)
    ...and its classification as “frigid.” In sculpture some of the important commissions regrettably resulted in this lifeless concept of Neoclassicism. Among the examples are large marbles of Christ, John the Baptist, and the Apostles by the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen in the Church of Our Lady, Copenhagen (1821–27 and 1842). Thorvaldsen’s marbles, unlike Canova...
  • Christ, mystical body of (theology)
    ...believers, even though the two churches fell into schism in 1054. Furthermore, the juridical definition of the church did not include traditional themes such as the communion of saints and the body of Christ. The theme of the communion of saints refers to the church as a whole, including both the living and the dead (the souls in purgatory—a place or condition for those who must be......
  • Christ of the Andes (sculpture by Alonso)
    ...(1836–51, East Berlin) and the several statues of Joan of Arc in France. These were works of not simply historical but also topical and political significance, as indeed was the colossal “Christ of the Andes” by Mateo Alonso erected in 1902 on the border of Chile and Argentina (photograph). Abstractions were also endowed with a more urgent ideological content than in......
  • Christ of the Apocalypse (tapestry)
    ...by the tapestry revival in mid-20th-century France, has continued in Scotland. The most ambitious 20th-century tapestry designed by a British artist, Graham Sutherland’s (1903–80) enormous “Christ of the Apocalypse” (1962) for Coventry Cathedral, was, however, woven on looms in Felletin, France. This is the largest tapestry ever to have been made there (78 feet 1 inc...
  • Christ of the Apocalypse with the 24 Elders (Romanesque sculpture)
    ...are another indication of this sculptural instinct. Romanesque sculpture culminated in France in the great semicircular relief compositions over church portals, called tympanums. The example at Moissac (c. 1120–30), which represents the Apocalyptic vision with the 24 elders, is a particularly brilliant demonstration of how devices of style can so transform the objects of nature......
  • Christ of Velázquez, The (work by Unamuno)
    ...and San Manuel Bueno, mártir (1933; “Saint Manuel the Good, Martyr”), the story of an unbelieving priest. Unamuno’s El Cristo de Velázquez (1920; The Christ of Velázquez), a study in poetic form of the great Spanish painter, is regarded as a superb example of modern Spanish verse....
  • Christ on Parnassus (work by Forsyth)
    ...of Jesus Christ (1909), attempted “to moralize dogma,” to express in terms of modern personal experience the meaning of the doctrine of Christ’s divinity. In Christ on Parnassus (1911), dealing with theology and the arts, and in The Justification of God (1916), he considered the relation of Christian faith to th...
  • Christ on the Cross (painting by Goya)
    In 1780 Goya was elected a member of the Royal Academy of San Fernando, Madrid, his admission piece being a Christ on the Cross, a conventional composition in the manner of Mengs but painted in the naturalistic style of Velázquez’s Christ on the Cross, which he doubtless knew. In 1785 he was appointed deputy director of painti...
  • Christ on the Cross (painting by Rubens)
    ...Europe. Among his more important religious compositions from this period are “The Last Judgment” (c. 1616, Alte Pinakothek) and “Christ on the Cross” (also called “Le Coup de Lance,” 1620; Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp [see photograph]). Yet during this same decade Rubens also produced many paintings on secular......
  • Christ on the Mount of Olives (work by Beethoven)
    ...an oratorio, though its content is secular and its form a loosely articulated series of evocative pieces. Ludwig van Beethoven’s single oratorio, Christus am Ölberg (1803; Christ on the Mount of Olives), does not succeed, nor do most of those occasioned by the 19th-century large halls, choral societies, and festivals, especially in Germany and England....
  • Christ, Order of (Portuguese religious group)
    On his return to Portugal, Henry was made duke of Viseu and lord of Covilhã. In 1420, at the age of 26, he was made administrator general of the Order of Christ, which had replaced the crusading order of the Templars in Portugal. While this did not oblige him to take religious vows, it was reported that he afterward resolved to lead a chaste and ascetic life. However, the traditional......
  • Christ Recrucified (work by Kazantzakis)
    ...beginning with Víos ke politía tou Aléxi Zorbá (1946; Zorba the Greek) and continuing with his masterpiece O Christos xanastavronete (1954; Christ Recrucified), he embodied a synthesis of ideas from various philosophies and religions in larger-than-life characters who wrestle with great problems, such as the existence of God and the......
  • Christ Stopped at Eboli (work by Levi)
    ...was a painter and a practicing physician when he was exiled (1935–36) to the southern district of Lucania for anti-Fascist activities. His Cristo si è fermato a Eboli (1945; Christ Stopped at Eboli) reflects the visual sensitivity of a painter and the compassionate objectivity of a doctor. Quickly acclaimed a literary masterpiece, it was widely translated....
  • Christ the King, Church of (church, Cork, Ireland)
    ...by Frank Lloyd Wright to develop a number of highly individual styles, especially in his designs for Roman Catholic ecclesiastical buildings. One of his finest works, the reinforced concrete Church of Christ the King, Cork, Ireland (from 1928), is said to be the first European Catholic church designed by a U.S. architect....
  • Christ the King, Feast of (Roman Catholic festival)
    festival celebrated in the Roman Catholic church in honour of Jesus Christ as lord over all creation. Essentially a magnification of the Feast of the Ascension, it was established by Pope Pius XI in 1925. Originally, it was celebrated on the last Sunday in October, but in the revised liturgical calendar promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1969, it was moved to the last Sunday of Ordinary Time (immediat...
  • Christ the Redeemer (statue, Mount Corcovado, Brazil)
    ...
  • Christ the Saviour, Cathedral of (cathedral, Moscow, Russia)
    ...the 1960s, much careful restoration and repair work has been undertaken—but some architectural monuments disappeared in the early Soviet period. In 1931 Stalin demolished the 19th-century Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, and, beginning in 1958, a vast open-air swimming pool occupied its foundation, in accordance with Khrushchev’s orders. The cathedral, however, was restored to its...
  • Christ thorn (plant)
    thorny vinelike plant of the spurge family (Euphorbiaceae), popular as a houseplant and in the tropics as a garden shrub. Flowering is year-round, but most plentiful in wintertime in the Northern Hemisphere. The sprawling, branching, vinelike stems attain lengths of more than two metres (seven feet). Native to Madagascar, crown of thorns has stout, gray spines, oval leaves that drop as they age, a...
  • Christ, two natures of (theology)
    ...between orthodox Christians and monophysites. The Henotikon’s theological formula incorporated the decisions of the general Councils of Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381) and recognized Christ’s divinity, but it omitted any reference to the orthodox distinction of Christ’s human and divine essences, as enunciated by the Council of Chalcedon (451), and in so doing ...
  • Christ Walking on the Water (work by Giotto)
    Three principal works are attributed to Giotto in Rome. They are the great mosaic of Christ Walking on the Water (the Navicella), over the entrance to St. Peter’s; the altarpiece painted for Cardinal Stefaneschi (Vatican Museum); and the fresco fragment of Boniface VIII Proclaiming the Jubilee, in San......
  • Christ with St. John the Baptist (painting by Cavaliere d’Arpino)
    ...fresco painter, having impressed Pope Clement VIII with his facility of execution. But his frescoes in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, begun in 1596, were never finished. Perhaps his best work is the four incidents from the life of St. John the Baptist in the Church of San Giovanni in Laterano, Rome. During his long career, he also created the designs for the mosaics of the cupola of St. Peter...
  • Christabel (poem by Coleridge)
    ...the sense of wonder in common life that marks many of Wordsworth’s contributions. While this volume was going through the press, Coleridge began a complementary poem, a Gothic ballad entitled “Christabel,” in which he aimed to show how naked energy might be redeemed through contact with a spirit of innocent love....
  • Christabel; Kubla Khan: A Vision; The Pains of Sleep (work by Coleridge)
    ...a renewed interest in the arts. Coleridge’s lectures on Shakespeare became fashionable, his play Remorse was briefly produced, and his volume of poems Christabel; Kubla Khan: A Vision; The Pains of Sleep was published in 1816. Biographia Literaria (1817), an account of his own development, combined philosophy and....
  • Christadelphians (Protestant religious group)
    member of a Christian group founded about 1848 by John Thomas, who, after studying medicine in London, emigrated to Brooklyn, New York. He at first joined the followers of Thomas and Alexander Campbell, founders of the Disciples of Christ (Christians), but eventually he began preaching independently, largely applying Hebrew prophecy and the book of Revelation to current and futu...
  • Christal Glasse for Christian Women (work by Stubbs)
    ...in dress, food, drink, games, and especially sex. At first Stubbs was inclined to condemn only excessive concentration on worldly pastimes, but in later works he denounced all forms of them. His Christal Glasse for Christian Women (1591), a biographical account of his wife, depicts her as an even narrower Puritan than he was himself. On her deathbed she declared her affection for a puppy...
  • Christaller, Walter (German economic geographer)
    Another major contribution to location theory was Walter Christaller’s formulation of the central place theory, which offered geometric explanations as to how settlements and places are located in relation to one another and why settlements function as hamlets, villages, towns, or cities....
  • Christchurch (New Zealand)
    city, Canterbury regional council, eastern South Island, New Zealand, on the Avon River. It was the last and most successful colonizing project inspired by Edward Gibbon Wakefield and his New Zealand Company. Christchurch was founded by the Canterbury Association, which was formed in 1848 largely through the efforts of John Robert Godley and...
  • Christchurch (district, England, United Kingdom)
    town and borough (district), administrative county of Dorset, historic county of Hampshire, England. It lies at the confluence of the Rivers Stour and Avon and adjoins the English Channel resort of Bournemouth. The site was significant during prehistoric times; Late Bronze–Early Iron Age trade with the European continent apparently focused on nearby Hengistbury Head and Christchurch. The......
  • Christchurch (England, United Kingdom)
    town and borough (district), administrative county of Dorset, historic county of Hampshire, England. It lies at the confluence of the Rivers Stour and Avon and adjoins the English Channel resort of Bournemouth. The site was significant during prehistoric times; Late Bronze–Early Iron Age trade with the European continent apparently focused on nearby Hen...
  • Christchurch Mansion (museum, Ipswich, England, United Kingdom)
    in Ipswich, Suffolk, Eng., Tudor mansion built between 1548 and 1550 by Edmund Withipoll and now maintained as an art gallery and museum that is part of the Ipswich Museum of Art. The mansion houses a collection of local antiquities, including paintings and memorials of Edward Fitzgerald and Thomas Wollner. It has fine 16th-century paneling and part of a marble font from Tournai....
  • Christelycke leringhen op den 25. Psalm (work by Menno Simons)
    ...Van de geestlijke verrijsenisse (“The Spiritual Resurrection”), De nieuwe creatuere (“The New Birth”), and Christelycke leringhen op den 25. Psalm (“Meditation on the Twenty-fifth Psalm”). Late in 1536 or early in 1537, he received believer’s baptism, was called to leaders...
  • Christendom (European history)
    By the 10th century the religious and cultural community known as Christendom had come into being and was poised to enter a prolonged period of growth and expansion. Important progress had taken place well before this period, however. Beginning in the last years of the Roman Empire, the central institutions of medieval Catholic Christianity had gradually evolved, laying the foundation for the......
  • Christenheit oder Europa, Die (work by Novalis)
    ...and romantic searchings of a young poet. The central image of his visions, a blue flower, became a widely recognized symbol of Romantic longing among Novalis’s fellow Romantics. In the essay Die Christenheit oder Europa (1799; “Christendom or Europe”), Novalis calls for a universal Christian church to restore, in a new age, a Europe whose medieval cultural, social, a...
  • christening (Christianity)
    a sacrament of admission to the Christian Church. The forms and rituals of the various churches vary, but Baptism almost invariably involves the use of water and the Trinitarian invocation, “I baptize you: In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” The candidate may be wholly or partly immersed in water, the water may be ...
  • Christensen, Benjamin (Danish director)
    Danish motion-picture director known for his exploration of the macabre....
  • Christensen, Harold (American dancer)
    American dancer and teacher who, with his brothers, Willam and Lew, was instrumental in establishing ballet in the western United States....
  • Christensen, Inger (Danish poet)
    Danish poet whose linguistically sophisticated work explores the interconnections of language, fiction, and reality....
  • Christensen, Leonard (Norwegian explorer)
    ...for some 50 years. From 1839 to 1843, the British rear admiral James Ross, in command of the ships “Erebus” and “Terror,” explored the coast of Victoria Land. In 1894 Leonard Christensen, captain of a Norwegian whaler, landed a party at Cape Adare, the first to set foot on Antarctica. In the first decade of the 20th century, various explorers, including Britons......
  • Christensen, Lew Farr (American dancer)
    American dancer, teacher, and choreographer whose work with the San Francisco Ballet Company helped establish ballet in the western United States....
  • Christensen, Willam (American dancer)
    American dancer, choreographer, and teacher who, along with his brothers, Harold and Lew, established the San Francisco Ballet Company....
  • Christensen, William Farr (American dancer)
    American dancer, choreographer, and teacher who, along with his brothers, Harold and Lew, established the San Francisco Ballet Company....
  • Christentumsgesellschaft (German society)
    ...Oberlin (1740–1826) mixed his biblicistic piety with a concern for social missions. J.A. Urlsperger (1728–1806) sought to promote piety by organizing the Christentumsgesellschaft (“A Society for Christianity”), the German counterpart of the British Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Out of it grew the Basel Mission......
  • Christian (religious adherent)
    ...Oberlin (1740–1826) mixed his biblicistic piety with a concern for social missions. J.A. Urlsperger (1728–1806) sought to promote piety by organizing the Christentumsgesellschaft (“A Society for Christianity”), the German counterpart of the British Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Out of it grew the Basel Mission.........
  • Christian (kings of Denmark)
    ...Oberlin (1740–1826) mixed his biblicistic piety with a concern for social missions. J.A. Urlsperger (1728–1806) sought to promote piety by organizing the Christentumsgesellschaft (“A Society for Christianity”), the German counterpart of the British Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Out of it grew the Basel Mission.........
  • Christian and Missionary Alliance (Protestant group)
    missionary and evangelistic movement that developed from the work of Albert B. Simpson (died 1919), a Presbyterian minister who left that church to become an independent evangelist in New York City. In 1887 Simpson and others organized two societies, one for home and one for foreign missions. The two societies were merged into the Christian and Missionary Alliance in 1897. Part of the Holiness chu...
  • Christian art, Early
    architecture, painting, and sculpture from the beginnings of Christianity until about the early 6th century, particularly the art of Italy and the western Mediterranean. (Early Christian art in the eastern part of the Roman Empire is usually considered to be part of Byzantine art) The Christian religion was part of a gener...
  • Christian August (crown prince of Sweden)
    ...aged and childless, was elected king in his place, but by the end of 1809 he was in failing health. The Riksdag (parliament) provided for the succession by naming Duke Christian August (later Charles August) heir apparent, and, on his early death in 1810, one of Napoleon’s marshals, Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, whom Charles adopted as his son. From then until his death, Charles was eclipsed...
  • Christian August Heinrich Kurt, Graf von Haugwitz (Prussian minister and diplomat)
    Prussian minister and diplomat, the principal author of Prussian foreign policy from 1792 to 1806, who was held largely responsible for the catastrophic war against Napoleon (1806) that made Prussia a French satellite....
  • Christian, Barbara (Caribbean-American educator and critic)
    Caribbean American educator and feminist critic who attempted to define an African American feminist philosophy of criticism....
  • Christian Brethren (religious community)
    ...in 1845, disputes over doctrine and church government split the Brethren. Darby’s followers formed a closely knit federation of churches and were known as Exclusive Brethren; the others, called Open Brethren, maintained a congregational form of church government and less rigorous standards for membership. Exclusive Brethren have suffered further divisions....
  • Christian Brothers (Roman Catholicism)
    member of either of two separate but similar congregations of Roman Catholic laymen devoted to teaching youth....
  • Christian canon (sacred literature)
    Types of sacred literature vary in authority and degree of sacredness. The centrally important and most holy of the sacred texts have in many instances been gathered into canons (standard works of the faith), which, after being determined either by general agreement or by official religious bodies, become fixed—i.e., limited to certain works that are alone viewed as fully......
  • Christian caste (Indian society)
    in India, the social stratification that persists among Christians, based upon caste membership at the time of an individual’s own or of an ancestor’s conversion. Indian Christian society is divided into groups geographically and according to denomination, but the overriding factor is one of caste. Caste groups may dine together and worship together, but, as a rule, they do not inte...
  • Christian catechetical school of Alexandria, Egypt (institution, Alexandria, Egypt)
    the first Christian institution of higher learning, founded in the mid-2nd century ad in Alexandria, Egypt. Under its earliest known leaders (Pantaenus, Clement, and Origen), it became a leading centre of the allegorical method of biblical interpretation, espoused a rapprochement between Greek culture and Christian faith, and attempted to assert orthodox Christian teachings against h...
  • Christian Catechism of the Orthodox Catholic Eastern Greco-Russian Church (work by Philaret)
    By 1858, having overcome extended opposition, Philaret successfully directed the translation of the Bible into modern Russian. His chief theological work was the “Christian Catechism of the Orthodox Catholic Eastern Greco-Russian Church,” treating the 4th-century Nicene Creed, the theology of prayer, and the Mosaic Law. First published in 1823, Philaret’s “Catechism...
  • Christian Catholic Church (American church)
    conservative American Christian sect founded in Chicago in 1896 by John Alexander Dowie. A Congregational minister from Australia, Dowie became interested in faith healing and established a tabernacle and “healing rooms” in Chicago, where he attracted a large following. With many of his followers Dowie established an exclusive Christian community in nearby ...
  • Christian, Charles (American musician)
    American jazz guitarist, who was one of the first to produce improvised masterpieces using electrically amplified equipment. His recording career, tragically brief though it was, helped raise the guitar from an accompanying to a dominant solo instrument....
  • Christian, Charlie (American musician)
    American jazz guitarist, who was one of the first to produce improvised masterpieces using electrically amplified equipment. His recording career, tragically brief though it was, helped raise the guitar from an accompanying to a dominant solo instrument....
  • Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) (Protestant denomination)
    The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) affirms a free and voluntary covenantal relationship binding members, congregations, regions, and general units in one ecclesiastical body committed to a mission of witness and service. Recognizing its status as a denomination, it acknowledges the right of “dissent in love” and engages fully in the ecumenical venture....
  • Christian Coalition (American political organization)
    ...fundamentalists sought to build on the success of the Moral Majority and like-minded groups. In 1988 Robertson ran unsuccessfully for president of the United States. Shortly afterward he founded the Christian Coalition, which succeeded the Moral Majority as the leading organization of the movement and became closely associated with the Republican Party. Fundamentalists were strong supporters of...
  • Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood (Russian religious sect)
    (Russian: “Spirit Wrestler”), member of a Russian peasant religious sect, prominent in the 18th century, that rejected all external authority, including the Bible, in favour of direct individual revelation....
  • Christian Democracy (political movement)
    By the end of the 19th century, industrialization had created a large and turbulent working class whose increasing involvement in politics gave it a powerful voice. All Christian churches, but especially the Roman Catholic church, faced anticlerical attacks from liberal reformers on the one hand and working-class socialists on the other. The Catholic church responded by developing social......
  • Christian Democrat Group (political party, Europe)
    transnational parliamentary group representing the interests of allied conservative parties in the European Parliament of the European Union (EU). The EPP was formed in 1953 as the Christian Democrat Group, which acted as a transnational political party in the Common Assembly of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). It consists of mo...
  • Christian Democratic Appeal (political party, The Netherlands)
    In the 1960s the system began to disintegrate. New radical political parties were formed, and, in the face of rapid secularization of the vote, the various Christian parties joined together in the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA). However, the religious vote has continued to decline, and in the 1990s there were “purple” coalitions for the first time, between the (red) Labour Party.....
  • Christian Democratic Movement (political party, Slovakia)
    ...populist Smer (“Direction”), the Slovak Democratic and Christian Union, the Slovak National Party, the Party of the Hungarian Coalition, the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia, and the Christian Democratic Movement....
  • Christian Democratic Party (political party, El Salvador)
    ...to take advantage of the increased trade opportunities offered by the recently formed Central American Common Market (CACM). A greater degree of political liberty seemed evident from the rise of the Christian Democratic Party (Partido Demócrata Cristiano; PDC) and the victory of its candidate, José Napoleón Duarte, in the 1964 mayoral election in the city of San Salvador. A...
  • Christian Democratic Party (political party, Italy)
    centrist Italian political party whose several factions are united by their Roman Catholicism and anticommunism. They advocate programs ranging from social reform to the defense of free enterprise. The DC usually dominated Italian politics from World War II until the mid-1990s....
  • Christian Democratic Party (political party, Venezuela)
    ...family, Herrera Campíns was educated at a university in Caracas. With Rafael Caldera Rodríguez, he founded the Social Christian Party in 1946. This moderate party, also known as the Christian Democrats, became the second largest political party in Venezuela (after the Democratic Action party) in the decades after World War II. In 1952 Herrera Campíns was arrested and sent.....
  • Christian Democratic Party (political party, Chile)
    ...1989 resulted in the removal of the ban on Marxist parties, just one of the amendments to the 1981 constitution that was voted on in a national referendum. Parties under the CPD umbrella include the Christian Democratic Party (Partido Demócrata Cristiano; PDC), one of Chile’s strongest parties; the Social Democratic Radical Party (Partido Radical Social Demócrata; PRSD), wh...
  • Christian Democratic Party (political party, Panama)
    The new Endara government began as a broad coalition, but it soon broke up with the expulsion of the largest party, the Christian Democrats (Partido Demócrata Cristiano; PDC), led by Vice President Ricardo Arias Calderón. This left the administration without a legislative majority and allowed the remnants of Noriega’s Democratic Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario......
  • Christian Democratic People’s Party (political party, Switzerland)
    Swiss centre-right political party that endorses Christian democratic principles. With the Radical Democratic Party, the Social Democratic Party, and the Swiss People’s Party, the Christian Democratic People’s Party has governed Switzerland as part of a grand coalition since 1959. Its strongest support is found in the Roman Cat...
  • Christian Democratic Union (political party, Germany)
    German centre-right political party that supports a free-market economy and social welfare programs but is conservative on social issues. The CDU has also been a strong advocate of European integration and has cultivated close relations with the United States while in government. The CDU, along with its Bavarian affiliate, the Christian Social Union (CSU), emerged out of the ash...
  • Christian Democrats (political party, Panama)
    The new Endara government began as a broad coalition, but it soon broke up with the expulsion of the largest party, the Christian Democrats (Partido Demócrata Cristiano; PDC), led by Vice President Ricardo Arias Calderón. This left the administration without a legislative majority and allowed the remnants of Noriega’s Democratic Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario......
  • Christian der Jüngere (German military commander)
    duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg-Wolfenbüttel, Protestant military commander, and soldier of fortune during the early part of the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48), who made his reputation predominantly through his wholesale plundering and burning....
  • Christian Doctrine (work by Augustine)
    The early Church Father St. Augustine made one of the earliest efforts to write a rhetoric for the Christian orator. Book IV of On Christian Doctrine is usually considered the first rhetorical theory specifically designed for the minister. Of course, the kind of truth to which Augustine sought to give verbal effectiveness was the “revealed” truth as contained in the......
  • Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation, The (work by Ritschl)
    ...faith by synthesizing the teaching of the Scriptures and the Protestant Reformation with some aspects of modern knowledge. Most of the results of Ritschl’s scholarship were presented in his major work, Die christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung (The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation), 3 vol. (1870–74)....
  • Christian education
    school for religious education, usually for children and young people and usually a part of a church or parish. The movement has been important primarily in Protestantism. It has been the foremost vehicle for teaching the principles of the Christian religion and the Bible....
  • Christian Endeavor, International Society of
    interdenominational organization for Protestant youth in Canada, Mexico, and the United States. It was founded in 1881 by Francis Edward Clark, who served as president until 1927. Members of the society pledged to try to make some useful contribution to the life of the church. Other churches soon organized Christian Endeavor societies, and the movement grew rapidly in the Unite...
  • Christian Era (chronology)
    ...cycle. In the 6th century it was the general belief that this was the year of Christ’s birth, and because of this Dionysius introduced the concept of numbering years consecutively through the Christian Era. The method was adopted by some scholars but seems only to have become widely used after its popularization by the Venerable Bede of Jarrow (673?–735), whose reputation for......
  • Christian ethics
    Christian theological discipline concerned with identifying and elucidating the principles that determine the quality of human behaviour in the light of Christian revelation. It is distinguished from the philosophical discipline of ethics, which relies upon the authority of reason and which can only call upon rational sanctions for moral failure. Moral theolog...
  • Christian Faith, The (work by Schleiermacher)
    ...remarkable as the best mediator yet of a clear consciousness of the divine being. Schleiermacher continued this apologetic theme in his comprehensive account of Christian doctrine, The Christian Faith (1821–22; 1831). In his wake, Protestant systematic theology in the 19th and 20th centuries generally sought to operate within the “plausibility......
  • Christian, Fletcher (British seaman and mutineer)
    seaman and leading mutineer on HMS Bounty, under the command of William Bligh....
  • Christian Frederik (king of Denmark)
    king of Denmark during the rise of the liberal opposition to absolutism in the first half of the 19th century....
  • Christian Front (American organization)
    in American history, anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi organization active from about 1938 until the United States entered World War II. Under the banner of anticommunism, it openly and clandestinely encouraged boycotts of Jewish merchants, used the slogan “Buy Christian,” and published the Christian Index, a directory of non-Jewish merchants in part of New York City. It received supp...
  • Christian Hero, The (tract by Steele)
    ...of dueling), partly because of sincere feelings of disgust at the “irregularity” of army life and his own dissipated existence, he published in 1701 a moralistic tract, “The Christian Hero,” of which 10 editions were sold in his lifetime. This tract led to Steele’s being accused of hypocrisy and mocked for the contrast between his austere precepts and his geni...
  • Christian humanism
    A textbook convention, heavily armoured against truth by constant reiteration, states that northern humanism—i.e., humanism outside Italy—was essentially Christian in spirit and purpose, in contrast to the essentially secular nature of Italian humanism. In fact, however, the program of Christian humanism had been laid out by Italian humanists of the stamp of Lorenzo Valla,......
  • Christian I (Scandinavian king)
    king of Denmark (1448–81), Norway (1450–81), and Sweden (1457–64, 1465–67), and founder of the Oldenburg dynasty, which ruled Denmark until 1863. He tried to gain control over Sweden and maintain a union of the Scandinavian nations but was defeated by rebellious Swedish nobles (1471)....
  • Christian II (Scandinavian king)
    king of Denmark and Norway (1513–23) and of Sweden (1520–23) whose reign marked the end of the Kalmar Union (1397–1523), a political union of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden....
  • Christian II (elector of Saxony)
    ...alchemist and companion of the famous astrologer, alchemist, and mathematician John Dee, lost his life in an attempt to escape after imprisonment by Rudolf II, and in 1603 the elector of Saxony, Christian II, imprisoned and tortured the Scotsman Alexander Seton, who had been traveling about Europe performing well-publicized transmutations. The situation was complicated by the fact that some......
  • Christian III (Scandinavian king)
    king of Denmark and Norway (1534–59) who established the state Lutheran Church in Denmark (1536) and, by forming close ties between the church and the crown, laid the foundation for the absolutist Danish monarchy of the 17th century....
  • Christian III Bible
    ...made at the request of the exiled king Christian II by Christiern Vinter and Hans Mikkelsen (Wittenberg, 1524). In 1550 Denmark received a complete Bible commissioned by royal command (the Christian III Bible, Copenhagen). A revision appeared in 1589 (the Frederick II Bible) and another in 1633 (the Christian IV Bible)....
  • Christian Index (American magazine)
    ...States entered World War II. Under the banner of anticommunism, it openly and clandestinely encouraged boycotts of Jewish merchants, used the slogan “Buy Christian,” and published the Christian Index, a directory of non-Jewish merchants in part of New York City. It received support from the Brooklyn Tablet, a Roman Catholic weekly newspaper. The Front became associat...
  • Christian IV (Scandinavian king)
    king of Denmark and Norway (1588–1648), who led two unsuccessful wars against Sweden and brought disaster upon his country by leading it into the Thirty Years’ War. He energetically promoted trade and shipping, left a national heritage of fine buildings, and won repute as a plucky, hard-drinking man of grim wit and great resource....
  • Christian IX (king of Denmark)
    Danish king who came to the throne at the height of a crisis over Schleswig-Holstein in 1863 and who later resisted the advance of full parliamentary government in Denmark....
  • Christian, Letitia (American first lady)
    American first lady (1841–42), the first wife of John Tyler, 10th president of the United States....
  • Christian Message in a Non-Christian World, The (work by Kraemer)
    ...into God’s nature. The concession was, however, a slight one. The Dutch theologian Hendrik Kraemer (1888–1965) applied the doctrine of the theology of the Word to non-Christian religions in The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World, which had a wide impact on the overseas mission field. Since man’s religions are cultural products and since each system of belief ...

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