Religion Past and Present
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Subject: Religious Studies
Edited by: Hans Dieter Betz, Don S. Browning†, Bernd Janowski and Eberhard Jüngel
Religion Past and Present (RPP) Online is the online version of the updated English translation of the 4th edition of the definitive encyclopedia of religion worldwide: the peerless Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (RGG). This great resource, now at last available in English and Online, Religion Past and Present Online continues the tradition of deep knowledge and authority relied upon by generations of scholars in religious, theological, and biblical studies. Including the latest developments in research, Religion Past and Present Online encompasses a vast range of subjects connected with religion.
Subscriptions: see brill.com
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Religion Past and Present (RPP) Online is the online version of the updated English translation of the 4th edition of the definitive encyclopedia of religion worldwide: the peerless Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (RGG). This great resource, now at last available in English and Online, Religion Past and Present Online continues the tradition of deep knowledge and authority relied upon by generations of scholars in religious, theological, and biblical studies. Including the latest developments in research, Religion Past and Present Online encompasses a vast range of subjects connected with religion.
Subscriptions: see brill.com
Stutz, Ulrich
(346 words)
[German Version] (May 6, 1868, Zürich – Jul 5, 1938, Berlin), studied law in Zürich and Berlin; his teachers included Otto v. Gierke (1841–1921) and P. Hinschius. In 1895 he was appointed associate professor in Basel and in 1896 full professor in Freiburg im Breisgau. In 1904 he moved to Bonn, where he founded an institute of canon law; in 1917 he and his institute moved to Berlin. In 1910 he founded the
Kirchenrechtliche Abhandlungen, followed in 1910 by the Kanonistische Abteilung of the
Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, which he edited until his death; in 1…
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Religion Past and Present
Stylite
(333 words)
[German Version] Stylitism was a special form of early Christian asceticism, in which the stylite stood for long periods, usually for life, on a platform atop a pillar (Gk στῦλος/
stýlos, hence “stylite”), which often was raised in stages, sometimes to a height of more than 20 m, as a visible expression of the ascetic ideal of extreme homelessness and immobility. It was the duty of monks to provide the stylite with sustenance and communion. As motivation the sources speak of total separation from the world and proximity to heaven. Proposed non-Christian models have been ruled out. ¶ This rad…
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Religion Past and Present
Suárez, Francisco
(1,410 words)
[German Version] ( Jan 5, 1548, Granada – Sep 25, 1617, Lisbon), SJ, leading theologian, philosopher, and legal theorist of Spanish Scholasticism. Suárez studied in Salamanca. Initially rejected for lack of aptitude, he was accepted into the Jesuits in 1564. In 1571 he began teaching philosophy in Segovia; after 1574 he taught theology in Valladolid, Segovia, and Alcalá. In 1580 he began teaching at the Collegium Romanum in Rome. In 1585 sickness forced him to return to Alcalá, where he succeeded …
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Religion Past and Present
Subculture
(345 words)
[German Version] A subculture is a partial culture of a society that differs from the socially dominant (primary) culture in its values, norms, attitudes, needs, lifestyles, and symbols, as well as its behavior patterns, organizations, institutions, and traditions. Subcultures presuppose differentiated and pluralistic societies. The term itself goes back to the sociological study of delinquency in the 1940s: the deviant but internally strictly codified behavior of juvenile delinquents could be explained as the result of social discrimination and lack ¶ of opportunities for …
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Religion Past and Present
Subdeacon
(136 words)
[German Version] (Gk ὑποδιάκοvος). In the liturgical hierarchy (II, 2) of the Orthodox Church, the subdeacon stands in fourth place: in first place stands the bishop (III, 2); then follow priest/presbyter (Priesthood: III, 2), deacon (VII), subdeacon (
Ipodiakon), reader, psalm singer, baptized laypersons, and, finally, catechumens. The subdeacon assists the bishop serving at the altar in a particular manner. He receives the Eucharist (Communion: III, 3), as do baptized laypersons, before the iconostasis (wall of images). In the worship service today, the subdeacon wears the
stoi…
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Religion Past and Present
Subeita
(206 words)
[German Version] (Σοβατα, Isr. Ḥorvat Šivṭā, Arab. As-Subēta), Byzantine city in the Negeb. It was a Nabatean settlement in the late 1st century ce (pottery, a Nabatean inscription); architecture in the form of houses and stables appears in the 4th/5th centuries. It was an agricultural city (wine presses) and a pilgrimage center, with three churches. In the center is the south church (mid-4th cent., initially monoapsidal, later triapsidal) with a baptistery and a mosque attached on the north side (coexistence). Its …
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Religion Past and Present
Subiaco
(215 words)
[German Version] village in Latium, in the valley of the Aniene east of Rome. Here Benedict of Nursia is said to have lived in a cave (Sacro Speco) as a hermit and to have later joined with companions to form a monastic settlement in rooms of a former villa of the emperor Nero (monastery of San Clemente). In the years that followed, he is said to have founded ten additional monasteries before going to Monte Cassino in 529. Two of them are still standing today: San Benedetto (Sacro Speco) and, low…
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Religion Past and Present
Subject and Object
(1,014 words)
[German Version] Today the terms
subject and
object usually denote the person who knows (the epistemic subject) as distinct from what is known (the object of cognition). Most of the common meanings of
subjective derive from this definition of
subject (Subjectivity). In everyday usage, though,
objective usually describes something that is not subjective, the thing as it truly is. This everyday usage was preceded by a complex history of
subject and
object as technical philosophical terms, closely tied to the development of epistemology and metaphysics.
Subject derives from Latin
subie…
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Religion Past and Present
Subjectivism
(1,150 words)
[German Version]
Subjectivism is unmistakably a polemical term, and is associated with political theory. It presupposes the rise of subjectivity as a paradigm in modern philosophy (III, 2). The charge of purely subjective knowledge it articulates is grounded in epistemology (II), whence it found its way into ethics, philosophy of religion, and theology, as well as aesthetics. Whoever uses it lays claim to a superior form of knowledge, which must be able to say in turn how it relates to the subjectivity that is inescapable in all forms of knowledge. The term
subjectivism allows old and …
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Religion Past and Present
Subjectivity/Subjectivity Theories
(1,313 words)
[German Version]
I. Terminology
1. The term
subject has gone through many changes of meaning (Subject and object) throughout its history. Initially it did not refer to the category in the epistemological process that defines things and assigns them corresponding meanings; it included semantic features that today we often associate with the term
object.
2. This understanding of the subject, which was definitive throughout the period of Scholasticism and beyond, was replaced by a contrary interpretation. In the controversy over the Cartesian
cogito ergo sum, the subject came to b…
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Religion Past and Present
Sublimation
(319 words)
[German Version] S. Freud’s psychoanalysis teaches that reality requires converting an unsatisfied sex drive (libido) into culturally valuable and socially approved modes of behavior (art, humor) as a compromise between the demands of the id and the superego developed in the process of socialization. This compromise is enabled by “defense mechanisms” (A. Freud), a series of behavioral strategies including such constructive forms as repression, substitution, conversion, and projection. A response t…
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Religion Past and Present
Sublime
(1,076 words)
[German Version]
I. Philosophy The expression
the sublime (Ger.
das Erhabene) refers to our experience of objects that by virtue of their greatness (physical or metaphysical), power, or perfection make us conscious of our own exaltation, often with an accompanying awareness of the limits of our own capacity. In the debate with poetic enthusiasm (I) in antiquity, the sublime was discussed using the term ὕψος (
hýpsos, “height”) as a category of poetics and rhetoric (I): in ¶ the works of writers like Plato, Aristotle, Aristophanes, and Pseudo-Longinus, the issue was the fu…
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Religion Past and Present
Subsidiarity
(1,117 words)
[German Version]
I. Social Science Subsidiarity is a principle that regulates the relationship between the state and non-state social agents. It presupposes personal responsibility on the part of individuals as well as limitation of public regulatory authority over them and the groups to which they belong. Human beings can exist only in social communities, into which they must be integrated. At the same time, their endowment with reason allows them to act on their own responsibility, and the communit…
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Religion Past and Present
Substance Abuse
(9 words)
[German Version] Drug and Alcohol Addiction
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Religion Past and Present
Substance/Substance and Accident
(1,192 words)
[German Version]
Substance (from Lat.
substantia) generally denotes what is constant in contrast to the variation of its conditions and attributes, which are called accidents
vis-à-vis substance. Substance is what stays constant as it bears its attributes, as the etymology of the word indicates:
substantia (from the verb
substare) means literally “what stands firm” and “is beneath”;
accidens (present participle of the verb
accidere) means that which arises or eventuates. In philosophical usage,
substantia and
accidens generally represent Greek οὐσία/
ousía and συμβεβηκός/
symb…
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Religion Past and Present
Substitution
(3,183 words)
[German Version]
I. Religious Studies The term
substitution, originating in the language of law, is used primarily in Christian theology, but it is well suited for use in religious studies as well, even though so far there has been no detailed systematic treatment of it. In the most general sense, we speak of substitution when the true subject affected or acting (God, an individual like the king, or a collective) is represented by another ¶ entity (a person or group, an animal, or an object) as a substitute involved (actively or passively) in the action, acting for the…
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Religion Past and Present
Substitutionary Gift
(223 words)
[German Version] In human societies, exchange transactions always involve exchanging different things, of equal or unequal value; the symmetry or asymmetry of the exchange is an expression of a particular relationship. This holds not just for exchanges of goods but for other types of exchange, for example in the system of justice (Blood revenge), and not least in contacts with the powers that dominate life, articulated in part by exchanges of gifts. In special cases, the “normal” gifts given by hu…
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Religion Past and Present
Suburbicarian Dioceses
(187 words)
[German Version] The suburbicarian dioceses are those in the region adjacent (
suburbium) to Rome. Most have had a checkered history: Albano, Frascati (replacing Tusculum, which replaced Labicum and was
de facto an episcopal see from 1058 to 1197, recognized nominally until 1537), Ostia, Palestrina, Porto (united the Santa Rufina [Silva Candida] by Callistus II), Sabina (the result of incorporating the see of Nomentum into the see of Forum Novum; united ¶ with Poggio Mirteto in 1925), Velletri (united with Ostia in 1150, separated once more in 1914, and united with …
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Religion Past and Present