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[German Version] Ever since C.-L. de Montesquieu and E. Gibbon, Roman history of the 4th and 5th centuries has been viewed primarily as a history of decadence and decline. The centuries preceding the fall of the Roman Empire in the West were interpreted consistently as a period of deterioration that affected architecture, art, and literature as well. In 1764 Johann J. Joachim Winckelmann spoke of a deterioration of sculpture and painting in the period after Commodus, and J. Burckhardt was referring explicitly to architecture, art, and literature when he used such terms as aging, senility, and deterioration to describe the age of Constantine. A new assessment of the period from Diocletian to Justinian I first appeared in art history. In 1901 Alois Riegl interpreted the style of late Roman art not as deterioration but as an expression of a positive Kunstwollen (“will to form”). All in all, the conception of deterioration and decline proved too one-sided; today developments after Diocletian are no longer characterized as decline but as a profound political, social, and cultural transformation. Late Antiquity, wh…

[German Version] I. Concept – II. Legal Aspects – III. Economics – IV. Non-Christian Antiquity – V. Bible – VI. Christianity – VII. Judaism – VIII. Islam I. Concept Interest is payment in exchange for a right of use or exploitation, typically on a temporary basis and always agreed for a fixed period of time. Money later gained increasing importance as an object of lending and now occupies a dominant position, although other items or rights remain possible as objects of lending, as for example rent. In economics (see III below), this mutual commitment between the conferral of the right to use and the corresponding obligation to pay interest remains key, and numerous explanation models have been put forward as to why interest is paid and what exactly it is intended to compensate (A.R.J. Turgot, Nassan William Senior, Eugen v. Böhm-Baw…

[German Version] I. General – II. History and Sociology I. General Since 1861 (the establishment of the Kingdom of Italy), Italy has been the name of the first unified nation on the Italian peninsula since the Lombard invasion in 568. Following a referendum in 1946, Italy became a republic (Repubblica Italiana) with a bicameral parliament. The president is the representative chief of state; the government is headed by the prime minister. Since 1870, with the dissolution of the Papal States, the capital has been Rome (population 2.7 million in 2000). Italy has an area of 187,179 km2, with a population of 57.6 million. It is divided into 20 administrative regions, of which five possess limited autonomy: Sicily, Sardinia, Valle d'Aosta, Trentino-Alto Adige, and Friuli-Venezia Giulia. The regions are divided into provinces, traditionally made up of communes. The official language is Italian, which, like all Romance languages, evolved from Vulgar Latin. Thanks to the works of the great 14th-century Italian writers Dante, Petrarch (F. Petrarca), and Giovanni Boccaccio, modern I…

[German Version] I. The Concept – II. Economic Systems and their Theories – III. Economy and Religion I. The Concept The term economy encompasses the totality of all individual actions and social interactions that serve to produce goods (commodities or services [Service …