An Examination of the Ideologies Underlying Nineteenth Century Scholarly Researches into the Viking Age

This thesis concerns the (more or less) systematic rehabilitation of the Viking Period, which was undertaken by a collection of poets and philologists, scholars and amateurs, from the latter half of the eighteenth century through the Victorian Era into the twentieth century. The reasons underlying their efforts were, in both the broad and the narrow sense, political. For example, William Morris was a Socialist, and he employed his knowledge of pre-Christian Scandinavian society in the development of a Socialist Utopia. Similarly, William Stubbs was an authority on the Anglo-Saxon legal system, and this enabled him to convincingly argue for the Germanic origin of the English democratic institutions. The works discussed range from crude propaganda to painstakingly accurate translations, and as such there are varying levels of subtlety in their ideological messages

An Examination of the Ideologies Underlying Nineteenth Century Scholarly Researches into the Viking Age

This thesis concerns the (more or less) systematic rehabilitation of the Viking Period, which was undertaken by a collection of poets and philologists, scholars and amateurs, from the latter half of the eighteenth century through the Victorian Era into the twentieth century. The reasons underlying their efforts were, in both the broad and the narrow sense, political. For example, William Morris was a Socialist, and he employed his knowledge of pre-Christian Scandinavian society in the development of a Socialist Utopia. Similarly, William Stubbs was an authority on the Anglo-Saxon legal system, and this enabled him to convincingly argue for the Germanic origin of the English democratic institutions. The works discussed range from crude propaganda to painstakingly accurate translations, and as such there are varying levels of subtlety in their ideological messages

Vestigial States: Secular Space and the Churches in Contemporary Australia

The legacy of the Enlightenment is increasingly contested in the twenty-first century. Science is a key explanatory authority for technological modernity, but since the mid-twentieth century new religious forms and supernaturally-tinged popular culture (close relatives of religion, but liberated from the traditional and institutional aspects of that phenomenon) have been resurgent. The so-called ‘World Religions’ (the biblical creeds of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and the sub-continental dharmic traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism) have resisted the notion that they share a common inheritance with secularism. It is here argued that these ongoing disclaimers are examples of professional boundary maintenance that reveals much about the embattled position of traditional religious institutions within secular modernity, in which popular culture and communications media have radically transformed the climate in which religious affiliation and spiritual identities are negotiated

The Virgin Mary at Coogee: A Preliminary Investigation

In the context of modern Roman Catholicism, Marian apparitions are usually traced to that received by Catherine Laboure, a Parisian Sister of Charity, in 1830 (Zimdars-Swartz, 1991: 26). Until the mid twentieth century, these apparitions grew in significance and were the medium for the transmission of increasingly apocalyptic messages. From the 1960s onward the Western world has become substantially secularised, with the influence of Christianity in public life being on the wane; and also re-enchanted by the rise in adherence to Eastern religions and esoteric traditions (Lambert, 1999). Marian apparitions continue to be an important part of Catholic piety, but some (such as Medjugorje, commencing in 1981 and continuing to the present) have attracted the attention of other Christians, pluralists and secularists, largely due to media coverage (Seward, 1993). The apparition of the Virgin Mary at Coogee, a seaside suburb of Sydney, was first revealed to the press in January 2003 by a local resident, Christine Cherry, of the Beach Street Gallery Laundrette.  Throughout January and early February it drew increasing crowds. A crisis point was reached on Sunday 9 February, when it was discovered that during the previous night, the fence that facilitated the appearance of Mary had been demolished by vandals. However, the fence was restored and the phenomenon continues. This paper considers modern Marian apparitions; traces the progress of the Coogee phenomenon; locates it in the context of other apparitions of the Virgin, including documented Australian cases; and makes some suggestions regarding the future of the Coogee apparition, which may be understood as a broadly spiritual phenomenon, open to all rather than confined to Catholics