Calea, Adevărul și Viața. Civilitate creștină în Europa Epocii Moderne

Calea, Adevărul și Viața. Civilitate creștină în Europa Epocii Moderne


Location:


Muzeul Brukenthal, Piața Mare, Nr. 4-5, Sibiu 550163, România

Dates and Hours:

About

Between the 16th and 19th centuries, a new behavioral model took shape, that of Christian civility. Many of the instructions laid out in the thousands of civility books published in that time will eventually end up in what we still call The Book of Good Manners. Some of the works that shaped European behavior beginning with the Early Modernity will be available for seeing and contemplating in the Cartography Cabinet from the Brukenthal Palace located in the Large Square, in Sibiu, from September 25th 2020.

Since its´ inception by the secular and ecclesiastical elites, the idea of civility was viewed as a tool for strenghtening the fabric of society by tempering the spontaneity, impulsiveness and impredictibility of human behavior, especially given the unstable context of 16th and 17th centuries Europe, caused by the political and cultural wars between the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Church.

The mixture between civility and Christianity gave this new civilized behavioral model the value of a duty towards not just society, but particularly towards God. In other words, Christian civility was a way of integrating oneself in society, an idea which encouraged and kept social peace and, more important even, as the theologians of the time argued, it assured the individual a place in Heaven.