Catholic Church

The Grave with the Hands (Dutch: Graf met de handjes, lit. 'Grave with the little hands') is a 19th-century funerary monument in the Dutch city of Roermond. It comprises two almost identical tombstones on either side of a wall separating the Catholic part from the Protestant part of Begraafplaats Nabij de Kapel in 't Zand (Cemetery Near the Chapel in the Sand), each with a carved arm and hand that clasps the other across the wall. The monument marks the graves of Josephina van Aefferden, a Catholic, and Jacobus van Gorkum, a Protestant, who were married in life, but had to be buried in separate sections of the cemetery. It was listed as a rijksmonument (state monument) in 2002.

Albertus Magnus OP (c. 1200 – 15 November 1280), also known as Saint Albert the Great, Albert of Swabia, Albert von Bollstadt, or Albert of Cologne, was a German Dominican friar, philosopher, scientist, and bishop. He is considered one of the greatest medieval philosophers and thinkers.

Canonized in 1931, he was known during his lifetime as Doctor universalis and Doctor expertus; late in his life the sobriquet Magnus was appended to his name. Scholars such as James A. Weisheipl and Joachim R. Söder have referred to him as the greatest German philosopher and theologian of the Middle Ages. The Catholic Church distinguishes him as one of the Doctors of the Church.

The School of Salamanca (Spanish: Escuela de Salamanca) was an intellectual movement of 16th-century and 17th-century Iberian Scholastic theologians rooted in the intellectual and pedagogical work of Francisco de Vitoria. From the beginning of the 16th century, the traditional Catholic conception of man and of his relation to God and to the world had been informed by internal developments in the Italian Rennaissance and its humanism, but also been challenged by the Protestant Reformation and the new geographical discoveries and their consequences. These new problems were addressed by the School of Salamanca.

The name is derived from the University of Salamanca (Spain), where de Vitoria and other members of the school were based. The Salamanca School of economic thought is frequently regarded as an early precursor to the Austrian School of Economics. This is due to its development of the subjective theory of value, its advocacy for free-market principles, and its focus on the supply and demand of money—ideas that would eventually contribute to the modern concept of sound money.

Laïcité ([la.i.si.te]; 'secularism') is the constitutional principle of secularism in France. Article 1 of the French Constitution is commonly interpreted as the separation of civil society and religious society. It discourages religious involvement in government affairs, especially in the determination of state policies as well as the recognition of a state religion. It also forbids government involvement in religious affairs, and especially prohibits government influence in the determination of religion, such that it includes a right to the free exercise of religion.

French secularism has a long history: Enlightenment thinkers emphasized reason and self direction. Revolutionaries in 1789 violently overthrew the Ancien Régime, which included the Catholic Church. Secularism was an important ideology during the Second Empire and Third Republic. For the last century, the French government policy has been based on the 1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and the State, which is however not applicable in Alsace and Moselle. While the term laïcité has been used from the end of the 19th century to denote the freedom of public institutions from the influence of the Catholic Church, the concept today covers other religious movements as well.

Ferdinand II (9 July 1578 – 15 February 1637) was Holy Roman Emperor, King of Bohemia, Hungary, and Croatia from 1619 until his death in 1637. He was the son of Archduke Charles II of Inner Austria and Maria of Bavaria, who were devout Catholics. In 1590, when Ferdinand was 11 years old, they sent him to study at the Jesuits' college in Ingolstadt because they wanted to isolate him from the Lutheran nobles. A few months later, his father died, and he inherited Inner Austria–Styria, Carinthia, Carniola and smaller provinces. His cousin, Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor, who was the head of the Habsburg family, appointed regents to administer these lands.

Ferdinand was installed as the actual ruler of the Inner Austrian provinces in 1596 and 1597. Rudolf II also charged him with the command of the defense of Croatia, Slavonia, and southeastern Hungary against the Ottoman Empire. Ferdinand regarded the regulation of religious issues as a royal prerogative and introduced strict Counter-Reformation measures from 1598. First, he ordered the expulsion of all Protestant pastors and teachers; next, he established special commissions to restore the Catholic parishes. The Ottomans captured Nagykanizsa in Hungary in 1600, which enabled them to invade Styria. A year later, Ferdinand tried to recapture the fortress, but the action ended in November 1601 with a defeat, due to unprofessional command of his troops. During the first stage of the family feud known as the Brothers' Quarrel, Ferdinand initially supported Rudolph II's brother, Matthias, who wanted to convince the melancholic emperor to abdicate, but Matthias' concessions to the Protestants in Hungary, Austria, and Bohemia outraged Ferdinand. He planned an alliance to strengthen the position of the Catholic Church in the Holy Roman Empire, but the Catholic princes established the Catholic League without his participation in 1610.

Dogma, in its broadest sense, is any belief held definitively and without the possibility of reform. It may be in the form of an official system of principles or doctrines of a religion, such as Judaism, Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, or Islam, the positions of a philosopher or philosophical school, such as Stoicism, and political belief systems such as fascism, socialism, progressivism, liberalism, and conservatism.

In the pejorative sense, dogma refers to enforced decisions, such as those of aggressive political interests or authorities. More generally, it is applied to some strong belief that its adherents are not willing to discuss rationally. This attitude is named as a dogmatic one, or dogmatism, and is often used to refer to matters related to religion, though this pejorative sense strays far from the formal sense in which it is applied to religious belief. The pejorative sense is not limited to theistic attitudes alone and is often used with respect to political or philosophical dogmas.

Herem (Hebrew: חֵרֶם ḥērem) is the highest ecclesiastical censure in the Jewish community. It is the total exclusion of a person from the Jewish community. It is a form of shunning and is similar to vitandus "excommunication" in the Catholic Church. Cognate terms in other Semitic languages include the Arabic terms ḥarām "forbidden, taboo, off-limits, or immoral" and haram "set apart, sanctuary", and the Geʽez word ʿirm "accursed".

An imprimatur (sometimes abbreviated as impr., from Latin, "let it be printed") is a declaration authorizing publication of a book. The term is also applied loosely to any mark of approval or endorsement. The imprimatur rule in the Catholic Church effectively dates from the dawn of printing, and is first seen in the printing and publishing centres of Germany and Venice; many secular states or cities began to require registration or approval of published works around the same time, and in some countries such restrictions still continue, though the collapse of the Soviet bloc has reduced their number.

The Edict of Nantes (French: édit de Nantes) was an edict signed in April 1598 by King Henry IV and granted the minority Calvinist Protestants of France, also known as Huguenots, substantial rights in the nation, which was predominantly Catholic.

While upholding Catholicism as the established religion, and requiring the re-establishment of Catholic worship in places it had lapsed, it granted certain religious toleration to the Protestant Huguenots, who had been waging a long and bloody struggle for their rights in France.

The Dragonnades was a policy implemented by Louis XIV in 1681 to force French Protestants known as Huguenots to convert to Catholicism. It involved the billeting of dragoons of the French Royal Army in Huguenot households, with the soldiers being given implied permission to mistreat the inhabitants and damage or steal their possessions. Soldiers employed as part of this policy were derisively referred to as "missionary dragoons".