Piety in the context of "Normans"

Entering heaven alive (called by various religions "ascension", "assumption", or "translation") is a belief held in various religions. Since death is the normal end to an individual's life on Earth and the beginning of the afterlife, entering heaven without dying first is considered exceptional and usually a sign of a deity's special recognition of the individual's piety.

Heaven, or the Heavens, is a common religious cosmological or supernatural place where beings such as deities, angels, souls, saints, or venerated ancestors are said to originate, be enthroned, or reside. According to the beliefs of some religions, heavenly beings can descend to Earth or incarnate and earthly beings can ascend to Heaven in the afterlife or, in exceptional cases, enter Heaven without dying.

Heaven is often described as a "highest place", the holiest place, a paradise, in contrast to Hell or the Underworld or the "low places" and universally or conditionally accessible by earthly beings according to various standards of divinity, goodness, piety, faith, or other virtues or right beliefs or simply divine will. Some believe in the possibility of a heaven on Earth in a world to come.

In modern usage, "enthusiasm" refers to intense enjoyment, interest, or approval expressed by a person. The term is allegedly related to playfulness, inventiveness, optimism, zest, verve, and high energy.People can often characterise the modern version of enthusiasm as "infectious" or "contagious",and sometimes even more metaphorically as a virus in its own right.

The word once applied, in accordance with its etymology,to persons possessed by a god, or to people who exhibited intense piety.

The Paus family (pronounced [ˈpæʉs]), also styled de Paus or von Paus, is a Norwegian family that emerged as an aristocratic priestly family from Medieval Oslo in the 16th century. For centuries, it belonged to the "aristocracy of officials," especially in the clergy and legal professions in Upper Telemark. Later generations entered shipping, steel, and banking, becoming steel magnates in Oslo. The family's best-known members are Henrik Ibsen and Ole Paus. The name is recorded in Oslo from the 14th century and likely derives from a metaphorical use of the Middle Low German word for pope—perhaps meaning "the pious one"—reflecting foreign influence and name satire in medieval Oslo.

The priest brothers Hans (1587–1648) and Peder Povelsson Paus (1590–1653) from Oslo have long been known as the family's earliest certain ancestors. In Slekten Paus, Finne-Grønn identified their grandfather as Hans Olufsson (d. 1570), a canon at St Mary's Church who held noble rank and served as a royal priest both before and after the Reformation. Peder Povelsson Paus came to Upper Telemark as parish priest of Vinje in 1618, became provost of Upper Telemark in 1633, and was the ancestor of the extant family; in the 17th century the family also used the name Vind (Wind) after the parish of Vinje. From the 17th to the 19th century, the family were among the foremost of the regional elite, the "aristocracy of officials" in Upper Telemark, where family members served as priests, judges and other officials, often across generations. The family held the district judgeship—the region's chief governmental and judicial office—for 106 years (1668–1774). It was a meritocratic elite defined by education, priesthood, and service to the state, and the apex of the social order of Upper Telemark.

A confraternity (Spanish: cofradía; Portuguese: confraria) is generally a Christian voluntary association of laypeople created for the purpose of promoting special works of Christian charity or piety, and approved by the Church hierarchy. They are most common among Catholics, Lutherans, Anglicans, and the Western Orthodox. When a Catholic confraternity has received the authority to aggregate to itself groups erected in other localities, it is called an archconfraternity. Examples include the various confraternities of penitents and the confraternities of the cord, as well as the Confraternity of the Holy Guardian Angels and the Confraternity of the Rosary.

Confraternities were "the most sweeping and ubiquitous movement of the central and later Middle Ages".

Henry III (1 October 1207 – 16 November 1272), also known as Henry of Winchester, was King of England, Lord of Ireland and Duke of Aquitaine from 1216 until his death in 1272. The son of John, King of England, and Isabella of Angoulême, Henry acceded to the throne when he was only nine in the middle of the First Barons' War. Cardinal Guala Bicchieri declared the war against the rebel barons to be a religious crusade and Henry's forces, led by William Marshal, defeated the rebels at the battles of Lincoln and Sandwich in 1217. Henry promised to abide by the Great Charter of 1225, a later version of Magna Carta (1215), which limited royal power and protected the rights of the major barons. Henry's early reign was dominated first by William Marshal, and after his death in 1219 by the magnate Hubert de Burgh, Earl of Kent. In 1230 the King attempted to reconquer the provinces of France that had once belonged to his father, but the invasion was a debacle. A revolt led by William Marshal's son Richard broke out in 1232, ending in a peace settlement negotiated by the Catholic Church.

Following the revolt, Henry ruled England personally, rather than governing through senior ministers. He travelled less than previous monarchs, investing heavily in a handful of his favourite palaces and castles. He married Eleanor of Provence, with whom he had five children. Henry was known for his piety, holding lavish religious ceremonies and giving generously to charities; the King was particularly devoted to the figure of Edward the Confessor, whom he adopted as his patron saint. He extracted huge sums of money from the Jews in England, ultimately crippling their ability to do business. As attitudes towards the Jews hardened, he later introduced the Statute of Jewry, which attempted to segregate the Jewish community from the English populace. In a fresh attempt to reclaim his family's lands in France, he invaded Poitou in 1242, leading to the disastrous Battle of Taillebourg. After this, Henry relied on diplomacy, cultivating an alliance with Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor. Henry supported his brother Richard of Cornwall in his successful bid to become King of the Romans in 1256, but was unable to place his own son Edmund Crouchback on the throne of Sicily, despite investing large amounts of money. He planned to go on crusade to the Levant, but was prevented from doing so by rebellions in Gascony.

Characteristic of Christianity in the 19th century were evangelical revivals in some largely Protestant countries and later the effects of modern biblical scholarship on the churches. Liberal or modernist theology was one consequence of this. In Europe, the Catholic Church strongly opposed liberalism and culture wars launched in Germany, Italy, Belgium and France. It strongly emphasized personal piety. In Europe there was a general move away from religious observance and belief in Christian teachings and a move towards secularism. In Protestantism, pietistic revivals were common.

The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to rid the Church of England of what they considered to be Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become more Protestant. Puritanism played a significant role in English and early American history, especially in the Protectorate in Great Britain, and the earlier settlement of New England.

Puritans were dissatisfied with the limited extent of the English Reformation and with the Church of England's toleration of certain practices associated with the Catholic Church. They formed and identified with various religious groups advocating greater purity of worship and doctrine, as well as personal and corporate piety. Puritans adopted a covenant theology, and in that sense they were Calvinists (as were many of their earlier opponents). In church polity, Puritans were divided between supporters of episcopal, presbyterian, and congregational types. Some believed a uniform reform of the established church was called for to create a godly nation, while others advocated separation from, or the end of, any established state church entirely in favour of autonomous gathered churches, called-out from the world. These Separatist and Independents became more prominent in the 1640s, when the supporters of a presbyterian polity in the Westminster Assembly were unable to forge a new English national church.