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The paper analyses the Concept Development and Experimentation (CD&E) approach which has been developed and implemented in NATO over the last 20 years. NATO’s CD&E approach is explained as an organisational innovation and institutional response to external and internal pressures. Within the theoretical framing of institutional isomorphism, the paper analyses the adoption of CD&E in the European Union’s (EU) Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). The research hypothesis is that the EU will adopt and apply NATO’s CD&E approach in the EU’s defence planning and capability development process. The empirical findings from the analysis of the EU policy practice, however, show that CD&E has actually been adopted from NATO and applied by the EU to a very limited extent. The low degree of isomorphism between NATO and the EU with regard to applying CD&E is explained by a complex set of factors. The research results have broader implications, suggesting that under the current institutional settings it is highly unlikely CD&E to be adopted by other international organisations in the field of international security.

In this article, I investigate the literary representation of the religious convictions and political strategy of neo-Nazi ideologues who are influential in rightwing authoritarian movements in the USA today. The reason that I do this is because in contemporary fascism, the novel has replaced the political manifesto, the military manual and proselytizing testimony, since fiction can evade censorship and avoid prosecution. I read William Luther Pierce’s Turner Diaries and Hunter together with his text on speculative metaphysics and religious belief, Cosmotheism. Then, I turn to Harold Covington’s Northwestern Quintet with The Brigade, reading this with Christian Identity and his own conception of Nazi religious tolerance. Finally, I look at OT Gunnarsson’s Hear the Cradle Song, reading this together with discussions of racism in Californian Odinism. I propose that what this literature shows is that the doctrinal differences between the three main strands of neo-Nazi religion—Cosmotheism, Christian Identity and Odinism—are less significant than their common ideological functions. These are twofold: (1) the sacralization of violence and (2) the sanctification of elites. The dystopian fictions of fascist literature present civil war scenarios whose white nationalist and genocidal outcome is the result of what are, strictly speaking, supremacist death cults.

Religious routes and itineraries can be seen as promoting not only the sharing of ethical and religious values and sentiments of peace and brotherhood but also the awareness and personal growth of the traveller. Those who walk remote pilgrimage paths today wish to experience the fascination of the past, to feel something of the dread and the passion of ancient travellers, but they also seek to fulfil an emotional and intellectual need for authenticity, spirituality and culture. The Puglia region has numerous religious paths that arose in past centuries and continue to be practised by modern pilgrims, who treat the journey as an emotional, educational, social and participatory experience. Appropriate exploitation of this type of journey would enable the promotion of a “gentle” but no less successful tourism, above all in a period of social distancing and global suffering. The present study starts with a presentation of some of the precursors of the many routes that led from the Orient towards Rome, such as those of the Apostle Peter, St Francis of Assisi and the anonymous Pilgrim of Bordeaux. It then examines the new values that prompt people to follow the Via Francigena del Sud that runs along the Italian peninsula linking Europe north of the Alps to the ports of Puglia, and it is just an exemplary case aimed at fulfilling the potential of eastern Mediterranean coastal regions by offering cultural routes and itineraries for sustainable and quality tourism.

This article analyzes Marian art in Spain from the tenth to nineteenth centuries in order to show how popular piety represented Mary’s motherhood. Through art, including architecture, painting, sculpture, and oral preaching, a popular image of Mary emerged and, in turn, became key for understanding the history of the family in western Catholic countries. Studying the evolution of Marian iconography during this thousand-year period reveals a kind of grandeur, and then a certain crisis, surrounding Mary’s motherhood. This crisis specifically involves the meaning of the body as an effective sign of the personal gift-of-self. We argue that this process ran parallel to growing problems in theological culture related to reconciling the natural and supernatural realms, and we further sustain that it contains a true cultural revolution, a shift that is at the origin of many later transformations. This interpretation helps better understand the dilemmas surrounding the history of the family in the West, and specifically of motherhood, from the point of view of the Christian tradition.

The discovery of the Northern Zhou (557–581AD) tomb of Shi Jun (494–579 CE) presents us with spectacular visual information about the Sogdians in medieval China, which was previously available to us only through written sources. The iconography-heavy sarcophagus in the tomb is an important vehicle for understanding the practices of religious (and everyday) life in the Sino-Sogdian community. The imagery on the Shi Jun sarcophagus reveals a mix of religious beliefs that existed among migrants in the premodern Eurasian world. Due to the absence of a dominant religion associated with Sino-Sogdian funerals, the iconography of the sarcophagus cannot be interpreted within an orthodox theological framework. Instead, it is possible that more syncretistic, indigenous, and regionally based folklore, tales, and hymns, in combination with a diversity of religious beliefs, might explain the sarcophagus’s enigmatic imagery, since the social order and religious order are often mutually reinforcing.

The Minoan peak sanctuaries call for systematic comparative research as an island-bound phenomenon whose significance to the (pre)history of medicine far transcends the Cretan context: they yield clay anatomical offerings attesting to the earliest known healing cult in the Aegean. The peak sanctuary of Petsophas produced figurines of weasels, which are usually interpreted as pests, ignoring their association with votives that express concerns about childbirth, traditionally the first single cause of death for women. The paper draws from primary sources to examine the weasel’s puzzling bond with birth and midwives, concluding that it stems from the animal’s pharmacological role in ancient obstetrics. This novel interpretation then steers the analysis of archaeological evidence for rituals involving mustelids beyond and within Bronze Age Crete, revealing the existence of a midwifery koine across the Near East and the Mediterranean; a net of interconnections relevant to female therapeutics which brings to light a package of animals and plants bespeaking of a Minoan healing tradition likely linked to the cult of the midwife goddess Eileithyia. Challenging mainstream accounts of the beginnings of Western medicine as a male accomplishment, this overlooked midwifery tradition characterises Minoan Crete as a unique crucible of healing knowledge, ideas, and practices.

A comprehensive analysis of Cypriot mosque architecture between the 19th and 21st centuries, from the Ottoman and British colonial periods to the present, does not exist. The phase after 1974, after the division of the island into a Turkish Cypriot, predominantly Muslim north and a Greek Cypriot, mainly Christian south, is especially insufficiently studied. This paper aims to interpret Cypriot mosque architecture and its meaning(s) through a comparative analysis, considering cultural, religious, and political developments. Based on an architectural survey and studies about Muslim Cypriot culture, this study investigates formal and spatial characteristics, focusing on the presence/absence of domed plan typologies and of minarets which, as visual symbolic markers, might express shifting cultural-religious notions and/or identities. Inconspicuous mosques without domes and minarets dominate until 1974. However, with the inter-communal tensions in the 1960s, the minaret possibly became a sign of Turkish identity, besides being a cultural-religious marker. This becomes more obvious after 1974 and is stressed by the (re)introduction of the dome. Since the late 1990s, an ostentatious and unprecedented neo-Ottoman architecture emphasizes visible and invisible meanings, and the Turkish presence in Cyprus stronger than before. The new architectural language visually underlines the influences from Turkey that North Cyprus has been experiencing.