Among the African people an important social and religious role is performed by funeral rituals, which belong to rituals of passage connected with changing of man’s status and social position. The rituals of the first and secondary funerals among the Konkomba belong to the most extended of all the rituals of passage. The present article describes and analyses the rituals of the first funeral, which are the burial rituals of elderly people (men and women). They differ in the richness of rites and the social significance from the simpler burials of adult people, children or infants. and V živote afrických národů hrají významné místo pohřební rituály, které patří mezi „přechodové rituály", související se změnou postavení člověka ve společnosti. První a druhé pohřební rituály Konkombů patří mezi nejrozsáhlejší ze všech přechodových rituálů. Článek popisuje a analyzuje rituály prvního pohřbu u starších osob (mužů a žen). Tyto pohřby se bohatstvím rituálů i sociálním významem odlišují od jednodušších pohřbů mladších dospělých, dětí a novorozenců.
Suicide in the Habsburg monarchy in the Early Modern Age has hitherto received almost no attention. This text considers attitudes to suicide in the context of questions of sin, conscience and individualization. It traces the changing perceptions of the meaning of these phenomena through theological and moral-philosophical texts, and does so on four levels: (1) suicide as a theme (or non- theme) in 17th and 18th century theology and homiletics; (2) suicide in the reformist theology of the late 18th century; (3) the question of penance; (4) the "good death" and individual responsibility for the salvation of the soul. The author shows that in the last three decades of the 18th century, when more notice began to be paid to the phenomenon of suicide, discourse on the subject assumed a more psychological tone, with theologians and philosophers increasingly drawing attention to the harm done by certain religious and meditative techniques which in their view overexcited the imagination and could result in melancholy and despair. This shift might well be called the secularization of the discourse on suicide., Tomáš Malý., and Obsahuje bibliografické odkazy