S

English Glossary

Sacraments:

Sans-culottes: ordinary, working French men and women (and their supporters from other groups in society) who played an important part in revolutionary politics. Their views were radical.

Salaried worker:

Scabbard: a sheath (case) for a sword.

Schliefen Plan

Scholasticism: method of study based on logic and dialectic that dominated the medieval schools. It assumed that truth already existed; students had only to organise, elucidate, and defend knowledge learned from authoritative texts, especially those of Aristotle and the Church Fathers.

Scutage: monetary payments by a vassal to a lord in place of the required military service.

Secular clergy: parish clergy who did not belong to a religious order.


 * Self-sufficient:** to be able to support oneself or provide what one needs in an independent way.


 * Serf:** (in the Middle Ages) peasants tied to the land they tilled.

Settlement: a group of houses like a small village.


 * Sewage system: **

Shi-a: the minority of Muslims who trace their beliefs from the caliph Ali who was assassinated in 661 AD.


 * Skilful: **having knowledge and skill and aptitude


 * Slavish: **blindly imitative

Slingers: soldiers who hurled stones at the enemy with slings.

Sophists:professional teachers who emerged in Greece in the mid-fifth century BC who were paid to teach techniques of rhetoric, dialectic, and argumentation.

Specia: family gods. Every Roman family worshipped theirr own household gods who, they believed, would protect them throughout life.


 * Spinning:** the act of drawing out and twisting the fibres of wool, cotton or other material to convert them into yarn.

Standard: flag or carving carried on a long pole by the standard bearer -an important soldier- to inspire the soldiers to follow the owners of country villas.

Strata: the plural for //stratum// (a level or class in society)

Steward: someone who looks after a house or lands for a lord or lady.

Stocks: a kind of public punishment in which the person sat with their feet held between two pieces of wood.

Stoics: a philosophical school founded by Zeno of Citium (335-263 BC) that taught that humans could only be happy with natural law. Human misery was caused by passion, which was a disease of the soul. The wise sought apatheia, freedom from passion.

Summa: an authoritative summary in the Middle Ages of all that was allegedly known about a subject.

Sunna: meaning "tradition". The dominant Islamic group.

Sunnis: those who follow the "tradition" (sunna) of the prophet Muhammad. They are the dominant movement within Islam to which the vast majority of Muslims adhere.

Supremacy:

Symposium: the carefully organized drinking party that was the center of Greek aristocratic social life. It featured games, songs, poetry, and even philosophical disputation.

Syncretism: the intermingling of different religions to form an amalgam that contained elements from each.

Glosario en español

Sistema federal de gobierno:

Soberanía: