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Presentation
Isabel de Villena and the fifteenth-century spirituality
Roxana RECIO, Antonio CORTIJO OCAÑA
Original title: Isabel de Villena y la espiritualidad del siglo XV
Special Issue
Sister Isabel de Villena: from religio amoris to amor religionis
Antonio CORTIJO OCAÑA
Original title: Sor Isabel de Villena: de la religio amoris al amor religionis
Keywords: Amor religionis, Love literature, Religio amoris, Sor Isabel de Villena, Vita Christi.
The Vita Christi by Sor Isabel de Villena was written for the nuns of the Monasterio de la Trinidad in Valencia. The female readership would have felt an immediate affinity with some of the female characters in this work (Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalen). These characters and their love for Christ are presented with a technique and emphasis that imitates that of other love narratives from the same period. Although diverse in context and intention, all these works share a new relevance given to affectivity when dealing with love as a theme, thus helping blur the boundaries between religio amoris and amor religionis.
Another Manner of Humanistic Literature during the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries: the vitae Christi by Isabel de Villena and Cristóbal de Fonseca
Roxana RECIO
Original title: Otra forma de literatura humanística de los siglos XV y XVI: las vitae Christi de Isabel de Villena y Cristóbal de Fonseca
Keywords: Franciscan literature, Isabel de Villena, Vita Christi.
This article analyzes the vitae Christi written by Isabel de Villena (fifteenth century) and Cristobal de Fonseca (sixteenth century) from the the point of view of the European tradition and the reform brought about by the Franciscan order, which was in favor of reaching the people in the vernacular. Issues such as alleged femininity, use of popular language with sentimental overtones, dependence on fictions from different periods, debt to specific sources, and structuring works with a specific reader in mind are examined. After reviewing twelve specific points on those two works, it is concluded that, while not denying the enormous importance of Fonseca’s work, Isabel de Villena, institutes a literary manner that will become fundamental in the development of religious narrative in the Iberian peninsula.
On the teaching will in the work of Isabel de Villena
Vicent J. ESCARTÍ
Original title: Sobre la voluntad didáctica en la obra de sor Isabel de Villena
Keywords: 15th century, Isabel de Villena, Medieval catalan literature, Teaching, Valencia, Vita Christi.
The Vita Christi of Isabel de Villena is an excepcional work. She wanted to give live models to her sisters of religion, and that is why the role of the female protagonists of the life of Christ gain relief in the pages of his work. This article emphasizes the teaching of the abbess of the Trinitat present in this book and in other works known and now lost.
Narrative as a Vehicle for Group Cohesion: Experiential Learning, Collective Experience and Sublimation in the Vita Christi by Isabel de Villena
Miryam CRIADO LÓPEZ-PICAZO
Original title: La narración como vehículo de cohesión grupal: aprendizaje experiencial, experiencia colectiva y sublimación en la Vita Christi de Isabel de Villena
Keywords: Franciscan literature, Isabel de Villena, Vita Christi.
This article explores narrative strategies used by Isabel de Villena to achieve her educational objectives: to move, to channel behaviors and, ultimately, to strengthen interpersonal bonds and, therefore, the emotional interconnection of her community. Furthermore, by examining the construction of characters such as Mary and Mary Magdalene, this study also shows the effectiveness of experiential learning, collective experience and sublimation in the process of instruction and indoctrination of the Poor Clares of the Holy Trinity Monastery in the fifteenth century.
Mariology, Queenship and Power in Isabel de Villena. A Female Political Theory of the 15th Century
María del Mar GRAÑA CID
Original title: Mariología, reginalidad y poder en Isabel de Villena. Una teoría política femenina del siglo XV
Keywords: Female Humanism, Isabel the Catholic, Mariology, Queenship, Querelle des femmes, Virtues.
Isabel de Villena, author of Humanism, offers a female paradigm of government in her Vita Christi: The Virgin Mary as queen and as pope. Through queenship, she formulates a new political ethic that she presents as a model to power male holders. Its study confirms the participation of the author in the “Querelle of Femmes” and show coincidences with contemporary courts of queens like Isabel I.
Two readings of Mary’s life: the Vita Christi by Isabel de Villena and Vida de la sacratíssima verge Maria, by Miquel Peres
Carme ARRONIS I LLOPIS
Original title: Dos lecturas de la vida de María: la Vita Christi de Isabel de Villena y la Vida de la sacratíssima verge Maria de Miquel Peres
Keywords: Devotional Literature, Isabel de Villena, Life of Mary, Marian Literature, Miquel Peres, Vita Christi.
The Vita Christi by Isabel de Villena and La vida de la sacratíssima verge Maria by Miquel Peres are two devotional works appeared in Valencia in the late Fifteenth Century, and both are characterized by its Marian subject. However, they have been never analyzed together in search of possible dependencies or divergences. This work exposes for the first time how, despite the thematic proximity, each author offers a different text in order to present the role of the Virgin in the evangelical facts.
Isabel de Villena, a very special and feminine theological look
Lola ESTEVA DE LLOBET
Original title: Isabel de Villena, una mirada teológica en femenino muy singular
Keywords: Coadjuvants women, Redemption, Trinity theologie.
The traditional reception from on of the classical works referents of European spirituality, el Vita Christi, by Ludolf de Sajonia, hass been transformed by the writings of Isabel de Villena, who in her book, la Vita Christi, offers a new point of view, human and humanistic at the same time: the life of Christ develops in a theological threatsense of trinity experience where women at as adjuvant of Christ Redemption.
Isabel de Villena: Prayer and Franciscan Spirituality
Lesley K TWOMEY
Keywords: Franciscan prayer techniques, Franciscanism, Middle Ages, Orality, Passion.
This essay examines traces of the oral in the prayers written by Isabel de Villena (1430-1490), abbess of the Santa Trinitat convent in Valencia. The essay compares the prayers of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane in the Vita Christi with St Francis’s Office of the Passion. It finds that whilst there are some similarities between St Francis’s Office and Villena’s Vita Christi, this is because of technique in using phrases from the Psalms rather than direct influence.
Articles
The Sasanian Tradition in ʽAbbāsid Art: squinch fragmentation as The structural origin of the muqarnas
Alicia CARRILLO
Keywords: Islamic architecture, Middle Ages, Muqarnas, Sasanian, Tripartite squinches, ʽAbbāsid Caliphate.
Islamic architecture presents a three-dimensional decoration system known as muqarnas. An original system created in the Near East between the second/eighth and the fourth/tenth centuries due to the fragmentation of the squinche, but it was in the fourth/eleventh century when it turned into a basic element, not only all along the Islamic territory but also in the Islamic vocabulary. However, the origin and shape of muqarnas has not been thoroughly considered by Historiography. This research tries to prove the importance of Sasanian Art in the aesthetics creation of muqarnas.
