Approach to the theatrical use of the body in La Farce de Pathelin (c. 1470)
Alejandra DA CRUZ; Juan Cruz ZARIELLO VILLAR
Original title: Aproximación al uso teatral del cuerpo en La Farce de Pathelin (c. 1470)
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Body, La Farce de Pathelin, Medieval Theater, Scenic resources.
In this paper, we will try to examine the functions of the body in La Farce de Pathelin (c. 1470), a significative text in French profane theatre in the Low Middle Ages. Despite the moral and formative intentions of the religious representations, the farce seeks the spectator’s laugh, with a simple plot and scenic resources related to the disguise or violence. Our analysis focus on body’s representations in three dimensions: body and knowledge and the figure of the doctor; the interactions between both sick body and mind; the relationship between body and religion. We will highlight the theatrical simulation of Maese Pathelin in order to fool the draper.
Bodies, clothing and social structure: the Germanic art of miniature illustrations in the Codex Manesse (13th century)
Beatriz Passamai PEREIRA
Original title: Corpos, vestuário e estrutura social: a arte germânica da iluminura no Codex Manesse (século XIII)
Published in
Keywords: Body, Clothing, Codex Manesse, Medieval Art, Miniature Illustrations.
This research investigated the clothing of the ministerial knights in the Große Heidelberger Liederhandschrift with the aim of capturing the reflections of the medieval social order of the thirteenth century based on the miniature ilustrai-ons present in this manuscript. The miniatures of the Manessische Handschrift are an excellent reference to the idea we have of life and the world in the Middle Ages. They depict the panorama of medieval clothing very well. For this reason the present investigation analyzed the dress of the troubadours. Clothes are an extension of the body, such an important element for the Christian medieval conception. The study sought to inventory the pieces of garment that compose the vestments of the ministerial knights; we categorized such pieces based on the medieval social hierarchy and related characteristics such as colors and cuts to the medieval social orders. As a theoretical research, primary and secondary sources were used, such as: Codex Manesse: Die Miniaturen der Großen Heidelberger Liederhandschrift (Ingo Walther and Gisela Siebert), De Amore (Andreas Capellanus), Ars Amatoria (Ovid) and The Lais of Marie de France. The analysis finds its basis in the method proposed by Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968) in the work Meaning in the Visual Arts. This study also uses the notion of image suggested by Jean-Claude Schmitt (1946-) in two works: The Body of Images and The Thematic Dictionary of the Medieval Occident. From the universe of 137 miniature ilustrations, six were selected based on the fol-lowing criteria: 1) the vestments of ministerial knights; 2) images containing a male and a female figure. Based on the analysis, we were able to catch the re-flexes of the medieval social order of the thirteenth century, as we observed the dress of the troubadours represented in Codex Manesse. The civilian dress prevailed: it was mainly used by the nobility and, therefore, by the ministeriales.
Body and Image in teaching of Medieval Philosophy
Libertad MARTINEZ LARRAÑAGA
Original title: El cuerpo y la imagen en la enseñanza de la Filosofía Medieval
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Body, Image, Medieval Philosophy, Monotheistic creationism, Platonic dualism, Teaching, Theory of incarnation.
This paper describes a teaching experience developed as a teaching assistant of Medieval Philosophy at the College of Humanities – UNMDP, where the concepts of body and conforming and disconforming image were presented according to the theories of contemporary philosopher J. M. Schaeffer. This author seeks to explain the importance of the image in Western cultural tradition for its association with the body, an association that occurs in the medieval period from the synergy between three sources of thought: Platonic dualism, monotheistic creationism and the theory of incarnation. The lesson topic was specially chosen to present a contemporary elaboration on a medieval theme, and at the same time to perform a significant teaching experience with the use of images –both from the analyzed period and contemporary. Students were asked to analize aestheticaly and philosophicaly those images, with argumentative clarity, adequate use of the concepts developed in class and elements of visual language.
Disease, Sin and Soul Medicine in the preaching of Saint Anthony (c. 1195-1231)
Gustavo Cambraia FRANCO
Original title: Doença, pecado e medicina da alma na pregação de Santo Antônio (c. 1195-1231)
Published in War and Disease in Antiquity and the Middle Ages
Keywords: Body, Disease, Medicine, Saint Anthony of Lisbon, Sin.
The purpose of this article is to analyze the ideas of Saint Anthony of Lisbon, a XIIIth century Franciscan preacher, about diseases and their relationship with the medieval doctrine of sin and vices. The theme is exposed from evangelical passages and a series of related biblical accounts, explained by Saint Anthony, which contain references to diseases and physical sickness. His sermons emphasize, through the exegesis of the allegorical and moral senses, that the human body and its five senses are open doors to vices, by which the human soul, and even the body itself, are infected and affected by various physical and spiritual illnesses. So, only the medicine of Christ and of his preachers, the continuous exercise of virtues and penitential practices have the power to heal and regenerate man to its original state of health.
Much more than flesh and bones: the body and the relationship with God in the Hebrew Bible
Renan FRIGHETTO, Willibaldo RUPPENTHAL NETO
Original title: Muito mais que carne e ossos: o corpo e a relação com Deus na Bíblia Hebraica
Published in War and Disease in Antiquity and the Middle Ages
Keywords: Body, God, Hebrew Bible, Soul.
This paper aims to analyze how the Hebrew Bible presents the human body, studying the biblical texts with particular attention to important terms for Jewish anthropology, like bāsār, usually translated as “body”, and nefesh, normally translated as “soul”, in order to highlight their particularity. This study intends to present not only the valuation of the body in the Hebrew Bible, but also its importance in the relationship between man and God according to the biblical perspective.
Musica Dolorosa – Symphony of the Sublime and the Grotesque
Antonio Celso RIBEIRO
Original title: Musica Dolorosa – Sinfonia do Sublime e do Grotesco
Published in Rhythms, expressions and representations of the body
Keywords: Body, Middle Ages, Music, Self-flagellation, Sin, Soul.
The present work intends to briefly analyze the role of the music in the mortification of the human body as atonement for sins, either voluntary as in the ritual of self-flagellation, and/or imposed for corporal punishment being both perceived as a source of pleasure, pain, desire, and expiation culminanting in the spectacle of scourging. Starting from the concept of the duality of the soul and the body, as suggested by several medieval allegories, the paper aims to make correlations between music, body, desire, religious fanaticism and madness in European Middle Ages, being these relationships the corporeality of musical and religious experience, i.e. through the experience of (self)-imposed flagellation, ascestics would insist the human body would function as a musical instrument where it skin, tendons, throat, torso could be beaten, strechted, plucked, and strummed to produce resonances that were in accord with the pitch and timbre of the crucified Jesus, whose exposed ribs and extended sinews turned him into the harp of the salvation in countless medieval allegories.
Painful Pleasure. Saintly Torture on the Verge of Pornography
Sarah SCHÄFER-ALTHAUS
Published in Pleasure in the Middle Ages
Keywords: Body, Hagiography, Pornography, Torture, Women Saints.
Within female hagiographical narratives, stimulating, pornographic, and often sadistic endeavours can be detected; gendering the tortured body parts such as the tongue, teeth or the breast and thus supporting the development of (negative) erotic fantasies. This paper will explore the connection between pornography, torture, and hagiography and investigate the ambiguity of this ‘painful pleasure’, which, despite any assumptions, is not only enjoyed by the male torturer when cutting off these symbolically significant body parts, but recurrently so it seems also by the saint herself, who more than once cheerfully exclaims that ‘the pains are my delight’ (St Agatha).
The body in the pedagogical philosophy of Ramon Llull (1232-1316)
GIUBERTI, Fabricia dos Santos
Original title: O corpo na filosofia pedagógica de Ramon Llull (1232-1316)
Published in
Keywords: Body, Doctrine for Children, History of Medicine, Ramon Llull.
Ramon Llull (1232-1316) in his work Doctrine for Children (c. 1274-1276) teaches his son Dominic that the human body is composed of four elements, an idea inherited from Greek medicine, and that such elements corrupt the man’s body. There are five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. Through them, the man participates in external things. For the Mallorcan, bodily life is the actuality by which the body lives, and the spiritual life is to love God. From these principles, Llull teaches the child that he must love the bodily life and health because, through health, the soul and the body are convenient to each other, and the man lives by convenience.The purpose of this paper is to present the conception of Ramon Llull about the body as exposed on Doctrine for Children, methodologically combined with the historical perspective of Jacques Le Goff and Nicholas Truong in the work "A History of the Body in the Middle Ages".
The configuration of the beloved body in medieval romance: idealization and eroticism in Le Chevalier de la charrette by Chrétien de Troyes (c. 1135-1185)
María ESTRELLA
Original title: La configuración del cuerpo amado en el roman medieval: idealización y erotismo en El caballero de la Carreta de Chrétien de Troyes (c. 1135-1185)
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Body, Chrétien de Troyes, Medieval romance, Wound.
The main purpose of this article is to analyse the configuration of the body in Le Chevalier de la charrette (1176/1181), written by Chrétien de Troyes, which narrates the adulterous love of Lancelot and Queen Geneva. We are interested in observing the survival of the doctrine of courteous love in the construction of the chivalrous hero and the character of the beloved woman, who is worshiped as a superior being. A "religion of love" is outlined, which, according to Denis de Rougemont, is one of the axes that articulates this doctrine. At the same time, this idealization is combined with the physical presence of the body, especially in the description of the sexual encounter of the couple. We will explore a conception of love that is delineated as pleasurable suffering and characterized by an eroticism that combines joy and pain, which is represented in the topic of the wound.
The five senses, the body and the spirit
Eric PALAZZO
Original title: Les cinq sens, le corps et l’esprit
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Body, Five senses, Spirit.
According to the Christian authors of Antiquity and the Middle Ages, the general tendency in the appreciation of the symbolic meaning of the five senses rests on the consideration of the fundamental unity in man, between the body and the spirit, allowing to establish the doctrine of the corporal senses and the spiritual senses. From the first centuries of Christianity, theologians and philosophers endeavored to convey the Greek concept of “man” or the balance between body and spirit, or soul, as a superior source, following in this, on the one hand, the philosophical ideas of Plato and, on the other hand, those of Aristotle. The biblical passage that we have considered as the founding text of this conception of the unity of the body and spirit in man, in Christian perspective, is an excerpt from the first epistle to the Corinthians. The third century Christian sees, in the same way, the Christian concept of the five spiritual senses and their correspondences with the five corporal senses. Origins (185?-253?) Has been the initiator of the concept of the spiritual senses leading, mainly, to the reconciliation of the soul and the body by the establishment of correspondences between the bodily senses and the spiritual senses whose place is established by the Incarnation of the Word. Some expressions of human anatomy in the manuscripts of the second half of the Middle Ages, show strong similarities with the ideas of Lactantius regarding the relationship between the outer man and the inner man and as to the place given to the head in both site of the soul and where the main organs of the senses reside. As in most areas of theology, the thought of Augustine of Hippo has had a considerable influence on the Christian understanding of the five senses, which implies a deep reflection on the relationship between body and mind in Christianity. We can also mention Pedro Damiano in whom we find a pronounced interest in the metaphor of the Man-city where the senses are compared with doors and windows that give access to the outside world and their knowledge. A famous drawing contained in a manuscript realized in the German abbey of Heilbronn, in century XII, summarizes, in himself, a long part of the explored elements on the relation between the body and the spirit in the Christian theology of the Middle Ages from the exploration of the five senses. As we will see, the drawing also suggests a deep reflection on the sensory dimension in the journey of man on earth and in the perspective of what he will have to do in the future, guided by the model of Christ and the Christian virtues. On folio 130v, we see a final full page drawing where the role of the five senses in the journey of man on earth and in the hereafter is essential. In some aspects, the iconography of the drawings in folio 130v continues the reflection on the theme of the persecution of the Church or, in a broader way, the struggle between good and evil, which is at the center of the image of the mentioned folio. It expresses the theme of the path of life of the good and the bad or the two paths of human life. In the lower right part of the composition, the bust of the personification of nature brings out a naked man who begins to climb a staircase whose first five steps are assimilated to the five senses by their inscriptions. In the middle part of the image, the staircase separates into two paths offered to man to continue his course on earth and beyond. At the crossing of roads, man can choose between good and evil. The character who chose the path of evil is mounted by an imp that pushes down with the help of a fork in which is inscribed, in Latin, the maxim: “depraved behavior.” It will not escape the attentive observer that the character who chose the “depraved behavior” dresses as a prince and continues the “ascent” of his ladder resting on the bars identified by imprudence, intemperance, inconstancy and injustice. In the lower part of the image, the “evil man” is expected in hell by the demons and the devil himself who has in his left hand some types of phylacteries that allude to the “seven demons” that are the negative counterpart of Seven gifts of the Holy Spirit represented, too, in the form of phylacteries in the hands of Christ enthroned in majesty in the upper register of composition. The iconography of the folio 130v of the Heilbronn manuscript is, in many aspects, a unique case in Christian images of the Middle Ages. Certainly, the commentator of the thirteenth-century liturgy does not associate the five senses with the degrees on which he lectures. In spite of this, one has the right to suppose that, in the image of the German manuscript, the five senses are considered, also, virtues, in the same way as the other steps, the four cardinal virtues of the “positive” staircase presented by Man on the condition that he manifests the desire to reach the vision of God with a good intention and thanks to his will.