Love in the Time of Demons: Thirteenth-Century Approaches to the Capacity for Love in Fallen Angels
Juanita FEROS RUYS
Original title: O amor em tempos demoníacos: diferentes abordagens no século XIII para a capacidade de amar dos anjos caídos
Published in Emotions in the Ancient and Medieval Mediterranean World
Keywords: Demons, Free will, Friendship, Natural love, lust.
Demons in the Middle Ages were primarily known as creatures that could feel only envy, anger, and malicious glee. But there remained an undercurrent in both scholastic thought and monastic tales that also understood demons as creatures once capable−and perhaps still so−of love. This paper examines the capacity for love and friendship attributed to demons in the thirteenth century. It shows how love could be seen as the motivating emotion in their original fall from Heaven, and explores the role love is subsequently thought to have played in both their relationships with each other and their amatory and sexual relationships with humans.
The friendship, a political problem. Manueline construction of aristocratic bond
Federico J. ASISS-GONZÁLEZ
Original title: La amistad, un problema político. Construcción manuelina del vínculo aristocrático
Published in Senses and sensibilities in classical and medieval worlds
Keywords: Don Juan Manuel, Friendship, Nobility, Politics.
Friendship is presented before our eyes as a kind of universal bond, as the ideal way to bond with the rest of human beings. Its deployment over time, the loyalty or fidelity with which it solidifies friendly relations seem a topic more proper to ethics than to politics, although decades ago Jacques Derrida revealed it to us as a political issue. However, this work of unveiling that requires us to fully understand the nature of this bond was not such for don Juan Manuel. In his works, friendship occupies a specific function within the discourse on nobility. In fact, the friendship resulted from a pact, as requested by the Fuero de Castiella, between noblemen in order to pacify their relations and to proceed with their political struggles. In this article we propose to analyze the characteristics of this link in the Manueline texts or, in other words, to understand what is friendship for Don Juan Manuel and how it is articulated within the representation of his sector.
