Mysterious Nicopolis
José Enrique RUIZ-DOMÈNEC
Original title: Misteriosa Nicópolis
Published in The Middle Ages and the Crusades
Keywords: Historical personages, Middle Ages, Nicopolis, chivalry.
Essay about the great day of Nicopolis, the participation of the main characters, and a new historical-anthropological reading of a crucial event inspired by Hayden White and Marshall Salins. This is a new proposal for a historical interpretation of the crusades.
On the supposed line of development of the medieval portraiture. From the donor to individual portrait
José María SALVADOR GONZÁLEZ, Cristina DE LA CASA RODRÍGUEZ
Original title: Sobre la supuesta línea de desarrollo de la retratística medieval. Del donante al retrato individual
Published in
Keywords: Donor, Flemish painting, Individual, Middle Ages, Portrait, Quattrocento.
This paper aims to assess the problems arisen when trying to talk about the development of medieval portraits. Usually, we tend to think that the donor is typical of the Early Middle Age, and then, progressively, the importance of the subject depicted increases, so that finally we can encounter the Italian, but mostly Flemish, portrait in which the values of modern society, such as the distance taken from the religious principles or the human being’s feeling of superiority, are reflected. Throughout our paper, this so-called perfect evolution will be tested, by doing an initial approach to the concepts of “donor” and “portrait”, so that we can realise that this kind of expressions used by art historiography are just characteristic of narrow-minded visions which cannot be used to reproduce the existing diversity of the Art. Finally, we will analyze the different ways of depicting people throughout the Middle Ages, giving particular emphasis on the line of thought and the philosophy dominant every concept and piece described, with the firm belief that ideas, instead of mere formalist analysis, give us the key points about the human being’s representations throughout history, and in a more precise way, the medieval period.
Pagan syncretism in the Middle Ages: the zodiacal signs
Jesús CANTERA MONTENEGRO, Inmaculada ÁLVAREZ DEL OLMO
Original title: Sincretismo pagano en el medievo: Los signos zodiacales
Published in
Keywords: Astrological Studies, Calendars, Etimologies, Middle Ages, Pagan syncretism, San Isidoro de León, Signs of the Zodiac.
Study of signs of the Zodiac, essential element to understand the calendars configured in books of hours, as in the frescoes of temples, set during this historical period. These calendars were created from the astrological studies for good agricultural work and therefore shall be listed with their respective months, to somehow explain weather phenomena, as well as seasonal changes. A travel through its evolution and transformation since its inception in ancient times, to see its settings in medieval times. Many of them will be modified, either by the current fashion for illustrating images, or the meaning I wanted to give them.
Pleasure, sin, crime. Sexuality and sexual violence on the southern Valencian border at the end of the Middle Ages. Some examples
José Vicente CABEZUELO PLIEGO
Original title: Placer, pecado, delito. Sexualidad y violencia sexual en la frontera meridional valenciana a fines de la Edad Media. Algunos ejemplos
Published in
Keywords: Border, Kingdom of Valencia, Middle Ages, Sexual Violence, Sexuality.
This study analyzes some examples extracted from archival sources to contextualize and understand the key to these type of relations in the everyday life of the southern frontier of the Kingdom of Valencia within the Crown of Aragon. It pays particular attention to some aspects of sexuality and sexual violence, the connotations and varied meaning of pleasure, sin and crime.
Sacred and profane in Medieval: superposition or symbiosis? – The case of dedicated medieval religious institutions to non-religious purposes
Armando Alexandre dos SANTOS
Original title: Sagrado e profano no Medievo: superposição ou simbiose? – O caso das instituições religiosas medievais dedicadas a finalidades não religiosas
Published in Music in Antiquity, Middle Ages & Renaissance
Keywords: Building bridges, Middle Ages, Military life, Religious orders, Rules of Religious Orders.
This article considers the interpenetration of the sacred and profane spheres in the Middle Ages, studying the case of some religious orders destined for temporal and profane purposes, such as the construction of bridges; it focuses, in a special way, on the theological foundation of these orders and the constitutive importance of the rules or statutes for their regular and official existence.
Semblance of Arabic Poetry
Juan BRANDO
Original title: Semblanza de la poesía árabe
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Al-Andalus, Arabism, Islamic Law, Middle Ages, Poetry.
We propose a brief approach to the Arabic Poetry of the later Middle Ages with a Reading key centered on the metaphors alluding to wine, wáter, tears, dew and flowers. Prohibition and desire, postponenment and melancholy by the absence of the beloved or exile, the pains drowned in wine, are the ways by which poetry becomes a consideration of trascendence and primordial unity.
Senses and the original sin in the thinking of John Wyclif
Cecilia DEVIA
Original title: Los sentidos y el pecado original en el pensamiento de John Wyclif
Published in Senses and sensibilities in classical and medieval worlds
Keywords: John Wyclif, Middle Ages, Original Sin, Senses.
The main purpose of this article is to present an approach to the relationship between the senses and the original sin in the thinking of John Wyclif (c. 1328-1384). It will begin by making a brief outline of the link between senses and sins in the Middle Ages, to continue with a succinct exposition of the extremely versatile figure of Wyclif and its context. The first sections will be based on updated bibliography, while the last one will especially rely upon the English thinker’s Tractatus de statu innocencie, from 1376. It will be devoted to select and analyze the passages in which the author addresses the senses, both before and after the fall of Adam and Eve, and with theirs, that of all humanity.
Soissons: the stone builds the Marian faith (The Cantiga 53 of Cantigas de Santa Maria by Afonso X)
Bárbara DANTAS
Original title: Soissons: a pedra edifica a fé mariana (a Cantiga 53 das Cantigas de Santa Maria de Afonso X)
Published in Mirabilia Journal
Keywords: Alfonso X, Cantigas de Santa María, Middle Ages, Soissons Cathedral.
Alfonso X, sovereign of the peninsular kingdoms of León and Castilla, honored the fame of the kings of the medieval West of the 13th century and dedicated much of his time and money to promoting the arts, sciences and Marian cult. One of the ways to unite all these initiatives was the creation of the Cantigas de Santa María, a set of hundreds of stories of miracles and praises to the Virgin Mary, in which another hundred full-page illuminations are recorded. This work will focus on Cantiga 53 and aims to show the technical development implemented by gothic architects, as well as the syncretism between the French and peninsular kingdoms with regard to cathedral architecture, for the example of Soissons Cathedral.
State, nation and national feeling in the Late Middle Ages
Guillem CHISMOL
Original title: Estado, nación y sentimiento nacional en la Baja Edad Media
Published in
Keywords: Historiography, Middle Ages, Modern State, Nation, Taxation.
The article analyses the formation of the modern state during the later middle ages (13th-15th centuries) in Western Europe. It links the formation of this to the elites close to the monarch with the deployment of complex strategies of collective identification of the notables with the monarchy, the country and the national community. Attention is also given to the materiality of the State, present through permanent taxation, which in turn generated national feelings.
Structuring the tradition in the old Catalan Literatures: from Ramon Llull (1232-1316) to Bernat Metge (1340-1413)
Júlia BUTINYÀ
Original title: Estructurant la tradició en les lletres catalanes antigues: de Ramon Llull (1232-1316) a Bernat Metge (1340-1413)
Published in The World of Tradition
Keywords: Bernat Metge, Crown of Aragon, Humanism, Middle Ages, Ramon Llull.
To contribute to structuring the tradition in the Catalan letters of the Middle Ages, links are exposed that root the thought of the great humanist, Bernat Metge, in the great medieval philosopher, Ramon Llull. This link allows us to observe the continuity that, in one way or another and with greater or lesser intensity – and often with leaps of eras-, can be seen in the different literatures. According to the present proposal of textual concomitants, in the Crown of Aragon and through both authors, the connection between tradition and modernity occurs with high intensity in the 14th century itself, right at the beginning of the change in mentality and sensibility.
