Middle Ages

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The chivalrous ideal of Saint Bernard in The Holy Grail Demand

Ademir Luiz da SILVA

Original title: O ideal cavaleiresco de São Bernardo em A Demanda do Santo Graal

Published in Relations between History and Literature in Ancient and Medieval World

Keywords: Bernard of Clairvaux, Knight Templar Order, Medieval Literature, Middle Ages, The Holy Grail Demand.

The Knight Templar Order was established in Palestine, between 1118 and 1119, after the Christian victory on the First Great Crusades, aiming to protect the palmeiros visitors at the Holy Sites. By fits and starts the former warrior monks reached fame and under Bernardo de Claraval intellectual tutorage the Templar was soon spread throughout Europe. The demand, the quest symbol, replaced the crusade sentiment. The literary meaning of these standards, including the joaquimita millenarian strong influence, can be found in Portuguese version of the French feat novel The Holy Grail Demand.

The feminine imaginary in Virtuosa Benfeitoria and its mediation between Man and Paradise

Mafalda Maria Leal de Oliveira e Silva FRADE

Original title: O imaginário feminino na Virtuosa Benfeitoria e sua mediação entre o Homem e o Paraíso

Published in Paradise, Purgatory and Hell: the Religiosity in the Middle Ages

Keywords: Infant D. Pedro, Middle Ages, Virgin Mary, Virtuosa Benfeitoria, Woman.

The main goal of this research is to study the female imagery in the medieval work Virtuosa Benfeitoria, written by Infante D. Pedro and based on Seneca’s book De Beneficiis. In this text, there are various ideas about the status of women, conveyed by three specific groups: the Graces, the six maidens and the Virgin Mary. Given the religiosity of Middle Ages, the latter is given a leading role (despite the mythological influences of the three Graces and the allegory of the six maidens): she is the epitome of perfection and is responsible for an important role of mediation between Man and Heaven.

The iconography of Hell in Medieval artistic tradition

Tamara QUÍRICO

Original title: A iconografia do Inferno na tradição artística medieval

Published in Paradise, Purgatory and Hell: the Religiosity in the Middle Ages

Keywords: Hell, Iconography, Middle Ages, Visions of the Otherworld.

This article shall briefly discuss the elaboration of the visual representation of Hell – both in paintings as in plays –, as well as some of the most important iconographic elements of the theme. It is intended to show how Scriptural elements were associated to others of popular origin in order to create the iconography of the theme throughout medieval period. It must be considered that Hell forms Christian imaginary, being an essential part of one of the most important questions to Christianity: man’s fate after death and after the end of the world. Absorbing concepts and traditions alien to Christian religiosity, the iconography of Hell became one of the main elements to indoctrinate the faithful, when presented as an independent theme, but especially when it was associated to the broader representation of the Last Judgment.

The late medieval Castilian nobility and the king: building and redistribution of power

Cecilia DEVIA

Original title: La nobleza castellana bajomedieval y el rey: construcción y redistribución del poder

Published in Aristocracy and nobility in the Ancient and Medieval World

Keywords: Chronicles, King, Middle Ages, Nobility, Violence.

It discusses the relationships between the nobility and the king in the Chronicle of King Don Pedro by Pero Lopez de Ayala, in light of the model reproductive strategies of the dynastic State developed by Pierre Bourdieu. Emphasis is placed on the rational use of violence that govern the conduct of both the king and the nobles, especially in construction and redistribution of power.

The medieval ruin in Caspar David Friedrich’s landscapes

Mar LLOPIS ORIVE

Original title: La ruina medieval en los paisajes de Caspar David Friedrich

Published in

Keywords: Friedrich, Gothic Revival, Gothic architecture, Landscape Painting, Medieval ruin, Middle Ages, Romanticism.

Romanticism brings along the revaluation of medieval art, especially of Gothic architecture, until then denied and despised. From this will echo romantic paintings, in which the representation of medieval ruins will become commonplace. Friedrich (1774-1840) is the most paradigmatic artist of this particular context, and therefore, our study will focus on his work.

The monastery and the social function of religious architecture: the Cantiga 45 of the Cantigas de Santa Maria by king Alfonso X (13th century)

Bárbara DANTAS

Original title: O mosteiro e a função social da arquitetura religiosa: a Cantiga 45 das Cantigas de Santa Maria do rei Afonso X (século XIII)

Published in

Keywords: Cantigas de Santa Maria, Medieval architecture, Middle Ages, Monastery.

D. Afonso wanted his obra maestra, the Cantigas de Santa Maria, to encompass everything that man sees and feels. And there is nothing more seen and felt than Architecture. Especially for us Religious Architecture. In Cantiga 45, the wise king presents us with a miracle report in which a knight, very affectionate to bad attitudes, wished to repair his errors and build a monastery dedicated to the Virgin Mary. His monastery would have all the rooms and spaces necessary for the monastic life.

The mulier of Saint Isidore of Seville and the Fathers of the Church. Aristolelian configurations

Pedro Carlos Louzada FONSECA

Original title: A mulier de Santo Isidoro de Sevilha e os Padres da Igreja. Configurações aristotélicas

Published in Games from Antiquity to Baroque

Keywords: Aristotle, Fathers of the Church, Middle Ages, Theology and Religious Doctrine.

This article examines the presence of postulates of Ancient Science presented by Aristotle about the anatomy and physiology of the parents in the generation of animals in his book Generatione animalium [Generation of animals], which starts from the biology of the genders to reach ideological values about the male and the female. female, Widespread in the Middle Ages, the teachings of Aristotle influenced the thought and religious literature of the period of the so-called Fathers of the Church. Through comparison, the article traces of this Aristotelian theme in Saint Isidore of Seville, Saint Anselm, and Saint Thomas Aquinas with the critical purpose of concluding that the theology and morals of religious doctrine were in many respects debtors of the classical legacy of Greek Antiquity, very well represented by the well-known Stagirite.

The role of incarnation in the Republic: between political seduction and theophanic vision

Nicolas HUMPHRIS

Original title: La fonction d’incarnation dans la République : entre séduction politique et vision théophanique

Published in

Keywords: De Gaulle, Imitation of Christ, Incarnation of power, Judge of children, Membership and civility, Middle Ages, Political charisma, Sacred royalty.

There is, in the state power of the contemporary French Republic, an archaic institution which continues incognito, the “function of incarnation”. This charismatic function is an institutional device developed at the dawn of our civilization (4th-10th centuries) to arouse, as part of an enterprise of seduction, the free adherence of subjects to public authority by borrowing the model of Christ mediator whose human presence and the flesh irresistibly and subliminally attract men to the invisible God. Today, those who exercise the function of incarnation in the Republic also secretly arouse the adhesion of men to the invisible and transcendent entity that is the State, in the manner of the “seducer” Christ. Whether we are believers or atheists, we all depend, for our attachment to the Republic, on this Christ-like power of seduction of the leader, and therefore, indirectly, of a certain Christ, mysteriously present in his earthly imitator. Are we the prisoners of the subliminal grip of this hidden God? To prevent the said political seduction from being a place of non-freedom, it is necessary to become aware of it, and, even more, to disocccult this Christ who appears here against all expectations, while he is both ignored by the State. and by the Church. It is important to rediscover the capacity for theophanic perception which was from the outset intimately associated with the function of incarnation, to lift the gaze in order to come to perceive the God hidden in the secularized nation state.

The sacred and the profane in the Three Wise Kings. From the Middle Ages to their origins

Irene ROMO PODERÓS

Original title: Lo sagrado y lo profano en los Reyes Magos. De la Edad Media a los orígenes

Published in

Keywords: Magi, Middle Ages, Representation, Symbolism.

In the countries of Christian tradition as well as in many others to different degrees the story of the “Three Wise Men” of the East is known who, according to the Christian version, gave their offerings to the “King of Kings” on his birth. However, beyond the myth, who were the so called Magi who according to one legend left behind trails of aromatic herbs in their wake? Are they based on real figures? Is their symbolic origin to be found in the sacred or in the profane? The purpose of this article is to explore the idea of the Three Magician of the East and to try to clarify its historical, legendary, secular and religious aspects. It will also try to show its role as a religious tool used to condition secular thought in medieval Europe. In this way, it will try to analyze how the figure of the Magi constitutes an artistic and literary symbol used for the propagation of Christianity in Medieval Europe, an example of the sacred versus secular dichotomy so characteristic of that continent. To do this, it will explore a variety of different aspects of the culture in the medieval period, as it is in this moment that the representation of the Magi as they are known today is definitively fixed in human memory.