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.
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.
Reflections on the relation between Lilith and the femme fatale: the prostitution at the end of the 19th century
Marta MORUECO O’MULLONY
Original title: Reflexiones sobre la relación entre Lilith y la femme fatale: la prostitución a finales del siglo XIX
Published in
Keywords: Femme fatale, Hebrew tradition, Lilith, Nineteenth-century art, Sin.
The study of the figure of Lilith must be set in two very specific moments: first, the Ancient Times, in which the Lilith myth arises; and the nineteenth century, as “reawakening” of this character. This research deals with the relationship between women and evil, and its iconography; The negative view of the feminine was propagated during the Middle Ages mostly due, in large part, to the discovery of the Aristotelian texts, laden with a strong misogynistic content. It will be precisely in the twelfth century when Lilith is adopted as part of the Hebrew imaginary, assuming the negative character of the woman, freeing Eve from the only and absolute responsibility of the Original Sin. This idea will be recovered during the nineteenth century reincarnated in the figure of the femme fatale and the pleasure from the demonic and the forbidden thoughts, coming to fetishize it, which has a direct relationship with the rise of prostitution, in whose artistic representations we can find the Lilith’s seed.
The free will and the evil in Saint Augustine
Ricardo J. BELLEI and Délcio Marques BUZINARO
Original title: O livre-arbítrio e o mal em Santo Agostinho
Published in The Time and the Eternity in the Ancient and Medieval World
Keywords: Free will, Moral evil, Sin, Supreme Good.
Saint Augustine (354-340). One of the greatest exponents of the Christian philosophy is inserted in a reality where the Christianity has just become his official doctrine of the Roman Empire and still hasn’t got solid basis of his doctrines. A time of arising heresies. In some cases, the own saint himself had important role in the combat such as the Manichaeism and the pelagianismo. Against the Manichaeism which confirmed that the good (spirit) and the evil (something solid) were enemy eternal forces, that were in struggle – Augustine develops his system to solve the evil problem, fully unlinking Good, (the supreme God and creator of everything) from such reality and nothing that the blame of the evil presence in the world, thus, the moral evil or the sin. The physical evil would be, however, an unfolding of the sin.
