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A Knight Deployed in the Border in the Service of King Peter IV of Aragon: Pedro Jiménez de Samper (1347-1364)

Mario Lafuente Gómez

Original title: Pedro Jiménez de Samper, un caballero de frontera al servicio de Pedro IV de Aragón (1347-1364)

Published in The chivalry and the art of war in the Ancient and Medieval World

Keywords: 14th century, Kingdom of Aragon, Peter IV of Aragon, War.

A New Approach to the Biography of Pedro Jiménez de Samper, a Knight Deployed in the Border in the Service of Pedro IV of Aragon (ca. 1314-1364)

Mario LAFUENTE GÓMEZ

Original title: Una nueva aproximación a la biografía de Pedro Jiménez de Samper, un caballero de frontera al servicio de Pedro IV de Aragón (ca. 1314-1364)

Published in Returning to Eden

Keywords: 14th Century, Crown of Aragon, Military History, Nobility, Peter IV of Aragon, Social History, War.

Pedro Jiménez de Samper was a prominent member of the Aragon’s middle nobility, who lived during the central decades of the 14th century and developed an intense military career in the service of King Peter IV of Aragon, the Ceremonious. In this text, we offer a revised and expanded version of his biography, which we first published in 2008 in this journal’s number 8. The current version preserves the original text while incorporating new content, which refers to all the stages of Samper’s life and allows us to considerably widen the repertoire of issues previously addressed. Among the most important new features presented here are the location of his family origins, the identification of his clientele networks and the dating of his death. The result is a case study that provides an accurate illustration of the relationship between aristocracy and war in the Crown of Aragon in this period of the late Middle Ages.

Architecture in the Cantigas de Santa Maria by Alfonso X (13th century): Huelva, the Islam and the triumph of the Virgin Mary

Bárbara DANTAS

Original title: Arquitetura nas Cantigas de Santa Maria de Afonso X (séc. XIII): Huelva, o Islã e o triunfo da Virgem Maria

Published in

Keywords: Architecture, Islam, Middle Ages, Virgin Mary, War.

The Cantigas de Santa Maria by king Alfonso X is a work with three artistic expressions: music, literature and painting. There are about 420 songs with reports of miracles and praises to the Virgin written in galician-portuguese and accompanied by illuminations that represent words in images. The focus will be to demonstrate the presence of architectural forms in the text and the illumination of the Cantiga 273, the miracle report of the city of Huelva-Andalusia. The architecture as a record of the defeats and victories occurred in the battles between christians and moors during the centuries of the Reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula, as well as the pacific artistic syncretism of that time.

Army, game, and social order: an approach to the cosmic metaphor of the justification of war in De bello by Juan de Legnano

Emiliano ALDEGANI; Lucía GARCÍA ALMEIDA

Original title: Ejército, juego y orden social: una aproximación a la metáfora cósmica de la justificación de la guerra en De bello de Juan de Legnano

Published in Games from Antiquity to Baroque

Keywords: Game, Huizinga, Legnano, Middle Ages, War.

The aim of this paper is to point out the articulation between the celestial order and the military order expressed in the work of the medieval jurist John of Legnano (14th century) in the Tractatus de Bello, de Represaliis et de duello. In the introduction to his book, he states that ‘human war’ reflects war in the divine order, which leads the author to justify the military conflicts present in his time as coming from God, a hypothesis that he supports based on the testimonies offered by the Gospels. Thus, in the first chapter, he divides war into Spiritual, celestial, or human warfare and Corporal, universal or warfare. In addition, some central ideas of the medievalist Johan Huizinga, in his work Homo ludens, on the sacred meaning of victory in the context of medieval military confrontations, which is deeply related to the meaning of victory in the game, will be recovered. Based on this key reading, the aim is to contextualise Legnano's conception within the framework of the canonical understandings of the foundations of war conflicts that prevailed in the late medieval period.

Disease, War, Identities in a(nother) TV series on the Borgias

Adéla KOŤÁTKOVÁ

Original title: Malaltia, guerra, identitats en una (altra) sèrie de televisió sobre els Borja

Published in War and Disease in Antiquity and the Middle Ages

Keywords: Borgia family, Disease, Historical fiction, Identities, War.

When representing the Borgias, a part of the most recent historical fiction tends to avoid the black legend that has accompanied the surname over the centuries. In this article we review the mechanisms through which a television series presents the family as active protagonists of the transition from the Middle Ages to the modern period, as promoters of the Renaissance, not only with regard to artistic and intellectual interests, but also to the evolution of diseases and therapies or in the management of military conflicts. We also check how the creators of the series project their preconceptions on the ethnolinguistic identities of the characters.

Maiorca and Aragon in time of Ramon Llull (1250-1300)

Ricardo da Costa

Original title: Maiorca e Aragão no tempo de Ramon Llull (1250-1300)

Published in Mirabilia 1

Keywords: Aragon, James II of Maiorca, Maiorca, Medieval politics, Peter III of Aragon, Ramon Llull, War.

Description and analysis of the political situation of the kingdons of Maiorca and Aragon in Ramon Llull's time, with enphasis in the relationship of Llull with the kings James II of Maiorca and Peter III of Aragon. This description has for an objective the compreension of the historical circunstances that influenced the political thoughts of Ramon Llull.

Models of Warfare in the Chronicle of D. Duarte de Meneses − Text, Context and Representation

André Luiz BERTOLI

Original title: Modelos de ação bélica na Crônica de D. Duarte de Meneses − Texto, Contexto e Representação

Published in Emotions in the Ancient and Medieval Mediterranean World

Keywords: Chronicle, Models of warlike action, North Africa, Portugal, War.

In this paper I shall present some preliminary research on the Crônica do Conde D. Duarte de Meneses, wrote by Gomes Eanes de Zurara between 1464 and1468. I will make a closer study of several chapters in the chronicle, especially chapter 44 (Riiij) and chapter 154 (CLiiij), which expound the warrior values and Christian virtues that defined the chivalric profiles of the Lusitanian nobility. The chapters selected retell exemplary deeds through which Zurara highlighted among many other types of warlike attitudes that were part of the whole relationship of medieval man to war: the obedience to the captain versus the execution of chivalric prowess. In this chronicle Gomes Eanes de Zurara tried to define an ideal of chivalry adapted to the needs of the Portuguese expansion in North Africa during the fifteenth century, which, in turn, would serve as a model for all the Portuguese warrior nobility in Africa.

Peace and just war according to Thomas Aquinas

Luís Carlos Silva de SOUSA

Original title: Paz e guerra justa de acordo com Tomás de Aquino

Published in Mirabilia Journal 31 (2020/2)

Keywords: Justice, Peace, Thomas Aquinas, War.

The goal of this text is to analyze the notion of peace in Thomas Aquinas’ theory of just war. The texts of Summa theologiae are as follows: STh. IIa-IIae, q. 40, a. 1 and STh. IIa-IIae q. 29, a. 1 and 2. Thomas Aquinas places the notion of peace as the goal of war in the broad context of an ethics of virtues in the line proposed by Aristotle. However, we will argue that Thomas Aquinas’ reception of the Augustinian notion of peace as tranquillitas ordinis (tranquillity of order) plays a fundamental role in his view of just war by allowing him a transcendental justification.