Building the city: the role of women in late medieval construction
Marta REDONDO DE FUENMAYOR
Original title: Construyendo la ciudad: el rol femenino en la edilicia bajomedieval
Published in Mirabilia Journal
Keywords: Architecture, Construction, Jobs on the construction site, Late Middle Ages, Women, Workshops.
Transgressors or submissive to established norms, women have been active subjects of architectural practice throughout history. This was the case in the Middle Ages, with its well-known patriarchal societies, where a clear hierarchy of the public, dominated by men, over the private, the place of women, was evident. Thus, it seems unthinkable to some that a percentage of the hands that built the great medieval buildings belonged to the gender relegated to the intimacy of the home. But nothing could be further from the truth: historical experiences show that medieval construction was a phenomenon of shared jurisdiction. Therefore, the purpose of this work is to make visible the role of women as construction workers. The starting point will be a bibliographical review, which reveals the dispersion, scarcity, and limited visibility that this subject has had in traditional historiography. On this basis, we will analyse the regulatory documents, builindg logs, statutes of professional guilds and municipal ordinances, as primary sources that have facilitated the understanding of the role of women within the social hierarchies established in the late medieval period. Subsequently, a general overview will be given of the activities carried out in the construction process, both the tasks on site and those carried out in trades and workshops. The starting point for this is the analysis of graphic and written sources. The images that accompany this chapter, unusually considered when dealing with the subject, support the documentation and become a magnificent exponent of the visual culture of the Middle Ages. Finally, the female stipend in construction work will be analysed, making it possible to ascertain the place of women in the late medieval building industry.
Feminine elites in Galician towns during the Late Middle Ages
Miguel GARCÍA-FERNÁNDEZ
Original title: Las élites femeninas en las ciudades gallegas de la Baja Edad Media
Published in Mulier aut Femina. Idealism or reality of women in the Middle Ages
Keywords: Galicia, Late Middle Ages, Towns, Urban elites, Women.
Women from different social groups lived in medieval towns. However, historians have studied more closely women working outside their homes in various trades and, far less, women that were part of the urban oligarchies. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to analyze female elites in Galician towns during the Late Middle Ages, indicating who they were and what their role within the oligarchy was. So, we will know some names, places, relationships, public actions and attitudes to death of those female elites.
Idols that collapse. The memory of the cult of Apollo in the Flight into Egypt of the Holy Family
Patricia GRAU-DIECKMANN
Original title: Ídolos que se derrumban. El recuerdo del culto a Apolo en la Huida a Egipto de la Sagrada Familia
Published in
Keywords: Apollo, Early Christianity, Flight to Egypt of the Holy Family, Late Middle Ages.
Through the iconographic analysis of two representations of the Flight to Egypt of the Holy Family, one of the fifth century and another of the fourteenth century, an attempt will be made to consider the possibility of the durability in Christian art of motifs linked to the ancient Greco-Roman religion, syncretized in the cult of Apollo settled in Egypt. Two emblematic works of this iconography will be analyzed, but chronologically and geographically opposed. They are the mosaic representation of the Flight to Egypt in Santa Maria Mayor of Rome (432) and the flemish diptych of Dijon (c. 1390), by Melchor Broederlam (c. 1355-1411). Both will serve as paradigmatic images to suspect that the presence of the ancient myths was not totally eradicated from the popular imagination, at least during the period from the Early Christianity to the Late Middle Ages. The written sustenance is found in the narrations of the earliest Apocryphal Gospels. The central theme is the plastic repetition of the presence of the idols of the temples of the god Apollo that fall from their pedestals when the Holy Child is present.
Katechon and right of resistance: an approach from the Middle Ages
Cecilia DEVIA
Original title: Katechon y derecho de resistencia: una aproximación desde la Edad Media
Published in Medieval and Early Modern Iberian Peninsula Cultural History
Keywords: Galicia, Katechon, Late Middle Ages, Right of resistance, Violence.
The figure katechon is a complex and ambiguous character, based on a biblical quote taken from the Second Epistle of Paul to the Thessalonians. Expresses the power to “slow” or “holds” the coming of the Antichrist and therefore the confrontation between the forces of good and evil, which precedes the return of the Messiah and the end of the world. In this paper we build on the analysis undertaken on the concept by different contemporary thinkers. If the figure of katechon be applied in relation to the uprisings in medieval and early modern radical character as those inspired by millenarian movements, one could consider that the daily resistance of the dominated, mostly passive features, would act as a brake for the arrival of the end of the world, necessary for the advent of a new one.
Pedro I and Enrique II of Castile: the construction of a monstrous king and the legitimization of a usurper in the Chronicle of Chancellor Ayala
Cecilia DEVIA
Original title: Pedro I y Enrique II de Castilla: la construcción de un rey monstruoso y la legitimación de un usurpador en la Crónica del canciller Ayala
Published in Relations between History and Literature in Ancient and Medieval World
Keywords: Castile, Chronicles, Enrique II of Castile, Late Middle Ages, Pedro I of Castile, Violence.
To justify the confrontation between Pedro I and Enrique II of Castile, culminating in the murder of an unquestionably legitimate king in hands of his usurper brother, the chronicler Pero Lopez de Ayala build gradually a negative and somehow monstrous of Pedro I. Meanwhile, he attempts to prove that the count of Trastámara does not dethrones Pedro because of a personal ambition and breaking the rules, instead, he seems to be prevented to carry out with the mission of saving the kingdom from the terrible ills caused by the monstrous actions of his stepbrother. We will analyze the dichotomy between the negative and irrational portrait that Chancellor Ayala, one of the biggest responsible for that Pedro will be remembered as “Rey Cruel”- builds with skill, and what the practices he reveals says themselves. A meticulous scrutiny of the documents reveals a policy of regional power building through practices in which different functions of violence. Ware involved: economic, socializing, with exchange, symbolic, of justice, foundational, cultural, etc. We present here what might be called a cross dichotomy, which would face two internally contradictories terms: a monstrous but legitimate king against a usurper who is a providence’s instrument. What the construction realized by the trastamarist propaganda would have made, which from the chancellor Ayala would be the most brilliant exponent, is the conversion of a legitimate king in a illegitimate one, by nature of its own monstrosity, and the conversion of a usurper who -as shows the definition itself, is illegitimate- in a legitimate king, in function of the realization of a divine mission.
The right of resistance of the subjugated people. An example of case: the late medieval Galicia
Cecilia DEVIA
Original title: El derecho a la resistencia de los dominados. Un ejemplo de caso: la Galicia bajomedieval
Published in Manifestations of the Ancient and Medieval World
Keywords: Galicia, Late Middle Ages, Orders, Right of resistance, Violence.
The purpose of this article is to show some of the results of an investigation in progress that pretends to examine the right of resistance exercised by the subjugated people, through a theoretical-documentary approach that uses as example of case the late medieval Galicia. It will be approached within a wide range that extends from the daily practices taken to preserve their own interests, to the study of open and declared revolts, such as the Irmandiño Revolt in 1467-1469. The theory of the three orders, considered as the prevailing worldview at the time, will be briefly discussed. Subsequently this problems will be studied through the analysis and interpretation of various sources.
Writing, legitimacy and memory: slogans and badges of Alfonso V the Magnanimous (1416-1458)
Gema Belia CAPILLA ALEDÓN
Original title: Escritura, legitimidad y memoria: lemas y divisas de Alfonso V el Magnánimo (1416-1458)
Published in
Keywords: Alphonsus V the Magnanimous, Badges, Crown of Aragon, Late Middle Ages, Slogans.
Alfonso V the Magnanimous, King of Aragon (1416-1458), due to his linking to the Neapolitan throne and his role in the European policy of the Quattrocento, built a speech of his image to represent himself to his contemporaries and to the posterity. His purpose was to prove his legitimacy as heir to Naples, to appear to his contemporaries as the new princeps sponsored by the Italian Humanism and to remain in memory like a virtuous Caesar. This speech was composed of numerous and varied pieces ranging from the field of numismatics to Sigillography passing through the tilework or epigraphy, to name a few, and among which stand out from those containing motes and symbols denoting some specific qualities of the sovereign. Therefore, the aim of this article is to analyze the use made by the king of this slogans and badges and to restore their chronological and symbolic place in the political and cultural program designed by the Magnanimous.
