Article
-
Ancient Medicine and the body’s perception in Hippocrates (c. 460-370 BC)
Hélio Angotti Neto
Original title: A Medicina Antiga e a percepção do corpo em Hipócrates (c. 460-370 a. C.)
Published in Rhythms, expressions and representations of the body
Hippocratic medicine addresses the human body and its phenomena based on principles like the complexity and the balance of its components among themselves and its relations towards the nature. By means of logical formulations based on the composition of the human body by humors (blood, phlegm, yellow bile and dark bile) and, consequently, principles (heat, cold, dry and humid), the Hippocratic author seeks an explanation of phenomena such as epidemic diseases and nutritional disorders. Although the text is anachronistic, according to the current scientific perspective, there are epistemological principles obtained through contemplative science and empiricism that still have some value in relation to medical epistemology concerning human body comprehension.
-
The right of life and death in war in De iure belli libri tres (1598) by Alberico Gentili (1552-1608)
Giuliano MARCHETTO
Original title: Il diritto di vita e di morte in guerra nel De iure belli libri tres (1598) di Alberico Gentili (1552-1608)
Published in The World of Tradition
In war, there are situations in which one side is given the power of life or death over the other. The medieval legal tradition tries to bring this power back into law and to limit it. The Italian jurist Alberico Gentili in his work De jure belli libri tres (1598) represents, in the modern age, the attempt to offer an interpretation of war as an instrument of justice and therefore regulated in every aspect by the law. Gentili’s theory is the opposite of a different tradition, ancient but always resurfacing in history, which instead sees war as a place from which law is absent, is silent and only violence, which includes an unlimited vitae necisque potestas, thus becomes the origin of law and of every new power and order.
-
Presentation. A Comprehensive Look into the Past
Ricardo da Costa
Original title: Presentación. Una mirada comprehensiva hacia el Pasado
Published in The World of Tradition
-
Women artists in the Middle Ages: constantly self-represented, consciously ignored
Sheila ADÁN LLEDÍN
Original title: Artistas en la Edad Media: constantemente autorrepresentadas, conscientemente ignoradas
Published in Mirabilia Journal 34
Women in the medieval society were taught good manners in taking care of their homes, their children, pregnancy, or marriage. However, not a few of them made it to get rid of it and become writers, mystics, medics, doctors, sculptors, painters, powerful queens, and even crusaders and war soldiers. Despite many of them being silenced, many others left the anonymity behind. Courageous women who never meant to be forgotten and will be remembered in this work. It’s key to consider that due to the patriarchal system, as well as the medieval misogyny, only a few women were able to study and learn to read and write. The ones who succeeded belonged to wealthy families with high social standards, or to the Church, like the abbesses. The Renaissance will bring more women testimonies, signatures, and self-portraits. However, there are many relevant female artists before this period, and this work will focus on them. The article goes through the different Middle Ages artistic periods: from the Early (5th-10th century) to the High (11th-13th century) and finally the Late Middle Ages (14th-15th century).
-
Medieval animals and gender configurations in the Colonial chronicles: discursive strategies and political order
Pedro Carlos Louzada FONSECA
Original title: Animais medievais e configurações de gênero na cronística colonial: estratégias discursivas e ordem política
Published in Mirabilia Journal 34
The representation of the natural reality of America epitomized in the chronicles of Colonial Brazil is permeated by a dichotomous posture situated between wonder and utility, whose teleological values can be perfectly verified in medieval references. Using the comparative method and favoring the study of cultural ideas, this article examines the plausibility of the presence of the medieval bestiary and the process or trope of the feminization of the colonial natural reality, configuring oscillations between the simple enjoyment of the wonderful and its practical usefulness. The terms of this dialectical formation are examined in this article seeking to identify its limits in the configuration of reality in the chronicles of Colonial Brazil. In this way, two pillars in the article are approached, namely, the symbolic tradition of the so-called bestiary books and the tropological tradition of the feminizing discourse of reality, both of an ideological and political nature. Therefore, a curious but explainable formation of values were strategically conceived to legitimize the European intentions in the possession of the American lands in colonial times.
-
Forms of defence of the social body before criminal agency, in 16th-century imagery creations
Maria Leonor García da CRUZ
Original title: Formas de defesa do corpo social perante arbítrios criminosos em criações imagéticas quinhentistas
Published in Music in Antiquity, Middle Ages & Renaissance
A very fashionable creation in modern Europe since the first edition of Andrea Alciato, the book of emblems, has been chosen as a historical source. The selection of the socio-political message and socio-economic discourse was made in emblems of different editions and spatial and time contexts that bring together inscriptio, pictura and subscriptio. It is valued a deepening of the explicit meanings in the motto and in the picture, when they exist, and we seek to unravel the hidden, not always completely decoded in the comments of the different editions. Hence, we choose to compare several versions of the same emblem, built in different contexts. Alciato’s political discourse necessarily reveals on many occasions social concerns, and they are the ones that lead us to clues about a discourse after all interdisciplinary, leading us to considerations sometimes of artistic nature or economic and financial management. Music and musical instruments become vehicles of concord and social concert, solidarity, resistance to crime and dissent that call into question social peace. The action of the prince or ruler, on the other hand, is considered in several perspectives: from a firm-hand ruler in defence of the common good to a tyrant, and to a defender of the good of the State not benefiting the victims of tax crimes. Alciato thus reveals strong controversies in the Renaissance.
-
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
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.
-
The Cançon de la Crosada (13th century) by William of Tudela. An English Translation (II-LXV)
Antonio CORTIJO OCAÑA
Original title: La Cançon de la Crosada (s. XIII) de Guillermo de Tudela. Traducción al inglés (II-LXV)
Published in Music in Antiquity, Middle Ages & Renaissance
The History of the Albigensian Crusade is one of the most intriguing medieval Provençal texts. It represents the beginning of a persecuting society. We provide a translation.
