Article

1. The lexical-figurative textualism on "Los Beatus"

   Nora Marcela Gómez

   Original title: La Textualidad Léxico-Figurativa en los Beatos

   Published in Mirabilia 1

   Keywords: Blessed Spanishes, Doom, iconographic autonomy, iconographic independency., simultaneously and dissimilar texts, written and iconographical text.

   The Art history of the Middle Age has been commonly based on the statement that the pictorial-sculptural iconography due its representation exclusively to sacred books. This approach reduce the artistic image to just a visual variant of the text, a mere translocation of the printed word to its formal and material representation with divulgation aims for the unlettered, converting this iconography in a dogmatic one. So, the rich and deep value of the images and their omnifunctionality in medieval society has been misjudged. The text Commentarius in Apocalypsin from Beato had huge publicity in the Hispanic world; with further and multiples copies and illustrations over the next centuries. The thirty-two codices from centuries IX to XIII are enough evidence of the great success of the text. This paper will focus on the relation between text and image to check correlations, dissimilarities, autonomous presentiveness, and plastic innovations that defied the logical system of the time. The illuminators of “Los Beatos”, yet still depending on the canonical versicles and on the commiter demands, produced an iconographical-apocalyptic corpus that testimony a creative freedom, an artistic quality, and a masterfulness on the plasticchromatic ways, that enact those codices as an absolutely exceptional and one-of-a-kind iconographic monument from the Art of the Middle Age.

2. Erotics and Kwowledge related to a short-story in The Thousand and One Nights

   Rafael Ramón Guerrero

   Original title: Erótica y Saber a propósito de un cuento de Las Mil y Una Noches

   Published in Mirabilia 1

   Keywords: Arabic Philosophy., Erotic, Greek Philosophy, wisdom.

   The Thousand and One Nights is a collection of tales; many of which exposed a wisdom elaborated along the history by various peoples. A tale collects the conception that Greek philosophy, since Plato, set up and developed about love as a trend toward wisdom. In this article, I recall shortly this process through Greek philosophy, Christian world and medieval Islam, and I finally sketch the tale of the Thousand and One Nights.

3. The end of Ancient World: a historical debate

   Gilvan Ventura da Silva

   Original title: O fim do mundo antigo: uma discussão historiográfica

   Published in Mirabilia 1

   Keywords: Ancient World, Disintegration, Historiography..

   With this article, we intend to discuss how some writers since 18th century treated the “decline” of the Roman Empire connected with their historical views. Therefore, we analyze the emergence of a new conception of time, the refutation of progress and decadence as useful historical concepts and the dissolution of the positivist paradigm trying to show how the theme of the passage from Antiquity to Medieval Age acquired a new meaning according to these deep and important theoretical changes.

4. Considerations about the Woman’s condition in Classical Greece (5th and 6th centuries)

   Moisés Romanazzi Tôrres

   Original title: Considerações sobre a condição da mulher na Grécia Clássica (séculos V e IV a.C.)

   Published in Mirabilia 1

   Keywords: Aristophanes., Aristotle, Women.

   This article, fundamentally about ateniense case, presents some aspects about woman condition in the Classic Greek. Aristotle justifies the woman submission by the absence of logos plenitude in her spirit. The Aristophanes comedy presents the woman participation in the public life as unusual action. Finally, on the Spartan woman case, we verify a shorter importance in the social body and in the family life.

5. The Magical Knowledge of Medea

   Maria Regina Candido

   Original title: O Saber mágico de Medéia

   Published in Mirabilia 1

   Keywords: Greek, Greek woman, Magic, Medea, Myth, Tragedy.

   The Medea is one the most remarkable and important imaginative works in all western literature. Medea is presented, initially as victim, but she is able to strike and pursue her revenge on a heroic homeric way.

6. Works of Art or Artisan? Some considerations about the figurative greek vases

   José Francisco de Moura

   Original title: Obras de Arte ou Artesanato? Algumas considerações sobre os vasos figurados gregos

   Published in Mirabilia 1

   Keywords: Ancient greece, Arkesilas, Art History, Black figure, Sparta, Vase.

   The aim of his article is to expose and refleting about some aproaches in the greek vases.

7. Jñâna Yoga’s “Liberation in Life”, as Viewed by the Vedanta

   Edrisi Fernandes

   Original title: A “Liberação em vida” do Jñâna Yoga na visão do Vedanta

   Published in Mirabilia 1

   Keywords: Jivanmukti, Jñana Yoga, Kevaladvaita, Shankara, Uttara-Mimamsa, Vedanta.

   Jñâna Yoga, the control of vital functions aiming at the actualization of wisdom/of “absolute knowledge”, is based, with rare exceptions, almost completely on the teachings of the Advaita (non-dualist) branch of the Vedânta (from the “End of the Veda”) school, and has chapter IV of the Bhagavad-Gitâ (the “Song of the Divine Master”) as a fundamental referece. Shankara (788-820), whose philosophical system is called kevalâdvaita (unique/perfect non-dualism [monism]) ou shuddhâdvaita (inqualified nondualism), has taken moral life as an essential requisite to metaphysical knowledge, necessary to reaching the ultimate objective of life: knowledge of the essential identity between the “I”(âtman) and the Supreme Being (Brahman). In his Viveka-Chûdâmani (“The Supreme Jewel of Discernment”), as well as in other vedantic writings, Brahman is called Sat-Chit-Ânanda (Being-Conscience-Blessedness), and G. Dandoy makes the following analogy between this conception and images of God in Saint Augustine (De Civitate Dei, VIII, 10): Sat - “causa constituta universitatis”; Chit - “lux percipiendæ veritatis”; Ânanda - “fons bibendæ felicitatis” (G. Dandoy, L’Ontologie du Vedanta, 1932: 33). We analize the way how these characteristics of the divine nature, that can be attained solely by those men that have reached the stage of jîvanmukti (“liberation in life”), can motivate men to reach the Divine, mirroring themselves in His/Her characteristics while trecking the trail of viveka (discerniment), and practicing as pre-requisites the obligatory actions of yama (“moral discipline”, consisting in Ahimsâ [“non-violence”], Satyâ “truthfulness”], Asteyâ [“notrobbing”], Brahmacaryâ [“chastity” or “non-vicious sexuality”], Aparigrahâ [“non-envy”]) and niyama (“self-control”, consisting in Shachka [“cleanliness” or “purity”], Samtosha [“content”], Tapas [“austerity” or “askesis”], Svâdhyâya [“study”], and Îshvara-pranidhâna [“devotion to the Supreme Being”]). We see in depth the reasons why, in the Vedânta, victory over ahamkâra (egotism) is the most important event in the life of the seeker of liberation, in the spirit of what Vivekânanda has thaught: “altruism is the negation of our lower or apparent self. It’s our task to freed ourselves from the miserable dream in which we are those bodies we see...” (Swami Vivekânanda, Jnâna-Yoga, 1936: 463).

8. Superstition and Religiousness in the Res publica: Areas of Power?

   Luís Filipe Silvério Lima

   Original title: Superstições e Religiosidade na Res Publica: Espaços de Poder?

   Published in Expressing the Divine: Language, Art and Mysticism

   Keywords: Livy., Prophecy, Religion, power.

   This paper deals with the links between religion and prophecy as forms of power in Livy.

9. Memory and Rhapsody: The Divine Song in Archadia

   Ciléa Dourado

   Original title: Memória e Rapsódia: o canto divino na Arcádia

   Published in Expressing the Divine: Language, Art and Mysticism

   Keywords: Poetry, Power., tradition, truth.

   The poetic activity of the Greek Golden Age, better known as Archadia, grew inside a pre-literate culture which was characterized, above all, by a mythological symbolism. The Archadian poetry points to the notion of the fantastic, of the sublime and of the divine in its purest form. The archaic Poet was endowed with the power directly by the gods, and such a power was non-negotiable and non-transferable. The lineage and succession of a rhapsodist was often brought out by Arete, the choice of the nobler.

10. Diseases of the soul in the writings of Gregory of Nyssa: A metaphor or a true analogy?

    María Teresa GARGIULO

    Original title: Enfermedades del alma en los escritos de Gregorio de Nisa ¿Una metáfora o una verdadera analogía?

    Published in Intercultural Mediterranean

    Keywords: Ancient Science, Ancient medicine, Galen, Gregory of Nyssa, Illness of the Soul.

    Language:

    The figure of Christ the doctor runs through the vast majority of apostolic and patristic writings. Christ presents himself as the healer of men's sins. Therefore, it should not surprise us that this medicinal metaphor was extended to a large part of moral and theological writings until the middle of the 13th century. Sin is presented, metaphorically, as a disease of the soul. Now, if we look at certain writings of the Cappadocian fathers, particularly those of Gregory of Nyssa, the medical metaphor in certain cases is replaced by a true analogy. Diseases of the soul are not only metaphorically predicated on moral dispositions and sin, but they are understood in themselves as an authentic participation of the soul in human illness. Galenic medicine seems to have had a direct impact on this new understanding of the illness of the soul.