Article
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The Mystical Transformation of Medieval Lyrical Topoi in Ramon Llull's (1232-1316) Llibre d'amic e Amat
Jordi Pardo Pastor
Original title: La transformació mística dels tòpics lírics medievals dins del Llibre d’amic e Amat de Ramon Llull
Published in Expressing the Divine: Language, Art and Mysticism
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A Polemical Iconography: the Magi from Orient
Patricia Grau-Dieckmann
Original title: Una Iconografía polémica: los Magos de Oriente
Published in Expressing the Divine: Language, Art and Mysticism
"… there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem" briefly informs Mathews Gospel about these illustrious visitors that - following a star - arrive from the east to worship Baby Jesus. He further tells that they fell on their knees and "presented him with gifts - gold, incense and myrrh". Later apocryphal tales and popular narratives beautify and adorn the legends about these mysterious characters. Very early does art reflect the iconography of the worship of the magi, known as "Epiphany". This scene will mutate through time and will develop into the sumptuous representation of the royal characters that became the Three Wise Men. Early Christian art may offer a key to the understanding of whom they were, what were they looking for and what were the reasons that justify the importance of the scene of the Epiphany within the frame of this new religion - Christianism - that tried to expand among the gentiles.
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Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179): the Exceptional Way of a Medieval Visionary Woman
Carmen Lícia Palazzo
Original title: Hildegard de Bingen: o excepcional percurso de uma visionária medieval
Published in Expressing the Divine: Language, Art and Mysticism
The goal of this article is to present a few aspects of the extensive body of work by the visionary nun Hildegard of Bingen, relating her acceptance with the 12th century context and suggesting certain research possibilities. The debate among monks of Cister and Cluny and the severe criticism to Abelard’s teachings by Bernard of Clairvaux constitute, in my opinion, an essential elements to be considered in order to explain the direct support by the Church to Hildegard’s texts and Hildegard as a person. However, it was certainly the quality of her work and her prodigious intelligence that consolidated her achievements not only as a visionary but also as composer, counsellor and therapist.
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The lexical-figurative textualism on "Los Beatus"
Nora Marcela Gómez
Original title: La Textualidad Léxico-Figurativa en los Beatos
Published in Mirabilia 1
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.
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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
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.
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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
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.
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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
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.
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The Magical Knowledge of Medea
Maria Regina Candido
Original title: O Saber mágico de Medéia
Published in Mirabilia 1
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.
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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
The aim of his article is to expose and refleting about some aproaches in the greek vases.
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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
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).
