Article

1. The epektasis [ἐπέκτασις] and the exploits of the soul (ἡ ψυχή) in Gregory of Nyssa’s De anima et resurrectione

   Elena Ene D-VASILESCU

   Published in Mirabilia Journal 

   Keywords: Gregory of Nyssa, Macrina, On the Soul and the Resurrection, Progress (epektasis), Resurrection.

   The paper refers to a notion central to Gregory of Nyssa’s theology – that of epektasis (ἐπέkτασις), i.e. progression of the soul (ἡ ψυχή) towards its Creator, as presented in the dialogue De anima et resurrectione/On the Soul and the Resurrection. he conversation between Nyssen and his sister Macrina, employing concepts peculiar to the most advanced science of their time, emphasizes that in the afterlife the soul does not leave the body (and neither does human memory). The interesting consequences of this state of affairs for both the resurrection of people and that of Jesus Christ are also discussed.

2. Christian iconography: The Great Power of God and its iconographic development in the Canary Islands. Art, History and Tradition

   Clementina CALERO RUIZ, Domingo SOLA ANTEQUERA

   Original title: Iconografía cristiana: El Gran Poder de Dios y su desarrollo iconográfico en Canarias. Arte, Historia y Tradición

   Published in Mirabilia Journal 31 (2020/2)  

   Keywords: Art and Tradition, Exvotes and Miracles, Great Power of God, Iconography, Promises.

   The Great Power of God is an iconography based on that wounded and pensive one called Humility and Patience Christ. This representation changed to another triumphant and glorious one throughout the 18th Century. This iconography was adopted in the Canary Islands, especially in the Tenerife town of Puerto de la Cruz, after the arriving of a statue with that advocation at the very beginning of that century. In 1754 an engraving of this sacred icon was done. Several paintings derive from it helping to spread its miraculous fame outside the Islands, even reaching Latin American territories.

3. The beginning of the path to equality: a comparison of medieval male and female texts about women in the Middle Ages

   Sheila ADÁN LLEDÍN

   Original title: El principio del camino a la igualdad: Una comparativa de textos medievales femeninos y masculinos sobre la mujer en la Edad Media

   Published in Mirabilia Journal 31 (2020/2)  

   Keywords: Comparison, Female, Male, Middle Ages, Misogyny, Writing.

   We are used to read medieval texts created by men, but there were not only male’s quills. There were also many documents written by women that have not been discussed so far, where they stand up for other women, speaking of their selves, their circumstances, their lives, their feelings, their sex’s conception, and their opinions, despite the prohibitions and impediments that were imposed to them. This is what this article aims to show: inspirational testimonies that stand for progress, change, fight, and equality. A comparison between what men in the Middle Ages wrote about women, and what women at that time wrote about women.

4. The manuscripts with works of Saint Jerome in the Library of the Colegio Mayor de San Bartolomé in 1433-1440 and in 1550

   Jorge JIMÉNEZ LÓPEZ

   Original title: Los manuscritos iluminados con obras de san Jerónimo en la Librería del Colegio Mayor de san Bartolomé en 1433-1440 y en 1550

   Published in Mirabilia Journal 31 (2020/2)  

   Keywords: Colegio Mayor de San Bartolomé, Diego de Anaya, Maître de Blanche de Castille, Patristics.

   The study shows the presence of the Saint Jeronimo in different moments of the school library, taking the only preserved documentary testimonies as reference: the 1433-1444 inventaries, the 1550 index and the registers before the closing of the School in 1798. From then, the manuscripts conserved nowadays are located and the analysis of his iconic repertoire is approached, with the objective of defining the ways and space of his creation. That is how the testimonies from the primitive laic ateliers in Languedoc or from the most relevant groups in the parisian setting are identified in the 12th century, Maître de Blanche de Castille. The contrast of these refined pieces with the copy promoted by Diego de Anaya also allows to understand the attitude and the relationship of the founder with the books and the bartolomea library.

5. Jerome at the Light of his Epistolary: The use of Written Oratory for the conformation of his personality

   María Teresa MUÑOZ GARCIA DE ITURROSPE

   Original title: Jerónimo a la luz de su Epistolario: el uso de la oratoria escrita para la conformación de su personaje

   Published in Mirabilia Journal 31 (2020/2)  

   Keywords: Letters, Saint Hieronymus, Self-representation, Written Oratory.

   A careful reading of the epistolary confirms that in his most “personal” texts Hieronymus of Strido follows, with Paul as a model, the guidelines of the epideictic genre (and sometimes also the judicial one). Self-praise and humiliation, self-defense and confession are completed with isolated data on his origin, age, studies and physical appearance. All these elements − which in the classic prescriptive were applied to the speaker and which he adapts to impose a powerful self-portrait as a Christian intellectual − can help to explain how he managed to promote himself to be distinguished in the Christian community through the spread of his collection of letters.

6. The Hagiographical Relations between Byzantium and the West during the Middle Byzantine Period

   Spyros P. PANAGOPOULOS

   Original title: Las relaciones hagiográficas entre Bizancio y Occidente durante el período bizantino medio

   Published in War and Disease in Antiquity and the Middle Ages

   Keywords: Byzantium, Hagiography, Middle Byzantine Period, Pilgrimage-relics, West.

   In the present study a special reference is made to the hagiographical relations between Byzantium and the West. The first part is dedicated to the “communication” of Byzantium with the West, on the role played by the Lives of Byzantine Saints, the transfer and honor of their relics and pilgrimages. The phenomenon developed after the 4th century, when an attempt was made to create a liturgical and worship communication between the two Churches and the Roman Martyrologium was formed in the West. The second part is dedicated to the “communication” of the West in Byzantium through the honor of the western Saints. In the next paragraph, we talk about "communication" through the holy relics of the Saints, and it is found that the phenomenon mainly concerned Saints of the East. The paper closes with some introductory notes on translators’ translation options and techniques.

7. Much more than flesh and bones: the body and the relationship with God in the Hebrew Bible

   Renan FRIGHETTO, Willibaldo RUPPENTHAL NETO

   Original title: Muito mais que carne e ossos: o corpo e a relação com Deus na Bíblia Hebraica

   Published in War and Disease in Antiquity and the Middle Ages

   Keywords: Body, God, Hebrew Bible, Soul.

   This paper aims to analyze how the Hebrew Bible presents the human body, studying the biblical texts with particular attention to important terms for Jewish anthropology, like bāsār, usually translated as “body”, and nefesh, normally translated as “soul”, in order to highlight their particularity. This study intends to present not only the valuation of the body in the Hebrew Bible, but also its importance in the relationship between man and God according to the biblical perspective.

8. Dante (c. 1265-1321) and the Musical Aesthetics of the Divine Comedy

   Gustavo Cambraia FRANCO

   Original title: Dante (c. 1265-1321) e a Estética Musical da Divina Comédia

   Published in The Medieval Aesthetics

   Keywords: Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy, Medieval Aesthetics, Music, Poliphony.

   The present article aims to analyze the figurative-musical aesthetics elaborated by the poet Dante Alighieri in the Divine Comedy, through the use of musical concepts, contemporary to the author, of monodia gregoriana and choral polyphony. The aim is to demonstrate how Dantian musical theory is applied in the Commedia using an imagetic and instrumental musical repertoire and a specific set of lexical and poetic expressions, whose function is to express, in a comprehensible way to the reader and interpreter, the sonorous dissonance, disharmony and the antimusical cacophony of Hell, the nature of the sacred, monodic Gregorian chant of Purgatory, and the symphonic and polyphonic musical nature of Paradise.

9. A contribution to the study of a scarcely known atín translation: The Life of John the Almsgiver [BHL 4392]

   Olga SOLEDAD BOHDZIEWICZ

   Original title: Una contribución al estudio de una traducción latina poco conocida: la Vida de Juan el Lismonero [BHL 4392]

   Published in The Medieval Aesthetics

   Keywords: John the Almsgiver, Latin hagiography, Leontius of Neapolis, Re-writing, Translation.

   Paris, BNF, Lat. 3820, copied during 14th century, is a liturgical manuscript, an homiliary-legendary, written for its use at the cathedral of St. Trophime in Arles. There the life of John the Almsgiver stands, as it is usual for byzantine martyrologies, in No-vember. The text appears to be a “re-adaptation” of the hagiography written by Leon-tius of Neapolis rather than a proper translation of it, for a selection of its chapters gets a new organization in order to fit the pattern of a more conventional vita. The purpose of this paper is to make a first approach to analyse this scarcely studied text by considering its translation and rewriting techniques.

10. The transit of the medieval truth to the modern knowledge – Chronicle of a phase that out of orbit

    Carlos ENRIQUE BERBEGLIA

    Original title: El tránsito de la verdad medieval al conocimiento moderno – crónica de una fase que se desorbita

    Published in The Medieval Aesthetics

    Keywords: Authority, Belief, Effectiveness, Limit, Need, Order, Precision, True.

    The Middle Ages, in their lengthy centuries of existence, sum up a polysemous era. It is an epoch that bridges the gap between a preceding time, which it knows and from which it extracts enhanced knowledge and experience, and a succeeding time, which it ignores as a human period but knows at a suprahuman level, a knowledge coded as the end of times, which they consider imminent, although that imminence may take centuries to come true. Polysemous because, in spite of appearances, and much interpretation with an ideological bias that considers it a monolithic era ruled by just one way of thinking and acting in consequence, it treasures and displays literatures expressed in languages that, later on, will come to light in their full richness with the dawn of nationalities, philosophies that, though influenced by their theological and Greco-Latin root, become prodromes of future thought, technological and architectonic changes that will last indelibly. It was an age that possessed extended self-awareness, in contrast with the following ones, which reprocess it at a more and more accelerated pace and occasionally downplay its importance. It believed it was the owner of absolute truth; in this respect it does differ from subsequent times, except for the means it implemented to defend it, given that those “subsequent times”, in spite of disowning it, do not usually resign themselves to the fragility of the knowledge it obtains and resort to inquisitorial methods to defend it. The subtitle of this essay refers to the exorbitance that characterized the end of this era, depreciated or appreciated depending on the spirit of those times succeeding it, which means that each period reinterprets it, the destiny of everything human, which, from “our perspective”, medieval people sought to overcome.