Article
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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.
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The five senses, the body and the spirit
Eric PALAZZO
Original title: Les cinq sens, le corps et l’esprit
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Body, Five senses, Spirit.
According to the Christian authors of Antiquity and the Middle Ages, the general tendency in the appreciation of the symbolic meaning of the five senses rests on the consideration of the fundamental unity in man, between the body and the spirit, allowing to establish the doctrine of the corporal senses and the spiritual senses. From the first centuries of Christianity, theologians and philosophers endeavored to convey the Greek concept of “man” or the balance between body and spirit, or soul, as a superior source, following in this, on the one hand, the philosophical ideas of Plato and, on the other hand, those of Aristotle. The biblical passage that we have considered as the founding text of this conception of the unity of the body and spirit in man, in Christian perspective, is an excerpt from the first epistle to the Corinthians. The third century Christian sees, in the same way, the Christian concept of the five spiritual senses and their correspondences with the five corporal senses. Origins (185?-253?) Has been the initiator of the concept of the spiritual senses leading, mainly, to the reconciliation of the soul and the body by the establishment of correspondences between the bodily senses and the spiritual senses whose place is established by the Incarnation of the Word. Some expressions of human anatomy in the manuscripts of the second half of the Middle Ages, show strong similarities with the ideas of Lactantius regarding the relationship between the outer man and the inner man and as to the place given to the head in both site of the soul and where the main organs of the senses reside. As in most areas of theology, the thought of Augustine of Hippo has had a considerable influence on the Christian understanding of the five senses, which implies a deep reflection on the relationship between body and mind in Christianity. We can also mention Pedro Damiano in whom we find a pronounced interest in the metaphor of the Man-city where the senses are compared with doors and windows that give access to the outside world and their knowledge. A famous drawing contained in a manuscript realized in the German abbey of Heilbronn, in century XII, summarizes, in himself, a long part of the explored elements on the relation between the body and the spirit in the Christian theology of the Middle Ages from the exploration of the five senses. As we will see, the drawing also suggests a deep reflection on the sensory dimension in the journey of man on earth and in the perspective of what he will have to do in the future, guided by the model of Christ and the Christian virtues. On folio 130v, we see a final full page drawing where the role of the five senses in the journey of man on earth and in the hereafter is essential. In some aspects, the iconography of the drawings in folio 130v continues the reflection on the theme of the persecution of the Church or, in a broader way, the struggle between good and evil, which is at the center of the image of the mentioned folio. It expresses the theme of the path of life of the good and the bad or the two paths of human life. In the lower right part of the composition, the bust of the personification of nature brings out a naked man who begins to climb a staircase whose first five steps are assimilated to the five senses by their inscriptions. In the middle part of the image, the staircase separates into two paths offered to man to continue his course on earth and beyond. At the crossing of roads, man can choose between good and evil. The character who chose the path of evil is mounted by an imp that pushes down with the help of a fork in which is inscribed, in Latin, the maxim: “depraved behavior.” It will not escape the attentive observer that the character who chose the “depraved behavior” dresses as a prince and continues the “ascent” of his ladder resting on the bars identified by imprudence, intemperance, inconstancy and injustice. In the lower part of the image, the “evil man” is expected in hell by the demons and the devil himself who has in his left hand some types of phylacteries that allude to the “seven demons” that are the negative counterpart of Seven gifts of the Holy Spirit represented, too, in the form of phylacteries in the hands of Christ enthroned in majesty in the upper register of composition. The iconography of the folio 130v of the Heilbronn manuscript is, in many aspects, a unique case in Christian images of the Middle Ages. Certainly, the commentator of the thirteenth-century liturgy does not associate the five senses with the degrees on which he lectures. In spite of this, one has the right to suppose that, in the image of the German manuscript, the five senses are considered, also, virtues, in the same way as the other steps, the four cardinal virtues of the “positive” staircase presented by Man on the condition that he manifests the desire to reach the vision of God with a good intention and thanks to his will.
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The parody of the trip to the underworld in Novella di Ferondo (ottava della terza giornata), in Giovanni Boccaccio’s (1313-1375) Decameron
Liliana NOEMÍ SWIDERSKI
Original title: La parodia del viaje al inframundo en la Novella di Ferondo (ottava della terza giornata), del Decameron, de Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375)
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Boccaccio, Carnivalization, Ferondo, Parody, Trip to the underworld.
The Novella di Ferondo develops two plot-lines typical of the medieval tradition, but whose joint approach shows the passage to the Renaissance worldview. On the one hand, the topic of adultery characteristic of the fabliaux, with their main characters: the stupid and vigilant husband, the seductive and submissive wife, the astute and lustful lover. On the other hand, the trip to the underworld to be purified by corporal punishment, which is related to the serious and moralizing line of the exempla and the Divina Commedia. However, the parody of the sacred discourses, the irony and the rupture of the stylistic isotopy constitute a burlesque eschatology. The humorous references to death, purgatory, the resurrection of the flesh and even the Annunciation show, in Bakhtin's terms, how laughter relaxes the fears imposed by official culture. The corrective violence that Ferondo suffers, as well as the exaltation of free erotic enjoyment and the identity mutations caused by disguise, reveals the resistance against disciplinary mechanisms. The ending of the story, a utopia of freedom conquered by deception to power, represents a victory of Renaissance hedonism over medieval asceticism.
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The advent of solo ricercare in sixteenth century as a transposition of the voice in instrument: the discorso in Giovanni Bassano (c. 1560-1617)
Patricia Michelini AGUILAR
Original title: O advento do ricercare solista no século XVI como transposição da voz em instrumento: o discorso em Giovanni Bassano (c. 1560-1617)
Published in Music in Middle Ages and Early Modernity
Keywords: Bassano, Diminutions, Ricercare, Ricercata, Soggetto, Speech.
Throughout the sixteenth century, especially in some Italian cities, instrumental cult music began to develop with certain autonomy in relation to vocal music. The human voice was still considered the most expressive and perfect way for musical practice, but the instruments, constantly improved, became more valued, especially when they emulated the voice. In this paper we will demonstrate that the ricercare for melodic instruments came from the transposition of vocal into instrumental music. We begin with a brief history of this genre; we continue with a description of the main compositional procedures used at the time for vocal music, in order to find some paralells with the diminutions in Signor mio Caro (Cipriano de Rore) and with the Ricercate Terza and Quarta, musics from the manual Ricercate, passaggi et cadentie (Veneza, 1585), by Giovanni Bassano (c. 1560-1617). We try to demonstrate that Bassano uses certain devices present in vocal music of the period to create pieces that already indicate an instrumental character, such as the conscious choice of musical intervals and rhythmic figures for building soggetti (little themes) and subsequent development on virtuosic ornamentation. We conclude supposing that the lack of text on ricercatas does not eliminate the presence of a hidden voice, originated by pure intonation, without words that give it a literal meaning, but related to current expressions of some affetti.
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The Cantigas of Santa Maria – a musical treasure of the reign of Afonso X, the wise man (1252-1284)
Lenora Pinto MENDES
Original title: As Cantigas de Santa Maria – um tesouro musical do reinado de Afonso X, o Sábio (1252-1284)
Published in Music in Middle Ages and Early Modernity
Keywords: Cantigas, Music, Poetry.
Produced in the alfonsine scriptorium, the Cantigas de Santa Maria constitute a true encyclopedia of medieval music. Inserted in the medieval European troubadour movement in its Marian aspect in which the Virgin Mary takes the place of the lady of the court. They survived in four richly illuminated manuscripts with the record of all their melodies on the staff of five lines and squares neums developed a little earlier by the master Guido D’Arezzo. Considered a treasure by the wise king, the books of the songs also possessed healing powers. Some cantigas record passages of the life of its royal author.
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The spirit, the groove of the self in St. Augustine
Giannina BURLANDO
Original title: El espíritu, surco del Yo en san Agustín
Published in Idea and image of royal power of the monarchies in Ancient and Medieval World
Keywords: Augustine, Inside of a man, Self, Spirit.
In Aristotle’s Greek ancient universe it is “a special set of material substances: the ether, the pneuma and the beginning of the transparency and the light, hot or brilliant all of them, all assets and they are not submitted to the qualitative change, which function consists of acting as vehicles and intermediaries across which the immaterial thing relates with all other material things and acts on them. Thereby, the immobile engine acts on the totality of the things by means of the fact of putting in movement the skies consisted of ether, and the soul acts on the body and reports with it by means of the pneuma.” Armstrong noticed that this idea has a great historical importance: it comes from the pre-Socratic thought and constitutes the immediate source of the stoic doctrine of the pneuma, which is one of the essential sources wherefrom there come the ideas of the fire or of the light as the material formative and active principle that we find then in Plotinus, and that for his influence, it will persist in the medieval philosophy. In this occasion we are interested in emphasizing how this current generated in the Greek world will persist in San Augustine's philosophy, although with a difference of emphasis, namely, the way of the self and subjectivity.
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«Caput et membras». The image of the Castilian king in the rhetoric and iconography
Osvaldo Víctor PEREYRA
Original title: «Caput et membras». La imagen del rey castellano en la retórica y la iconografía
Published in Idea and image of royal power of the monarchies in Ancient and Medieval World
Keywords: Body, Head, King, Member, image.
The construction of the archetypal image of the Castilian king implies the combination of a set of symbols of royal power during the Middle Ages are being incorporated place as their own manifestations of political-social gravity is reaching the monarchy front of the set of groups and classes privileged kingdom. This paper attempts to highlight some of these elements that involve the symbolic realization of the king's image both in the discursive construction and iconography that accompanies it.
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The Golden Age of Islam: The Abbasid Caliphate Patronage and the House of Wisdom
Carmen Lícia PALAZZO
Original title: A Idade de Ouro do Islã: o mecenato do Califado Abássida e a Casa da Sabedoria
Published in Idea and image of royal power of the monarchies in Ancient and Medieval World
Keywords: Abbasid Caliphate, Baghdad, Golden Age, Islam.
This article analyses some aspects of the so-called Golden age os Islam by following the works of the Abbasid Caliphate, concentrating on the period ranging from the establishment of the capital at Baghdad up to 833, year of Al-Mamun’s death. The House of Wisdom (Bayt al-Hikma) is the most potent image among manifold activities, the memory of which lives on the present day. It bears witness to a period in the History of Islam during Which caliphal power acted as a patron to sciences, philosophy, arts, and literature.
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Art and History: the genesis of the monarchy conception in the Christian West (IV-VI centuries)
Ricardo da COSTA
Original title: Arte e História: a gênese da concepção monárquica no Ocidente cristão (sécs. IV-VI)
Published in Idea and image of royal power of the monarchies in Ancient and Medieval World
Keywords: Christianity, Clovis I, Constantine, Middle Ages, Monarchy, Theodosius I, the Great.
The article examines the birth of the Monarchy in the Medieval West. To do it, three paradigmatic cases that helped to build the monarchical ideal are analyzed: the conversions to Christianity of Constantine the Great (272-337) and King Clovis I (c. 466-511), beyond the submission of Theodosius I (347-395) to the Roman Catholic Church, with their corresponding images (fresco, painting, sculpture, coin, illumination, tomb).
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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.
