Article
-
A Small Big Problem in Medieval History: the Revolt of Arrabal de Cordoba (818) and the conquest of the Island of Crete in 827
Diego Melo Carrasco
Original title: Un Pequeño Gran Problema de la Historia Medieval: La Revuelta del Arrabal (Rabad) de Córdoba (818) y la Toma de Creta en el 827
Published in Mirabilia 4
The present article deals with a topic might appear of marginal importance in the context of medieval history, thas is, the expulsion of the Cordoban conspirators after the Revolt of Arrabal de Cordoba (818) and their conquest of the Island of Crete in 827, Nevertheless, it becomes important when one realizes the implications in the Eastern Mediterranean, when this area was transformed into a “Moslem Lake” –as it has been called by Henri Pirenne. Which would prevente the free transit of Byzantine shipping, forcing the Empire to employ all of its diplomatic abilities to deal whit the situation.
-
Considerations concerning the Aristotelian ethics into the Sophocle's tragedy: The case of King Oiedipus
Tito Barros Leal de Pontes Medeiros
Original title: Considerações acerca da ética aristotélicanas tragédias sofoclianas: o caso de Édipo Rei
Published in Mirabilia 4
This article tries to understand the Sophocle's production questioning the traditional temporary demarcation of the Greek history in the Archaic Period (XII - VI B.C.) and in the Classic Period (V - IV B.C.), proposing the century V B.C. as transition among these periods. They are also analyzed some Aristotelian concepts that are supposed fundamental to understand the philosophical-educational dimension of the Sophocle's tragedy and, in this sense, to try to observe ethical elements in the actions of Oiedipus, starting from the tragedy King Oiedipus.
-
To The God and The Goddess That I Know and That I Don´t Know: the Tremendum in a Sumero-Akkadian Prayer
Cláudia Cerqueira do Rosario
Original title: Ao Deus e à Deusa que conheço e que não conheço: oTremendum numa prece sumero-acadiana
Published in Mirabilia 4
This paper analyses the notion of mysterium tremendum posed by the historian and philosopher of religions Rudolf Otto, through a prayer produced in the sumero-akkadian historical context – circa 3500/1800 BCE. This notion becomes a fundamental one for the study and understanding of the religious phenomenon's essence.
-
The Medical Wars: Proximity of Etnic and Geographic Frontiers between athenians and ethiopians in the VI and V B. C. Centuries
Cristiano Bispo
Original title: As Guerras Médicas: Proximidade de fronteiras étnicas e geográficas entre atenienses e etíopes nos séculos VI e V a. C.
Published in Mirabilia 3 (2003)
This article presents the Persian Wars as a historic factor able to agglutinate the ethnic and geographic frontier between athenians and others ethnics groups if his kept relations. However, our attention will be look upon in this abstract the interactions existing among athenians and ethiopians in the VI and V B. C. Centuries.
-
A Different Expression of the Divine: Jewish Knowledge on Geography Spaces in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
Márcia Siqueira de Carvalho
Original title: Uma outra expressão do Divino: O Conhecimento do Espaço Geográfico pelos judeus na Idade Média e no Renascimento
Published in Expressing the Divine: Language, Art and Mysticism
Voyages, since Antiquity, are important sources for topographical descriptions. Thus, religious persecutions, pilgrimages and commercial routes played a major role for geographical knowledge. This article focuses Jewish geographical knowledge in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
-
Pletho's Nomoi - A Case of Polytheism in the Latebizantinian Era and its Reception in the Islamic World
Anna Akasoy
Original title: Ein Beitrag zum Polytheismus in spätbyzantinischer Zeit und seiner Rezeptionìn der islamischen Welt
Published in Expressing the Divine: Language, Art and Mysticism
During his stay in Italy as a member of the Greek delegation at the Council of Union in Ferrara/Florence in 1438/9 George Gemistos Pletho criticized the intellectuals of the Latin West heavily for their overestimation of Aristotle and their disregard of Plato. Meanwhile he blamed the Arabic commentators of the Aristotelian corpus Avicenna and Averroes for this misinterpretation, Islam is used as a positive example in Plethos historical writings. On the other hand Pletho s works were received in the Islamic world as well through the Arabic translation of his Nomoi done at the court of Mehmet II. This article offers a short overview of the different aspects of the relation between Pletho and Islam and the transliteration and translation of the Arabic translation of his Compendium Zoroastreorum.
-
Heaven versus Hell: The vision Tnugdal and the voyage of the soul in search of salvation (12th century)
Adriana Zierer
Original title: Paraíso versus Inferno: a Visão de Túndalo e a Viagem Medieval em Busca da Salvação da Alma (séc. XII)
Published in Expressing the Divine: Language, Art and Mysticism
The Salvation in Middle Ages was connected to the idea of voyage. The medieval man saw himself as a voyager (homo viator), a walker between two worlds: the ephemerous earth, place of tentations and the Heaven, the kingdom of God and of celestials beings. If the individual suceeded in maintain his body pure, he would obtain the salvation, but if he failed his soul would be condemned with eternal chastiments in Hell or provisorial in the Purgatory. It was a medieval paradox the fact that the soul could only be saved by the body. Because this sentiment of guilt, broght by the Original Sin, the population usually searched for salvation by means of a voyage, for example the peregrinations to achieve the Saint Earth (Jerusalem). These displacements were insecures (bad trails, menace of robbery and of diseases) and seen as a form of salvation since the pilgrim never knew for sure if he would come back or not. He wanted to experience in his flesh what Christ and other martyrs had suffered. Another means of salvation was the isolation from the rest of society in search of a life connected to God, such as the hermits and monks did. Because of their despite for terrestrial pleasures and their lives consacrated in prayers and fastings to God, they were considered the purest in terrestrial society. The benedictine monks dedicated themselves to write Visions with the purpose of presenting the chastiments and pleasures of the souls in beyond. Their intention was to show to the people the correct rules of behavior to obtain the salvation. The exempla, such as the Vision of Tundalo, present the types of chastiments based on the seven capital sins, and the actions that should be performed to reach the Paradise: to give alms, to go to mass, to give riches to the Church and to avoid lust. Un common element from the Visions is the emphasis in the sensations of the five senses. For example, stink in Hell and perfume in Heaven. Tortures are explained by the use of darkness, screams and sorrows, in opposition to clarity, singing and happiness. In Iconography, with the Seven Deadly Sins, by Bosch, and The Final Jugdement, by Fra Angelico, the structure of the Visions is confirmed. The topos of the beyond, in the case of the Heaven, are characterized by an edenic landscape represented by gardens, chants, fountains, angels and leafy trees. Once in Hell, the geography presuppose some obstacles such as ways with narrow brigdes, boiling rivers, mountains, lakes of ice and monsters. Thus, the individual in Middle Ages wanted the salvation more for the fear of Hell than from the glories of the Heaven, and the human soul debated herself between the desire for the pleasures and the dread of the infernal abyss.
-
Bringing the Divine down into Man: the building-up of the yoga path
Edrisi Fernandes
Original title: Trazendo o Divino para Dentro do Homem: a Construção do Sistema do Yoga
Published in Expressing the Divine: Language, Art and Mysticism
The author analizes the evolution of Yoga as an ascetic discipline, since the time of the absorption of the local inhabitants by the Aryan tribes, that settled in India in protohistoric times. Austerity vows, magical practices, breath control exercises and ascetic attitudes of the locals were incorporated in Vedic metaphysics and religion, and also in preclassical Yoga. The discovery of the power of ascetic/meditational practices gave rise to a progressive distantiation of the yogis from external religious practices such as sacrifices, intended to propitiate the gods, and to a parallel advance of the view of yoga as a kind of sacrifice in itself, grounded on the association - thought as a binding or [re]union - between the Self/the living Soul (âtman; jivâtman) of man and the eternal norm (sanatana dharma), the “Lord of Creatures” (Prajâpati), the Supreme Being (Parameshtin; Brahman; Shiva of Shaivism; Vishnu of Vaishnavism), or the force or power (Shakti of Shaktism [Tantrism]) that makes life possible and maintains the cosmos. Through a review of the Purusha (Sanskrit for “person; man”, but also for “Universal man; man-god”) theme in some classical Indian literary references - encompassing the Rigveda, the Atharvaveda, many Upanishads, relevant portions of the Mahâbhârata (particularly of the Bhagavad-Gîtâ, and of the Mokshadharma and other sections of the Shânti Parva), the Yoga-Sûtra of Patañjali (the founding text of classical yoga), the Bhâgavata-Purâna, the Yoga-Vâsishtha attributed to Vâlmîki, and the Kulârnava-Tantra (an essential text to tantra-yoga), among others -, an articulation that consolidates human autonomy and superior status in the universe is perceived, giving way to the idea that one can be “enlighted”, and the God-in-man status can be achieved, both through knowledge (jñâna) and through yoga - the way of enlightment associated with bodily and mental control and stability, and with the achievement of trans-rational conciousness. Purely “transcendental” meditation and concentration practices progressively [re]turn to a situation where the body is valued as a kind of “temple”, that must be appropriately constructed and cared for in order to allow and to favour the final encounter and assimilation between man and the Divine.
-
The Quotidianity of an Image: the Face of the Christ
Ofelia Manzi
Original title: La Cotidianeidad de una imagen: el rostro de Cristo
Published in Expressing the Divine: Language, Art and Mysticism
After the third century, a widespread repertoire of Christian images is created. Recognition of the characters of Biblical history was made by their assimilation to motifs of Roman art. The study of origin, development and modifications that modified the face of Christ offers the possibility of analyzing the multiple sources for this image as well as establishing the changes of its meaning, that run parallel to the history of the Church.
-
The portal and the rose window in the Praise 1 of the Cantigas de Santa Maria by Alfonso X (13th century)
Bárbara DANTAS
Original title: O portal e a rosácea no Louvor 1 das Cantigas de Santa Maria de Afonso X (século XIII)
Published in Intercultural Mediterranean
Language:
The Cantigas de Santa Maria, in addition to their most obvious characteristic, that of King Alfonso X's homage to the Virgin Mary, through hundreds of praises, accounts of miracles and their corresponding images – in particular, more than four hundred full-page historical illuminations – are for us, art historians, a summary of medieval life, not only in the kingdoms of León and Castile, ruled by the Wise King in the second half of the 13th century, but throughout Europe and its surroundings. An example of this is right at the beginning of the Alfonsine compendium, in the Praise 1, since its 2nd stanza, as well as vignette 2 of the illumination, tell of an important event that took place in Bethlehem: the birth of Jesus. Focusing on this stanza and vignette – but without losing sight of the main theme of the praise of the Virgin, her seven moments of extreme happiness, or “goyos” in Galician language –, this article correlates biblical texts with the themes addressed in the Praise 1 of the Cantigas; it also correlates religion and architecture, goodness and beauty, as well as holiness and perfection of forms. Let us then delve into the religious universe that underpins the creation of the Gothic portal and rose window, according to the vision of Alfonso X and his Cantigas de Santa Maria.
