Article
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The stone vault and the ivy leaves: the Cantiga 65 of the Cantigas de Santa Maria by King Afonso X (13th century)
Bárbara DANTAS
Original title: A abóbada de pedra e as folhas de hera: a Cantiga 65 das Cantigas de Santa Maria do rei Afonso X (século XIII)
Published in Returning to Eden
Keywords: Afonso X, Cantigas de Santa Maria, Medieval Art., Vault.
This work analyses the text and images of the Cantiga 65 of the Cantigas de Santa Maria by the Castilian king Afonso X with the aim of demonstrating how the vaults of medieval sanctuaries relate to the ivy leaves and the main character of this Cantiga, an excommunicated man who wandered across half the world to receive from the Virgin herself the grace of redemption, in addition to glimpsing the immortality of faith and friendship in an abandoned church, already covered by vast foliage.
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The mulier of Saint Isidore of Seville and the Fathers of the Church. Aristolelian configurations
Pedro Carlos Louzada FONSECA
Original title: A mulier de Santo Isidoro de Sevilha e os Padres da Igreja. Configurações aristotélicas
Published in Games from Antiquity to Baroque
Keywords: Aristotle, Fathers of the Church, Middle Ages, Theology and Religious Doctrine.
This article examines the presence of postulates of Ancient Science presented by Aristotle about the anatomy and physiology of the parents in the generation of animals in his book Generatione animalium [Generation of animals], which starts from the biology of the genders to reach ideological values about the male and the female. female, Widespread in the Middle Ages, the teachings of Aristotle influenced the thought and religious literature of the period of the so-called Fathers of the Church. Through comparison, the article traces of this Aristotelian theme in Saint Isidore of Seville, Saint Anselm, and Saint Thomas Aquinas with the critical purpose of concluding that the theology and morals of religious doctrine were in many respects debtors of the classical legacy of Greek Antiquity, very well represented by the well-known Stagirite.
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The funeral weddings of the Eurypid princesses Cassandra and Polyxena. Comparison between the tragedies The Trojan Women and Hecuba of Euripides (c. 480-406 a. C.)
Anastasia TERZOPOULOU
Original title: Las bodas fúnebres de las princesas euripídeas Casandra y Políxena. Comparación entre las tragedias Las troyanas y Hécuba de Eurípides (c. 480-406 a. C.)
Published in The World of Tradition
Keywords: Death, Funeral Weddings, Pride, Punishment, Revenge, Trojan War.
The aim of this article is to compare the “funeral weddings” of the Trojan princesses Cassandra and Polyxena through the tragedies The Trojan Women and Hecuba by the Athenian playwright Euripides. More specifically, this work indicates the terrible consequences that people suffer due to the cruelty of war.
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The fish, the pearl and the daisy: admiration for Rafael and his works in the Spanish collections
Aurora GALISTEO RIVERO; Jorge RIVAS LÓPEZ
Original title: El pez, la perla y la margarita: admiración por Rafael y sus obras en las colecciones españolas
Published in Mirabilia Journal 34
Keywords: Art Collecting, Philip IV of Spain, Prado Museum, Raphael, Renaissance painting.
This article aims to make an appreciation about a specific artist, Raphael Sanzio, in the Spanish collections from the very XVIth century to the present. To focus on this matter, the three most representative paintings have been selected among all those which were at some point in Spain. It will try to reflect the great importance that these paintings had from the beginning, all of them being acquired in the XVIIth century during the reign of Philip IV of Spain. For this purpose, the consultation of different sources will be essential, among them, the descriptions of the Escorial monastery, artistic treatises, or news. The vicissitudes during the Peninsular War have been also considered, as well as the departure of artworks to France, their return, and their placement in the rooms of the newly opened Prado Museum. Taking all this into account, we will be able to evaluate the different stages through which the taste or esteem for this artist has been changing in our country, to understand his presence into the world of the art collecting and his influence in the artistic scene.
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The second level of St. Bonaventure’s Transcendent Aesthetics: Speculating the divine Trinity through the good
José María SALVADOR-GONZÁLEZ
Published in Mirabilia Journal 31 (2020/2)
Keywords: Christ, Contemplation, Good, St. Bonaventure, Theology, Trinity.
After pointing out that St. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio conceives his Aesthetics as a free way to be able to ascend contemplatively towards God, this article seeks to explain the surprising and ingenious “arguments” (deeply imbued by faith) that this author proposes to base the second level of the “transcendent” stage of his peculiar Aesthetics. In the first four levels of his Aesthetics, Bonaventure establishes this initial ascent to God by considering the external beings of the material world as vestiges of the Creator (first and second levels), and then by examining our mind as an image of God, in which he can be seen reflected in a mirror (third and fourth levels). St. Bonaventure states that in the third stage of his Aesthetics (the "transcendent" stage), the human mind can look over itself to speculate on God in his essential property as the Supreme Being (fifth level) and in his personal properties as highest Good (sixth level). Our article focuses exclusively on the expression of this sixth level of Bonaventurian Aesthetics.
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The corporeal and the ethereal: the abstraction of color in Fra Angelico
Águeda ASENJO BEJARANO
Original title: Lo corpóreo y lo etéreo: la abstracción del color en Fra Angélico
Published in Mirabilia Journal 31 (2020/2)
Keywords: Abstraction, Color, Fra Angelico, Marble, Originality, Plasticity, Quattrocento.
With this study I intend to carry out a plastic and pictorial analysis of the work of the famous quattrocentist author Fra Angelico from the details that the Italian painter captured in his works where he combined colors in a totally heterogeneous way as watercolor surfaces, which recall and emulate to small abstract paintings generating an interconnection between the author’s innate creativity and his context. These fragments are like fields soaked in water and the colors flashes of pigment that spread across the canvas. He experimented with color and its possibilities within the painting, since although many authors define it as marbles, its originality and uniqueness are undoubted.
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The Christian itinerary according to Evagrius Ponticus: the reach of its exegetical projections on the Holy Scriptures in general, and on the book of Ecclesiastes in particular
Santiago Hernán VÁZQUEZ, Ana Laura QUIROGA
Original title: El itinerario cristiano según Evagrio Póntico: sus proyecciones exegéticas en la Sagrada Escritura en general y en el libro del Eclesiastés en particular
Published in War and Disease in Antiquity and the Middle Ages
Keywords: Ecclesiastes, Evagrius Ponticus, Exegesis, Natural Contemplation.
In the context of current studies on the thought of Evagrius Ponticus we are interested in deepening the exegetical projections that –following a well– identified classical–Christian tradition– possesses the evagrian conception of Christianity as an itinerary of salvation. These projections extend to Sacred Scripture in general and, in a way, to the book of Ecclesiastes. Thus, after developing the sense of the evagrian itinerary and its general exegetical projections, our work will focus on the evagrian commentary entitled “Scholia on Ecclesiastes” and its place within the framework of the thought of the philosopher of Ponto. This work has been little studied but it constitutes a unique exegetical piece within the evagrian corpus. Through this work we access a deeper understanding of what Evagrius wanted to designate with the concept of “natural contemplation”. In this sense, deepening this work allows –in our view– a renewed understanding of the spiritual itinerary that constitutes, for Evagrius, the essence of Christianity. Similarly, Scholia on Ecclesiastes allow us to understand more fully the particularities of the exegetical evagrian method.
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The papyri of The Book of Jannes and Jambres in the context of the lost Greek novels
María Paz LÓPEZ MARTÍNEZ
Published in War and Disease in Antiquity and the Middle Ages
Keywords: Egyptian and Christian Literature, Greek literary papyri and parchments, Jewish, Lost Greek novels, Magician tales, Old Testament apocrypha, The Book of Jannes and Jambres.
A revision of some of the Greek novel topics and loci paralleli that we can find in a lost work, known as The Apocryphon of Jannes and Jambres. The author and the date are unknown but 7 –perhaps 8– testimonies from the original text have been preserved thanks to the papyri and parchments. They correspond to different supports and languages.
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The control of the bodies in The Physician’s Tale and The Wife of Bath’s Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343-1400)
Candela ARRAIGADA
Original title: El control de los cuerpos en The Physician’s Tale y The Wife of Bath’s Tale, de Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343-1400)
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Arthurian subject, Canterbury Tales, Control over the Body, Literature of the Middle Ages.
In Una historia del cuerpo en La Edad Media (2005), Jacques Le Goff and Nicolas Truong point out that the oscillations between rejection and exaltation, humiliation and veneration, cross the medieval Christian body. In line with this approach, our paper aims to examine two stories belonging to The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer, in which the conflicts between old age and youth are glimpsed, articulated mainly around the ideals of virginity and chastity, which reveal the links between eroticism and control over bodies. Both stories will establish a counterpoint between two models of women. The Physician’s Tale offers a paradigmatic perspective of the physical and psychic virtues of a young woman and reveals the absolute value given to virginity. On the other hand, in The Wife of Bath’s Tale the Arthurian subject and the structure of the quest will serve the analysis of the power relationships between oldness / ugliness and youth / beauty, in intimate relation with the Prologue that precedes it, focused on the modern notion of experience.
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Approach to the theatrical use of the body in La Farce de Pathelin (c. 1470)
Alejandra DA CRUZ; Juan Cruz ZARIELLO VILLAR
Original title: Aproximación al uso teatral del cuerpo en La Farce de Pathelin (c. 1470)
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Body, La Farce de Pathelin, Medieval Theater, Scenic resources.
In this paper, we will try to examine the functions of the body in La Farce de Pathelin (c. 1470), a significative text in French profane theatre in the Low Middle Ages. Despite the moral and formative intentions of the religious representations, the farce seeks the spectator’s laugh, with a simple plot and scenic resources related to the disguise or violence. Our analysis focus on body’s representations in three dimensions: body and knowledge and the figure of the doctor; the interactions between both sick body and mind; the relationship between body and religion. We will highlight the theatrical simulation of Maese Pathelin in order to fool the draper.
