Article
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From bestiaries to the Iconology of Cesare Ripa: the construction of political and religious representations at the dawn of the Modern Age
Maria Leonor García da CRUZ
Original title: Dos bestiários à Iconologia de César Ripa: a construção de representações políticas e religiosas nos alvores da Época Moderna
Published in Ramon Llull. Seventh centenary
Wolves and foxes, traditionally chosen as representatives of the threat to the sheep that were led by the Pope, Pastor of souls, were animals used both positively and negatively in religious and profane literature, in bestiaries, emblem books and in the “Iconology” of Cesare Ripa in the late 16th century. Putting special emphasis on the latter and comparing political thought and 16th-entury movements of spirituality, I shall attempt to explain meanings in the textual and pictorial representations of the time, in an approach that is part of the “Imagery Studies” of Lisbon University’s History Centre.
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The idiom of the Jewish apostasy in seventeenth-century Holland: the Bible of Ferrara and the revival of Sephardic Culture
Ronaldo VAINFAS
Original title: O idioma da apostasia judaica na Holanda do século XVII: a Bíblia de Ferrara e a reinvenção da cultura sefardita
Published in Medieval and Early Modern Iberian Peninsula Cultural History
This article presents a study on the conversion of the Portuguese New Christians to Judaism in Amsterdam as well as in Recife under the Dutch rule, during the first half of the seventeenth century. New Christians, which, due to their ambivalent identity amidst the Sephardic Judaism and Catholicism, were defined by the historian Yosef Kaplan as New Jews. Based on processes of the Inquisition of Lisbon against Portuguese Jews caught in Pernambuco´s war, the author analyzes the jewish rites reported by the prisoners, in particular the use of the Castilian language, or its variant, the ladino, in the synagogal daily prayers. The article sustains that this doctrinal method, conceived in the early seventeenth century by the Portuguese Jewry in Amsterdam, was an adaptation of the first translation of the Old Testament into Spanish – the Bible of Ferrara. Composed in the 1550s by the Portuguese Daniel Pinel and by the Spanish Jeronimo Vargas, both Sephardic exiles, in Italy, the ferraresca bible proves the decisive role of the traditional Sephardic culture, restored in the Mediterranean Diaspora – as the case of Ferrara shows – for the Iberian Judaism reconstruction in the Netherlands.
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The manual worker cultures: didactic teatrises dedicate to dignify the mechanical tradesThe manual worker cultures: didactic teatrises dedicate to dignify the mechanical trades
Josué VILLA PRIETO
Original title: La cultura de los menestrales: tratados didácticos medievales dedicados a la dignificación de los oficios mecânicos
Published in Medieval and Early Modern Iberian Peninsula Cultural History
Facing Artes Liberales practiced by intellectuals, experts in Trivium and Quadrivium or doctors in Law or Teology, Artes Mechanicae are exercised by workers through manual practice. In Classical Antiquity they are considered Artes Vulgares, an expression which reflects an underestimation in relation to Artes Liberales. During the Middle Ages, this term is replaced with Artes Mechanicae by philosophers and writers, in order to claim their utility and value in medieval society. This study proposes an interpretative synthesis about speeches dedicated to the classification and dignification the Artes Mechanicae in Spanish teatrises in the Late Medieval period, treatises which are dedicated to issue knowledge and represent the ideal society (Ramón Llull, don Juan Manuel, Francesc Eiximenis, Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo) as well in French and Italian authors very known in Iberian Peninsula (Hugh of Saint Victor, Vincent de Beauvais, Ralph of Longchamp, Giles of Rome).
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Albert the Great and the treatise De Prudentia
Matteo RASCHIETTI
Original title: Alberto Magno e o tratado De Prudentia
Published in Nicholas of Cusa in Dialogue
Last part of the Summa creaturis (or Summa Parisiensis), written by the Doctor Universalis, the moral treatise De bono considers the good by the point of view moral and organizes the matter into five treaties. The fourth one is the De Prudentia, briefly presented in this article, that sticks his roots in the classical tradition, in the patristic and scholastic.
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The Love as the greatest virtue in the Sermons of Nicholas of Cusa
Maria Simone Marinho NOGUEIRA
Original title: O Amor como a maior das virtudes nos Sermões de Nicolau de Cusa
Published in Nicholas of Cusa in Dialogue
Nicholas of Cusa approached the theme of love throughout his philosophical-theological work. A part of this work, however, deserves our special attention when we analyze this theme. We refer to the Sermons: in various moments of his life the German Thinker has prepared and preached these writings. We propose, from them, a reflection on the love as the greatest of virtues.
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“The Pleasure of the Text”: The Parliament of Fowls as the Site of Bliss for Chaucer and his Readers
Oya BAYILTMIŞ ÖĞÜTCÜ
Published in Pleasure in the Middle Ages
Roland Barthes’s arguments in The Pleasure of the Text have brought a literary outlook to the concept of pleasure. For him, texts that do not have a closure (‘indecisive texts’) create pleasure both in the author and the reader due to polysemy resulting from writerly neurosis. Hence, the body of the text, like a physical body, becomes a site of pleasure. Chaucer’s the Parliament of Fowls presents such a site of bliss through the love debate among the birds where Chaucer depoliticises and satirises the medieval estate structure. Moreover, left open-ended, the text creates Barthesian bliss for both Chaucer and his readers. Thus, the aim of this paper is to elucidate and evaluate Chaucer’s the Parliament of Fowls as the source of textual pleasure.
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From the Cantigas de Amor to the Cantigas de Santa Maria: The Appellatives of the Dame in Galician-Portuguese Troubadour Poetry
Marina KLEINE
Original title: Das cantigas de amor às Cantigas de Santa Maria: os apelativos da dama na lírica galego-portuguesa
Published in Mulier aut Femina. Idealism or reality of women in the Middle Ages
This paper aims to study the different forms of nominating the beloved woman, or dame, who constitutes the troubadours’ object of devotion in Galician-Portuguese love poetry, both profane and religious. The analysis will be focused on the appellatives of the dame in a sample of cantigas de amor extracted from the Cancioneiro da Ajuda and in Cantigas de Santa Maria’s cantigas de loor.
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Ascensio in Deum per vestigia et in vestigiis. The St. Bonaventure’s immanent Aesthetics and its possible reflections in the iconography of the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi
José María SALVADOR GONZÁLEZ
Original title: Ascensio in Deum per vestigia et in vestigiis. La Estética inmanente de San Buenaventura y sus posibles reflejos en la iconografía de la Basílica de San Francisco en Asís
Published in Monastic and Scholastic Philosophy in the Middle Ages
In his Itinerarium mentis in Deum (1259), St. Bonaventure (1221-1274) discusses the six degrees (with a seventh of ecstatic enjoyment) by which man can and should ascend from the created world to contemplate God. In this paper we will analyze only the first two grades of this Itinerarium, which constitute both of them what we might call the “immanent aesthetic” of St. Bonaventure. Highlighting then two of the central theses of this “immanent aesthetic”, we shall try to show the possible reflections that these theses may have had in the iconography of some frescoes in the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi.
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The Peace and the War, the War and the Peace in Marsilio of Padua
Moisés Romanazzi Tôrres
Original title: A Paz e a Guerra, a Guerra e a Paz em Marsílio de Pádua
Published in The chivalry and the art of war in the Ancient and Medieval World
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The Knights, Infantry (Peonage), Crossbowman in the Middle Ages as the Customary Laws the local communities of Guarda, Santarém, Évora and Beja in Portugal
Alice Tavares Durán
Original title: El estatuto de los Caballeros Villanos, Peones y Ballesteros en la Edad Media, según los Fueros Extensos de los concejos portugueses de Guarda, Santarém, Évora y Beja
Published in The chivalry and the art of war in the Ancient and Medieval World
