Article (Mirabilia Ars)
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Greek Fathers of the 4th-5th centuries and the secular education. Their acceptance in Greek thinking while rejecting pagan cults
Eirini ARTEMI
Original title: Greek Fathers of the 4th-5th centuries and the secular education. Their acceptance in Greek thinking while rejecting pagan cults
Published in
Keywords: Christian Philosophy, Christian Theology, Pagan cults, Philosophy, Secular Education.
The Fathers were neither implacable enemies of Greek thought nor did they hate the works of the ancient Greek poets and writers. Great Basilius did not hesitate to show ancient people as examples of virtue who were referred to in the works of secular literature. He like others emphasized, however, that not everything within ancient literature is acceptable but that one should only keep what is useful for Christianity! The rest constituted sinister men’s acts and should therefore be avoided. No one must imitate their actions. Cyril of Alexandria did not reject the ancient Greek thought as philosophy but as theology. The motive was obvious. The contrast between Christian theology and Greek philosophy existed only when the latter was presented as theology. It was a feud between a presupposed common area which each claimed for herself. The rejection of the Greek “false worship as totally useless” took place as a theological crisis. When the Fathers condemned the “Greek and avid ... malice” and exercised “control of the Greek fraud” they essentially failed on Greek philosophy, while targeting ancient Greek religiosity. Hence, Greek Fathers honoured Greek thinking, Greek language and used both in their writings but tried to avoid ideas of Greek pagan practice and cult and fought against these with all their powers.
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Letting the wolf in: the duality of human and animal, inclusion and exclusion and the crossing of these boundaries of the werewolves in Gerald of Wales’ Topographia Hibernica
Julia van ROSMALEN
Original title: Letting the wolf in: the duality of human and animal, inclusion and exclusion and the crossing of these boundaries of the werewolves in Gerald of Wales’ Topographia Hibernica
Published in
Keywords: Boundaries, Depiction of the other, Duality, Eucharist theory, Form and nature, Inclusion and exclusion, Liminality, Monsters and hybrids, Transformation.
This article shows, using a close analysis of the images and text, that despite the initial association with ‘Othering’ and monstrousness, the werewolves from the Topographia Hibernica are not a perfect Other but rather assimilated into the community. They represent a transgression between the boundaries of the human and the animal that renders them porous and allows for movement between the two and an interplay of inclusion and exclusion. The werewolves aren’t hybrids in form or nature, but rather show a discordance between form and nature: They are perfectly animal in appearance and perfectly human in nature. The deliberate parallel with theory of form and nature in the eucharist which plays a central role in both the conclusion of the story, the final image and the authors theological discourse on transformation shows that the final verdict on the wolves is one of sameness rather than otherness.
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The rendering of Christ in the Temple icon of the Theotokos: a gaze from the fourth century. Part two
Elena ENE D-VASILESCU
Original title: The rendering of Christ in the Temple icon of the Theotokos: a gaze from the fourth century. Part two
Published in
Keywords: Christ, Egypt, Fourth century AD, Icon, Mary, Theotokos.
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Reflections on the relation between Lilith and the femme fatale: the prostitution at the end of the 19th century
Marta MORUECO O’MULLONY
Original title: Reflexiones sobre la relación entre Lilith y la femme fatale: la prostitución a finales del siglo XIX
Published in
Keywords: Femme fatale, Hebrew tradition, Lilith, Nineteenth-century art, Sin.
The study of the figure of Lilith must be set in two very specific moments: first, the Ancient Times, in which the Lilith myth arises; and the nineteenth century, as “reawakening” of this character. This research deals with the relationship between women and evil, and its iconography; The negative view of the feminine was propagated during the Middle Ages mostly due, in large part, to the discovery of the Aristotelian texts, laden with a strong misogynistic content. It will be precisely in the twelfth century when Lilith is adopted as part of the Hebrew imaginary, assuming the negative character of the woman, freeing Eve from the only and absolute responsibility of the Original Sin. This idea will be recovered during the nineteenth century reincarnated in the figure of the femme fatale and the pleasure from the demonic and the forbidden thoughts, coming to fetishize it, which has a direct relationship with the rise of prostitution, in whose artistic representations we can find the Lilith’s seed.
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The sacred and the profane in the Three Wise Kings. From the Middle Ages to their origins
Irene ROMO PODERÓS
Original title: Lo sagrado y lo profano en los Reyes Magos. De la Edad Media a los orígenes
Published in
Keywords: Magi, Middle Ages, Representation, Symbolism.
In the countries of Christian tradition as well as in many others to different degrees the story of the “Three Wise Men” of the East is known who, according to the Christian version, gave their offerings to the “King of Kings” on his birth. However, beyond the myth, who were the so called Magi who according to one legend left behind trails of aromatic herbs in their wake? Are they based on real figures? Is their symbolic origin to be found in the sacred or in the profane? The purpose of this article is to explore the idea of the Three Magician of the East and to try to clarify its historical, legendary, secular and religious aspects. It will also try to show its role as a religious tool used to condition secular thought in medieval Europe. In this way, it will try to analyze how the figure of the Magi constitutes an artistic and literary symbol used for the propagation of Christianity in Medieval Europe, an example of the sacred versus secular dichotomy so characteristic of that continent. To do this, it will explore a variety of different aspects of the culture in the medieval period, as it is in this moment that the representation of the Magi as they are known today is definitively fixed in human memory.
