Article
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The poetics of Love in the Roman the la Rose
Ruy de Oliveira ANDRADE FILHO, Luiz Fernando ALVES
Original title: A poética do Amor em O Romance da Rosa
Published in Nicholas of Cusa in Dialogue
Keywords: Courtly Love, Guillaume of Lorris, Jean of Meun, The Romance the la Rose, XIII Century.
We aim with this article to analyze the poetics of love in The Romance of the Rose. We think that Guillaume de Lorris’s conception of love is associated with the flourishing of the French courtly society of the XIII Century, and that Jean de Meun’s conception of love is a result of the decline of this same society. Behind the virtues offered by Guillaume to the medieval lover we find the notion of courtesy, of the art of living in society, the understanding of the poetry as a form of ethics, and the medieval poetic of desire – intimately associated with the religious mysticism appeared from the XI Century and with the troubadours’ poetry. Jean is more influenced by the Ovidian tradition of thinking about the causes and effects of love. In the first part of the poem, Guillaume idealizes the conquest of the Rose; in the second, Jean describes the cueillette of the Rose, which could be read as a rape, in an allegorical way. It is this tension between different conceptions of love in a same poem that makes possible a better comprehension of the ways people used to think and feel in the Middle Ages.
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A Proposal for a Universal Science in Ars Brevis (1308) by Ramon Llull
Fabricia dos Santos GIUBERTI
Original title: A Proposta de uma Ciência Universal na Arte Breve (1308) de Ramon Llull
Published in Nicholas of Cusa in Dialogue
Keywords: Art, Medieval Philosophy, Ramon Llull, Science.
As a passionate follower of Ramon Llull, Nicolau de Cusa, had in his personal library, several works of Catalan philosopher. One version of Art Llull which had spread over the centuries following his death was the Art Brief (1308) precisely because it is a simplification of his proposals to create a universal science idea as to suit modern thought still in gestation. The purpose of this issue is to present the general structure of his art, as the Mallorcan went down to posterity as an original innovator of medieval proposals unification of all sciences.
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Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464) in Dialogue
Ricardo da COSTA, Bento Silva SANTOS
Original title: Nicolau de Cusa (1401-1464) em Diálogo
Published in Nicholas of Cusa in Dialogue
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Saint Vincent Ferrer in Valencian popular imaginary: a ethnopoetics approach to narrative cycle of Vincentians miracles
Joan BORJA I SANZ
Original title: Sant Vicent Ferrer en l’imaginari popular valencià: una aproximació etnopoètica al cicle narratiu dels miracles vicentins
Published in Nicholas of Cusa in Dialogue
Keywords: Ethnohistory, Ethnopoetics, Land of Valencia, Miracles, Vincent Ferrer.
This paper focusses on the productive narrative cycle by St. Vincent Ferrer in Valencian cultural context, from a repertoire of over forty stories. The analysis allows to state and explain a curious phenomenon. That is: regardless of the real and historical biography, legends about St. Vincent Ferrer respond to idiosyncratic grammar of fantasy, and they are like a mirror which is projected and reflected the ethnohistorical personality of the Valencian people.
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Dr. Badia i Margarit, in memoriam
María Luisa ORDÓÑEZ LLANOS, Maria Mercè MONTAGUT i BARBARÀ
Published in Nicholas of Cusa in Dialogue
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Fables in Bayeux Tapestry: interrelations between margin and center in the narrative of the 11th century conquering of England
Jaime Estevão dos REIS, Adriana ZIERER, Lúcio Carlos FERRARESE
Original title: As fábulas na Tapeçaria de Bayeux: inter-relações entre margem e centro na narrativa da conquista da Inglaterra no século XI
Published in Art, Criticism and Mysticism
Keywords: Bayeux Tapestry, England., Fables, Margin.
This article’s objective is to comprehend the role that the fables depicted in the marginal illustrations of the Bayeux Tapestry perform towards the main narrative. We present the historical context of the source’s creation, concerning the Battle of Hastings of 1066, the relations between the narrative and its context, with the fables. Thus, we have observed that these perform an auxiliary role for the comprehension of the main narrative, presenting exemplary and moralistic stories that interact directly with the central images.
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The anagogical contemplation in Saint-Denis Abbey (XII century)
Ricardo da COSTA, Tainah Moreira NEVES
Original title: A contemplação anagógica na Abadia de Saint-Denis (séc. XII)
Published in Art, Criticism and Mysticism
Keywords: Medieval Art, Medieval Philosophy, Saint-Denis, Suger.
“Bright is the noble work; but, being nobly bright, the work should brighten the minds, so that they may travel, through the true lights, to the True Light where Christ is the true door”. This phrase was inscribe by orders of Abbot Suger (c. 1081-1151) in one of Saint-Denis Abbey’s bronze doors. It emphasizes the anagogical character, provided by Suger to art, at the basilica’s reconstruction. In this philosophical and religious process, described by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, in the fifth century, the medievals ascend from the physical light, the material, to the spiritual light, immaterial, guided by Art, and then reach elevation. It is a continuous, cyclical movement, produced by the arduous search of entitys towards the Being. In order to accomplish such aesthetic investigation, we propose to analyze three extracts from the Liber de Rebus in Administratione Sua Gestis, by Suger, in which the Abbot describes the reasons of his idealized and directed reedification at Saint-Denis. More specifically, the first addition to the church and the santuary’s doors (I, XXV – De ecclesiæ primo augmento, XXVII – De portis fusilibus et deauratis). Based on them, we intend to defend the hypothesis that, to reform the Abbey with a new aesthetic (later to be known as gothic), Suger used art to convey his interpretation of Christian theology, and so materialize, artistically, tangible means by which one could ascend from the material to the immaterial. By creating this anagogical atmosphere that, by the contemplation of the materials forms occurs the contemplation of the immaterial, of the immutable, Suger managed to express artistically, at the abbey, the celestial hierarchy.
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Sacred Architecture and Nature in the Cantigas de Santa María
Ricardo da COSTA, Bárbara DANTAS
Original title: A Arquitetura Sagrada e a Natureza nas Cantigas de Santa María (séc. XIII)
Published in Art, Criticism and Mysticism
Keywords: Cantigas de Santa Maria, Medieval Art, Medieval Literature, Nature.
The Middle Ages was the time of insertion of man in Natural environment. More than that: it was, mainly, the time of the conquest of space, the large land clearance, the architectural constructions (sometimes in the middle of Nature), and the expansions at the expense of the environment. The monastic movements were the drivers of this increase. In this sense, the monks were, par excellence, the pathfinders, the lords, the domesticators of Nature, both subjects as objects to induce this process of understanding, civilization. Theology itself so allowed (“For every sort of beast and bird and every living thing on earth and in the sea has been controlled by man and is under his authority”, Jas 3, 7). The Western civilization was the daughter of this process, of this relationship, of this symbiosis, often unintended, between Nature and Culture, Civilization and Barbarism, raw and cooked. The purpose of this study is to analyze the iconography of the illuminations of two songs and one praise present in the Cantigas de Santa Maria, a work attributed to Alfonso X, the Wise. Our methodology consisted of thematically define the presence of Nature in those three illuminated, so when we fix the following artistic tops: 1) The Sacred Nature (cantiga 10), 2) The Supplicant Nature (cantiga 93) and 3) The Saving Nature (cantiga 7). In order, from Nature that surrounds and adorns the Virgin to Nature, which witnesses the passage of time, in a paradoxical duality between the eternal time of Nature and the fleeting and fickle weather of Art. Meanwhile, the Nature who pleads isolates the leper in his retreat, and, ultimately, the saving Nature is one that involves with his heavenly robe who ask the intercession of the Virgin.
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St. Bonaventure’s aesthetic ideas as possible doctrinal source of Trecento Italian iconography
José María SALVADOR GONZÁLEZ
Original title: Ideas estéticas de San Buenaventura como posible fuente doctrinal de la iconografía del Trecento italiano
Published in Art, Criticism and Mysticism
Keywords: Aesthetics, Iconography, Italian painting, Mariology, Patristics. Medieval Philosophy, St. Bonaventure, Trecento.
This paper attempts to highlight the influence that the primary Aesthetics designed by St. Bonaventure could have had on some paintings of the Italian Trecento. Therefore, the work is divided into two parts essentially linked. Firstly it analyzes in detail the first two levels (of the six proposed by the saint. plus a seventh of pure ecstasy), by which man can and must ascend from the world to contemplate God: on those two initial levels, linked to the sensory knowledge, man uses his sensitivity to appreciate the material things of this created world as footprints and traces of their Creator. In the second part several paintings by Giotto, Simnone Martini, Pietro Lorenzetti, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Agnolo Gaddi and Taddeo Gaddi are analyzed, in order to see if one can perceive in them some influence of the initial phase of the Aesthetics of Bonaventure, that implies a remarkable enhancement of the physical world and the senses by which we perceive it with full cognitive validity.
