Article
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Castrated children: the beginning of a vocal practice in Iberian Peninsula
Kristina AUGUSTIN
Original title: Niños caponados: o início de uma prática vocal de origem ibérica
Published in Medieval and Early Modern Iberian Peninsula Cultural History
Keywords: Capon, Castrati, Castration, Early Music, Vocal practice.
This article is intended to address and clarify some issues about the castrati, the chronological question about the beginning of the practice of castration with musical objective in Europe as well as the existing migration particularly between Spain and Italy in the first half of the sixteenth Century.
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Barbarians or/vs Romans? About Identities and Discoursive Categories
Daniele Gallindo Gonçalves SILVA; Mauricio da Cunha ALBUQUERQUE
Original title: Bárbaros ou/vs Romanos? Sobre Identidades e Categorias Discursivas
Published in Medieval and Early Modern Iberian Peninsula Cultural History
Keywords: Barbarians, Etnogenesis, Identities, Late Antiquity.
In this article, we discuss the identity issues in relation to the world of Late Antiquity and its subsequent representations. To this end, we start with a discussion of the identities in the late-ancient world, emphasizing the complexity and fluidity that occur in the processes of formation (ethnogenesis) and transformation. Then arises the problem of the terminologies used to represent the ancient people (focusing on the concept of “German”), and how these categories, having a potential to produce representations, create misconceptions of identity about (and between) the ancients.
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The status of women and men in the marriage by John Chrysostom (c. 349-407)
Eirini ARTEMI
Published in Medieval and Early Modern Iberian Peninsula Cultural History
Keywords: Family, Love, Marriage, Mutual respect, Spouses.
Saint John Chrysostom refers to the obligations of spouses in a marriage. He addresses mainly his advice in men, because the male selfishness hardly is tamed and he sometimes behaves with cruelty. Chrysostom condemns the practice of physical violence and abuse of women by men. On the contrary he requires the sacrificial spirit from man, great forgiveness and not threats and intimidation. With grace and meekness, the deep peace of the family will be ensured and the discontent will be removed and also the devotion of one spouse to the other will increase. Chrysostom says: “There is nothing, nothing more precious than to anyone be loved so much from his wife or from her husband”. St. John Chrysostom refers to a cohesive element, the foundation of conjugation, communication between spouses. It is the daily interaction of both spouses. The most important element of communication is discussion. The debate should be about intimacy, mutual respect in an atmosphere of freedom, equality and love. Then you may find the solution in case of disagreement or conflict. St. John Chrysostom thinks that the husband and the wife must try together to have a happy marriage.
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Adoubement and Chivalry in the Feudal West: Gautier d’Arras’s Eracle (c. 1159-1184)
Guilherme Queiroz de SOUZA
Original title: Adoubement e Cavalaria no Ocidente feudal: o Eracle (c. 1159-1184) de Gautier d’Arras
Published in Medieval and Early Modern Iberian Peninsula Cultural History
Keywords: Adoubement, Eracle, Feudal West, Gautier d’Arras, chivalry.
The purpose of this article is to analyze the adoubement and the Chivalry in the Feudal West, through the emphasis on the romance Eracle, written by the French cleric Gautier d’Arras between 1159 and 1184. In this work, the protagonist hero is submitted to the adoubement (rite of passage) to join the Chivalry, category considered by some historians as the dominant institution during the Feudalism. We study the evolution and stages of the rite, as well as the main chivalric virtues (courage, loyalty and prudence), the concepts of largesse and prodomie and the art of war. For this, we utilize comparatively works of the 11-12th centuries.
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Height, fall and rebirth of the Carolingian exegetical tradition. Comments regarding the transmission of the Benedictine culture between centuries VIII and XX
Alfonso M. HERNÁNDEZ RODRÍGUEZ
Original title: Auge, caída y renacimiento de la tradición exegética carolingia. Observaciones sobre la transmisión de la cultura benedictina entre los siglos VIII y XX
Published in Medieval and Early Modern Iberian Peninsula Cultural History
Keywords: Benedictine culture, Biblical exegesis, High Middle Ages, Maurists.
During the High the Middle Ages the main centers of thought were, or were influenced, by the cultural and theological tradition of the monasteries. The Carolingian biblical exegesis belongs to that tradition. This study explores the becoming of the exegetical texts that forms that tradition, from its production to its modern use as sources for the study of early medieval culture during the twentieth century.
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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
Keywords: Francesc Eiximenis, Medieval teatrises, Ramón Llull, Rodrigo Sánchez de Arévalo, Urban trades.
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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The Templars in France: Between History, Heritage, and Memory
Philippe JOSERAND
Published in Medieval and Early Modern Iberian Peninsula Cultural History
Keywords: France, Historiography, Memory, Myth, Templar Order, XIIth-XXIth Centuries.
A comprehensive scholarly study of the Templars in France has not been published yet. Yet their order, from the outset, was closely linked to the French present space: most brethren were born there, and the langue d’oïl rapidly stood as the official tongue of the institution. For two centuries, the Templars used the Capetian kingdom as the main operations base to act in the Latin East and to sustain their singular vocation merging prayer and warfare into the same religious move. After the trial which opened in 1307 on King Philip the Fair’s initiative, the Templar order, although suppressed, did not entirely disappear from the French landscape: some buildings remained and, even more, a myth took shape, from which an historiography gradually emerged. This scientific movement strengthened from the end of the twentieth century and it now allows to shed new light on the French Templar presence, and to question the generally accepted ideas in order to better understand a medieval reality, which is still fascinating, but often strangely evoked.
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Cause and explanatory principle of being in Aristotle (Metaphysics VII, 17)
Barbara BOTTER
Original title: Causa e princípio explicativo do ser em Aristóteles (Metafísica VII, 17)
Published in Medieval and Early Modern Iberian Peninsula Cultural History
Keywords: Aristotle, Explanation, Form, Hylemorfism, Metaphysics.
The main topic of this paper is to study the role the form has in constituting composite substances. I will examine the chapter 17 of Metaphysics VII, especially the lines 1041b12-25, who Aristotle uses the example of syllable to show that form is the primary cause of being of sensible substances in that it causes them to be one. The main issue of this investigation is to show that, especially in the last chapter of Metaphysics Zeta, essence is closely identified by Aristotle to the form, which is in charge to transform the material elements into an essential unity and to explain the structure of hylomorphic substances.
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The Unicorns – Virtue and Treason – An enigmatic iconographic proposal by Salvador Dalí (1904-1989)
Patricia GRAU-DIECKMANN
Original title: Los Unicornios – Virtud y Traición – enigmática propuesta iconográfica de Salvador Dalí (1904-1989)
Published in Medieval and Early Modern Iberian Peninsula Cultural History
Keywords: Alchemical Hermetic Androgyne, Bestiary, Hunting of the unicornio, Salvador Dalí, Unicorn.
“Whether or not a real unicorn existed, it may not itself be as exciting or as important as the things that men dreamed, thought and wrote about it” (Shepard). Of all the stories woven around the mythical figure of the unicorn, one that is repeated over and over again is that only a true virgin can be used as a decoy. Her aroma leaves the unicorn defenseless in front of the hunter who would kill it for its valuable horn. An unexpected iconography is the one proposed by Salvador Dalí in his small statue of The Unicorn.
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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
Keywords: Bible of Ferrara, Inquisition, New Jews, Sephardi.
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.
