Article
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Vasa Sacra or Non Sacra? The Aquila Beaker Bearing a Kabbalistic Inscription from the Medieval Hoard from Vinerea, Transylvania
Cristian Ioan POPA
Published in Music in Antiquity, Middle Ages & Renaissance
Keywords: Aquila symbol, Gothic Kabbalistic Inscription, Middle Ages, Silver Becker.
In the middle of the last century, a medieval treasure, made of gold and silver objects, was accidentally discovered in Transylvania on Vinerea (Cugir town). The hoard contained several precious metal objects and several hundred coins, out of which 396 are still preserved today, after a small part was stolen upon discovery. An extremely interesting item is the gold plated silver becker. On its surface was incised a ribbon that contains a text written in Gothic characters – nceirmoiahedrpma // indecmhpeoirsli. The text is most likely encrypted, making the message difficult to interpret. Towards the centre the ribbon is interrupted by the presence of a carefully incised aquila. The becker has analogies with similar items from Central Europe, datable around the year 1500. The aquila could be considered as a Christian symbol, in relation with Saint John’s (?) iconography.
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Alienora Dei gratia regina Anglie. The potestas of the English queen Eleanor of Castile (1241-1290): status quaestionis
Andrea BERGAZ ÁLVAREZ
Original title: Alienora Dei gratia regina Anglie. La potestas de la reina Leonor de Castilla (1241-1290): status quaestionis
Published in Music in Antiquity, Middle Ages & Renaissance
Keywords: Eleanor of Castile, England, Historiography, Potestas, Queenship.
The aim of this article is to analyse from a historiographic point of view the potestas of Eleanor of Castile (1241-1290), Queen of England. It studies her activity before she became queen and the extent to which it influenced her subsequent exercise of power. This power is analysed by evaluating the different mechanisms that were used by the queen: mediation and intercession, marriage policy, her influence in the court, her cultural activity, her intervention in the internal and international policy… The political biography of this consort still shows many gaps and questions, something that opens a wide range of possibilities that we believe should be highlighted.
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Duplex Spiritus Almus: the semantics of the “X” in the Romanesque period
Dominique J. PERSOONS
Original title: Duplex Spiritus Almus: la sémantique du “X” à l’époque romane
Published in Music in Antiquity, Middle Ages & Renaissance
Keywords: Double soul, Holy Spirit, Jaca, Ornate letters, Plato.
The illumination from the early thirteenth century English manuscript Harley-MS-4951 shows a curious disposition of the divine trinity. If the Father and the Son are easily identified, the Holy Spirit appears in the form of an X surmounted by two animal heads, one threatening and the other affable. This suggests that the Spirit was considered double and made up of two opposing spirits. This hypothesis is verified by the observation of the tympanum of the cathedral of Jaca.
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The Woman and the Androgyne in Leonardo da Vinci’s (1452-1519) pictorical work
María del Carmen BREA REINA
Original title: La Mujer y lo andrógino en la obra pictórica de Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
Published in Music in Antiquity, Middle Ages & Renaissance
Keywords: Androgyne, Cinquecento, Leonardo da Vinci, Madonna, Quattrocento, Renaissance, Virgin.
Leonardo da Vinci is one of the main exponents of Italian Renaissance painting. In his work the female characters or Madonnas stand out, in many cases with a leading role of great symbolism. Leonardo makes this concept evolve into the figure of the androgynous person, mixing feminine and masculine features to bring a new perspective to his production.
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Forms of defence of the social body before criminal agency, in 16th-century imagery creations
Maria Leonor García da CRUZ
Original title: Formas de defesa do corpo social perante arbítrios criminosos em criações imagéticas quinhentistas
Published in Music in Antiquity, Middle Ages & Renaissance
Keywords: Andrea Alciato, Crime, Emblem, Music, Social order.
A very fashionable creation in modern Europe since the first edition of Andrea Alciato, the book of emblems, has been chosen as a historical source. The selection of the socio-political message and socio-economic discourse was made in emblems of different editions and spatial and time contexts that bring together inscriptio, pictura and subscriptio. It is valued a deepening of the explicit meanings in the motto and in the picture, when they exist, and we seek to unravel the hidden, not always completely decoded in the comments of the different editions. Hence, we choose to compare several versions of the same emblem, built in different contexts. Alciato’s political discourse necessarily reveals on many occasions social concerns, and they are the ones that lead us to clues about a discourse after all interdisciplinary, leading us to considerations sometimes of artistic nature or economic and financial management. Music and musical instruments become vehicles of concord and social concert, solidarity, resistance to crime and dissent that call into question social peace. The action of the prince or ruler, on the other hand, is considered in several perspectives: from a firm-hand ruler in defence of the common good to a tyrant, and to a defender of the good of the State not benefiting the victims of tax crimes. Alciato thus reveals strong controversies in the Renaissance.
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Iconographic Analysis of the Façade of the Temple of San Miguel Arcángel, in Ixmiquilpan, Hidalgo
Carmen Fabiola MORENO VIDAL
Original title: Análisis Iconográfico de la Portada del Templo de San Miguel Arcángel, en Ixmiquilpan, Hidalgo
Published in Music in Antiquity, Middle Ages & Renaissance
Keywords: 2 acatl, Augustinians, Façade, Ixmiquilpan, Nahui-Ōlin, Shield, Winged hippocampus.
The Plateresque façade of the temple of San Miguel Arcángel, has a harmonious and elegant composition, with a rich decoration based on grotesques, presenting a clear moralizing and reflective message for the Christian observer of the time; for the indigenous observer, the grotesques could contain the main symbols of their worldview by presenting familiar and mimetic forms, such as the four-petalled flowers representing the Nahui-Ōlin, the flamer cauldron shaped like the sign 2 Acatl, the shields of San Nicolás Tolentino with Atl tlachinolli, the tops of the columns as a representation of the Tlachieloni and the undulating forms like Xonecuilli. This cover also presents the unification of European elements with the local ones, such as the coats of arms that contain the local flora and fauna, as well as the representation of a territorial partiality in the pre-Hispanic way, through the Altepetl.
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Graphic parody in classical Greece
Manuel ÁLVAREZ JUNCO
Original title: La parodia en la Grecia clásica
Published in Mirabilia Journal 34
Keywords: Classical Greece, Figurative ceramics, Graphic parody, Visual humour.
What we now call graphic humour did not emerge until the 19th century with European and American periodicals. Tracing its precedents in the figurative ceramics of classical Greece is the reason for this study, focused exclusively on graphic parody. To find it, it has been necessary to contextualize its opportunity and analyse its specific visual resources. If a culture like the Greeks provided us with the formal, conceptual, and aesthetic bases of Western civilization, this article delves into the figurative counterpoints developed by these fundamental ancestors of ours.
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The Λόγος Τέλειος in Lactantius’ De Vita Beata: Philological Analysis of the Hermetic Fragmentum of the Divinæ Institutiones 7.18.4-5
David Pessoa de LIRA
Original title: O Λόγος Τέλειος em De Vita Beata de Lactâncio: análise filológica do Fragmentum Hermético das Divinæ Institutiones 7. 18. 4-5
Published in Mirabilia Journal 34
Keywords: Asclepius Latinus, Fragmentum Hermeticum, Hermetic Literature, Lactantius, Philology, Λόγος Τέλειος.
This article analyzes the fragmentum of the Λόγος Τέλειος in Lactantius's De Vita Beata, Divinæ Institutiones 7. 18. 4-5. Of particular interest here is the idea and argument of the Hermetic fragmentum Λόγος Τέλειος in contrast to the idea in its context in De Vita Beata. Although there has been significant research on the small apocalypse or prediction of Asclepius Latinus 26a, this article focuses on understanding the aspects that characterize the Λόγος Τέλειος without dwelling beforehand on the idea of prediction and the future, nor on the subsequent interpretations developed for future events in the Latin translation of the Asclepius Latinus. The Coptic ⲗⲟⲅⲟⲥ ⲧⲉⲗⲉⲓⲟⲥ [Logos Teleios] (Nag Hammadi VI.8 (73,23-36)) corroborates various aspects of Λόγος Τέλειος. The first text helps to understand the second one reciprocally. Therefore, the comparative method is used here to demonstrate the similarities and differences between the Greek Λόγος Τέλειος, the Coptic ⲗⲟⲅⲟⲥ ⲧⲉⲗⲉⲓⲟⲥ, the Asclepius Latinus 26a and the intervention in these texts in sources of fragmentum transmission. The comparative analysis shows some relevant results in the relationship between the Λόγος Τέλειος en De Vita Beata de Lactantius. As result, one could perceive that the Λόγος Τέλειος is a text that deals with periodic cataclysm and timelessness and its demonstradum is different from Lactantius’ conception.
