Is there a great cosmic wheel hidden in the tympanum of Moissac Abbey?
Cécile M. FOSSOUL; Dominique J. PERSOONS
Original title: ¿Hay una gran rueda cósmica escondida en el tímpano de la Abadía de Moissac?
Published in Mirabilia Journal
Keywords: Cosmic, Invisible image, Moissac, Tympanum, Wheel.
The tympanum of the Abbey of Moissac, which belonged to the Cistercian order, known for its austerity, presents a strange iconography: Christ in Glory is surrounded by the four evangelists who adopt paradoxical positions, and a kind of laxity that seems at first glance incomprehensible. Also, the two angels keep their hands in the air for no apparent reason. When arranged symmetrically, Romanesque angels generally hold the halo of Christ. However, in Moissac those angels seem to be “paralyzed”. Does the tympanum contain a hidden iconography? Could the 12th century Christianity transmitted secret images? Today, this question could have been answered through the use of graphic design software.
Isidore of Pelusium and the use of the Holy Bible in his epistles
Eirini ARTEMI
Original title: Isidore of Pelusium and the use of the Holy Bible in his epistles
Published in
Keywords: Apostles, Christ, Isidore the Pelousiotes, New Testament, Old Testament, One God in Three Persons, Scriptures.
St. Isidore the Pelousiotes studied the Bible carefully. Through his letters, he interpreted various biblical passages and he explained different biblical themes. The word of the Bible was for the Father an infallible guide to overcome the pitfall of every heretical teaching, which threatened the salvation of believers in Christ. At the same time according to the inspired work of the Bible he could proclaim that there is One God in Three Persons. He emphasized the unity of God's essence and at the same time he talked about the hypostases of the one God. Isidore knew, of course, that the human mind cannot grasp the incomprehensible wisdom, that God's wisdom, since that God overlies the limits of the human mind. Finally with the help of hagiographical passages he could comprehensively cover the letters of issues other than doctrinal, moral, ascetic, educational and interpretive. In the Scriptures, he supported that the believer finds in Christ supplies to strive for social and moral progress, but mainly in order to conquer spiritual godly progression and perfection. The profound study of the Scriptures provides to the human being the ability to keep alive the flame of faith. It is a safe guide for the course of the life in Christ according to what the Triune God revealed in the Old Testament, the incarnated Word taught in the New Testament and the Apostles preached. Through Isidore's letters, it seems the respect which nourishes the holy father for Old and New Testament. For him, both testaments have the same worth as sources the Bible. They proclaim strongly and unambiguously the existence of one and at the same time Triune God. Simultaneously he ridiculed those heretics like Marcion who distorted the truth and became enemies to the Testaments.
Jerusalem has to be free and God has to be loved: Bernard of Clairvaux between Second Crusade and Cistercian Mystic
Matteo RASCHIETTI
Original title: Jerusalém há de ser liberada e Deus há de ser amado: Bernardo de Claraval entre a Segunda Cruzada e a Mística Cisterciense
Published in The Middle Ages and the Crusades
Keywords: Bernard of Clairvaux, Love to God, Mystic, Second Crusade.
The XIIth century has been one of the most lively, turbulent and creative time of Middle Age. The reformation of the church, begun on first half of the XIth century, reaches its result, most of all in monastic sphere. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) was a great action man, incarnating the religious spirit of his epoch, and one of the founders of medieval mystic too. Preacher of the Second Crusade, which failed, wrote on De diligendo Deo the syntheses of his mystic experience that is also a summa of monastic experience as a whole.
Joachim of Fiore: Trinity, history and millenarianism
Cláudio REICHERT DO NASCIMENTO
Original title: Joaquim de Fiore: Trindade, história e milenarismo
Published in Mystic and Millenarianism in Middle Ages
Keywords: History, Joachim of Fiore, Millenarianism, Thomas Aquinas, Trinity.
The article shows the hermeneutic system developed by Joachim of Fiore to interpret the Scripture and History. The World's figure appears as a synthesis of this system and represents the general history (generalis historia), with regard to the Old and New Testaments, and the special histories (especiales historia). These histories have the relation between the biblical figures, present in both testaments, and the animals described in the prophet Ezekiel's vision. Finally, it makes reference to the criticism that Thomas Aquinas made to the doctrine of the abbot, since there would not be a new gospel that overlap with the new law in his opinion.
John the Baptist in the Segon del Cartoixà, by Joan Roís de Corella
Jordi OVIEDO SEGUER
Original title: Joan el Baptista en el Segon del Cartoixà, de Joan Roís de Corella
Published in
Keywords: Cartoixà, Joan Roís de Corella, Ludolph of Saxony, Vitae Christi.
In the field of religious-themed works of Roís de Corella, the work that is now presented is based on the peculiarity of one of the volumes, the second, that form the known as the Cartoixà, the catalan translation of the Vita Christi by Ludolph of Saxony, made by the valencian Joan Roís de Corella at the end of the 15th century. The Cartoixà is a work of own maturity, as constant features in Corella’s collection are gathered and characteristic nuances of our words are provided. The treatment of the figure of John the Baptist in the Segon will allow us to observe what are these and what elements distinguish the Cartoixà as part of creation, arising from a catechetical desire. This evangelical character symbolizes the passage between the Old Testament and the New; Corella will employ the resources of the literary language for the christocentric project that represents the Cartoixà.
Judes Macabeo: from hero of Old Testament to hero of medieval chivalry
Vinicius Cesar Dreger de Araújo
Original title: Judas Macabeu: de herói do Antigo Testamento a herói da cavalaria medieval
Published in The chivalry and the art of war in the Ancient and Medieval World
Keywords: Culture, Judas Maccabeys, chivalry.
Jñâna Yoga’s “Liberation in Life”, as Viewed by the Vedanta
Edrisi Fernandes
Original title: A “Liberação em vida” do Jñâna Yoga na visão do Vedanta
Published in Mirabilia 1
Keywords: Jivanmukti, Jñana Yoga, Kevaladvaita, Shankara, Uttara-Mimamsa, Vedanta.
Jñâna Yoga, the control of vital functions aiming at the actualization of wisdom/of “absolute knowledge”, is based, with rare exceptions, almost completely on the teachings of the Advaita (non-dualist) branch of the Vedânta (from the “End of the Veda”) school, and has chapter IV of the Bhagavad-Gitâ (the “Song of the Divine Master”) as a fundamental referece. Shankara (788-820), whose philosophical system is called kevalâdvaita (unique/perfect non-dualism [monism]) ou shuddhâdvaita (inqualified nondualism), has taken moral life as an essential requisite to metaphysical knowledge, necessary to reaching the ultimate objective of life: knowledge of the essential identity between the “I”(âtman) and the Supreme Being (Brahman). In his Viveka-Chûdâmani (“The Supreme Jewel of Discernment”), as well as in other vedantic writings, Brahman is called Sat-Chit-Ânanda (Being-Conscience-Blessedness), and G. Dandoy makes the following analogy between this conception and images of God in Saint Augustine (De Civitate Dei, VIII, 10): Sat - “causa constituta universitatis”; Chit - “lux percipiendæ veritatis”; Ânanda - “fons bibendæ felicitatis” (G. Dandoy, L’Ontologie du Vedanta, 1932: 33). We analize the way how these characteristics of the divine nature, that can be attained solely by those men that have reached the stage of jîvanmukti (“liberation in life”), can motivate men to reach the Divine, mirroring themselves in His/Her characteristics while trecking the trail of viveka (discerniment), and practicing as pre-requisites the obligatory actions of yama (“moral discipline”, consisting in Ahimsâ [“non-violence”], Satyâ “truthfulness”], Asteyâ [“notrobbing”], Brahmacaryâ [“chastity” or “non-vicious sexuality”], Aparigrahâ [“non-envy”]) and niyama (“self-control”, consisting in Shachka [“cleanliness” or “purity”], Samtosha [“content”], Tapas [“austerity” or “askesis”], Svâdhyâya [“study”], and Îshvara-pranidhâna [“devotion to the Supreme Being”]). We see in depth the reasons why, in the Vedânta, victory over ahamkâra (egotism) is the most important event in the life of the seeker of liberation, in the spirit of what Vivekânanda has thaught: “altruism is the negation of our lower or apparent self. It’s our task to freed ourselves from the miserable dream in which we are those bodies we see...” (Swami Vivekânanda, Jnâna-Yoga, 1936: 463).
King Horn, um romance inglês ducentista
Gabriela Cavalheiro
Published in The Philosophical Tradition in the Ancient and Medieval World
Keywords: King Horn, Middle English romance, translation.
Knowledge and Education in the Late Antiquity: the Monastic Fathers and Ecclesiastics before of Greek-Roman culture
Ronaldo Amaral
Original title: Saber e Educação na Antigüidade Tardia: os Padres monásticos e eclesiásticos diante da cultura greco-romana
Published in The educacion and secular culture in the Middle Ages
Keywords: Christianity, Culture, Late Antiquity.
The Late Antiquity is certainly one of the most important periods for the understanding of our civilization and its culture. Cradle of the Christianity and of that that would come to be the western Christian civilization, for we restrict ourselves to the Latin world, it is in this period that appears and it takes body, or else properly our material structures, in our great measure mental structures, once we owed to the Christianity and its main current of thought of this time, the Patristic, the essential not only of our religious credo, but even of the genesis in our way and thought reason. The Christian culture, for its time, had been indebted of another religious and cultural tradition, being built to the incorporation of that another tradition. This process was developed above all in this period that occupies us and by means of many of those that would come to be known as priests of the Church.
Kumbi Ṣāliḥ. An example of twin city. The zenith and the fall
Vicente CASTRO MARTÍNEZ
Original title: Kumbi Ṣāliḥ. Un ejemplo de ciudad gemela. Auge y caída
Published in Returning to Eden
Keywords: African values, Bilād as-Sudān, Ghana and Almoravids, Islam, Kumbi Ṣāliḥ.
The concept of twin city which, many times, is considered specifically African but, however, has its origin in the rise of Islam in territories such as Iraq and Egypt. The aim of this article is nothing but reflexing about this concept using the example of the ancient city of Kumbi Ṣāliḥ. Along the following lines there will be exposed some ideas as the origin of the city, its rise related to its condition of capital of the Kingdom of Ghana, the relation between Islamic and traditional African values and the causes of the decline that ends with the abandon of this place at the beginning of the 13th century. In addition, there will be used some sorts of resources such as archaeological discoveries, written records, and other piece of historical works. Finally, this essay has the proposal of using these resources in a complementary way.
