Ricardo da COSTA

Original title: Apresentação: A Cruzada renasceu?

Published in The Middle Ages and the Crusades

Laura CAROLINA DURÁN

Original title: Ptolemaïs de Cirene (siglo III a. C.) y la teoría musical en la antigua Grecia

Published in Rhythms, expressions and representations of the body

Keywords: Aristoxenics, Greek Music Theory, Perception vs. Reason, Ptolemaïs of Cyrene, Pythagoreans.

Giles Menage in his History of Women Philosophers mentions Ptolemaïs of Cyrene as a Pythagorean not entirely committed to that school, he thinks that she was probably a contemporary of the Empress Julia Domna, since by her example many women dedicated themselves to studies. Ptolemaïs is the only woman music theorist from Greek Antiquity whose texts are preserved, but we lack biographical data about her. Porphyry’s Commentary on Ptolemy’s Harmonica contains a series of fragments, of variable lenght, from Ptolemaïs’s Pythagorean Elements of Music. In these texts, the female author presents the epistemological commitmets and methodologies of various schools of ancient musical traditions that she divides into two large groups: the mousikoí or Aristoxenics and the kanonikoí or Pythagoreans. These schools have a different understanding of the use of perception and reason in relation to musical knowledge. Pythagorean music theory was base on mathematical principles, while Aristoxenus favored the use of sensory data. When dealing with these themes, Ptolemaïs dedicates herself to the philosophical problema of the scope of reason and perception, a discussion of the mind-body dilema that has traversed the history of philosophy addressed in a philosophical-musical setting. In this work I present and analyze the perserved texts of the female autor, which will allow us to measure the importance of this female figure in the history of philosophical thought about music, while at the same time rescuing her from oblivion in Western culture.

Harvey Hames

Published in Ramon Llull (1232-1316): the cooperation among different cultures and the inter-religious dialogue

Keywords: Art, Correlatives, Kabbalah, Ramon Llull, Sefirot, Solomon ibn Adret, Trinity, conversion, religious disputation.

Unlike most of his contemporaries, Ramon Llull understood the need of actually engaging with the beliefs of his Jewish and Muslim contemporaries, rather than just with their texts, if he wanted to attain their conversion to Christianity. Coming from the Iberian peninsula where new theologies like Kabbalah were gaining ground among the Jews, Llull harnessed its central tenets in order to convince the Jews, by "necessary reason", of the inherent truth of Christianity. This article discusses the intellectual milieau in which Llull developed his Art, shows how he intended it to be used, and brings a Jewish response by Solomon ibn Adret, leader of the Jewish community in Catalonia to the challenge posed by Llull.

Manuel ORTUÑO ARREGUI

Original title: Las propuestas de Ramon Llull al Concilio de Vienne (1311-1312). Una síntesis del prehumanismo Cristiano

Published in

Keywords: Christian, Council Vienne, Humanism, Ramon Llull.

The Council of Vienne (1311-12) proposed to make proposals around the crusade. In this context, Ramon Llull made a series of proposals before his convocation, which were synthesized in the memorial Petitio in concilio generali [sc. Vienne] ad acquirendam terram sanctam (1311). They can be summarized in three thematic nuclei: the foundation of chairs for the teaching of oriental languages; the reform of the military orders to conquer the Holy Land, and, finally, the defense of the nature of the human person against Averroism that he considered an error. Of all these proposals, he succeeded in achieving the first and thus endowed European universities with the study of oriental languages for the later missionary enterprise. Without a doubt, a fundamental element in the synthesis of prehumanist thought that he promulgated until his last days of life as an influential man in the thought of the western Mediterranean and Europe.