Gregory of Tours, Political Criticism and Lower-Class Violence
Michael BURROWS
Published in Pleasure in the Middle Ages
Keywords: Authority, Class, Gregory of Tours, Merovingian Gaul, Political Critique.
The aim of this paper is to add to the growing scholarship on Gregory of Tours’ Histories by investigating a series of episodes of lower class violence that occurred in Book VII of that work. It is hoped that this study will demonstrate an additional layer to Gregory’s work, and add to our understanding of his perception of authority in contemporary Merovingian society. It is also hoped that, in addition to investigation Gregory’s agenda, some light will be cast on the lower classes of Merovingian Gaul and their potential for ‘independent’ acts of violence.
Have we learned from the mistakes of the past? Segregation of leprosy patients until the twentieth century
Patrícia Duarte DEPS, Brunella de A. FREITAS, Cícero D. CHICON, Larissa C. CASER, Líbia A. MENDES, Marianna M. SIQUEIRA, Luciana QUINTELA, Manoel A. CATARINA
Original title: Será que aprendemos com os erros do passado? Segregação dos pacientes portadores de hanseníase até o século XX
Published in
Keywords: Colony hospital, Human rights, Leprosy, Segregation.
Hansen’s disease, also known as "leprosy" in Brazil until the end of the 60s in the last century, is an infectious disease of low contagiousness. Once the cause was unknown, in Medieval Age, leprosy was a disease related to divine punishment, and leprosy patients were stigmatized and isolated in "leper colonies". The suffering of those who were diagnosed with leprosy lingers to nowadays, and the current article brings events that occurred with carriers of the disease in Brazil until 1979 mainly. In the State of Espírito Santo was built Dr. Pedro Fontes Hospital, also known as Colony of Itanhenga, which was opened in 1937. That Colony Hospital worked for several decades as a place of compulsory isolation of leprosy patients. We show the vision of former leprosy patients and former staffs of Dr. Pedro Fontes Hospital, and former inmates of Alzira Bley Educational Establishment, a site dedicated to the segregation of children born from leprosy patients while hospitalized at Dr. Pedro Fontes Hospital. The article presents the theme to bring up the reflection about decisions made by the society that hurts the basic principles of human rights.
History through Image: an iconological analysis of the Saint George’s Altarpiece by Bernat Martorell
Carlos Vinicius Costa de MENDONÇA, Bárbara Lofiego Pimenta LOFEGO
Original title: A História através da Imagem: uma análise iconológica do Retábulo de São Jorge (1425-1437) de Bernat Martorell (c. 1390-1452)
Published in Art, Criticism and Mysticism
Keywords: 15th century, Bernat Martorell, International Gothic, Medieval Art, St. George.
This work aims to establish an iconological analysis based on the art historian Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968) methodology of analysis. The addressed work is the St. George’s Altarpiece (1425-1437) by the Catalan painter Bernat Martorell (1390-1452). The major goal is to data the collection of St George’s legend and the copic texts that tells his life, highlighting the chivalrous ideal represented by this saint in the fifteenth century medieval society. This work also aims to provide a comprehensive overview of this society, which was identified whth St. George’s image, in that particular period.
Homo, animal pacificans: Toward an interpretation of Llull’s system in anthropological key
Julián BARENSTEIN
Original title: Homo, animal pacificans: Hacia una interpretación del sistema luliano en clave antropológica
Published in Ramon Llull. Seventh centenary
Keywords: Human télos, Lullian Anthropology, New interpretation, Peace, Ramon Llull.
In this paper we present the fundamental guidelines for a general interpretation of Llull’s system that takes as points of support the conception of man put forward by Ramon Llull and the specific role of the human being, his télos, in this world. Also, in the course of our research we use elements taken from current interpretations to show, finally, their compatibility in the light of our proposal.
Human dignity and conflicts of interest in clinical trials in the book "The Constant Gardener"
Márcia de Cássia CASSIMIRO, Joana ARAÚJO, Teresa Adão da FONSECA
Original title: Dignidade humana e conflitos de interesse nos ensaios clínicos na obra O Fiel Jardineiro
Published in
Keywords: Clinical trials, Conflict of interest (COI), Human Dignity, The Constant Gardener.
The cruel and violent history of humanity, full of injustices and tyrannies revealing indifference and disrespect for human dignity, has nevertheless shown real progress in understanding and recognising each person's dignity and in establishing such dignity as the foundation for the rights and ethical imperatives with which human society has been built. Nowadays, however, human progress in the fields of medicine, biotechnology and scientific research entails unacceptable abuse and heralds serious threats to human dignity. Objectively, loss of dignity can occur in situations of war, poverty, or social misery, but people in these situations can still preserve great dignity in their behaviour, not feeling unworthy in the eyes of others. There are situations of great indignity. The issue in The Constant Gardener involves a clear violation of dignity. The way the pharmaceutical industry, lacking any scientific integrity, conducts a clinical trial in a country who’s political and social situation is completely disrupted and where the population is highly vulnerable due to several factors such as their economic and social condition, food shortages, and high illiteracy is without a doubt a clear violation of human dignity. Conflicts of interest in scientific research, particularly in clinical trials and how they are conducted, represent a point of convergence of two different areas, science and ethics, encouraging reflection and the search for solutions that will promote not only scientific, but also moral progress.
Human or Computer Assisted Interactive Transcription: Automated Text Recognition, Text Annotation, and Scholarly Edition in the Twenty-First Century
M. J. CASTRO-BLEDA, J. M. VILAR, S. ESPAÑA, D. LLORENS, A. MARZAL, F. PRAT, F. ZAMORA
Published in Pleasure in the Middle Ages
Keywords: Ancient documents, Assisted transcription, Interactive automatic text recognition, Multimodal human/computer interaction.
Computer assisted transcription tools can speed up the initial process of reading and transcribing texts. At the same time, new annotation tools open new ways of accessing the text in its graphical form. The balance and value of each method still needs to be explored. STATE, a complete assisted transcription system for ancient documents, was presented to the audience of the 2013 International Medieval Congress at Leeds. The system offers a multimodal interaction environment to assist humans in transcribing ancient documents: the user can type, write on the screen with a stylus, or utter a word. When one of these actions is used to correct an erroneous word, the system uses this new information to look for other mistakes in the rest of the line. The system is modular, composed of different parts: one part creates projects from a set of images of documents, another part controls an automatic transcription system, and the third part allows the user to interact with the transcriptions and easily correct them as needed. This division of labour allows great flexibility for organising the work in a team of transcribers.
Humanism and medieval narrative in Max Weber´s iron cage: the case of Hayden White
Miguel Ángel SANZ LOROÑO
Original title: Humanismo y narrativas medievales en la jaula de hierro de Max Weber: el caso de Hayden White
Published in
Keywords: Cold War, Philosophy of History, Weber, White.
This paper attempts to read the “content of the form” of the medievalist work published by Hayden White in his early academic career. Taking Max Weber as the main guide, White plotted the history of papal schism of 1130 with typical tools of social science: Weberian typology and narrative. Also, White began, from the contradictions and limits of the German sociologist, to develop a personal vision of the humanistic and moral function of historiography. The limits to his humanism that he found in Weber's quasi dystopian narrative of modernization, strongly embodied by the realities of the Cold War, were equally important for this development. Over time, these limitations (from political prohibition to antihumanism) led White from Max Weber to Benedetto Croce. Finally, the neo-Kantian dualism of Weber's epistemology, which dramatically embodied the ontological gap opened up by modernity, had developed by the humanist idealism of the Neapolitan philosopher.
Humorous Discourses on Classical Greek Pottery
Manuel ÁLVAREZ JUNCO
Original title: Discursos humorísticos de la cerámica griega clásica
Published in The World of Tradition
Keywords: Classical Greece, Conceptual wit, Iconography, Visual insight.
The figurative pottery of classical Greece developed some visual discourses recognizable in the current Western humorous graphics. An important legacy of these significant images, of a high-quality technical workmanship and artistic expressiveness, has reached our times. This paper shows and analyses some examples of that visual world and its communicative methodology. The festive, the comic and, above all, the conceptually witty, has been the criteria followed for their selection.
Humour in the Game of Kings: The Sideways Glancing Warder of the Lewis Chessmen
Annika HÜSING
Published in Pleasure in the Middle Ages
Keywords: Cultural Perspective, Cultural Turn, Humour, Lewis Chessmen, Odd one out.
The cultural turn of the twentieth century’s last quarter gradually led to a new approach to the classical objects of historical research. Historians nowadays are required to take on a ‘cultural perspective’ in the course of their studies. Using the example of a particular piece of the Lewis Chessmen this paper examines both the benefits and the limitations that come about with the cultural approach and cautions against a too rigid application.
Idols that collapse. The memory of the cult of Apollo in the Flight into Egypt of the Holy Family
Patricia GRAU-DIECKMANN
Original title: Ídolos que se derrumban. El recuerdo del culto a Apolo en la Huida a Egipto de la Sagrada Familia
Published in
Keywords: Apollo, Early Christianity, Flight to Egypt of the Holy Family, Late Middle Ages.
Through the iconographic analysis of two representations of the Flight to Egypt of the Holy Family, one of the fifth century and another of the fourteenth century, an attempt will be made to consider the possibility of the durability in Christian art of motifs linked to the ancient Greco-Roman religion, syncretized in the cult of Apollo settled in Egypt. Two emblematic works of this iconography will be analyzed, but chronologically and geographically opposed. They are the mosaic representation of the Flight to Egypt in Santa Maria Mayor of Rome (432) and the flemish diptych of Dijon (c. 1390), by Melchor Broederlam (c. 1355-1411). Both will serve as paradigmatic images to suspect that the presence of the ancient myths was not totally eradicated from the popular imagination, at least during the period from the Early Christianity to the Late Middle Ages. The written sustenance is found in the narrations of the earliest Apocryphal Gospels. The central theme is the plastic repetition of the presence of the idols of the temples of the god Apollo that fall from their pedestals when the Holy Child is present.
