David NAVARRO

Original title: Juan Manuel (1282-1348) and ‘Jewish’ Professions in Count Lucanor: A Medieval Iberian Model of Inter-Group Relations

Published in Medieval and Early Modern Iberian Peninsula Cultural History

Keywords: Convivencia, Count Lucanor, Extended Contact Hypothesis, Jew, Juan Manuel.

This article aims to analyze the personal relationship between Christian writer Juan Manuel (1282-1348) and the Jewish community in his collection of didactic exempla, El Conde Lucanor [Count Lucanor]. Through the theory of out-group interaction, and the mechanisms of re-fencing and extended contact hypothesis, I will examine the relationship of trust and respect reflected between the author and the Jews through the portrayal of some professions attributed to that community by popular folklore, such as money lenders, physicians, alchemists, nigromancers and sorcerers, as shown in the introduction and four exempla of the book. I will analyze several literary techniques employed by the author in regards to these ‘Jewish occupations’ as a resource to minimize the social rejection towards the Jew, and an example of a complex convivencia [cohabitation] that shaped XIV-century Castilian Christian-Jewish relations.

Cecilia DEVIA

Original title: Katechon y derecho de resistencia: una aproximación desde la Edad Media

Published in Medieval and Early Modern Iberian Peninsula Cultural History

Keywords: Galicia, Katechon, Late Middle Ages, Right of resistance, Violence.

The figure katechon is a complex and ambiguous character, based on a biblical quote taken from the Second Epistle of Paul to the Thessalonians. Expresses the power to “slow” or “holds” the coming of the Antichrist and therefore the confrontation between the forces of good and evil, which precedes the return of the Messiah and the end of the world. In this paper we build on the analysis undertaken on the concept by different contemporary thinkers. If the figure of katechon be applied in relation to the uprisings in medieval and early modern radical character as those inspired by millenarian movements, one could consider that the daily resistance of the dominated, mostly passive features, would act as a brake for the arrival of the end of the world, necessary for the advent of a new one.

Bernhard RAINER

Published in Music in Antiquity, Middle Ages & Renaissance

Keywords: 16th c. instrumentation, 40-part compositions, Alessandro Striggio, Cantorey, Ecce beatam lucem, Missa sopra Ecco si beato giorno, Transposition.

In the 1560s Alessandro Striggio composed monumental works such as his Missa sopra Ecco si beato giorno à 40 and a 40-voice motet, both of which can be proven to have been performed in Munich in 1567 and 1568. Analysis of the performing forces of Munich’s Cantorey of this time concludes not only that the instrumental participation of these performances must have been significant, but also that the works were transposed downward. Furthermore, a hypothesis is proposed that the Munich performance of an untitled 40-voice motet in 1568 involved Striggio’s Ecce beatam lucem à 40, which itself may constitute a contrafactum of Ecco si beato giorno, a madrigal that circulated in copies during the decade.

Julia van ROSMALEN

Original title: Letting the wolf in: the duality of human and animal, inclusion and exclusion and the crossing of these boundaries of the werewolves in Gerald of Wales’ Topographia Hibernica

Published in

Keywords: Boundaries, Depiction of the other, Duality, Eucharist theory, Form and nature, Inclusion and exclusion, Liminality, Monsters and hybrids, Transformation.

This article shows, using a close analysis of the images and text, that despite the initial association with ‘Othering’ and monstrousness, the werewolves from the Topographia Hibernica are not a perfect Other but rather assimilated into the community. They represent a transgression between the boundaries of the human and the animal that renders them porous and allows for movement between the two and an interplay of inclusion and exclusion. The werewolves aren’t hybrids in form or nature, but rather show a discordance between form and nature: They are perfectly animal in appearance and perfectly human in nature. The deliberate parallel with theory of form and nature in the eucharist which plays a central role in both the conclusion of the story, the final image and the authors theological discourse on transformation shows that the final verdict on the wolves is one of sameness rather than otherness.