«Caput et membras». The image of the Castilian king in the rhetoric and iconography
Osvaldo Víctor PEREYRA
Original title: «Caput et membras». La imagen del rey castellano en la retórica y la iconografía
Published in Idea and image of royal power of the monarchies in Ancient and Medieval World
Keywords: Body, Head, King, Member, image.
The construction of the archetypal image of the Castilian king implies the combination of a set of symbols of royal power during the Middle Ages are being incorporated place as their own manifestations of political-social gravity is reaching the monarchy front of the set of groups and classes privileged kingdom. This paper attempts to highlight some of these elements that involve the symbolic realization of the king's image both in the discursive construction and iconography that accompanies it.
Álvaro de Luna and the political discourses of the Chapel of Saint James
Cinthia ROCHA
Original title: Álvaro de Luna e os discursos políticos da Capela de Santiago
Published in
Keywords: 15th century, Crown of Castile, Funerary chapels, Nobility, Álvaro de Luna.
The Chapel of Saint James, built in the Cathedral of Toledo during the fifteenth century to become the burial place of Alvaro de Luna and his lineage, is one of the leading exponents of Spanish Late Gothic. The construction process had two phases: during the life of the Constable, when he took charge of the work, and a few decades after the tragic death of the former Favorite, when the Chapel elements were completed and his body transferred under the responsibility of his daughter, María de Luna y Pimentel, II Duchess of the Infantado. As the building occurred at different moments of a broad process of transformations, the structure also indicates changes in the representations and strategies used by the noblemen within conflicts of intra-nobility nature. The objective of this paper is analyze the Chapel of Saint James, understanding it as a complex form of political action, whose examination may contribute to the comprehension of the transformations that marked the fifteenth century in Castile, as the conflicts that involved the representation of groups and/or individuals were active agents of the changes that engendered the consolidation of high-nobility ideology.
“Personal Jesus”: Adam of Bremen and ‘Private’ Churches in Scandinavia During the Early Conversion Period
Dimitri TARAT
Published in Pleasure in the Middle Ages
Keywords: Adam of Bremen, Hamburg-Bremen, Local Churches, Local Kings, Scandinavia.
In modern research it is customary to describe the 50s and the 60s of eleventh century as a first phase of the struggle for independence by the local churches in Scandinavia. All of them were officially subordinated to the church of Hamburg-Bremen, even if some of them found themselves under the influence of the Anglo-Saxon church. However, careful reading of Adam of Bremen’s Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae Pontificum indicates that in fact the period at the end of the first phase of Christianisation, was a period of personal initiatives by local rulers to control the missions and religious establishments in their lands. These religious initiatives by rulers in 1050s and 1060s turned the control over the local churches into a political tool against unwelcome foreign influences. However, it would be a mistake to try and describe this period as an awakening of a national church movement in Scandinavia for ecclesiastical independence. The kings simply wanted to keep the church subjected only to them.
“Quel dan uenga sobre altre que sobre nos”: tolerance and pragmatism in the Llibre dels Feyts of James I of Aragon (1213-1276)
Aline Dias da SILVEIRA; Rodrigo Prates de ANDRADE
Original title: “Quel dan uenga sobre altre que sobre nos”: tolerância e pragmatismo no Llibre dels Feyts de Jaime I de Aragão (1213-1276)
Published in Medieval and Early Modern Iberian Peninsula Cultural History
Keywords: Iberian Peninsula, James I of Aragon, Llibre dels Feyts, Pragmatism, Tolerance.
The purpose of this article is to undestand the representations about the saracens in the autobiography of James I of Aragon (1208-1276) produced in the 1270 decade, the Llibre dels Feyts. Since the contemporary medieval studies interpret these representations from a preponderance of ethinic and religious aspects or a break caused by the first revolt of Valencia (1244), becomes necessary to analyze the relations between christians and muslims from a medieval concept of tolerance in order to encompass them in their historical complexity and increase the interpretations to the developed time by entering James I in the Iberian context of the XIII century. The analysis of the Llibre dels Feyts exposes the operationalization of a pragmatic policy toward the conquered Muslims populations, to tolerate those who recognize the authority and legitimacy of catalan-aragonese monarch. According to an organic and feudal perspective the saracens were incorporated into Catalan and Aragonese territories, without, however, enjoy a equal status.
“The Pleasure of the Text”: The Parliament of Fowls as the Site of Bliss for Chaucer and his Readers
Oya BAYILTMIŞ ÖĞÜTCÜ
Published in Pleasure in the Middle Ages
Keywords: Bliss, Parliament of Fowls, Roland Barthes, Textual pleasure, Writerly neurosis.
Roland Barthes’s arguments in The Pleasure of the Text have brought a literary outlook to the concept of pleasure. For him, texts that do not have a closure (‘indecisive texts’) create pleasure both in the author and the reader due to polysemy resulting from writerly neurosis. Hence, the body of the text, like a physical body, becomes a site of pleasure. Chaucer’s the Parliament of Fowls presents such a site of bliss through the love debate among the birds where Chaucer depoliticises and satirises the medieval estate structure. Moreover, left open-ended, the text creates Barthesian bliss for both Chaucer and his readers. Thus, the aim of this paper is to elucidate and evaluate Chaucer’s the Parliament of Fowls as the source of textual pleasure.
“Venid a suspirar al verde prado”: missing and melancholy in an Iberian song (XVI century)
José Eduardo Costa SILVA
Original title: “Venid a suspirar al verde prado”: saudade e melancolia em uma canção ibérica (séc. XVI)
Published in Medieval and Early Modern Iberian Peninsula Cultural History
Keywords: Iberian song, Musical analysis, Neo-Kantian, Phenomenology.
This article by employing the use of musical analysis, investigating the possibility of music porting an objective basis for the production of sensations, feelings and meanings. Thus, it is inscribed in the traditional discussion, often engendered by neo- Kantian and the Husserlian phenomenology, around the categorical joints involved in the subject-object relationship. The analyzed example is the Iberian anonymous “Venid a suspirar al verde prado”. Through its analysis, we concluded that the constitution's own musical time lie the foundations that sustain affective production and signifying that common sense attributes to the Iberian repertoire, especially the Portuguese songbook.
