Gontrão: Rei, Sacerdote, Santo
Edmar Checon de Freitas
Published in The Philosophical Tradition in the Ancient and Medieval World
Keywords: Christian royalty, Gregory of Tours, Merovingian Gaul.
Graphic parody in classical Greece
Manuel ÁLVAREZ JUNCO
Original title: La parodia en la Grecia clásica
Published in Mirabilia Journal 34
Keywords: Classical Greece, Figurative ceramics, Graphic parody, Visual humour.
What we now call graphic humour did not emerge until the 19th century with European and American periodicals. Tracing its precedents in the figurative ceramics of classical Greece is the reason for this study, focused exclusively on graphic parody. To find it, it has been necessary to contextualize its opportunity and analyse its specific visual resources. If a culture like the Greeks provided us with the formal, conceptual, and aesthetic bases of Western civilization, this article delves into the figurative counterpoints developed by these fundamental ancestors of ours.
Heaven versus Hell: The vision Tnugdal and the voyage of the soul in search of salvation (12th century)
Adriana Zierer
Original title: Paraíso versus Inferno: a Visão de Túndalo e a Viagem Medieval em Busca da Salvação da Alma (séc. XII)
Published in Expressing the Divine: Language, Art and Mysticism
Keywords: Heaven, Hell, Seven deadly sins, Tnugdal.
The Salvation in Middle Ages was connected to the idea of voyage. The medieval man saw himself as a voyager (homo viator), a walker between two worlds: the ephemerous earth, place of tentations and the Heaven, the kingdom of God and of celestials beings. If the individual suceeded in maintain his body pure, he would obtain the salvation, but if he failed his soul would be condemned with eternal chastiments in Hell or provisorial in the Purgatory. It was a medieval paradox the fact that the soul could only be saved by the body. Because this sentiment of guilt, broght by the Original Sin, the population usually searched for salvation by means of a voyage, for example the peregrinations to achieve the Saint Earth (Jerusalem). These displacements were insecures (bad trails, menace of robbery and of diseases) and seen as a form of salvation since the pilgrim never knew for sure if he would come back or not. He wanted to experience in his flesh what Christ and other martyrs had suffered. Another means of salvation was the isolation from the rest of society in search of a life connected to God, such as the hermits and monks did. Because of their despite for terrestrial pleasures and their lives consacrated in prayers and fastings to God, they were considered the purest in terrestrial society. The benedictine monks dedicated themselves to write Visions with the purpose of presenting the chastiments and pleasures of the souls in beyond. Their intention was to show to the people the correct rules of behavior to obtain the salvation. The exempla, such as the Vision of Tundalo, present the types of chastiments based on the seven capital sins, and the actions that should be performed to reach the Paradise: to give alms, to go to mass, to give riches to the Church and to avoid lust. Un common element from the Visions is the emphasis in the sensations of the five senses. For example, stink in Hell and perfume in Heaven. Tortures are explained by the use of darkness, screams and sorrows, in opposition to clarity, singing and happiness. In Iconography, with the Seven Deadly Sins, by Bosch, and The Final Jugdement, by Fra Angelico, the structure of the Visions is confirmed. The topos of the beyond, in the case of the Heaven, are characterized by an edenic landscape represented by gardens, chants, fountains, angels and leafy trees. Once in Hell, the geography presuppose some obstacles such as ways with narrow brigdes, boiling rivers, mountains, lakes of ice and monsters. Thus, the individual in Middle Ages wanted the salvation more for the fear of Hell than from the glories of the Heaven, and the human soul debated herself between the desire for the pleasures and the dread of the infernal abyss.
Height, fall and rebirth of the Carolingian exegetical tradition. Comments regarding the transmission of the Benedictine culture between centuries VIII and XX
Alfonso M. HERNÁNDEZ RODRÍGUEZ
Original title: Auge, caída y renacimiento de la tradición exegética carolingia. Observaciones sobre la transmisión de la cultura benedictina entre los siglos VIII y XX
Published in Medieval and Early Modern Iberian Peninsula Cultural History
Keywords: Benedictine culture, Biblical exegesis, High Middle Ages, Maurists.
During the High the Middle Ages the main centers of thought were, or were influenced, by the cultural and theological tradition of the monasteries. The Carolingian biblical exegesis belongs to that tradition. This study explores the becoming of the exegetical texts that forms that tradition, from its production to its modern use as sources for the study of early medieval culture during the twentieth century.
Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179): the Exceptional Way of a Medieval Visionary Woman
Carmen Lícia Palazzo
Original title: Hildegard de Bingen: o excepcional percurso de uma visionária medieval
Published in Expressing the Divine: Language, Art and Mysticism
Keywords: Church, Hildegard of Bingen, Middle Ages, visionary woman.
The goal of this article is to present a few aspects of the extensive body of work by the visionary nun Hildegard of Bingen, relating her acceptance with the 12th century context and suggesting certain research possibilities. The debate among monks of Cister and Cluny and the severe criticism to Abelard’s teachings by Bernard of Clairvaux constitute, in my opinion, an essential elements to be considered in order to explain the direct support by the Church to Hildegard’s texts and Hildegard as a person. However, it was certainly the quality of her work and her prodigious intelligence that consolidated her achievements not only as a visionary but also as composer, counsellor and therapist.
History handbooks and medieval education: Middle Ages historiography, proximities and distances
Luciana Rosar Fornazari KLANOVICZ
Original title: Os manuais de História da Educação e a educação medieval: aproximações e distanciamentos na historiografia sobre Idade Média
Published in Aristocracy and nobility in the Ancient and Medieval World
Keywords: Historiography, History handbooks, Middle Ages, education.
This article addresses interpretations on medieval education available in Education History handbooks in the light of a historiography reading on the topic. Therefore, Paul Monroe’s História da Educação, Edward Myers’ La educación en la perspectiva de la historia, Mario Manacorda’s História da educação, and Franco Cambi’s História da Pedagogia have been analyzed. Amidst any discourse disputes, knowledge on Middle Ages within Education History has also been losing quality or becoming rather symbolic in physical space or time periods, in order to guarantee the identification of western civilization with secularization, progress, and civilization conceived as the ideal society meant to be constructed for the contemporary age.
Horace in Curial e Güelfa?
Sònia GROS LLADÓS
Original title: Horaci en Curial e Güelfa?
Published in
Keywords: Bacchus, Benvenuto da Imola, Curial e Güelfa, Horace.
This article analyzes the possible presence of Horace, not studied so far by the specialists, in the novel Curial e Güelfa. Firstly, the most obvious points of contact are established: the relevance of the classical deities of poetry, Apol·lo and Bacchus, and the respective domains to which they were associated. The transmission of classical texts is revised through the exegetic tradition of the Commedia and finally a proposal of the Anonymous Catalan author’s interpretation is offered.
Humanizing the Biomedical Model, and the Quality-of-Care Crisis
James A. MARCUM
Original title: Humanização do Modelo Biomédico e a Crise na Qualidade do Cuidado com a Saúde
Published in
Keywords: Biomedical Model, Humanistic Medicine, Quality-of-Care Crisis.
In this paper, I explore the philosophical issues concerning the efforts of philosophers and clinicians to humanize the biomedical model of medical knowledge and practice to address the quality-of-care crisis. To that end, I discuss the metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical dimensions of the biomedical model and its humanization. I begin with metaphysics, exploring the presuppositions upon which modern medical knowledge and practice are founded; for presuppositions determine the entities that compose the medical worldview. Next, I examine the epistemological issues that face the humanization of the biomedical model, particularly those driven by methodological procedures undertaken by epistemic agents to constitute medical knowledge and practice. Finally, I investigate the ethical implications of the biomedical model and of its humanization, especially in terms of the physician-patient relationship. In a concluding section, I discuss the issues surrounding the question of the humanization of the biomedical model in terms of the quality-of-care crisis.
Hávamál: annotated translation from Old Norse to Portuguese
Elton O. S. MEDEIROS
Original title: Hávamál: tradução comentada do Nórdico Antigo para o Português
Published in Mulier aut Femina. Idealism or reality of women in the Middle Ages
Keywords: Hávamál, Medieval Scandinavia, Mythology, Poetic Edda.
Present in the manuscript of the Poetic Edda, the poem Hávamál is one of the most famous texts of the Old Norse literature. With elements which allude the mythological past of northern Europe, social practices of conduct and signs of pre-Christian religiosity. With this annotated translation done from the original idiom to Portuguese we intend to shed some new light upon this work to the modern public, whether to the scholar as to those that are taking your first contact with the poem.
Iconographic Analysis of the Façade of the Temple of San Miguel Arcángel, in Ixmiquilpan, Hidalgo
Carmen Fabiola MORENO VIDAL
Original title: Análisis Iconográfico de la Portada del Templo de San Miguel Arcángel, en Ixmiquilpan, Hidalgo
Published in Music in Antiquity, Middle Ages & Renaissance
Keywords: 2 acatl, Augustinians, Façade, Ixmiquilpan, Nahui-Ōlin, Shield, Winged hippocampus.
The Plateresque façade of the temple of San Miguel Arcángel, has a harmonious and elegant composition, with a rich decoration based on grotesques, presenting a clear moralizing and reflective message for the Christian observer of the time; for the indigenous observer, the grotesques could contain the main symbols of their worldview by presenting familiar and mimetic forms, such as the four-petalled flowers representing the Nahui-Ōlin, the flamer cauldron shaped like the sign 2 Acatl, the shields of San Nicolás Tolentino with Atl tlachinolli, the tops of the columns as a representation of the Tlachieloni and the undulating forms like Xonecuilli. This cover also presents the unification of European elements with the local ones, such as the coats of arms that contain the local flora and fauna, as well as the representation of a territorial partiality in the pre-Hispanic way, through the Altepetl.
