The Christian imaginary in the novels of knights and in the cantigas de amor
Hilda Gomes Dutra Magalhães, Eliane Cristina Testa and Izabel Cristina dos Santos Teixeira
Original title: O imaginário cristão nas novelas de cavalaria e nas cantigas de amor
Published in The educacion and secular culture in the Middle Ages
Keywords: Christian Education, chivalry story, love songs.
We analyze, in this text, the influence of the christian education in the secular imaginary of the Middle Age, more exactly in the story of chivalry Search for the Holy Grail and in the plaintive love songs, produced in the Europe in the twelfth century. Throughout the reflection, we observed an important influence of the Church as much in the cavalry stories as in the plaintive love songs, but these influences weren't sufficient for to avoid the increase, in the imaginary of Middle Age, of the individuality, cultural substratum of the Europe anterior the Christianism.
The Christian itinerary according to Evagrius Ponticus: the reach of its exegetical projections on the Holy Scriptures in general, and on the book of Ecclesiastes in particular
Santiago Hernán VÁZQUEZ, Ana Laura QUIROGA
Original title: El itinerario cristiano según Evagrio Póntico: sus proyecciones exegéticas en la Sagrada Escritura en general y en el libro del Eclesiastés en particular
Published in War and Disease in Antiquity and the Middle Ages
Keywords: Ecclesiastes, Evagrius Ponticus, Exegesis, Natural Contemplation.
In the context of current studies on the thought of Evagrius Ponticus we are interested in deepening the exegetical projections that –following a well– identified classical–Christian tradition– possesses the evagrian conception of Christianity as an itinerary of salvation. These projections extend to Sacred Scripture in general and, in a way, to the book of Ecclesiastes. Thus, after developing the sense of the evagrian itinerary and its general exegetical projections, our work will focus on the evagrian commentary entitled “Scholia on Ecclesiastes” and its place within the framework of the thought of the philosopher of Ponto. This work has been little studied but it constitutes a unique exegetical piece within the evagrian corpus. Through this work we access a deeper understanding of what Evagrius wanted to designate with the concept of “natural contemplation”. In this sense, deepening this work allows –in our view– a renewed understanding of the spiritual itinerary that constitutes, for Evagrius, the essence of Christianity. Similarly, Scholia on Ecclesiastes allow us to understand more fully the particularities of the exegetical evagrian method.
The Christian marvelous in the Mexico-Tenochtitlan conquest (1519-1521)
Guilherme Queiroz de Souza
Original title: O maravilhoso cristão na conquista de México-Tenochtitlán (1519-1521)
Published in The chivalry and the art of war in the Ancient and Medieval World
Keywords: Conquest of México-Tenochtitlán, Marvelous Christian, Spaniards.
The Christological nobility of animals in the medieval Bestiary: the Lion and the Unicorn examples
Pedro Carlos Louzada FONSECA
Original title: A nobreza cristológica de animais no bestiário medieval: o exemplo do Leão e do Unicórnio
Published in Aristocracy and nobility in the Ancient and Medieval World
Keywords: Christology, animal symbolism, medieval bestiary.
This article examines aspects of creation and development of the medieval bestiary, and its moral and doctrinal significance for medieval Christianity. In the development of the study, an analytical and interpretative exam is done in relation to some animals which are considered noble due to their outstanding Christological symbolism, namely the lion and the unicorn.
The Construction of Space(s) and Identity(s) in Medieval Literature: Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales as a Case Study
Mourad EL FAHLI
Published in Music in Middle Ages and Early Modernity
Keywords: Christendom, Cultural Interchange, Europe, Heathendom, Identity, Infidels, Representation.
This paper examines the engagement of medieval literature in the construction of identities, particularly those of Europe and Muslims. While the former is represented as a unified Christian space, the latter is depicted as an external threat that endangers God’s plan and kingdom. Hence, medieval literature distinguished two opposing spatiality’s namely Christendom and Heathendom. Such spatial configuration deliberately overlooked internal schisms and antagonisms that characterized medieval Europe and instead opted for an ideal utopian vision, which has its origin in crusading discourses that emphasized unity in the face of “infidels.” To examine these issues, the paper takes as an example Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, which is considered by many as one of the most influential medieval literary works. Medieval ideological othering has-ad still- shaped understandings and configurations of the various contacts between West and East and between Islam, Christianity and Judaism. The paper further enriches the discussion by a focus on cross-cultural interchange that informs Chaucer’s oeuvre, particularly the influence of Medieval Arabic scientific studies on his conception of lovesickness. Such interchange paradoxically problematizes the western condemnatory attitude towards Islam.
The Dante’s Inferno and the seventh circle symbology
Solange Ramos de ANDRADE and Daniel Lula COSTA
Original title: O Inferno de Dante e a simbologia do sétimo círculo
Published in Paradise, Purgatory and Hell: the Religiosity in the Middle Ages
Keywords: Dante, Demons, Hell, Middle Ages, Violence.
The period between XI to XIII century was remarkable for the expansion of Christian hell. The belief in evil increased the fear of unknown and enabled the structure of a punitive hell. The poet, Dante Alighieri, made a geography for Christian hell, paradise and purgatory by means of collective representations of medieval man. We’ll use the concept of representation to discuss the symbolism of Dante’s inferno, focusing in the structure of its seventh circle, where the violent souls are punished.
The Death of the Virgin Mary (1295) in the Macedonian church of the Panagia Peribleptos in Ohrid. Iconographic interpretation from the prospective of three apocryphal writings
José María SALVADOR GONZÁLEZ
Original title: La muerte de la Virgen María (1295) en la iglesia macedonia de la Panagia Peribleptos de Ohrid. Interpretación iconográfica a la luz de tres escritos apócrifos
Published in Relations between History and Literature in Ancient and Medieval World
Keywords: Byzantine painting, Iconography, Koimesis, Medieval Art, apocryphal literature.
Painted in 1295 by the Greek painters Michael Astrapas and Eutychios, the fresco of the Virgin’s Death (Koimesis) in the church of Panagia Peribleptos in Ohrid, Macedonia, highlights the main events described by the apocryphal stories on the death, the burial, the resurrection and the assumption of Mary, reinterpreted by the theologians and the hymns’ writers. This mural painting integrates in a diachronic development the scenes of the Virgin’s farewell to her friends, the coming of the apostles on clouds, the death, the funeral and the burial of Mary, including the episode on the attempt of desecration, the punishment and the conversion of a Jew named Jephonias, as well as the Virgin’s assumption, a subject performed for the first time in art. This article tries to explain and to illustrate the iconographic elements contained in this mural painting, analyzing them from the perspective of three apocryphal texts on the Mary’s death and assumption. Through such analysis we would highlight the direct and essential influence of certain Literature (apocryphal) in the creation of certain History, understood at the same time as History of Art (iconography) and History of Religions (dogmatic).
The Descent of Er: Ethic's philosophical foundation in Republica X
Flavia Dezzutto
Original title: El Descenso de Er: La fundamentación filosófica de la ética en República X
Published in Mirabilia 4
Keywords: Cavalry, Philosophy, Ramon Llull, Thought.
The objective of the present work is to analyze the allegorical story of the book X of the POLITEIA or Republic of Plato, known like the myth Er, in the perspective that we expose next. The "displacements", towards prohibitive regions for the mortals, by the routes of the dream or the death, have the common characteristic, from most archaic Greek Literature, to constitute spaces of revelation of certain truths. The paradigm of the ultra tomb story or the narration of the dream, as well as the literary figures that are made presents there, the topography of those regions, and the learning and testimonies that are compiled in that context, are decisive to delimit the sense field that tries a content transmitted to the revelations or knowledge. Of such way, the meaning field that appears from this analysis, sends the proposition of a political ethics, in the Greece of the IV century B.C. that makes possible to us discern the construction of a prescriptive sense, by means of rhetorical resources that acquire relevance, and they are inserted in a complex interpretative tradition, because the mentioned factors more above are the vehicle than instructs us about the doctrines that are tried to expose. These are exposed like the foundation of what is a model in the life of the mortals, in a philosophical sense, and still present an evaluation of the human institutions that comes from a strange place to the intellection of those who lives in the time; the border areas of the dream and the death.
The Epigraphic layout in the Pompeian honorary inscription of Marcus Holconius Rufus
Carlos Alberto SERTÃ
Original title: A Diagramação Epigráfica na inscrição honorária pompeiana de Marcus Holconius Rufus
Published in Aristocracy and nobility in the Ancient and Medieval World
Keywords: Epigraphy, Pompeii, lapidaries, ordering.
This paper examines the work of the lapidaries’ ordering on the epigraph of Marcus Marcus Holconius Rufus in Pompeii.
The Five Buddhas of Meditation from Yungang
André BUENO
Original title: Os Cinco Budas da Meditação de Yungang
Published in
Keywords: Ancient China, Buddhism, Buddhist Iconography, Intercultural Dialogue, Theory of Five Buddha’s of Meditation.
In a previous article, we examined the relationship between the Buddha Akshobhya 阿閦如来 of cave 16 from the Yungang complex 雲崗石窟 in China, and the construction of a Buddhist iconography with Indo, Greek and Roman origin’s. Our proposal was that the Buddha of cave 16 is designed to spiritually receive the peoples from the Mediterranean. Now we want to analyze the elements by which we can say that the Buddha of cave 16 is Akshobhya, and as the original set of five caves of Yungang was organized according to the theory of “Five Buddhas of Meditation”.
