THE VIRGIN MARY AS LADY GRAMMAR IN THE MEDIEVAL WEST

Traditio ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 74 ◽  
pp. 279-305
Author(s):  
GEORGIANA DONAVIN
Keyword(s):  
Early Literacy ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Chartres Cathedral ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Literacy Training

The Virgin Mary, as Mother of the Word, has long been associated with early literacy training in the medieval West, an association that, as this article argues, connects her to The Marriage of Philology and Mercury's Lady Grammar. While Gary P. Cestaro has demonstrated the ways in which representations of Lady Grammar became more maternal throughout the medieval period, this article demonstrates how and why the Virgin Mother took on the persona of Lady Grammar in both verbal and material arts from the High to the Late Middle Ages. It explores the famous sculptures of the Virgin and Lady Grammar on the Royal Portal at Chartres Cathedral, the writings of grammatical theorists that led to these depictions, and the thirteenth-century artes poetriae that portray Mary as a Christian Grammatica. From St. Augustine's declaration that grammar is a “guardian” to the claims of Gervais of Melkley, John of Garland, and Eberhard the German that Mary is the mother of beautiful expressions, grammatical thought and practice in the medieval West led to a characterization of the Virgin, guardian of the Word in her womb and parent to Wisdom, as the supreme teacher and exemplar of Latin. Adopting Lady Grammar's iconography of the nourishing breast, classroom text, and punitive whip, the Virgin Mary is not only connected to basic Latin instruction but also comes to embody its principles.

The Marian Symbolism of Spring, ca. 1200-ca. 1500: Two Case Studies

2006 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 319-398 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID J. ROTHENBERG
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Courtly Love ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Symbolic Thought ◽  
Polyphonic Music

Abstract As the season of earthly rebirth, spring in the high and late Middle Ages provided both an ideal setting for secular love songs and a symbolic underpinning for the liturgical season of Eastertide. With the Virgin Mary acting as a spiritual point of mediation, Eastertide liturgy and secular springtime song resonated symbolically with one another, a resonance seen nowhere more clearly than in polyphonic compositions in which Eastertide chants, Marian prayers, and secular springtime songs sound simultaneously. This essay presents two case studies that explore the confluence of these diverse elements within polyphonic music. The first examines thirteenth-century compositions on the widespread tenor In seculum, positing its origins in the Mass for Easter Sunday —and by extension its associations with spring—as the reason that it was used so often and combined with such diverse textual and musical materials as pastourelles, dances, courtly love songs, and Marian prayers. The second study examines the use of multiple cantus firmi in Isaac's Laudes salvatori (from Choralis Constantinus) and Josquin's Victimae paschali laudes, both paraphrase settings of Easter sequences that comment upon their primary cantus firmus by simultaneously quoting additional melodies. Isaac uses the chants Regina caeli and Victimae paschali laudes to emphasize the central role that Mary plays in the miracle of the Resurrection, while Joquin accomplishes this same goal by employing the well-known chansons D'ung aultre amer and De tous biens plaine as vernacular symbols of Christ and the Virgin Mary, respectively. The two case studies, taken together, illustrate a consistent mode of symbolic thought that endured for over three centuries.

The Image of Music and the Bodies of Knowledge in the Late Middle Ages: Rhythmic Procedures as Cultural Representations

1996 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorit Tanay
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Cultural Representations ◽  
Musical Thought ◽  
Late Middle Ages

The ArgumentThe paper argues that the distinction between modernism and postmodernism can be applied metaphorically to clarify the changing image of music during the late Middle Ages. The paper discusses the scientific and rational strategies that thirteenth century musical theorists applied to revise earlier musical conceptualization. It highlights the thirteenth-century innovative affiliation of music with Aristotelian physics and argues that in a very subtle and seemingly contradictory way music theorists expressed the nascent awareness, if not tacit acknowledgment, of the mundane nature of music. It argues further that in the fourteenth century the issue of representing musical-rhythmical variability by means of a suitable language shifted to the forefront of musical theory and practice. The unprecedented emphasis on musical signs and their semantic behavior as well as the demand to demystify the discourse about rhythmical concepts — so as to question the necessity of metacategories — all point to an affinity between fourteenth century musical thought and postmodern sensibilities.

The Criterion for Distinguishing Legal Opinions from Judicial Rulings and the Administrative Acts of Judges and Rulers

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shihab al-Din Ahmad ibn Idris al-Qarafi al-Maliki
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
English Translation ◽  
English Language ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Seminal Work ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Legal Texts ◽  
Legal Opinions ◽  
Subsequent Revision

This book is the first and much-needed English translation of a thirteenth-century text that shaped the development of Islamic law in the late middle ages. Scholars of Islamic law can find few English language translations of foundational Islamic legal texts, particularly from the understudied Mamluk era. This edition addresses this gap, finally making the great Muslim jurist Shihab al-Din al-Qarafi's seminal work available to a wider audience. The book's examination of the distinctions among judicial rulings, which were final and unassailable; legal opinions, which were advisory and not binding; and administrative actions, which were binding but amenable to subsequent revision, remained standard for centuries and are still actively debated today.

scholarly journals Lying and Perjury in Medieval Practical Thought

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Corran
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Moral Ambiguity ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
Moral Rules

Thought about lying and perjury became increasingly practical from the end of the twelfth century in Western Europe. At this time, a distinctive way of thinking about deception and false oaths appeared, which dealt with moral dilemmas and the application of moral rules in exceptional cases. It first emerged in the schools of Paris and Bologna, most notably in the Summa de Sacramentis et Animae Consiliis of Peter the Chanter. The tradition continued in pastoral writings of the thirteenth century, the practical moral questions addressed by theologians in universities in the second half of the thirteenth century, and in the Summae de Casibus Conscientiae of the late Middle Ages. This book argues that medieval practical ethics of this sort can usefully be described as casuistry—a term for the discipline of moral theology that became famous during the Counter-Reformation. This can be seen in the medieval origins of the concept of equivocation, an idea that was explored in medieval literature with varying degrees of moral ambiguity. From the turn of the thirteenth century, the concept was adopted by canon lawyers and theologians, as a means of exploring questions about exceptional situations in ethics. It has been assumed in the past that equivocation and the casuistry of lying was an academic discourse invented in the sixteenth century in order to evade moral obligations. This study reveals that casuistry in the Middle Ages was developed in ecclesiastical thought as part of an effort to explain how to follow moral rules in ambiguous and perplexing cases.

The Medieval Spice Trade

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Freedman
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Consumer Preference ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Trade Routes ◽  
Essential Ingredient ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
History Of ◽  
Spice Trade ◽  
Medieval Food ◽  
Historic Change

Europe's insatiable demand for spices in the late Middle Ages (1200-1500 AD) is a remarkable example of dramatic historic change triggered by consumer preference. The spice trade is important to the history of food not only because of the trade routes and speculation about how to expand them, but also because of the reasons for the heavy demand in the first place. Tropical spices are not an essential ingredient of modern European cuisine. This article documents the spice trade during the medieval period. It first considers the ubiquity of spices in medieval gastronomy and medieval pharmacology. It then turns to the health benefits of spices to medieval food, the origins and imagined origins of spices, spice trade routes, and prices of spices.

The Still Undiscovered Origin of Portolan Charts

1983 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 124-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. C. Freiesleben
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Board Ship ◽  
Modern Form

The term ‘portolan chart’ first occurs in Italy in the thirteenth century, not long after this aid to navigation came into general use on board ship. The Italian word portolano, however, can best be translated as ‘pilot book’ or ‘sailing directions’, a different aid to navigation of which one example survives from the fourth century b.c., and pilot books are indeed still published in modern form by all seafaring nations. References by Herodotus in the History make it probable that such documents already existed in his time, and under the name of periplus they continued up to the sixth century a.d.; after which they do not appear again until the golden age of navigation in Italy and Catalonia in the late Middle Ages, apart from some much simpler early medieval types. The portolano or periplus is a description of ports, with information required by the navigator concerning anchorages, dangers threatening landfall and the winds and weather over wider areas. Commercial information was sometimes included, obviously also a matter of interest to the mariner who could read, though it may be doubted if many of them then could.Italian portolan charts exist from almost the same period as the portolani, both of them denoted by the same word compasso, but while the pilot books have their modern successors the charts were only produced up to the beginning of the seventeenth century and are not really the forerunners of the modern sea chart.

scholarly journals Studnia przydrożna z XVI-XVII wieku na Ostrowie Tumskim w Poznaniu

2018 ◽  
pp. 67-80
Author(s):  
Olga Antowska-Gorączniak ◽  
Paweł Lech ◽  
Andrzej Sikorski
Keyword(s):  
Sea Level ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The Road ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Rose ◽  
The Church ◽  
Beam Technique

In July 2008 a roadside well was discovered on the cathedral island in Poznań (to date at least five drawing wells from the late Middle Ages and modern times have been registered).  The well was unearthed at the rose square (excavation pit 51/2008) about 18 m from the facade of the church of the Blessed Virgin Mary (and the now nonexistent churchyard) at the level of  56.09 meters above sea level (rubble fill-in) – 50.61 meters above sea level (end of exploration) – Fig. 1.  The object was situated directly next to the road, in a large oval or quadrilateral pit (with rounded corners) ca 3.6 m in diameter, and was ca 5.5 m deep. The wooden construction which protected the walls of the object was done in the post and beam technique – Fig. 2. Many different objects fell (were thrown) into the well while water was being drawn from it, perhaps some of them were redeemed while other remained at the bottom. However, most of the “sunk” relics got into the well while it was being dug or repaired, but especially when it was filled in, i.e. when water was no longer drawn from it (Figs. 4 and 5).The well, which was sunk during the rule of Bishop Jan Lubrański (1499-1520), i.e. at a time of prosperity of Ostrów Tumski in the 16th century, was in use and water was drawn from it in the 15/16-17th centuries. It is difficult to assert what reasons decided about its being

scholarly journals Continuity of Traditions in the Theotokos Shroud Images Creation: From Royal Craftwork Rooms — to Modern Russian Workshops

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (5) ◽  
pp. 546-559
Author(s):  
Marina V. Yuryeva
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Russian Orthodox ◽  
Russian Orthodox Church ◽  
Russian Orthodoxy ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Trace Back ◽  
First Time

In modern practices of Russian Orthodoxy, the feast of the Virgin Mary Dormition is so­lemnized with great splendor. During these celebrations in large and small religious centers, a liturgical image, in the Russian Orthodox Church called “The Theotokos Holy Shroud”, becomes the central temple image. This article, for the first time, makes an attempt to track down a continuity in the Dormition Shroud images creation — from royal craftwork rooms of medieval Russia to modern workshops. Learning on previous masterpieces, present-day apprentices contribute to preservation and deve­lopment of the unique traditions of national culture. The article introduces into scientific circulation a number of rare artifacts that become a subject of research for the first time. The study provides facts refuting the nowadays-widespread opinions that, in the alleged absence of material evidence (preserved monuments) of an earlier time, the period in which these images originated dates back to the late 19th century. This determines the relevance of the study. The author comes to the conclusion that, however brief and undescriptive the data recorded in documentary sources are, they make it clear that these relics already existed in the late Middle Ages, though questions of authorship and artistic value of the works still remain to be answered. This analysis becomes possible through studying the Synodal era images discovered in vestiaries of churches in the Moscow region, as well as those reported in some historical descriptions. Modern masters recreate works of high artistic le­vel, applying a combination of the ancient heritage and the modern variety of materials and innovative technologies. The data presented in the article contribute to further studying of the issues embra­cing emergence and spread of the liturgical images of the Theotokos Shroud in the practices of Russian Orthodoxy. It is also important to trace back the historical background of those selected artifacts first mentioned in this paper.

scholarly journals Árbitros y mediadores en el mundo rural valenciano durante la Baja Edad Media: Els Ports y El Maestrat (s. XIII-XIV) = Arbiters and Mediators in Rural Valencia during the Late Middle Ages: Els Ports and El Maestrat (Thirteenth-Fourteenth Centuries)

2019 ◽  
pp. 379
Author(s):  
Vicent Royo Pérez
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
Rural Society ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Social

Este artículo analiza la identidad de los árbitros que median en los conflictos suscitados en el campo valenciano en la Baja Edad Media. Tras la conquista del siglo XIII, la implantación de la nueva sociedad rural provoca el surgimiento de numerosos conflictos entre los actores sociales presentes en las comarcas de Els Ports y El Maestrat, situadas al norte del reino de Valencia. Muchos de estos litigios se solucionan a través de la institución arbitral, de modo que los mediadores tienen la responsabilidad de gestionar los cambios de la estructura social. En consecuencia, se pretende analizar la identidad de los árbitros y averiguar los criterios que siguen señores, burgueses y campesinos para elegir a los mediadores durante los siglos XIII y XIV, porque estos personajes tienen un papel esencial en la articulación de las relaciones sociales en el mundo rural.AbstractThis article analyses the identity of the arbiters in conflicts that took place in the rural country of the kingdom of Valencia during the late Middle Ages. After the conquest of the thirteenth century, the implementation of a new rural society led to the emergence of numerous conflicts between the social actors present in the regions of Els Ports and El Maestrat, both located in the northern part of the kingdom of Valencia. Many of these conflicts were resolved through arbitration, so the arbiters are responsible for managing any changes in social structure. Consequently, our aim is to analyse the identity of the arbiters and to determine the diverse criteria that lords, bourgeois and peasants followed to choose mediators during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, as these individuals played an essential role in the forging of relationships in rural society.

The Siculo-Arabic Ivories and Their Spreading to al-Andalus

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Noelia Silva Santa-Cruz
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Mediterranean Region ◽  
Western Mediterranean ◽  
Work Activity ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Extensive Range ◽  
Art Trade ◽  
Manufacturing Techniques

AbstractFrom the mid-twelfth century to the first half of the thirteenth century, Norman Sicily was one of the main centres of ivory work activity in the Western Mediterranean. Its workshops specialized in the crafting of ivory objects painted in various typologies according to manufacture techniques, and they are a splendid specimen of medieval quantity production. The extensive range of these pieces indicates the development of an almost industrialized manufacture whose products massively expanded and circulated throughout the Mediterranean region during the Late Middle Ages. Early on, al-Andalus received copies bearing these characteristics through the art trade and, once the Norman workshops ceased to exist, kept painted ivory production alive during the Naṣrid period by establishing its own manufacturing techniques that assimilated the techniques from the island while creating a thematic repertoire and some clearly personal aesthetic models.

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