Matthew X. Vernon, The Black Middle Ages: Race and Construction of the Middle Ages. The New Middle Ages. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, xiii, 266 pp.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 387-388
Author(s):  
Albrecht Classen

When I agreed to review this book, I had not paid enough attention to the subtitle, which reveals that the author is primarily concerned with the issue of Medievalism. In essence, Vernon is examining how Black or African American medievalists and writers have viewed the Middle Ages and what the study of the medieval world might mean for the struggle of Black Americans against racism and colonialism today. He argues that the examination of the Middle Ages mattered deeply for those intellectuals because many issues in that past are still mirrored in the present. This could be of relevance especially for those who are interested in the history of scholarship and the particular approach to that period from a specific ethnic perspective. Of course, then we would also need books about Asian American medievalists, Hispanic American medievalists, etc., which seems to be valid in political terms, but does not really do justice to the subject matter. At any rate, I cannot examine and evaluate the major portion of this book because it falls into the category of modern Medievalism.

2018 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 267-282
Author(s):  
Karol Dąbrowski

The subject matter of the Middle Ages is permanently present in the education of law students in Poland. It appears during the following classes: the history of Polish law, the general history of law, the history of political and legal doctrines. The medieval tradition can be inspiring for logicians and methodologists of science. The students of administration and internal security also better understand contemporary legal institutions if they are compared with examples from the Middle Ages.


Traditio ◽  
1960 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 111-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. G. Richardson

An explanatory foreword seems to be demanded by the studies in the English coronation ceremony here presented. I am conscious that on a number of points, views are now put forward incompatible with those I have expressed on other occasions since first I began to write on the subject. Further scrutiny of the evidence and the redating of some of the more important documents have, however, led me inevitably to conclusions at variance not only with those of other scholars, but with some that seemed plausible to me at the time of writing. What is principally in question is the history of the English coronation before 1308; but I have revised and elaborated the story of the evolution of the Fourth Recension of the English coronation office as it was presented by Professor Sayles and myself a good many years ago. It would be presumptuous on my part to pretend that I have given final answers to the many questions the tangled history of the English coronation provokes. I have changed my own mind too often to permit me to imagine that there may not be answers to those questions more satisfying than mine. But what I have written will, I trust, advance the study of obscure and complicated problems which have an important bearing upon the history of kingship in the Middle Ages and therefore upon medieval polity.


Traditio ◽  
1953 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 430-434 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfons Nehring

Treatises de modis significandi are known to have been a favorite genre of scholastic literature. One of them, by Martinus de Dacia, has lately been made the subject of a thorough study by Father Heinrich Roos, S.J., and will be briefly discussed in these pages. The text of this treatise, and commentaries on it, are found in a fairly large number of manuscripts, of which Fr. Roos presents a list, and which he endeavors to determine in their mutual relation in order to lay the groundwork for a future edition, apparently — as much as any one not himself familiar with the manuscripts can judge — with thoroughness and reliablity (chs. I, II). In some of the manuscripts and in certain other sources the treatise is ascribed to one Martinus de Dacia (Denmark). Very convincingly Fr. Roos demonstrates (ch. III) that this bit of information is correct and that the author was identical with a high-ranking Danish cleric of that name, who at one time was the chancellor of King Eric VI Menved. It is likely that Martinus composed his treatise while he was a professor in the Liberal Arts Faculty of the University of Paris, probably around 1250. The treatise seems to have enjoyed a great reputation, which would be accounted for if Fr. Roos is right in assuming that Martinus set the model for the entire type. In the last two chapters (IV, V) Fr. Roos describes the character and basic ideas of the tractate against the background of the development of scholarship and higher education during the Middle Ages. This historical outline is very interesting and instructive indeed. Nevertheless it provokes criticism regarding two interrelated points, namely, the characterization of scholastic grammar and its position in the history of linguistic studies.


AJS Review ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. i-xx
Author(s):  
Moshe Idel

The paper reviews briefly the relevant views on the age of forty as found in the Talmud and in the Arab tradition, views which are the background of the later development in the Middle Ages. Afterwards the philosophical discussions on the age of forty found in the writings of Moses ibn Ezra, Jehuda ibn Abbas, Shem Tov Falaquera, Levi ben Abraham, Nissim of Marseilles, Prat Maimon and Isaac Aboab are analyzed. The views of authors like Falaquera and ibn Abbas might have influenced the first kabbalistic restrictions against divulging secrets to students who had not yet reached the age of forty. Such restrictions occur in a work of R. Moses ben Simeon of Burgos and in the school of Abraham Abulafia. Special emphasis on the interdiction against revealing certain kabbalistic secrets can be found in the works of R. Shem Tov ibn Gaon who related it to his teacher R. Solomon ibn Adret. A number of kabbalists of the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries knew about this interdiction and it was influential also among pupils of R. Isaac Luria. Two last important occurrences of the subject discussed above appear in a document dictated by a court of the rabbis of Frankfurt to R. Moses Hayyim Luzzatto and signed by him, during the polemics against the Frankists.The appendix deals with some kabbalistic commentaries on the talmudic dictum “Restrain your children from higgayon” (Berakhot 28b).


Author(s):  
Ram Ben-Shalom

This chapter takes a look at contemporary Jewish understandings of Jesus Christ and Christianity during the Second Temple period. It showed that this period was often the subject of debate between Jews and Christians in the Middle Ages. The reason for this is clear: Christians regarded it as the time of their messiah, while Jews rejected their claims and continued to await the messiah's coming. Polemicists, Christian and Jewish alike, believed that clarifying the history of the period would support their positions. Thus, between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries Jews held a variety of opinions on the life of Jesus and the beginnings of Christianity, which can reveal much about how they saw Christian culture during the Middle Ages.


1997 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. B. Parkes

The Middle Ages inherited from antiquity a tradition of reading which embraced the four functions of grammatical studies (grammaticae officia): lectio, emendatio, enarratio and iudicium. Lectio was the process whereby a reader had to identify elements of the text — letters, syllables, words and sentences (discretio) — in order to read it aloud according to the accentuation required by the sense (pronuntiatio). Emendatio, a process entailed by the realities of manuscript transmission, required a reader (or his teacher) to correct the text in his copy, and sometimes tempted him to ‘improve’ it. Enarratio was the process of examining features of vocabulary, rhetorical and literary form, and above all of interpreting the subject matter of the text (explanatio). ludicium was the process of exercising judgement of the aesthetic qualities or the moral and philosophical value of the text (bene dictorum conprobatio).


2018 ◽  
pp. 52-55
Author(s):  
V. E. Turenko

The article analyzes the nature of the romantic culture of love. Romantic love is seen as a love culture, which includes a set of beliefs, ideals, principles that have developed in the Middle Ages, and the idea of which passes from generation to generation, from one century to another. It is emphasized that the romantic culture of love is not only a discourse of passion and ethos of eros. This cultural-historical type of love absorbs the connotations agape, filia and storge. Consequently, the discourse of those who love in the romantic invariant is not focused solely on passion, it is also caring, understanding, responsibility, attention, sacrifice, etc. – aspects inherent in love-filia, love-storge and love-agape. It is proved that a discourse of romantic culture of love is not realized through the prism of "rose-colored glasses", but in the context of understanding that the emergence of this feeling inevitably generates a sense of vulnerability in both participants of the love discourse. The presence of sorrow in one of the participants of the discourse of love is one of the most characteristic and vivid signs of the romantic culture of love. From the philosophical point of view, various aspects of love affliction are considered as markers of truth and authenticity of feelings, relationships between lovers. Tears, in romantic love - is not the weakness of an object and/or subject of love discourse, but it is their strength, depth and basis for the continuation of their history of feelings. It turns out that in contrast to the modern post-romantic culture of love, in the romantic tradition, the basis of love relations is the maximum recognition of the person. The one who we love is given to us as a fact of life, as the world itself. Love for which the only truly significant and determining any choice is the value of a particular, separate personality. The person we love, in essence, cannot be the subject of evaluation. One may be neither reasonable, nor good, but he/she is capable of transforming a valuable world, revealing its unity, its ability to harmony and doomed to disharmony. The love of human to human (the subject of Love) is the path where all the faces and all the boundaries, that distinguish people from one or another affiliation, disappear.


1941 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 71-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Grierson

The subject of the paper which I am about to read is one that can reasonably be regarded as of only secondary interest. During the later centuries of the Middle Ages, the relations between England and Flanders occupied a position of capital importance in the history of both countries. During the centuries that preceded the Norman Conquest, these relations were much less close than they were later to become, and correspondingly little is known about their character. But they are by no means devoid of interest, even if considered only as an introduction to the more important subject of the later relations between the two countries, and a study of their history is therefore not without justification. In the main, the period covered in this paper will be the two centuries before 1066. During almost the whole of this time, the counts of Flanders were masters of the region bounded by the Scheldt, the Canche, and the sea, and I shall use the word “ Flanders ” as the equivalent oi the county of Flanders at this date.


AJS Review ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. H1-H20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moshe Idel

The paper reviews briefly the relevant views on the age of forty as found in the Talmud and in the Arab tradition, views which are the background of the later development in the Middle Ages. Afterwards the philosophical discussions on the age of forty found in the writings of Moses ibn Ezra, Jehuda ibn Abbas, Shem Tov Falaquera, Levi ben Abraham, Nissim of Marseilles, Prat Maimon and Isaac Aboab are analyzed. The views of authors like Falaquera and ibn Abbas might have influenced the first kabbalistic restrictions against divulging secrets to students who had not yet reached the age of forty. Such restrictions occur in a work of R. Moses ben Simeon of Burgos and in the school of Abraham Abulafia. Special emphasis on the interdiction against revealing certain kabbalistic secrets can be found in the works of R. Shem Tov ibn Gaon who related it to his teacher R. Solomon ibn Adret. A number of kabbalists of the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries knew about this interdiction and it was influential also among pupils of R. Isaac Luria. Two last important occurrences of the subject discussed above appear in a document dictated by a court of the rabbis of Frankfurt to R. Moses Hayyim Luzzatto and signed by him, during the polemics against the Frankists.The appendix deals with some kabbalistic commentaries on the talmudic dictum “Restrain your children from higgayon” (Berakhot 28b).


2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-258
Author(s):  
Przemysław Słowiński

The main considerations related to the subject matter of the article were preceded by a comprehensive introduction, in which the figure of Jakub from Paradyż, who is the greatest thinkers, not only Polish, but European of his time, was presented. He was a scholar who had a significant influence on the development of science in the Middle Ages. Because of its timelessness, it’s thought can still be a model for future generations. Jakub from Paradyż devoted his life to science. He perceived the value of these teachings that teach proper life and directed his writings to a wide range of recipients. The intellectual values that characterized this outstanding philosopher were recorded in about 150 treaties, sermons and lectures. Some of his views are presented in the article below, presenting theses taken from the title treaty.


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