The Politics of Sanctity in Thirteenth-Century Ferrara

Traditio ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 63 ◽  
pp. 307-326
Author(s):  
Janine Larmon Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Moral Virtues ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Tremendous Impact ◽  
Official Recognition

The conferral of sainthood was no light matter in the late Middle Ages. An increasing emphasis on the papacy's right to discern between “authentic” and “false” sanctity meant that while many men and women were locally venerated as saints, few were officially recognized to have formally achieved this pinnacle of holiness. Out of the hundreds of new saints that emerged between 1198 and 1431, only thirty-five individuals were canonized.' Part of the reason for the dearth of holy men and women created by papal mandate in this period was the intrusion of political concerns, which had a tremendous impact on who attained the status of “saint.” Spiritual merit, as evidenced by moral virtues and attested miracles, was only one aspect of the medieval canonization process. Another integral facet was compliance with papal ends; in other words, successful candidates often were supported by communities willing to submit to papal wishes.” Thus when official recognition of sanctity occurred, it came at the cost of not only religious but also political obedience to the papacy. Conversely, those towns whose loyalty to the pope was suspect often found their petitions for a canonization inquiry ignored. Habitually recalcitrant towns might even find their veneration of a putative saint actively opposed by papal agents such as inquisitors. These types of situations occasionally led to protracted battles in which the saint's followers refused to capitulate to authorities and cease venerating the person in question.

Who Were the Scribes of Latin Manuscripts?

2020 ◽  
pp. 704-710
Author(s):  
Alison I. Beach
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Reform Movements ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Gender Education ◽  
The Status ◽  
Written Word

This chapter discusses scribes from antiquity and the early Christian era through the late Middle Ages: their professions, class, gender, education, religion, age, etc. The status of scribes varied dramatically from period to period, reflecting changes in literacy and respect for the written word. The author discusses monastic attitudes towards writing, the influence of different monastic orders and reform movements on ideas about scribes, and the place of scribal activity in Universities and secular bureaucracies.

Time and the Testator, 1370–1540

2002 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 133-144
Author(s):  
Judith Middleton-Stewart
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The Past ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Perception Of Time ◽  
Limited Duration ◽  
At Will

There were many ways in which the late medieval testator could acknowledge time. Behind each testator lay a lifetime of memories and experiences on which he or she drew, recalling the names of those ‘they had fared the better for’, those they wished to remember and by whom they wished to be remembered. Their present time was of limited duration, for at will making they had to assemble their thoughts and their intentions, make decisions and appoint stewards, as they prepared for their time ahead; but as they spent present time arranging the past, so they spent present time laying plans for the future. Some testators had more to bequeath, more time to spare: others had less to leave, less time to plan. Were they aware of time? How did they control the future? In an intriguing essay, A. G. Rigg asserts that ‘one of the greatest revolutions in man’s perception of the world around him was caused by the invention, sometime in the late thirteenth century, of the mechanical weight-driven clock.’ It is the intention of this paper to see how men’s (and women’s) perception of time in the late Middle Ages was reflected in their wills, the most personal papers left by ordinary men and women of the period.

Art and Identity in the Parish Communities of Late Medieval Kent

1992 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 225-237
Author(s):  
Judy Ann Ford
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Art Criticism ◽  
Religious Community ◽  
Social Meaning ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Political Messages ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Social ◽  
Religious Associations

Historians have long been aware that patronage is a crucial factor in interpreting the social meaning of art. The late Middle Ages knew a variety of patrons, each employing art to communicate different sorts of concern: royal and aristocratic courts emphasized political messages, urban communes created governmental myths, cathedrals and monasteries gave expression to spiritual ideas—and all used art to convey notions of social identity. Recent investigations into the process of choosing and procuring works of art in these contexts have not only added perspective to formal art criticism, they have also deepened our understanding of the groups interested in the creation of art. One area in which questions of patronage could perhaps be better illuminated is the community of the parish. The parish served as the primary religious community for the majority of men and women for most of the Middle Ages. It was complex in composition, involving both laity and clergy, encompassing other religious associations, such as gilds, and including the devout and the indifferent, the orthodox and the dissenters.

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.

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.

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.

scholarly journals La moda no es capricho. Mensajes y funciones del vestido en la Edad MediaFashion is not a whim. Messages and functions of clothing in the Middle Ages

2017 ◽  
pp. 71
Author(s):  
Juan Vicente García Marsilla
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Urban Population ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Consumption Level ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Privileged Communication ◽  
Positive Stimuli ◽  
The Middle Ages

Los siglos finales de la Edad Media vieron como nuevas modas en el vestir irrumpían en Europa con un ritmo cada vez más acelerado. Eran una de las manifestaciones de una sociedad más dinámica, que utilizaba la vestimenta como un código de comunicación privilegiado del estatus social y la pujanza económica y política. Sin duda, las cortes nobiliarias jugaron un importante papel en esa activación de la moda, pero el fenómeno alcanzó a buena parte de la población urbana y a las capas más acomodadas del campesinado, como lo demuestran las leyes suntuarias y la difusión del mercado de segunda mano. Hombres y mujeres rivalizaban por acceder a las novedades, que viajaban de un país a otro con cierta facilidad, sin que la indumentaria, no obstante, llegara a homogeneizarse del todo en el continente. De esta manera, el cuidado de la apariencia, y la constante adaptación a las novedades en el vestido, se convertirían ya entonces en acicates básicos para un nivel de consumo sostenido, que a la larga alentaría importantes mutaciones del sistema económico.PALABRAS CLAVE: Edad Media, moda, leyes suntuarias, consumo, gusto.ABSTRACTThe Late Middle Ages saw new fashions in clothing appearing in Europe with an increasingly frequent rhythm. These trends were one of the manifestations of a more dynamic society that used clothing as a privileged communication code of social status and economic and political importance. Noble courts no doubt played an important role in this activation of fashion, but the phenomenon reached a large part of the urban population and the more affluent layers of the peasantry, as evidenced by sumptuary laws and the spread of the second-hand market. Men and women competed for access to novelties, which travelled from one country to others quite easily, although clothing never became homogenous across the whole continent. Thus, the care of appearance, and the constant adaptation to new fashion trends, became two basic positive stimuli for a sustained consumption level, which, in the long run, promoted important changes in the economic system.KEY WORDS: Middle Ages, fashion, sumptuary laws, consumption, taste.

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