A Note on Functional Linguistics in the Middle Ages

Traditio ◽  
1953 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 430-434 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfons Nehring
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Historical Outline ◽  
Future Edition ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Basic Ideas ◽  
The University ◽  
The Middle Ages

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.

The Coronation in Medieval England: The Evolution of the Office and the Oath

Traditio ◽  
1960 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 111-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. G. Richardson
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Medieval England ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Middle Ages

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.

The Medieval Fortunes of ‘Theatrica’

Traditio ◽  
1986 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 265-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Glending Olson
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Medieval History ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Mechanical Arts ◽  
The Middle Ages

Early in the twelfth century, Hugh of St. Victor in his Didascalicon divided philosophical knowledge into four areas: theoretical, practical (i.e., moral), mechanical, and logical. He further divided mechanical knowledge into seven arts, parallel to the liberal arts, giving last place to theatrica, which he defined briefly as ‘scientia ludorum.’ It proved to be the most controversial of his seven categories. Some twenty years ago W. Tatarkiewicz studied Hugh's idea, its sources, and its appearance in a few subsequent texts from the Middle Ages and Renaissance; later Nancy Howe added a reference from Petrarch. Since then, the concept of theatrics has seldom been treated in itself, although we now have substantially more evidence of its pervasiveness in medieval thinking, as a result of further scholarship on the Didascalicon and on the history of the mechanical arts. Drawing on these sources and on previously unreported material, this study attempts to describe in some detail the progress of theatrica during roughly the first three hundred years after its appearance in the works of Hugh. The medieval history of this idea does not tell us much about the theater, but it does tell us quite a lot about medieval attitudes toward play, entertainment, and performance, topics that learned circles did not often discuss extensively or dispassionately.

Western Aesthetics

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Significant Contribution ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
History Of ◽  
Basic Ideas ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The Middle Ages

This chapter studies the development and basic ideas of Western aesthetic thoughts by reviewing the aesthetic history of ancient Greece and the Middle Ages and by investigating the modern and contemporary aesthetics. It initially discusses the dominant classical Greek aesthetics, the medieval aesthetics, the 19th century aesthetics, and finally the modern aesthetics. The chapter finds that while the history of aesthetics is marked by countless schools of thoughts, only a few people of rare talent have made significant contribution to the entire human civilization through their aesthetic theories and ideas.

On the History of the Interdiction against the Study of Kabbalah before the Age of Forty

AJS Review ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. i-xx
Author(s):  
Moshe Idel
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Middle Ages

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).

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