From Prophecy to Mysticism: Bonaventure's Eschatology in Light of Joachim of Fiore

Traditio ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 52 ◽  
pp. 153-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilia Delio
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Academic Career ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Body Of Christ ◽  
Whole Process ◽  
Ongoing Work ◽  
The Many ◽  
Working Out ◽  
The Trinity ◽  
Joachim Of Fiore

In the Middle Ages, the destiny of the historical process was a subject of intense thought, fueled by an overarching notion of historical change and the impending final age. Of the many theologians who contributed to this discussion none stands out in more colorful form than the Cistercian abbot, Joachim of Fiore (1135–1202). Joachim made his mark by describing history as a process of patterns unfolding according to the relationships of the Trinity. For Joachim, history was an ongoing work of the living God, and he sought to elucidate the innermost mystery of the trinitarian relationships in the working-out of history. The whole process of history, he maintained, was progressing toward a higher spiritual level that would be characterized by the image of the mystical body of Christ in the final age, an age that he held would take place in this world. Although Bonaventure dismissed Joachim early in his academic career as ignorant andsimplex, his rise to minister general in an order divided by radical Joachimism may have influenced his view of the abbot's theology. E. Randolph Daniel has shown that Bonaventure borrowed one of Joachim's patterns of history to define his eschatology more clearly in terms of Christocentricity. Like Joachim, Bonaventure held that the final age would take place in this world, and would be characterized by mystical peace. Potential Joachimist influence may also be detected in Bonaventure'sLegenda maior.

Medieval Combat in Colour: Hans Talhoffer’s Illustrated Manual of Swordfighting and Close-Quarter Combat from 1467, ed. and introduced by Dierk Hagedorn. Barnsley, S. Yorkshire: Greenhill Books, 2018, 319 pp., ill.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 548-549
Author(s):  
Albrecht Classen
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Close Quarter ◽  
The Many

The late Middle Ages witnessed the creation of numerous fencing books, mostly in Germany, illustrating the many different techniques, weapons, styles, strategies, and the movements, as Patrick Leiske discussed only recently in his Höfisches Spiel und tödlicher Ernst (2018; see my review here in vol. 32). Some of the true masters and teachers of this sport and fighting technique were Johannes Liechtenauer, Peter von Danzig, Sigmund Ringeck, and Hans Talhoffer, whom Leiske also discusses in a separate chapter.

The Fate of Small Towns, Hilltop Settlements, and Elite Residences in Merovingian-Period Gaul

2020 ◽  
pp. 610-640
Author(s):  
Luc Bourgeois
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Power Networks ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
The Many

The study of places of power in the Merovingian realm has long been focused on cities, monasteries, and royal palaces. Recent archaeological research has led to the emergence of other categories. Four of them are addressed in this chapter. These include the capitals of fallen cities, which continue to mark the landscape in one way or another. Similarly, the fate of small Roman towns during the early Middle Ages shows that most of them continued to host a variety of secular and ecclesiastical powers. In addition, from the fourth century onward, large hilltop fortified settlements multiplied anew. They complemented earlier networks of authority, whether elite residences, artisan communities, or real towns. Finally, from the seventh century onward, the great aristocratic villas of late antiquity were transformed into settlements organized around one or more courtyards and supplemented by funerary and religious structures. The evolution of political spaces and lifestyles explains both the ruptures in power networks that occurred during the Merovingian epoch and the many continuities that can be seen in the four kinds of places studied in this chapter that were marked by these developments.

scholarly journals The Thingness of the Thing: The Role of Everyday Objects in Becket Miracle Windows

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 152-157
Author(s):  
Dana Vasiliu
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Phenomenal World ◽  
Ordinary Objects ◽  
Everyday Objects ◽  
The Trinity ◽  
The Middle Ages

Abstract In “The Waning of the Middle Ages”, J. Huizinga has pointed out that “all things would be absurd if their meaning would be exhausted by their function and their place in the phenomenal world, if by their essence they did not reach into a world beyond this.” (1924:201) Starting from this assumption, I purport to analyze the role/roles played by everyday/ordinary objects in the miracle stories depicted in the Trinity Chapel glazing and argue that their individuation/haecceity is subject to practices of ritualistic and artistic encodings

Memoirs: Notes on the Maturation of the Ovum of Alcyonium digitatum

1905 ◽  
Vol s2-49 (195) ◽  
pp. 493-505
Author(s):  
M. D. HILL
Keyword(s):  
Egg Cell ◽  
Whole Process ◽  
Material Preparations ◽  
Polar Bodies ◽  
Female Pronucleus ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Nuclear History ◽  
Do So

Although the foregoing accouut is obviously incomplete, yet it is possible to draw some conclusions. I believe we have shown that: (a) The egg of Aleyonium produces no polar bodies in the ordinary sense of the word. (b) That the division of the female pronucleus before the entrance of the spermatozoon is irregular and amitotic. (c) That no chromatiu leaves the egg in the stage of ovocyte I, to use Boveri's nomenclature. (d) That the female pronucleus completely disappears. (s) That there are no bodies that can be termed chromosomes throughout the whole process. (f) That the first segmentation nucleus is formed in a way (unknown) that must in any case be unlike anything hitherto described. Furthermore I believe, though I cannot state so positively, that: (g) A process takes place that may roughly be compared to the formation of polar bodies, but they disintegrate and do not leave the cell. So far as I have ascertained nothing in the shape of extrusion takes place. It is, however, curious to note that the nearest account that I have been able to find of like behaviour in an egg nucleus is that of Sfcoeckel.1 This author found in a human ovary certain of the ova containing large nuclei, the membrane of which, as a rule, was well marked, but "oft geht diese scharfe Abgrenzung auch verloren. Die Konturen werden unregelmässeg Zackig, verschwommen."...Stoeckel believed that these changes in form were the beginning of amitotic nuclear divisions, giving rise to binucleated ova, of which he found several. I know of no other assumption of the direct division of an egg nucleus before fertilisation. (h) The first segmentation nucleus is derived from the male pronucleus, though it is quite possible that chromatin equal in amount to that of the male may also be derived from the female pronucleus, though all trace of the latter has been lost. If the foregoing statements be only partially true, it is obvious that a great gulf is fixed between the maturation processes in the egg of Alcyonium and all hitherto described cases. For this reason I am very loth to do more than state the bare conclusions to which I have come. To the best of my belief, no author has described amitotic nuclear divisions in the formation of polar bodies. We seem to have to deal with perfectly abnormal conditions. Nevertheless we are forced to admit that the maintenance of the individual parental chromosomes in a fertilised egg-cell is not universal. On the contrary, all trace of the chromatin of the original egg nucleus is lost. Furthermore, there are several instances among the protozoa of the breaking up and reorganisation of the nucleus. This occurs in many Ciliates. For instance : In ‘Oxytricha and Lacrymaria’ Gruber has shown that the meganucleus breaks up into minute fragments which become scattered through the protoplasm, but eventually reunite into a single body. So much attractive speculation has been based on the ordinarily observed facts of maturation and fertilisation that we feel almost bound to assume that these processes are the same iu all metazoa. But it is obvious that in certain cœlenterates we have facts before us that cannot be brought into line with what we feel we have a right to expect. At present the affair is a mystery. Pending farther investigation it were unwise to speculate on the possible meaning of these phenomena, however much one may be tempted to do so. In case that what I have observed, and still more failed to observe, may induce some other zoologist to follow this cytological byeway, I can only hope that he will find this paper a path over which it may not be necessary to retrace his steps. There would seem to be four points to which attention should be specially directed: (a) The nuclear history of the germ-cells from their earliest "Anlagen." (b) The mode of formation of the polar bodies. (c) The actual penetration of the spermatozoon. (d) The way in which the first segmentation nucleus is built up. Lastly, I have but to express my sincere thanks to Professor Hickson for his kindness in allowing me the use of his material, preparations, and notes, and for the many fruitful suggestions that I have received from him.

The Marais

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Reader
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Comprehensive Overview ◽  
Andre Malraux ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City ◽  
The Middle Ages

This book explores the history and the vicissitudes of one of Paris’s most extraordinary areas, the Marais. Centrally located on the Right Bank, this neighbourhood was from the Middle Ages through to the eighteenth century the most fashionable in the city, headquarters of the nobility who endowed it with resplendent architecture. The Court’s move to Versailles and the Revolution of 1789 led to the quartier’s decline, so that in the nineteenth century and the earlier part of the twentieth it was in parlous shape, its fine buildings run down and often severely overcrowded. It escaped wholesale destruction in the post-War frenzy of modernization largely thanks to André Malraux, who as Culture Minister fostered the restoration of the area. Malraux’s efforts were, however, not immune from criticism, sometimes seen as a form of socio-economic cleansing with concomitant fossilization, and thus emblematic of the problems faced by a city which has always been torn between the preservation of its past and the need to adapt to social and historical change. The book focuses particularly on literary, cinematic and other artistic reproductions of the quartier, of which it attempts to provide a comprehensive overview, and foregrounds particularly its importance as home to and base of two highly significant minorities – the Jewish and the gay communities.

Genres and Motives

2015 ◽  
pp. 13-63
Author(s):  
Ram Ben-Shalom
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
The Other ◽  
Unified Approach ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Southern France ◽  
Jewish Historiography ◽  
Religious Polemic ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One ◽  
Christian Discourse

This chapter examines the genres and motives behind Jewish chronology during the Middle Ages. Jewish historiography focused on correlating Jewish chronology, general chronology, and Christian chronology. This was a similar approach to Christian writers. The chapter shows that this correlation of Jewish chronology with Christian and general chronology was one of the many components of medieval Jewish–Christian discourse. On the one hand, this suggests that Jews had a unified approach to history, in which they saw themselves as full participants. On the other, the timing and meaning of historical events were part of the religious polemic with Christianity. Religious polemic and apocalypticism were important reasons why Jewish scholars in Spain and southern France engaged in historiography. Other motives included the moral lessons that could be found in history and intellectual curiosity.

The Periodic System

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Scerri
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Platonic Solid ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Platonic Solids ◽  
System P ◽  
Chemical Inertness ◽  
Dimensional Shape ◽  
The Many

In ancient Greek times, philosophers recognized just four elements—earth, water, air, and fire—all of which survive in the astrological classification of the 12 signs of the zodiac. At least some of these philosophers believed that these different elements consisted of microscopic components with differing shapes and that this explained the various properties of the elements. These shapes or structures were believed to be in the form of Platonic solids (figure 1.1) made up entirely of the same two-dimensional shape. The Greeks believed that earth consisted of microscopic cubic particles, which explained why it was difficult to move earth. Meanwhile, the liquidity of water was explained by an appeal to the smoother shape possessed by the icosahedron, while fire was said to be painful to the touch because it consisted of the sharp particles in the form of tetrahedra. Air was thought to consist of octahedra since that was the only remaining Platonic solid. A little later, a fifth Platonic solid, the dodecahedron, was discovered, and this led to the proposal that there might be a fifth element or “quintessence,” which also became known as ether. Although the notion that elements are made up of Platonic solids is regarded as incorrect from a modern point of view, it is the origin of the very fruitful notion that macroscopic properties of substances are governed by the structures of the microscopic components of which they are comprised. These “elements” survived well into the Middle Ages and beyond, augmented with a few others discovered by the alchemists, the precursors of modern-day chemists. One of the many goals of the alchemists seems to have been the transmutation of elements. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the particular transmutation that most enticed them was the attempt to change the base metal lead into the noble metal gold, whose unusual color, rarity, and chemical inertness have made it one of the most treasured substances since the dawn of civilization.

The Question of Francia (400–816)

On Hospitals ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 59-79
Author(s):  
Sethina Watson
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
The West ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Common Life ◽  
Hospital Reform ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Many

The consistency of the character of hospitals in law, as observed in Chapter 2, suggests a customary legal inheritance that preceded classical canon law. Part II turns now to the early middle ages to discover that inheritance. This chapter begins that process by unpicking the long-held model of the early medieval hospital. It surveys the many hypotheses for the origins of hospital law in the West, which claim that hospital law adopted from the East and accommodated via Frankish councils. The chapter confronts the latter of these claims and re-examines its twin pillars: a legal formula of ‘murderers of the poor’ (necator pauperum) and a hospital reform at Aachen (816). The first hinges on the council of Orléans (549), whose efforts were aimed at one royal foundation, King Childebert and Queen Ultrogotha’s xenodochium at Lyons. The council of Aachen’s (816) rules for canons and canonesses prescribed a way of common life for these religious, with different facilities for each for the poor. The chapter argues that the efforts of both councils were singular, and carefully circumscribed. Frankish councils were not to take an interest in xenodochia until c.850. Legal initiatives regarding hospitals began elsewhere.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document