Tumultus Et Rumor in Sinagoga: An Aspect of Social Life of Provençal Jews in the Middle Ages

AJS Review ◽  
1977 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 227-255 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Shatzmiller

It is impossible to discuss the social life or the organization of the Jewish community in the Middle Ages without noting the fact that the synagogue was its center. In many cases the synagogue was the only building owned by the community as such, the only institution that actually was at everyone's disposal. It did not always happen to be a special kind of building constructed or dedicated to the worship of God: sometimes one of the city's houses, or an apartment, or a room, would serve as a synagogue. Thus we hear that in the town of Manosque in Southern France—the location of our episodes—there was in the year 1311 a synagogue located at what had formerly been the house of Macip, one of the community's members.

Antiquity ◽  
1939 ◽  
Vol 13 (52) ◽  
pp. 403-415
Author(s):  
Canon G. H. Doble

The incident of the theft of the relics of Saint Petroc from his shrine in Bodmin priory church by a canon of Bodmin in 1177, their removal to the abbey of St.-Méen in Brittany, and their subsequent restoration owing to the vigorous action of Henry 11, is well-known. It is briefly referred to by the chroniclers Roger of Hoveden and Benedict of Peterborough. The long Vita Petroci in the newly discovered Gotha MS.; however, contains a full and detailed account of the whole affair by a contemporary writer of considerable literarypowers. It abounds in lifelike touches, and is one of the most interesting glimpses into the social life of the Middle Ages which we possess. It is here printed for the first time.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (6) ◽  
pp. 4-8
Author(s):  
Abror A. Odilov ◽  

This article analyzes issues related to religious life in Central Asia, specifically in the Movarounnahr and Khorasan regions, from the early Middle Ages to the Mongol invasion. The author describes the spread of Islam in the region, its causes, the fact that the principle of tolerance towards other religions in Islam has become an integral part of the social life. It is also the theory that the land of Movarounnahr was the place where tolerance emerged in the Middle Ages Index Terms: Islam, religion, Movarounnahr, Khorasan, tolerance, Christianity, Judaism, territory, other religions, mosque, church, temple


1882 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 354-360
Author(s):  
H. F. Tozer

The central peninsula of the three that project from the south of the Peloponnese, which since the Middle Ages has been known as the district of Maina, is one of the wildest parts of Greece owing to its rugged mountains and rocky shores, and has always been the abode of independent and intractable races. The emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus speaks of the Mainotes as having retained their primitive heathenism until the latter half of the ninth century. At the present day they are notorious for their blood-feuds, which are the scourge of the country, and seriously interfere with its social life. On the western shore of this remote district, near a small harbour that runs in from the Messenian gulf, is the town of Vitylo, one of the comparatively few places in the Morea, though these are more numerous on the seaboard than in the interior, which have retained their classical name. It was formerly called and this appellation now appears in the form which accounts for its pronunciation as Vitylo. The modern form of the name is probably the original one, for Ptolemy calls the place Rather more than two centuries ago this town was the scene of a remarkable emigration. At that time the Turks, who had made themselves masters of Crete in 1669, proceeded to attempt the subjugation of Maina. Spon and Wheler, who sailed round cape Matapan on their way to Constantinople in the summer of 1675, were told that the invaders had succeeded in reducing most of the country by means of forts built on the coasts—they seem to have been aided by the treachery of some of the inhabitants—and that part of the population had escaped to Apulia. A few months after these travellers passed by, a number of the inhabitants of Vitylo and its neighbourhood, amounting to about 1000 souls, were persuaded by the Genoese to emigrate under their auspices to Western Europe. They ware led by one of their countrymen, John Stephanopoulos, and were established by their new protectors in Corsica, which was at that time a Genoese possession; and in that island their descendants remain at the present day.


2013 ◽  
pp. 49-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bryan Gillingham

One of the difficulties in creating an adequate picture of the contextual situation for music, other than that clearly associated with the liturgy, in the Middle Ages, is the paucity of accounts describing performance circumstances. We know little about the social milieu and purposes attending genres marginal to the liturgy such as the conductus and thirteenth-century motet. A manuscript which seems to redress this problem, albeit for one very specific instance, is Vat. lat. 2854 in the Vatican library in Rome. This manuscript is unusual in that it contains not only music but a detailed account of why the music was written. The author, Bonaiutus de Casentino, active in the circle of Pope Boniface VIII, prepared the manuscript in the last decade of the thirteenth century at Rome. The document includes various poems, sacred and secular, as well as two Latin songs written in late Franconian notation. One of the pieces is a two-voice conductus (Hec medela corporalis) which was written, according to the account of Bonaiutus himself, in order to cure the maladies of an ailing pontif. The pontifical complaints seemed to be both psychological and intestinal in nature. It was the hope of Bonaiutus not only to provoke laughter (always a curative), but also to cleanse the papal bowels through his composition. Although one cannot generalize on the basis of this single incident, it does yield a fascinating glimpse into a possible venue for the conductus.


2017 ◽  
pp. 167
Author(s):  
Michaela Seewald

The 19th century is - as regards urban planning - characterized by the development of infrastructure, such as schools or hospitals. These changes can also be observed in the eastern parts of the monarchy. The regional focus of this thesis lies on Czernowitz, the capital city of the Bukovina since 1849. Three institutions - the town hall, the railway station and the museum - serve as an example to show how the construction of these buildings had an impact on the social life of the residents of Czernowitz. The article shows that identity is the central connective element.


1952 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Thomas C. Smith

As in the Middle Ages in the West, so in Tokugawa Japan (1600–1868) men were fond of explaining the hierarchical society in which they lived by comparing it to an organism. Social classes, Confucian scholars said, were like parts of the body: each had a vital function to perform, but their functions were essentially different and unequal in value. In this scheme the peasants were second in importance only to the ruling military class. Just as the samurai officials were the brains that guided other organs, so the peasants were the feet that held the social body erect. They were the “basis of the country,” the valued producers whose labor sustained all else. But, as a class, they tended innately to backsliding and extravagance. Left alone they would consume more than their share of the social income, ape the manners and tastes of their betters, and even encroach upon the functions of other classes to the perilous neglect of their own. Only the lash of necessity and the sharp eye of the official could hold them to their disagreeable role. They had to be bound to the land; social distinctions had to be thrown up around them like so many physical barriers; and, to remove all temptation to indolence and luxury, they had to be left only enough of what they produced to let them continue producing.


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