The Still Undiscovered Origin of Portolan Charts

1983 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 124-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. C. Freiesleben
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Board Ship ◽  
Modern Form

The term ‘portolan chart’ first occurs in Italy in the thirteenth century, not long after this aid to navigation came into general use on board ship. The Italian word portolano, however, can best be translated as ‘pilot book’ or ‘sailing directions’, a different aid to navigation of which one example survives from the fourth century b.c., and pilot books are indeed still published in modern form by all seafaring nations. References by Herodotus in the History make it probable that such documents already existed in his time, and under the name of periplus they continued up to the sixth century a.d.; after which they do not appear again until the golden age of navigation in Italy and Catalonia in the late Middle Ages, apart from some much simpler early medieval types. The portolano or periplus is a description of ports, with information required by the navigator concerning anchorages, dangers threatening landfall and the winds and weather over wider areas. Commercial information was sometimes included, obviously also a matter of interest to the mariner who could read, though it may be doubted if many of them then could.Italian portolan charts exist from almost the same period as the portolani, both of them denoted by the same word compasso, but while the pilot books have their modern successors the charts were only produced up to the beginning of the seventeenth century and are not really the forerunners of the modern sea chart.

Cinderella! Cinderella!: A closer look into Dutch seventeenth-century gender roles and genre paintings

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 123-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katie Downs
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Gender Roles ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Everyday Practices ◽  
Art Form ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Second Commandment

This article highlights a time when Northern artists were no longer allowed to paint or carve holy images as they had done during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The Catholic Church banned this art form due to the interpretation of the second commandment: ‘Thou shalt make no graven image of thy God’. Genre paintings were the outcome of this banishment and a way to represent and depict an everyday life scene in a Dutch seventeenth-century household. The paintings would show the best of a situation and also its worst counterpart in almost a mocking comical way. By exploring these paintings, we come to understand how women were fed propaganda into becoming a better housewife, mother and bearing the weight of physical nourisher to all. Although amusing, the images have been celebrated and considered legendary during the Golden Age of the Netherlands. While taking a closer look at genre paintings and the everyday practices of the Dutch household, we can connect patterns to how these paintings affected women and influenced their domestic duties in the Golden Age.

Why This Time and Place?

Born to Write ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 10-19
Author(s):  
Neil Kenny
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Social Position ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Social ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
The Revolution

From about the late fifteenth century onwards, literature and learning acquired increased importance for the social position of noble and elite-commoner families in France. One reason is the expansion and rise to prominence of the royal office-holder milieu, which had no exact equivalent in, say, England, where the aristocracy was much smaller than the French nobility and where there was no equivalent of the French system of venality of office. In France, family literature often helped extend across the generations a relationship between two families—that of the literary producer and that of the monarch. From the late Middle Ages, the conditions for family literature were made more favourable by broad social shifts. Although this study focuses mainly on the period from the late fifteenth to the mid-seventeenth century, it is likely that the production of works from within families of literary producers thrived especially up to the Revolution.

The Monasteries Founded by the Thirteen Syrian Fathers in Iberia

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-39
Author(s):  
Shota Matitashvili
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ascetic Communities ◽  
In The Beginning ◽  
Written Sources

A new step in the history of Christian monasticism in eastern Georgia is associated with thirteen Syrian monks, led by John, who came to Iberia (K‘art‘li) in the mid-sixth century C.E. They were the bearers of a Syrian tradition that implied the combination of an heroic ascetic endeavor and an apostolic mission. They came as spiritual heirs of St. Nino, a Cappadocian virgin who converted Georgia to Christianity in the beginning of the fourth century. Their vitae were first composed by a certain hagiographer named John-Martyrius, but this work does not survive. In the tenth century, the head of the Georgian Church and the distinguished ecclesiastical writer Arsenius II (955–980) depicted their lives and deeds based on different oral and written sources. Later, other unknown authors also wrote additional hagiographical works about these Syrian ascetics. At the beginning of their ascetic and ecclesiastical careers, the thirteen Syrian monks settled on Zedazeni mountain with their spiritual supervisor, John. John later sent them to different corners of the Iberian kingdom in opposition to paganism and Zoroastrianism. They founded monasteries and became influential religious leaders during the second half of the sixth century. Through their vitae, composed by Arsenius and other unknown authors, it is possible to trace the process of transforming the small ascetic communities established by Syrian monks into great feudal organizations. These monasteries had an important impact on the Georgian social and cultural landscape during the Middle Ages.

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 Candle of Distinction: A Cultural Biography of the Havdalah Light

Images ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-24
Author(s):  
Michele Klein
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Ashkenazi Jewish ◽  
Ashkenazi Jews ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Cultural Biography ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Jewish Ritual

This case study explores how a general lighting device transformed into a distinctive Jewish ritual object, the Havdalah candle. In late antiquity, the ubiquitous oil lamp served for the fire-light blessing during the end-of-Sabbath Havdalah ritual but in the fourth century, a sage added a torch, avukah, aggrandizing the ceremonial light. Jews showed little concern for the lighting utensil until the late Middle Ages, when a variety of contemporary torch-candles employed in Church ritual and among Christian aristocracy inspired new rabbinic interpretations of the term avukah. Ashkenazi Jews favored a costly Gothic-style implement with intertwined tapers, which particularly suited the words of the ancient Havdalah blessing. This became a distinctively Ashkenazi Jewish ritual object in the sixteenth century, after Christians abandoned the old-fashioned style of torch-candle. Following the drop in cost of wax, and massive Jewish migrations in modern times, all observant Jews adopted the Ashkenazi intertwined candle.

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 Christian Mangup: The Modern Source Base and the Main Stages of Its History

2021 ◽  
pp. 255-281
Author(s):  
Valery E. Naumenko ◽  
Aleksandr G. Gertsen ◽  
Darya V. Iozhitsa
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Entire Period ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
The South ◽  
Christian Community ◽  
Church Building ◽  
History Of ◽  
Available Information ◽  
The Church

Throughout the entire period of the Middle Ages, the settlement of Mangup was one of the most important ideological centres for the spread of Christianity in the south-western Crimea. From the creation of the independent Gothic bishopric on, it housed the residence and the cathedral church of the hierarchs of Crimean Gothia. This is evidenced by numerous churches and monasteries discovered by many-year-long excavations of the site (27 in total). This paper is the first in the scholarship attempt of systematization of all available information from the sources related to the Christian history of the castle of Mangup, written, epigraphic, archaeological, and so on. Particular attention has been paid to the results of modern excavations of the church archaeology monuments at the settlement in question, carried out systematically in 2012–2021. They formed the basis for the reconstruction of the main stages of church building and the most important periods in the history of the local Christian community. Generally, it covers a wide period from the mid-sixth century, when a big basilica featuring the nave and two aisles, the future cathedral of the Gothic bishopric (metropolia), was built at Mangup along with the large Byzantine castle, and finished in the early seventeenth century. The construction and functioning of most part of known churches and monasteries of the castle of Mangup dates to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when this site finally developed into a large mediaeval city, the capital of the principality of Theodoro in the south-western Crimea.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document