Two chants in the Byzantine Rite for Holy Saturday

1992 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Harris

Among the ten celebrations of the Mass of St Basil in the Orthodox Church during the year are the conclusions to the three Vesper services immediately before the three major feasts of Christmas, Epiphany and Easter. Two of these Vesper services – those for Christmas Eve and the Eve of Epiphany – are of particular musical interest since they contain psalms with troparia or antiphons, for both of which the entire music can be transcribed from thirteenth-century manuscripts, so that these two services can be celebrated with what are, almost certainly, the oldest known complete examples of Byzantine psalm singing. From a recent paper of mine on these psalms, it can be gathered that they are examples of what is known as ‘responsorial psalmody’, the psalm itself being sung by a soloist, and the attached troparion by a choir of trained singers or psaltae. In both services they occur as punctuations of a series of readings, appearing in each case after the third and the sixth reading. On the Eve of Epiphany we should perhaps expect to find further psalms after the ninth and twelfth readings, since the series extends to thirteen readings in modern service books and to twelve in the early Middle Ages; yet no such psalms appear now or seem ever to have been sung at this point. And similarly, on Holy Saturday, when according to the ancient Jerusalem cursus twelve readings were given, to be extended in Constantinople to fifteen, no equivalents seem to have been performed at any point.

Author(s):  
Peter Coss

In the introduction to his great work of 2005, Framing the Early Middle Ages, Chris Wickham urged not only the necessity of carefully framing our studies at the outset but also the importance of closely defining the words and concepts that we employ, the avoidance ‘cultural sollipsism’ wherever possible and the need to pay particular attention to continuities and discontinuities. Chris has, of course, followed these precepts on a vast scale. My aim in this chapter is a modest one. I aim to review the framing of thirteenth-century England in terms of two only of Chris’s themes: the aristocracy and the state—and even then primarily in terms of the relationship between the two. By the thirteenth century I mean a long thirteenth century stretching from the period of the Angevin reforms of the later twelfth century on the one hand to the early to mid-fourteenth on the other; the reasons for taking this span will, I hope, become clearer during the course of the chapter, but few would doubt that it has a validity.


Istoriya ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (9 (107)) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Maya Petrova

The paper deals the construction of Aachen as a symbol of the power of Charlemagne (742/4 — 814). It discusses the poetic Carolingian texts, which played an important role in the formation of the medieval ideology of the unity of the City and the power of its creator. It is shown that the most striking example of the statement of such a worldview is the third book (v. 1—536) of the anonymous epic poem (not fully preserved), known in the early Middle Ages under the title “Charlemagne and Pope Leo” (Karolus Magnus et Leo Papa). It is noted that this text, containing a description of the construction of the Second Rome — Aachen, influenced the subsequent Carolingian poetic tradition, serving as a turning point in the development of narrative poetry during the reign of Charlemagne.


Traditio ◽  
1987 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 171-197
Author(s):  
Richard C. Dales

Although the doctrine of the eternity of the world had evoked much concern and opposition among the Fathers of the Christian Church, it ceased to engage the attention of Latin Christian writers during most of the early Middle Ages. When interest in the question revived during the twelfth century, it was nearly always considered in the context of Plato's Timaeus or Boethius’ De consolatione philosophiae. By 1270, the issue seemed to be between the supporters and the opponents of Aristotle. Although the story of Latin discussions of the eternity of the world during the 1260s and 1270s has been quite thoroughly investigated, the preceding period from about 1230 to 1260 has been largely ignored. It is the purpose of the present study to elucidate this neglected stage in medieval discussions of the eternity of the world and to show its relationship to the earlier and later periods.


Author(s):  
Carolyn Muessig

Chapter 1 traces the patristic and early medieval exegesis of Galatians 6:17. It assesses how language and imagery were appropriated and developed by eleventh- and twelfth-century monastic theologians (especially Peter Damian) into a soteriological system of penance and redemption that focused on Christ’s wounds. Significantly, it looks at examples of stigmatization before Francis of Assisi. These cases vary in their form; they gradually move from stigmata being almost exclusively associated with the sacerdotal order in the early Middle Ages to being linked to the laity by the early thirteenth century as with the cases of Peter the Conversus and Mary of Oignies.


Traditio ◽  
1967 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 313-413 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles H. Lohr

The history of Latin Aristotelianism reaches roughly from Boethius to Galileo — from the end of classical civilization to the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. Whereas the early Middle Ages knew only a part of Aristotle's logic, the whole Aristotelian corpus became known in the period around 1200. From the middle of the thirteenth century to the end of the Middle Ages, and in some circles even beyond, the influence of these works was decisive both for the system of education and for the development of philosophy and natural science.


2007 ◽  
Vol 76 (2) ◽  
pp. 298-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean L. Field

Three vernacular religious biographies were written by women about other women around the year 1300: Agnes of Harcourt's FrancienVie d'Isabelle de France(ca. 1283), Felipa of Porcelet's ProvençalVida de la benaurada sancta Doucelina(begun ca. 1297), and Marguerite of Oingt's Franco-ProvençalVia seiti Biatrix virgina de Ornaciu(between 1303 and 1310). Although a limited number of similar texts had been composed in Latin dating back to the early Middle Ages, and a few twelfth-century women such as Clemence of Barking had refashioned existing Latin lives of early female martyr-saints into Anglo-Norman verse, the works of Agnes, Felipa, and Marguerite are the first extant vernacular biographies to have been written by European women about other contemporary women. Just as strikingly, after the three examples studied here, few if any analogous works appeared until the later fifteenth century, with most writing by women about other religious women in the intervening period instead being found in “Sister Books” and convent chronicles.


2013 ◽  
Vol 82 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-68
Author(s):  
Carolyn Muessig

Francis of Assisi's reported reception of the stigmata on Mount La Verna in 1224 is widely held to be the first documented account of an individual miraculously and physically receiving the wounds of Christ. The appearance of this miracle, however, in the first quarter of the thirteenth century, is not as unexpected as it first seems. Interpretations of Galatians 6:17—“I bear the marks of the Lord Jesus Christ in my body”—had been circulating in biblical commentaries since the early Middle Ages. These works posited that clerics bore metaphorical and sometimes physical wounds(stigmata)as marks of persecution, while spreading the teaching of Christ in the face of resistance. By the seventh century, the meaning of Galatians 6:17 had been appropriated by bishops and priests as a sign or mark of Christ that they received invisibly at their ordination, and sometimes visibly upon their death. In the eleventh century, Peter Damian articulated a stigmatic spirituality that saw the ideal priest, monk, and nun as bearers of Christ's wounds, a status achieved through the swearing of vows and the practice of severe penance. By the early twelfth century, crusaders were said to bear the marks of the Passion in death and even sometimes as they entered into battle. By the early thirteenth century, “bearing the stigmata” was a pious superlative appropriated by a few devout members of the laity who interpreted Galatian 6:17 in a most literal manner. Thus, this article considers how the conception of “bearing the stigmata” developed in medieval Europe from its treatment in early Latin patristic commentaries to its visceral portrayal by the laity in the thirteenth century.


2021 ◽  
Vol 114 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-110
Author(s):  
Isabella Baldini

Abstract The present contribution aims at reviewing the available data on the Triclinium of the Nineteen couches. It is divided into three parts: the first is intended to overview the information that Byzantine authors have handed down to us about this great banquet hall; the second aims at proposing reconstructive hypotheses about its dimensions and architecture, as well as to investigate the material aspects related to the organisation of the banquet in late antiquity; the third part deals with the ceremonial functions that were performed in it. Contrary to what is usually assumed, the Triclinium was probably not a huge hall with nine apses on each side, but a rectangular hall with a final apse and akkoubita arranged along the perimeter walls. In terms of ritual, the Triclinium must have continued to be in use throughout the early Middle Ages, with a particular revival in the 10th century.


TALIA DIXIT ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 59-83
Author(s):  
Carmen Benítez Guerrero ◽  
◽  
Covadonga Valdaliso Casanova

Although traditionally it was considered that the annals were the form of historical writing in the Early Middle Ages and fell into decline in the thirteenth century, several witnesses prove that the series of annals –i.e., series of concise historical records arranged chronologically –were copied, corrected, expanded, and continued, bringing it up to date, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This article comprises a study of a series of annals copied in the fifteenth century, but composed before, that cover the history of the Castilian Crown, focusing especially on the so-called Reconquest. As we will try to show, its contents are closely related to other annals written in Andalusia in the first half of the fourteenth century, as well as to later similar compositions


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Rita Copeland

What rhetorical traditions did the Middle Ages inherit from antiquity? The first part of this chapter outlines those traditions: a partial corpus of Ciceronian rhetoric; Horace’s Ars poetica; the Rhetoric of Aristotle which was not known until the thirteenth century. The second part considers how emotions figure across rhetorical doctrine in antiquity and the Middle Ages. The third part of the chapter considers the relation of this work to emotions studies and history of emotions more broadly. The fourth part of this Introduction considers the relation between theory and practice, and the sources from which we draw our understanding of medieval rhetoric and the emotions: from theoretical treatises, from rhetorical practice, and the intersections of the two.


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