Martin Luther’s Theological Aesthetics

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Mattes
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Theological Aesthetics ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Metaphysical Tradition ◽  
Pseudo Dionysius

Theological aesthetics is the theory or view of beauty in relation to God, including how the senses bear on or contribute to matters of faith. It has a long and important tradition in all forms of Christian faith, since this faith affirms that God is beautiful and therefore desirable. In both the Eastern and Western churches, views of beauty have appropriated criteria not only from the Bible but also from pre-Christian antiquity, borrowing from Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and others. These views tend to see beauty in metaphysical terms, that is, that the core of reality is to be understood on the basis of not only being, truth, goodness, and unity (the “transcendentals,” defining the reality of all things) but also (with some exceptions) beauty. Interpreting the scriptures, Christian thinkers in late antiquity, such as Augustine, singled out proportion as a criterion for beauty, and the Pseudo-Dionysius singled out light. Thomas Aquinas adopted these two perspectives, rooted in the wider Greek philosophical tradition, and added integrity or perfection as a third criterion. Late medieval nominalists and mystics did not focus on theological aesthetics but the piety and spirituality of “bridal mysticism,” mediated through Bernard of Clairvaux, present in Luther’s training in the friary, facilitated these views for Luther. Luther appreciated aspects of this metaphysical tradition, such as the role of mathematics as indicating humanity’s eternal destiny or the cosmic role of proportion in musical intonation and rhythm. However, he was more powerfully influenced by other developments in the late Middle Ages, seen for instance in Jean Gerson, which heightened the affects over the intellect, intellectualizing beauty less and acknowledging how beauty moves and transforms people. He rejected that aspect of the tradition which was apt to view beauty as an end goal of an itinerary of spiritual transformation into more godlike traits, a “theology of glory.” For Luther, God is the primary actor in the story of human salvation, not the human. God’s work of humbling humans “turned in upon themselves” is anything but beautiful: it is painful, indeed deadly, for “old beings.” But God’s proper work of regenerating and renovating humanity, including awakening human senses to “innocent delight,” is most beautiful indeed. The justification of sinners before God is due to their being “adorned” in Christ’s beauty, his righteousness, empowering them to cooperate with God in God’s ongoing “poetic” creativity. As bearing human sin, Christ subverts the standard medieval criteria of proportion, brightness, and integrity. But because Christ assumes the consequences of sin and sin itself and takes it away, sinners through the “happy exchange” receive the beauty proper to Christ. Through the renewal effectuated by the word, humans receive creation as gift and are genuinely awakened to its beauty, similar to the beauty that God made it originally. As new creatures, believers’ desire is reoriented to desire what God desires. While it is not a central concept (he devotes no treatises or disputations to it), it colors how we understand his view of justification and his view of human receptivity and gratitude. It has important ramifications for worship, the arts, and life.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ildar Garipzanov
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Dominant Role ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Sources Of Authority ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Periods

The concluding chapter highlights how the cultural history of graphic signs of authority in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages encapsulated the profound transformation of political culture in the Mediterranean and Europe from approximately the fourth to ninth centuries. It also reflects on the transcendent sources of authority in these historical periods, and the role of graphic signs in highlighting this connection. Finally, it warns that, despite the apparent dominant role of the sign of the cross and cruciform graphic devices in providing access to transcendent protection and support in ninth-century Western Europe, some people could still employ alternative graphic signs deriving from older occult traditions in their recourse to transcendent powers.

MARCEL PAGNOL'S THE BAKER'S WIFE, A CINEMATIC CHARIVARI IN POPULAR FRONT FRANCE

2005 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 437-469 ◽  
Author(s):  
BRETT BOWLES
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Popular Front ◽  
Partisan Politics ◽  
National Union ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Social ◽  
Definition Of

Taking an anthropological approach, this article interprets Pagnol's critically acknowledged classic as a reinvention of a carnivalesque ritual practised in France from the late middle ages through the late 1930s, when ethnographers observed its last vestiges. By linking La Femme du boulanger (The baker's wife, 1938) to contemporaneous debates over gender, national decadence, and the definition of French cultural identity, I argue that the film recycles the charivari's long-standing function as a tool of popular protest against social and political practices regarded as detrimental to the welfare of the nation. In the context of the Popular Front, Pagnol's charivari ridiculed divisive partisan politics pitting Left against Right, symbolically purged class conflict from the social body, and created a new form of folklore that served as a focal point for the communitarian ritual of movie-going among the urban working and middle classes. In so doing, the film promoted the ongoing shift in public support away from the Popular Front in favour of a conservative ‘National Union’ government under Prime Minister Edouard Daladier, who in 1938–9 assumed the role of France's newest political patriarch.

scholarly journals composer phenomenon in a historical retrospect of an authorship idea formation in European musical culture of the middle ages

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (S2) ◽  
pp. 284-302
Author(s):  
Iryna Yu Konovalova
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Historical Retrospect ◽  
Idea Formation ◽  
The Middle Ages

The article is devoted to comprehension of specifics and formation prerequisites of composer’s and musical authorship phenomena historical formation in European culture of the Middle Ages. Genesis of composer’s phenomenon and individual musical authorship model is considered on the basis of historical, socio-cultural and aesthetic-artistic transformations, on awareness about their dynamic’s tendencies and general cultural institutionalization of an authorship phenomenon, as well as on an increasing role of individual creativity in an artistic realm. It is stated that multi-ethnic and anonymous culture of oral tradition, folklore and Christian singing practices, as well as instrumental improvisation’s traditions, became spiritual sources of this phenomena and turn into a strong foundation of musical professionalism and creative impulse for European authorial music evolution. It is emphasized that process of composer’s formation as a creativity subject and musical professionalism carrier was stimulated by the necessity of everyday vocal-choral practice, conditioned by the spiritual context of time, by intention on theocentric world’s picture and religious – Christian outlook dominance. Significant role of secular direction development in the context of music-author’s discourse formation and composer’s figure assertion in the late Middle Ages is highlighted. 

Encyclopedists, medieval

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Barnish
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Strong Influence ◽  
Arts And Sciences ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Liberal Arts And Sciences ◽  
Martianus Capella ◽  
The Middle Ages

The modern encyclopedic genre was unknown in the classical world. In the grammar-based culture of late antiquity, learned compendia, by both pagan and Christian writers, were organized around a text treated as sacred or around the canon of seven liberal arts and sciences, which were seen as preparatory to divine contemplation. Such compendia, heavily influenced by Neoplatonism, helped to unite the classical and Christian traditions and transmit learning, including Aristotelian logic, to the Middle Ages. Writers in the encyclopedic tradition include figures such as Augustine and Boethius, both of whom were extremely influential throughout the medieval period. Other important writers included Macrobius, whose Saturnalia spans a very wide range of subjects; Martianus Capella, whose De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii (The Marriage of Philology and Mercury) covers the seven liberal arts and sciences; Cassiodorus, who presents the arts as leading towards the comtemplation of the heavenly and immaterial; and Isidore, whose Etymologies became one of the most widely referred-to texts of the Middle Ages. These writers also had a strong influence which can be seen later in the period, particularly in the Carolingian Renaissance and again in the twelfth century.

Part I Histories, Ch.2 Roman Law and the Intellectual History of International Law

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lesaffer Randall
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Law ◽  
History Of International Law ◽  
Roman Antiquity

This chapter describes the role of Roman law—whose influence has been largely underestimated in recent scholarship—in the intellectual history and development of international law. To that end, the chapter offers a general survey of the historical interactions between Roman law and international law, drawing from general insights into the intellectual history of law in Europe that have remained remarkably absent in the grand narrative of the history of international law. The focus is on the periods in which these interactions were most pronounced. Next to Roman Antiquity, these are the Late Middle Ages (eleventh to fifteenth centuries) and the Early Modern Age (sixteenth to eighteenth centuries).

scholarly journals Poeci polscy doby humanizmu wobec Rzymu / Polish Poets of the Age of Humanism and Rome

2012 ◽  
Vol 53 (6) ◽  
pp. 631-651
Author(s):  
Alina Nowicka-Jeżowa
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Cultural Exchange ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Holy See ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
The Arts ◽  
History Of ◽  
Roman Model ◽  
Successive Generations

Summary Based on earlier research, and especially Tadeusz Ulewicz’s landmark study Iter Romano- -Italicum Polonorum, or the Intellectual and Cultural Links between Poland and Italy in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (1999) this article examines the influence of Rome - in its role as the Holy See and a centre of learning and the arts - on Poland’s culture in the 15th and 16th century as well as on the activities of Polish churchmen, scholars and writers who came to the Eternal City. The aim of the article is to trace the role of the emerging Humanist themes and attitudes on the shape of the cultural exchange in question. It appears that the Roman connection was a major factor in the history of Polish Humanism - its inner development, its transformations, and the ideological and artistic choices made by the successive generations of the Polish elite. In the 15th century the Roman inspirations helped to initiate the Humanist impulse in Poland, while in the 16th century they stimulated greater diversity and a search for one’s own way of development. In the post-Tridentine epoch they became a potent element of the Poland’s new cultural formation. Against the background of these generalizations, the article presents the cultural profiles of four poets, Mikołaj of Hussów, Klemens Janicjusz, Jan Kochanowski, and Mikołaj Sęp Szarzyński. They symbolize the four phases of the Polish Humanist tradition, which draw their distinctive identities from looking up to the Roman model

Sickness and Healing

2020 ◽  
pp. 402-417
Author(s):  
Peregrine Horden
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
The Individual

How should a medieval monk behave when sick? Must submission to divine test or judgement be the only response, or is resort to secular as well as spiritual medicine allowed? What is the role of the infirmary in a monastery and, for the individual monk, what are the benefits and disadvantages of staying in it? The chapter traces medieval answers to such questions through case studies drawn from the earliest phase of monasticism in late antiquity, from Carolingian Europe, from the twelfth century, and from the later Middle Ages, concluding with an outline of a set of topics for further research.

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 Most Blessed Hilary Held an Estate”: Property, Reform, and the Canonical Life in Tenth-Century Aquitaine

2016 ◽  
Vol 85 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-39
Author(s):  
Anna Trumbore Jones
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Reform Movements ◽  
Common Life ◽  
Estate Property ◽  
Property Reform

This article explores thinking and practice regarding property at houses of canons from the mid-ninth to mid-eleventh centuries, through a case study of the charters of Saint-Hilaire-le-Grand in Poitiers. Since Late Antiquity, Christian orders debated the legitimacy of private property, with most rejecting it in favor of exclusively common holdings. For houses of canons, property became a defining issue in the Central Middle Ages: Carolingian legislation in 816 asserted that canons (unlike monks) could hold private property, while the order of regular canons, which emerged in the eleventh century, rejected it as corrupt. The role of property at houses of canons in the interim period, meanwhile, has been largely neglected by scholars. This essay argues that Saint-Hilaire embraced Carolingian acceptance of private property among canons, but that that stance did not preclude protection of joint property and interest in the common life. The resulting detailed understanding of both the quotidian functioning of property at a tenth-century house and the ideals that drove its regulation inform my concluding comments on two broader topics: the role of wealth and property in a dedicated religious life, and the nature of reform movements in the church of the Central Middle Ages.

The Bible in the Fourteenth Century: Some Observations

1985 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 176-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
William J. Courtenay
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Biblical Studies ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Late Medieval Period ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Precise Understanding ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Biblical Commentaries ◽  
English Group

One of the most pressing needs in the field of medieval biblical studies is for an adequate historical overview of developments in the late Middle Ages. One of the pioneers, the late Beryl Smalley, never fully achieved the intended sequel to her magisterial Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, although her English Friars and Antiquity was an excellent beginning, particularly for the early fourteenth-century English group. Other surveys end with Nicholas of Lyra, skip from the thirteenth century to the Reformation, or give only the most cursory attention to the late medieval period.2 And yet the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were rich in biblical commentaries, and scholars, have long considered a more precise understanding of developments in that period to be essential for an adequate appreciation of the character and significance of biblical commentaries in the early sixteenth century.

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