6. Empress of heaven and hell

2021 ◽  
pp. 99-122
Author(s):  
Mary Joan Winn Leith
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
Marian Devotion ◽  
High Middle Ages

‘Empress of heaven and hell’ recounts how the Virgin Mary came into her own during Europe’s High Middle Ages. Between 1150 and 1250, over 80 cathedrals and 500 churches were erected in honour of the Virgin Mary. There were a variety of factors that contributed to the explosion of Marian devotion in medieval and Renaissance spirituality. For example, Mary’s intercession with Christ acquired new urgency with a change in expectations about the soul’s fate after death. Related to this was belief in Mary’s Assumption, which is examined in light of theology and art. Mary’s place in medieval anti-Judaism is also worth considering. Historian Henry Adams’s description of medieval Marian energy carried over into the Renaissance, when Jesus’s humanity, based on Mary’s motherhood, became the touchstone for the humanist temper of the age.

The Virgin Mary, Miriam, and Jewish Reactions to Marian Devotion in the High Middle Ages

AJS Review ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ephraim Shoham-Steiner
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
Marian Devotion ◽  
High Middle Ages ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Dead Man

While discussing the rites and customs of burial and mourning in his bookTashbeẓ katan, the early fourteenth-century Rabbi Shimshon ben Ẓadok made the following remark:And the fact that we spill the water [that was in the presence of the dead man] outside [after the death] is because that when Miriam died the well ceased. For it is written: ‘And there was no water for the congregation [‘eda] since it was for her merit that the well traveled [with the Israelites] and we allude to it that he [the deceased] is a great man and he is worthy that water would cease on his behalf.

From Chronicle to Romance

After Lavinia ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Watkins
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Courtly Love ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
Negative Attitudes ◽  
High Middle Ages ◽  
Attitudes Toward Marriage

This chapter focuses on interdynastic marriage during the High Middle Ages. In particular, it examines the new emphasis on peacemaking in marriage diplomacy and its competition with other, generally negative attitudes toward marriage diplomacy. The chapter first considers how theological and devotional developments in the eleventh and twelfth centuries attributed a new sanctity to marriages between former belligerents by honoring brides as types of the Virgin Mary. It then discusses Dudo of Saint-Quentin's chronicle De moribus et actis primorum Normanniæ ducum, along with another Christian encounter with non-Christian representations of marriage and desire, the courtly love tradition, with its roots in Arabic and Ovidian accounts of erotic despair. The chapter shows that, by the High Middle Ages, the ideals that would support the great marriage treaties of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were in place.

The Virgin Mary in the Hymns of the Catholic Church

2019 ◽  
pp. 245-264
Author(s):  
Thomas A. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Vatican Ii ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
Council Of Trent ◽  
Marian Devotion ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
The Catholic Church ◽  
Catholic Liturgy

This study presents images of the Virgin Mary as found in the hymns of the Catholic Church—from the patristic to the post-Vatican II period. Marian hymns flourished in the Middle Ages, but after the Council of Trent (1545–1563), the Catholic liturgy contained, with few exceptions, only the Scriptural and euchological texts in Latin. The vernacular congregational hymn contributed to the flourishing of Marian devotion apart from the official liturgy. Vatican II integrated the Virgin Mary into the ‘Mystery of Christ’ celebrated in the liturgy and presented a Scriptural and ecclesial image of Mary. Suggestions are given for Marian hymns and for their place within the liturgy.

Marian Devotion and Confessional Identity in Sixteenth-Century Germany

2004 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
pp. 218-227
Author(s):  
Bridget Heal
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
Marian Devotion ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Confessional Identity ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City

The Virgin Mary provided a powerful focal point for religious identity. During the early modern period Mary-worship marked out one Christian confession from another, rather than Christian from Jew, as in the Middle Ages, or Catholic from secularist, as in more modern times. Intra-Christian disputes over Mary’s status were particularly intense in Germany, the heartland of the Reformation, where Catholic and Protestant lived side by side. This paper will consider the fate of Marian imagery and devotion in three of Germany’s key free cities: Nuremberg, Augsburg, and Cologne. Each city had a different confessional structure: Nuremberg adopted the Lutheran faith in 1525; Augsburg’s council introduced wide-ranging and radical (Zwinglian-influenced) reforms in the 1530s but the city had religious parity imposed on it in 1548; Cologne remained Catholic, despite the presence of a considerable Protestant minority within its city walls and the attempts of two archbishops to introduce a synodal Reformation. These three cities therefore illustrate the spectrum of possible responses of traditional Marian veneration to the pressures of Protestant and Catholic reform. A comparison between them allows us to assess the impact of both doctrinal debate and local circumstance on the expression of Marian piety, and reveals the various ways in which Marian devotion might be used to create confessional consciousness and define religious allegiance.

scholarly journals Courtly Motives In The Art Of The High Middle Ages

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alina Slivinska ◽  
Larysa Tzvetkova
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Symbolic Representation ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
Visual Images ◽  
Religious Symbol ◽  
High Middle Ages ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Rose ◽  
Gothic Art ◽  
The Ideal

Purpose of the article. The article presents a study of courtly motives in the art of the high Middle Ages and the foundations of the ideological and figurative-symbolic representation of courtly images in various artistic forms of this era. Methodology. The study of the content of courtly motives and images, the definition of the ideological foundations of their figurative and symbolic representation was carried out through the use of historical, analytical, symbolic, and allegorical methods. Scientific novelty. The article examines courtly motives and courtly images presented in the art of the High Middle Ages, identifies the ideological foundations of their figurative and symbolic representation in various artistic forms of this era. Conclusions.  The visual images of medieval masters create the world of courtly, filling the courtly universe with numerous subjects that reflect the image and lifestyle of both knights and their Beautiful ladies. And thus they help to understand the norms and prescriptions of courtesy, the models of the participants' behavior in the courteous action, the corresponding rituals and etiquette norms of courteous relations, their attributes, and stylistics. In order to do this, the artists used various techniques - bright colors, saturation with symbols, heraldry, outfits, etc. Especially popular was the use of the rose image, which became the quintessence of Gothic art, its courtly and religious symbol, the embodiment of the ideal of chivalry to the Beautiful Lady, and a kind of reflection of the Christian image of the Virgin Mary.

Anna Russakoff, Imagining the Miraculous: Miraculous Images of the Virgin Mary in French Illuminated Manuscripts, ca. 1250-ca. 1450. Studies and Texts, 215; Text Image Context: Studies in Medieval Manuscript Illumination, 7. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2019, xviii, 194 pp., ill.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 541-544
Author(s):  
Juan Carlos Bayo
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Old French ◽  
Illuminated Manuscripts ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
Medieval Manuscript ◽  
French Speaking ◽  
Image Context ◽  
Panel Paintings

This monograph deals with illuminated manuscripts created in French-speaking regions from the mid-thirteenth to the mid-fifteenth century, i.e., from the earliest narratives of Marian miracles written in <?page nr="542"?>Old French to the codices produced at the Burgundian court at the waning of the Middle Ages. Its focus, however, is very specific: it is a systematic analysis of the miniatures depicting both material representations of the Virgin (mainly sculptures, but also icons, panel paintings, altarpieces or reliquaries) and the miracles performed by them, usually as Mary’s reaction to a prayer (or an insult) to one of Her images.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
G.E.M. Lippiatt
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
High Middle Ages ◽  
Governing Institutions

Historians of political development in the High Middle Ages often focus on the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries as the generations in which monarchy finally triumphed over aristocracy to create a monopoly on governing institutions in Western Europe. However, it was precisely in this period that Simon of Montfort emerged from his modest forest lordship in France to conquer a principality stretching from the Pyrenees to the Rhône. A remarkable ascendancy in any period, it is perhaps especially so in its contrast with the accepted historiographical narrative. Despite the supposed triumph of monarchy during his lifetime, Simon’s meteoric career took place largely outside of royal auspices. Simon’s experience provides a challenge to an uncomplicated or teleological understanding of contemporary politics as effectively national affairs directed by kings.

Simon V of Montfort and Baronial Government, 1195-1218

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
G.E.M. Lippiatt
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Public Order ◽  
Violent Death ◽  
Documentary Evidence ◽  
Southern France ◽  
Archival Material ◽  
Fourth Crusade ◽  
High Middle Ages ◽  
Biographical Study

Dissenter from the Fourth Crusade, disseised earl of Leicester, leader of the Albigensian Crusade, prince of southern France: Simon of Montfort led a remarkable career of ascent from mid-level French baron to semi-independent count before his violent death before the walls of Toulouse in 1218. Through the vehicle of the crusade, Simon cultivated autonomous power in the liminal space between competing royal lordships in southern France in order to build his own principality. This first English biographical study of his life examines the ways in which Simon succeeded and failed in developing this independence in France, England, the Midi, and on campaign to Jerusalem. Simon’s familial, social, and intellectual connexions shaped his conceptions of political order, which he then implemented in his conquests. By analysing contemporary narrative, scholastic, and documentary evidence—including a wealth of archival material—this book argues that Simon’s career demonstrates the vitality of baronial independence in the High Middle Ages, despite the emergence of centralised royal bureaucracies. More importantly, Simon’s experience shows that barons themselves adopted methods of government that reflected a concern for accountability, public order, and contemporary reform ideals. This study therefore marks an important entry in the debate about baronial responsibility in medieval political development, as well as providing the most complete modern account of the life of this important but oft-overlooked crusader.

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