“Ridiculousness and Risibility”

2019 ◽  
pp. 119-149
Author(s):  
Eric Lawee
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Literary Expression ◽  
Jewish Intellectual

The religiocultural setting that looms largest in tracing critical receptions of the Commentary is the veritable Babel of Jewish intellectual and literary expression in the eastern Mediterranean. Something unprecedented occurs in the writings of scholars with certain or highly probable eastern Mediterranean (Byzantine) affiliations: the Commentary is subjected to intense and at times systematic criticism from a position of frank superiority. The critics focus on two things: misguided exegesis, especially as expressed in the Commentary’s surfeit of midrash, and thse scandalously unscientific understanding of the Torah that Rashi is charged with promoting. The main focus in this chapter falls on Revealer of Secrets (Ṣafenat pa‘neaḥ), a Torah commentary by the fourteenth-century Eleazar Ashkenazi, who stands as the earliest datable figure to adopt a stance of arrant scorn toward Rashi. Study of his work provides a window into a world of rhetorically intense resistance to Rashi elaborated more fully by other scholars.

Late Helladic IIIA 2 Pottery from Mycenae

1965 ◽  
Vol 60 ◽  
pp. 159-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth French
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Previous Article ◽  
The One ◽  
Definition Of

The L.H. IIIA 2 period according to Furumark's chronology covers the fourteenth century, a crucial phase in Mycenaean history and, whatever absolute dates are eventually assigned to the period, the pottery belonging to it marks the vast expansion of Mycenaean trade throughout the Eastern Mediterranean. It is therefore extremely important to determine what pottery must and what pottery may belong to L.H. IIIA 2. The definition of L.H. IIIA 1 pottery adopted in a previous article enables us to deal with the beginning of the period. The division between L.H. IIIA 2 late and L.H. IIIB 1 can be placed, in terms of the pottery from settlement sites, at one of two points. The earlier would be the introduction of the vertical (as compared with horizontal or diagonal) Whorl-Shells. This was suggested by Mackeprang. The later point, and the one adopted in this discussion, is the introduction of the Deep Bowl (FS 284) and in unpainted ware the Conical Kylix (FS 274). This later terminus seems preferable as a more radical and easily recognizable development.

On the Prehistory of Cretan Icon Painting

Frankokratia ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 108-164
Author(s):  
Michele Bacci
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Complex Issue ◽  
A Chain

Abstract The present paper offers some thoughts on the complex issue of Italianate elements in Cretan icon painting by emphasizing the extent to which they can be considered to stem from motifs worked out in the mid-to-late fourteenth century in the wider, fluid space between Venice and the Eastern Mediterranean. It focuses on a cluster of Marian panels that, on account of their mixed Byzantine and Western character, have been hitherto confined to the margins of art-historical research and improperly labeled as works of a so-called “Adriatic” school. The critical reassessment of these works illuminates the ways in which innovative compositional, iconographic, and stylistic solutions were developed by masters well acquainted with both Palaiologan and Venetian art, and reproduced in a chain of replicas, some of which can be reasonably attributed to Cretan workshops.

scholarly journals Sites of Controversy: Jews Debating Philosophy between Iberia and Occitania in the Fourteenth Century

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 631-648
Author(s):  
Tamar Ron Marvin
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Careful Examination ◽  
Social Activities ◽  
Intellectual Culture ◽  
Jewish Intellectual ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Communal Norms ◽  
Letter Collection

AbstractThe extant sources of the Maimonidean controversies demonstrate that medieval Jewish intellectual culture was sited in actual encounters and interactions. Such interactions often took place around the practices of writing, conveying, receiving, and discussing letters, social activities governed by communal norms. Whether in the course of collaborating with co-writers, seeking signatories in support of a proposition contained in the letter text, or congregating at an established meeting to discuss a newly arrived letter, those involved in the controversies were actively, socially engaged in addressing the problems raised by the incompatibility of the Greco-Islamic rationalist tradition with rabbinic principles. Through a careful examination of the rich letter collection Minḥat Qenaʾot from the Maimonidean controversy of 1304–1306, this paper details the modes of encounter among discussants in the acrimonious cultural debate.

The Mercenary Companies, the Papacy, and the Crusades, 1356–1378

Traditio ◽  
1982 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. 253-280 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norman Housley
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Social Problem ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Holy War ◽  
Christian Community ◽  
First Crusade ◽  
Leading Role

During the second half of the fourteenth century most of France and many parts of Italy faced a social problem of massive proportions in the activities of the routiers, unemployed and rampaging mercenary soldiers. The popes of the period, Innocent VI, Urban V, and Gregory XI, took a leading role in attempts to deal with this daunting problem, and the purpose of this article is to examine one of the chief instruments which they employed, the crusade. The place of the mercenary companies in the crusading movement was paradoxical. On several occasions from 1357 onwards the popes issued crusading indulgences to those who fought against the routiers on the grounds that they presented a serious threat to the well-being of the Christian community, the populus christianus. But the popes also hoped to use the companies in the service of Christian Holy War by persuading them to travel to the eastern Mediterranean, to Hungary or to Granada, to fight the Muslims. Both approaches sprang from long-established papal policy towards those considered as Christendom's internal foes. When the curia tried to bring about the destruction of the routiers by offering spiritual rewards to their opponents it placed the mercenaries in the roll-call of Christian rebels and excommunicates combatted by means of the crusade, alongside the emperor Frederick II, Peter II of Aragon, the Visconti, and others. And when it attempted to send the companies beyond the frontiers of Christendom, it was adopting a strategy which dated back at least as far as the First Crusade. So both aspects of papal policy towards the routiers were highly traditional. They were also unsuccessful, which raises important questions about the way the later Avignon popes thought about and exercised their power. In the mid-thirteenth century the popes successfully resisted the ambitions of the Staufen and destroyed their might; a century later they proved unable to contain the companies. Was this because the Avignon papacy was out-of-date in its policies, because it failed to appreciate and adjust to the profound changes which had occurred in society and government? In broader terms, does traditionalism in this instance betoken the ideological bankruptcy which some scholars have seen as a leading characteristic of the papacy in the fourteenth century? In order to answer these questions I shall first examine the nature of the threat which was posed by the companies, then look in detail at the two aspects of the policy adopted by the curia in response to it.

scholarly journals Mariun

2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gohar Grigoryan Savary
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
The Political ◽  
Self Organized ◽  
Female Spirituality ◽  
Mediterranean Communities ◽  
Holy City

Upon the Mamluk takeover of Sis in 1375 CE, the former Queen Mariun of the Armenian state of Cilicia was taken into captivity and held first in Aleppo and then in Cairo. From there she traveled to Jerusalem, where she lived until her death. Her tomb at the Sts. James Monastery in Jerusalem is often mentioned in medieval and postmedieval texts, but the information in later historiography concerning Mariun and some of her contemporaries who survived the fall of the Armenian kingdom and lived through the fourteenth century has been subject to inaccuracies. This article considers some of these accretions and misrepresentations using textual and archaeological documentation, and reconstructs several key episodes in the life and afterlife of Mariun. The story of this remarkable noblewoman crosses the political realms of at least three Mediterranean communities—Armenian, Mamluk, and Latin—and reflects the scope of the ever-changing geopolitical complexities that continued to mark the eastern Mediterranean under Mamluk domination. Spending the finalstages of her life in exile and on pilgrimage, the former queen of Armenia appeared in the Holy City at a time when female spirituality was flourishing within self-organized monastic institutions.

Living History

2020 ◽  
pp. 84-121
Author(s):  
Jane Gilbert ◽  
Simon Gaunt ◽  
William Burgwinkle
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
French Language ◽  
British History ◽  
Living History ◽  
Language Community ◽  
Prose Romance ◽  
North Eastern ◽  
Historical Text ◽  
French And English

This chapter discusses Peter Langtoft’s French-language epic chronicle of British history (c. 1307 and disseminated mainly in north-eastern England), and its most luxurious surviving manuscript: London, BL, Royal MS 20 A II. This early fourteenth-century manuscript contained other historical, lyric, and prophetic material in French and English; in the second half of the same century, abridged segments of the Lancelot en prose and Queste del Saint Graal were appended, along with a letter about recent events in the eastern Mediterranean. We ask: how does a historical text produce itself, how does it authorize itself, and what are the roles of language and of discourse? We show how the Arthurian prose romance extracts in French adapt the manuscript’s earlier contents to England’s changing political and cultural concerns. The use of a single language—French—enhances and directs the potential for meaningful conflict within and beyond the language community.

Hebrew Bible

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martti Nissinen
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
Literary Expression ◽  
Ancient Israel

This chapter considers prophecy in the Hebrew Bible. It is presented as literature which is rooted in the prophetic phenomenon but which no longer serves as a direct document of prophets in ancient Israel and Judah. The prophetic book is a genre of its own, owing its emergence to the scribal activity of the Second Temple period. Once regarded as the source of prophecy par excellence, the Hebrew Bible is a very different kind of a source for the ancient Eastern Mediterranean prophetic phenomenon—not because the phenomenon itself was different but because the scribal transmission of prophecy in Israel and Judah finds a distinctive literary expression in the biblical books.

scholarly journals Through the Eyes of a Mapmaker: Maritime Shrines on Cyprus during the Late Middle Ages

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 1022
Author(s):  
Ourania Perdiki
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Special Importance ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
Local Dimension ◽  
Sacred Sites ◽  
South Eastern ◽  
Late Middle Ages

Cyprus acquired special importance, especially from the thirteenth century onwards, on the Eastern Mediterranean’s pilgrimage network. Described by contemporary pilgrims as “Terra christianorum ultima”, the island was considered to be the last Christian land in the south-eastern Mediterranean on the pilgrims’ itinerary on their journey to the Holy Land. This study is concentrated on two maps of Cyprus dated to the fourteenth century and preserved in Milan: Biblioteca Ambrosiana, A95 sup. and Venice: Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, gr. XI.21. It aims to explore the physical and spiritual mobility and interconnectivity in Cyprus during the late Middle Ages and to consider how these contribute to the development of pilgrimage sites directly related with maritime routes, seamen and travellers. These unique nautical maps captured the sea voyage which had Cyprus as a stopover, bringing to light new insights into fourteenth century Cyprus. The maritime shrines discussed in this article, which are usually “mixed” sacred sites, are directly related with sailors’ needs. They integrate into a wide network of communication, removing them partially from their local dimension.

KNOSSIAN GIFTS? TWO LATE MINOAN IIIA1 CUPS FROM TEL BETH-SHEMESH, ISRAEL

2013 ◽  
Vol 108 ◽  
pp. 51-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shlomo Bunimovitz ◽  
Zvi Lederman ◽  
Eleni Hatzaki
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Viable Option ◽  
Social Agents ◽  
Close Affinity ◽  
New Evidence

Two Late Minoan IIIA1 cups were recently found in the excavations at Tel Beth-Shemesh, Israel. They were part of a larger assemblage of local Late Bronze IIA (first half of the fourteenth century bc) drinking and eating vessels sealed under a destruction layer in one room of a large edifice, presumably a ‘palace’. A commemorative scarab bearing the name of Amenhotep III and related to the first Jubilee (Sed festival) in his thirtieth regnal year was found alongside the cups, providing further chronological evidence. This article examines the Late Minoan IIIA1 cups from Beth-Shemesh within their Aegean context and emphasises their close affinity with comparable cups from the palace of Knossos, catalogued and republished here. The Tel Beth-Shemesh cups are the second occurrence – after Sellopoulo Tomb 4 – of Knossian Late Minoan IIIA1 pottery found together with Amenhotep III's scarab. This new evidence strengthens the likelihood of some chronological overlap between Late Minoan IIIA1 and the reign of this Pharaoh. The article also considers the biography of the two Minoan cups, as social agents within the intricate network of the Late Bronze Age palatial gift exchange in the eastern Mediterranean. While it is possible that the cups came to Beth-Shemesh directly from Knossos, another viable option is that they arrived as a gift from the Egyptian court. The two rare Late Minoan IIIA1 Knossian cups could have reached Egypt on the occasion of Amenhotep III's much-discussed official embassy to the Aegean – including Knossos – and then been sent as royal gifts to the ruler of Beth-Shemesh.

Francophone Literary Culture on the Move

2020 ◽  
pp. 58-83
Author(s):  
Jane Gilbert ◽  
Simon Gaunt ◽  
William Burgwinkle
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Northern Italy ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
The Past ◽  
Prose Romance

This chapter connects northern Italy with networked vectors of transmission encompassing the Low Countries, Britain, France, and the eastern Mediterranean: Arthurian prose romance is a vehicle for, and an instrument of, a pan-European chivalric vision of the past, present, and future. This Christianizing interest in figures like Tristan and Guiron le Courtois connects Italy with the Low Countries and the eastern Mediterranean in particular. A key feature of the transmission of this material, and one that grows in importance by the fourteenth century, is compilation. The famous Arthurian compilation (c. 1270) of Rusticiaus de Pise gathers episodes from different romance traditions. Guiron le Courtois circulates in ever-expanding compilations between the Low Countries and Northern Italy.

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