Competing Canons

2019 ◽  
pp. 235-265
Author(s):  
Eric Lawee
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Life ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Late Medieval

Rashi’s critics joined a battle that unfolded across the late medieval Mediterranean at the center of which stood divergent ideas not only as to the correct meaning of the Torah but how to realize the divine charge that the Torah communicated. Many in the eastern Mediterranean, including Rashi’s resisting readers, took inspirtation from teachings of the Spanish luminaries, Abraham ibn Ezra and Maimonides. The late medieval battle over Judaism’s future is apparent from a peculiar specimen of Jewish rationalism bearing the title ‘Alilot devarim (Book of Accusations). Its author put his satirical genius in the service of exposure of the obscurantism that, in his view, had come to degrade Jewish life in post-talmudic times. The corruption infiltrated every sphere, and this writer thought Rashi’s Commentary a major cause and symptom of it. In the end, amid competing canons, Rashi’s Commentary, standing in varying degrees of opposition to the exegetical and theological rationalism of Ibn Ezra and Maimonides, proved triumphant, as is betokened by the composition and popularity of the greatest of the Rashi supercommentaries by Elijah Mizrahi.

scholarly journals The origins and evolution of Cypriot glazed ware productions during the thirteenth to seventeenth centuries CE

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carmen Ting ◽  
Thilo Rehren ◽  
Athanasios Vionis ◽  
Vasiliki Kassianidou
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Commercial Activities ◽  
Late Medieval Period ◽  
Thin Section Petrography ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Economic Developments ◽  
Full Consideration

AbstractThis paper challenges the conventional characterisation of glazed ware productions in the eastern Mediterranean, especially the ones which did not feature the use of opaque or tin-glazed technology, as technologically stagnant and unsusceptible to broader socio-economic developments from the late medieval period onwards. Focusing on the Cypriot example, we devise a new approach that combines scientific analyses (thin-section petrography and SEM-EDS) and a full consideration of the chaîne opératoire in context to highlight the changes in technology and craft organisation of glazed ware productions concentrating in the Paphos, Famagusta and Lapithos region during the thirteenth to seventeenth centuries CE. Our results indicate that the Paphos production was short-lived, lasting from the establishment of Frankish rule in Cyprus in the thirteenth century to the aftermath of the fall of the Crusader campaigns in the fourteenth century. However, glazed ware production continued in Famagusta and Lapithos from the late thirteenth/fourteenth centuries through to the seventeenth century, using technical practices that were evidently different from the Paphos production. It is possible that these productions were set up to serve the new, local demands deriving from an intensification of commercial activities on the island. Further changes occurred to the technical practices of the Famagusta and Lapithos productions around the 16th/17th centuries, coinciding with the displacement of populations and socio-political organisation brought by the Ottoman rule.

Mit zweierlei Maß. Der Adriaraum als Laboratorium spätmittelalterlicher Praktiken des Slaving / Two Degrees of Bondage: The Venetian Adriatic Sea as a Laboratory for European Practices and Discourses of Slavery

2014 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Juliane Schiel
Keyword(s):  
Adriatic Sea ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
The Black Sea ◽  
Turn Of The Millennium ◽  
Commercial Policy ◽  
The West ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Black Sea Region ◽  
The Balkans

AbstractIt is usually held that by the turn of the millennium Latin Christians stopped enslaving their fellow-believers from within Europe. Scholars have therefore tended to define the late medieval type of domestic slaves in Italian and Iberian households, most of whom had been traded from the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea region to Europe, by their cultural and religious difference. Yet, the numerous Christians from the Balkans who came across the Adriatic Sea to the West (and especially to Venice) clearly complicate the picture. They were mostly under twelve years of age and could be purchased at a very low price. The paper examines the commercial policy of the Venetian Senate in respect of the Adriatic human trafficking and sounds the strategies Venetian merchants used in order to pursue their interests, within and outside the legal framework set by the state authorities East and West of the Adriatic Sea.

Mystical Theology and Social Dissent

1983 ◽  
Author(s):  
Byron L. Sherwin
Keyword(s):  
Educational Reform ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Communal Life ◽  
Innovative Program ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Mystical Theology

Judah Loew, better known as the Maharal of Prague, was a pivotal personality in late medieval European Judaism. Best known from the popular legend that credited him with the creation of a golem—an artificial human with superhuman powers—his true importance lay in his comprehensive exposition of a unique expression of Jewish mystical theology, his call for a reformation of Jewish communal life, and his influence on subsequent Jewish life and thought. This book, a lucid exposition of the life, legend, works, and ideas developed in Loew's massive writings, “reveals the concealed” by unravelling the often obscure nature of his mystical theology, his polemical jousts against past and contemporary Jewish scholars, and his innovative program for social and educational reform.

scholarly journals Served on a Plate: A Late Medieval Ceramic Vessel with Sgraffito Decoration of a Sailing Ship from the Ropotamo Underwater Excavations, Black Sea, Bulgaria

Heritage ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 170-191
Author(s):  
Dragomir Garbov ◽  
Kroum Batchvarov
Keyword(s):  
Black Sea ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
The Black Sea ◽  
Full Potential ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Maritime Culture ◽  
Black Sea Coast ◽  
Ceramic Vessel ◽  
Mediterranean Regions ◽  
Sailing Ship

We report on the interpretation of a late medieval Eastern Mediterranean glazed ceramic vessel with sgraffito decoration depicting a sailing ship. The artefact represents a chance find that was recovered outside the excavation area of the Ropotamo underwater archaeological excavations on the Southern Bulgarian Black Sea Coast in 2017. Fragments of late medieval sgraffito-decorated ceramics with depictions of sailing ships are rare. Complete examples can be considered exceptional. The Ropotamo artefact is of particular interest due to the freehand execution of its decoration, which suggests some understanding of contemporary ship proportions and seafaring practices on behalf of the artisan. The specimen is analyzed against similar artefacts and discussed in the context of maritime graffiti from the Black Sea and Eastern Mediterranean regions. The aim is to establish its potential for studying archaeological ceramics and evaluate the extent to which the decoration reflects aspects of Eastern Mediterranean maritime culture of the late Byzantine and early post-Byzantine periods. More research is required to appreciate the full potential of the Ropotamo artefact. A hypothesis for origin, dating and significance has been proposed. However, due to a shortage of published parallels, it may be subject to further refinements in the future in case more stratified similis are identified.

scholarly journals Combining dendrochronology and radiocarbon dating at the Late Medieval site of Sant’Alvise, Venice, Italy

2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicoletta Martinelli ◽  
John Meadows ◽  
Erio Valzolgher ◽  
Olivia Pignatelli ◽  
Laura Anglani ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Tree Ring ◽  
Radiocarbon Dating ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Wooden Structures

The excavation of a series of wooden structures, built to reclaim land on Venice’s northwestern edge, provided an opportunity, using Bayesian chronological modeling, to combine precise dendrochronological and radiocarbon dating results with floating tree-ring chronologies, artifactual dating and stratigraphic evidence. Our model indicates that the first structure was built in the early AD 1340s, the second in the early AD 1370s, and the reclaimed area was extended again within about a decade of cal AD 1400. The dates of these building episodes bracket the deposition of important pottery assemblages, including imports from Spain and the Eastern Mediterranean.

Religious Belief and Social Conformity: the ‘Converso’ Problem in Late-Medieval Córdoba

1981 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 115-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. H. Edwards
Keyword(s):  
North Africa ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Historical Consciousness ◽  
Western European Country ◽  
Physical Barrier ◽  
Social Conformity ◽  
European Continent ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
The Relationship

The fact that Spain is, to date, the only western European country which has ever been an Islamic colony still seems to banish her to the fringe of her neighbours' historical consciousness. Much of the responsibility for this state of affairs rests with the Spaniards themselves. In most cases and in most periods, the inhabitants of the Iberian peninsula have, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, used the Pyrenees as an intellectual, as well as a physical, barrier, and considered the Peninsula's problems as distinct from those of the rest of the European continent. A strong reason for adopting this approach is the remarkable co-existence of Islamic, Christian and Jewish civilization between 711 and 1492, which placed Spain and Portugal within both medieval Christendom and the Islamic world of North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean. The successes of co-operation between the three religions which were achieved during this period are worthy of greater recognition than they generally receive, but the intention here is to investigate the causes of the failures which brought co-existence to an end, concentrating on the relationship between Judaism and Christianity in a large, late-medieval Castilian town.

Global Middle Ages

2021 ◽  
pp. 195-219
Author(s):  
Catherine Holmes
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Global Approach ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Political Structures

This chapter considers societies and cultures outside western Europe from the early thirteenth to later fifteenth centuries by focusing with particular intensity on eastern Mediterranean societies. Rather than offering micro-surveys of a series of different contexts, some close to Europe and others further away, the chapter considers the late medieval world in global terms. The discussion focuses on the creation, projection, and realization of power by rulers during a period which has traditionally been associated with widespread turbulence and disintegration, and yet in which certain commonalities of political structures and culture can also be perceived. The global approach is comparative and largely political, but it also analyses dynamics which relate more to connectedness on social, economic, and cultural levels, and which also often involved movement over scales of all sorts: local, regional, transregional and even intercontinental. The principal relationship examined is between those with aspirations to high, supralocal power, and those who peopled the more fluid, fractured, and sometimes highly mobile formations that typify so much of the economic, social, religious, and cultural landscape of the late medieval centuries.

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