Divination and Scientific Prediction

2013 ◽  
Vol 18 (6) ◽  
pp. 517-535 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Fidora
Keyword(s):  
Conditional Probability ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Theoretical Assumptions ◽  
Epistemological Status ◽  
Medical Theory ◽  
Scientific Prediction ◽  
The Middle Ages

Starting with a survey of the terminology that was used to describe the epistemological status of the mantic arts during the Middle Ages, this article focuses on the connections between the theoretical assumptions of these arts and of other prognostic disciplines of the time. While during the thirteenth century, mantic disciplines, medicine and meteorology were classified altogether as conjectural sciences that were all based on the interpretation of signs, during the fourteenth century, a more differentiated model of scientific prediction developed in medical theory as well as in meteorology. This model took into account the conditional probability of the expected events, which allowed the option to falsify or at least to revise and adapt a prognosis. Against the backdrop of the epistemological models of prognosis, it becomes obvious that when the mantic disciplines were ultimately excluded from the Western canon of the sciences, it was due not alone to moral and theological concerns.


scholarly journals The Parish Clergy of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries: The Alexander Prize Essay, 1911–12

1912 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 89-128
Author(s):  
H. G. Richardson
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Black Death ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Economic Forces ◽  
Parish Clergy ◽  
Parish Priests ◽  
Prize Essay ◽  
The Middle Ages

Until the thirteenth century records touching the parish clergy are scanty, but thereafter they increase in bulk and, with the fourteenth century, there exist, side by side, a number of literary works which afford more than a passing glance at their lives and deeds. The parish priests and clerks of these centuries were not perhaps typical of the mediaeval period, since no century or centuries will afford a type of any class or institution which will be true for the whole of the Middle Ages; and it is possible that the tenthcentury parish and its people resembled the parish and people of the fourteenth century as little—or as much—as the Elizabethan parish resembled the parish of the present day. The changes that affected so profoundly the organisation of the manor during the course of the Middle Ages did not leave its counterpart, the parish, unaltered; and the same economic forces that helped to make the villein a copyholder and serfdom an anachronism, helped also to raise the chaplain's wages from five to eight marks within thirty years of the Black Death. But although the

Galen's de Constitutione Artis Medicaein the Renaissance

1993 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 302-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefania Fortuna
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Latin Translation ◽  
Great Success ◽  
Manuscript Tradition ◽  
Greek Manuscript ◽  
The Middle Ages

During the sixteenth century Galen'sDe constitutione artis medicae(i.224–304 Kühn) enjoyed a great success: in about fifty years it received four different Latin translations and three commentaries. Certainly this is also true of other medical classical texts, but such success is surprising for a treatise which did not have a wide circulation either in the Middle Ages or in the seventeenth century and later. In fact it is preserved in its entirety in only one Greek manuscript (Florence, Laur. plut. 74.3 = L of the twelfth or thirteenth century, with later corrections = L) and in a Latin translation by Niccolò of Reggio, who worked mainly for King Robert I in Naples in the first half of the fourteenth century. Furthermore, in his edition of 1679 René Chartier made a mistake, which the humanistic editors of the Greek Galen had avoided. The last part of theDe const, art. med.itself enjoyed a considerablefortunaas an independent tract on prognosis in the Greek and Latin manuscript tradition. The editors of the Aldine and the Basle editions knew such anexcerptum, at least in the manuscript Par. gr. 2165 (= P) of the sixteenth century, and rightly decided not to print it. Chartier found it in the manuscript Par. gr. 2269 of the fifteenth or sixteenth century, and published it in the wrong belief that it was a new treatise of Galen's (vol. ii. 170–95 = viii.891–5). He was followed by Carl Gottlob Kühn in his edition of 1821, who printed theDe const, art. med.in the first volume (289–304) and theDe praesagiturain vol. xix.497–511. The error was not publicly detected until Kalbfleisch in 1896.

Hippocrates Latinus: Repertorium of Hippocratic Writings in the Latin Middle Ages (VI)

Traditio ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 347-372
Author(s):  
Pearl Kibre
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Professional Conduct ◽  
Medieval Latin ◽  
Direct Knowledge ◽  
Latin West ◽  
Medical Theory ◽  
Characteristic Features ◽  
The Middle Ages

The Repertorium of Hippocratic Latin texts in the Middle Ages, begun in Traditio 31 (1975) 99–126 and continued in the issues following, here resumes with a number of tracts clearly labelled as by Hippocrates in medieval Latin manuscripts. In general, these texts contain traditional or characteristic features of Hippocratic medical theory and practice, particularly the emphasis upon the relation of climate and seasons to health, upon the four humors and the importance of maintaining a harmonious relation between food and exercise. They also, especially in the Oath (Iusiurandum) and the Law (Lex), reveal the importance placed on ethics and the moral and correct professional conduct of the physician. The fact that most of these treatises were available in the Latin West before the close of the fourteenth century should serve to modify traditional views regarding the lack of direct knowledge of Hippocrates before the so-called Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Papal Legates against the Albigensians: The Debts of the Church of Valence (1215–1250)

Traditio ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 68 ◽  
pp. 259-276
Author(s):  
D. Dudley Stutz
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Detailed Treatment ◽  
Northern Portion ◽  
Rhone Valley ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Middle Ages

In 1232 Pope Gregory IX (r. 1227–41) imposed a tenth of episcopal revenues on prelates of Occitania to subsidize the church of Valence, which owed 10,000 poundstournoisto various bankers of Vienne, Rome, Lyons, and Siena. In 1865 B. Hauréau first noted the event when he edited one of the main documents in theGallia christianavolume concerning the ecclesiastical province of Vienne. With the publication of Gregory IX's register from 1890–1908 most of the facts of the tax were more widely available. In 1910 Ulysse Chevalier briefly mentioned the tax in his monograph on the long tenure of John of Bernin, archbishop of Vienne (r. 1218–66). In 1913, Heinrich Zimmermann cited Hauréau's text in a note in his detailed treatment of early thirteenth-century papal legations. Recently Alain Marchandisse reviewed eight of the eleven papal letters pertaining to the tax in his study of William of Savoy (d. 1239) as bishop-elect of Liège. These scholars provided no reason for the debt or why the papacy would take such measures to ensure payment. Perhaps they did not study this tax further because a church indebted to moneylenders is not in itself surprising. It appears that the church of Valence acquired the debt, very large compared to the church's income, when bishop-elect William of Savoy (r. 1225–39) waged war against Adhémar II of Poitiers-Valentinois, count of the Valentinois (r. 1189–1239). Struggles between bishops and the local nobility occurred on a regular basis throughout the Middle Ages, so what in this unimportant Rhone-valley diocese interested the pope enough to impose taxes on prelates of Occitania over twenty years to ensure payment of this debt? Adhémar II faithfully supported Raymond VI (r. 1194–1222) and Raymond VII (r. 1222–49) of Saint-Gilles, counts of Toulouse, throughout their struggle with the papacy during and following the Albigensian crusades. Adhémar II was also their vassal for the Diois, which borders the Valentinois on the southeast and comprised the northern portion of the marquisate of Provence. These lands had been reserved for the church in the Treaty of Meaux-Paris (1229), which ended the Albigensian crusades. Thus William of Savoy as bishop-elect of Valence defended the papacy's claims on the marquisate of Provence, which the papacy deemed part of the larger struggle between the Roman church and the counts of Toulouse. The facts on the nature of the debts and the steps the papacy took to aid the diocese show that the local struggle between the bishop of Valence and the count of the Valentinois embodied a part of the larger struggle between the papacy and the counts of Toulouse over the marquisate of Provence, which began as early as 1215.

Florence, 1492: The Reappearance of Plotinus*

1996 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 488-508 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henri D. Saffrey
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Saint Augustine ◽  
Latin Translation ◽  
Western World ◽  
Marsilio Ficino ◽  
The Middle Ages

In the western world, Plotinus was only a name until 1492. None of his treatises had been translated during the Middle Ages, and the translations dating back to antiquity had been lost. He was not totally unknown, however, thanks to scholars like Firmicus Maternus, Saint Augustine, Macrobius, and to those parts of the works of Proclus translated in the thirteenth century by William of Moerbeke. But Plotinus's own writings remained completely unknown,and as Vespasiano da Bisticci observed in his Vite, “senza i libri non si poteva fare nulla” (“without the books, nothing can be done”). This fact was to change completely only with the publication by Marsilio Ficino of his Latin translation of the Enneads.

VII.—The Argument of the Vision of Piers Plowman

PMLA ◽  
1894 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 403-450
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Deering Hanscom
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Piers Plowman ◽  
Storm And Stress ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
The Middle Ages

The fourteenth century was for England a period of storm and stress. The Saxon genius does not achieve its conquests lightly; it does not march to victory with furled flags or muffled drums; it is profoundly conscious of its own effort and the object to be realized. True, it often attains more than it hopes or even knows; but it attains the larger result through the accomplishment of the immediate purpose. The internal struggles are those that cost, with nations as with men; and it is no small part of the greatness of England that she has been able to see and strong to resist those dangers which, rising from within, have threatened to overthrow that stability which outward foes have in vain assailed. In that century which marked the close of the middle ages and the beginning of the modern era, England was busy taking cities and ruling her own spirit, and only the wise knew which was the better.

scholarly journals Conductus as Analgesic

2013 ◽  
pp. 49-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bryan Gillingham
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Detailed Account ◽  
Social Milieu ◽  
Specific Instance ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Middle Ages

One of the difficulties in creating an adequate picture of the contextual situation for music, other than that clearly associated with the liturgy, in the Middle Ages, is the paucity of accounts describing performance circumstances. We know little about the social milieu and purposes attending genres marginal to the liturgy such as the conductus and thirteenth-century motet. A manuscript which seems to redress this problem, albeit for one very specific instance, is Vat. lat. 2854 in the Vatican library in Rome. This manuscript is unusual in that it contains not only music but a detailed account of why the music was written. The author, Bonaiutus de Casentino, active in the circle of Pope Boniface VIII, prepared the manuscript in the last decade of the thirteenth century at Rome. The document includes various poems, sacred and secular, as well as two Latin songs written in late Franconian notation. One of the pieces is a two-voice conductus (Hec medela corporalis) which was written, according to the account of Bonaiutus himself, in order to cure the maladies of an ailing pontif. The pontifical complaints seemed to be both psychological and intestinal in nature. It was the hope of Bonaiutus not only to provoke laughter (always a curative), but also to cleanse the papal bowels through his composition. Although one cannot generalize on the basis of this single incident, it does yield a fascinating glimpse into a possible venue for the conductus.

Muslim Roma in the Balkans

2000 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Crowe
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Word Meaning ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Byzantine Empire ◽  
Wild Animals ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
The Middle Ages

The Roma entered the Balkans from India during the Middle Ages. They reached Persia sometime in the ninth century and by the eleventh century had moved into the Byzantine Empire. According to the eleventh-century Georgian Life of Saint George the Athonite, the Emperor Constantine Monomachus asked the Adsincani to get rid of wild animals preying on the animals in his royal hunting preserve. Adsincani is the Georgian form of the Greek word Atsínganoi or Atzínganoi, from which the non-English terms for Roma (cigán, cigány, tsiganes, zigeuner) are derived. Adsincani means “ner-do-well fortune tellers” or “ventriloquists and wizards who are inspired satanically and pretend to predict the unknown.” “Gypsy” comes from “Egyptian,” a term often used by early modern chroniclers in the Balkans to refer to the Roma. Because of the stereotypes and prejudice that surround the word “Gypsy,” the Roma prefer a name of their own choosing from their language, Romani. Today, it is preferable to refer to the Gypsies as Rom or “Roma,” a Romani word meaning “man” or “husband.” Byzantine references to “Egyptians” crop up during this period as Byzantine political and territorial fortunes gave way to the region's new power, the Ottomans. There were areas with large Roma populations in Cyprus and Greece which local rulers dubbed “Little Egypt” in the late fourteenth century.

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