scholarly journals Artistic Genius versus the Hanse Canon from the Late Middle Ages to the Early Modern Age in Tallinn

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 59-80
Author(s):  
Juhan Maiste

In the article, the author examines one of the most outstanding andproblematic periods in the art history of Tallinn as a Hanseatic city,which originated, on the one hand, in the Hanseatic tradition andthe medieval approach to Gothic transcendental realism, and onthe other, in the approach typical of the new art cities of Flanders,i.e. to see a reflection of the new illusory reality in the pictures. Acloser examination is made of two works of art imported to Tallinnin the late 15th century, i.e. the high altar in the Church of the HolySpirit by Bernt Notke and the altarpiece of Holy Mary, whichwas originally commissioned by the Brotherhood of Blackheadsfor the Dominican Monastery and is now in St Nicholas’ Church.Despite the differences in the iconography and style of the twoworks, their links to tradition and artistic geography, which in thisarticle are conditionally defined as the Hanse canon, are apparentin both of them.The methods and rules for classifying the transition from theMiddle Ages to the Modern Era were not critical nor exclusive.Rather they included a wide range of phenomena on the outskirtsof the major art centres starting from the clients and ending with the semantic significance of the picture, and the attributes that wereemployed to the individual experiences of the different masters,who were working together in the large workshops of Lübeck, andsomewhat later, in Bruges and Brussels.When ‘reading’ the Blackheads’ altar, a question arises of threedifferent styles, all of them were united by tradition and the waythat altars were produced in the large workshops for the extensiveart market that stretched from one end of the continent to the other,and even further from Lima to Narva. Under the supervision ofthe leading master and entrepreneur (Hans Memling?) two othermasters were working side by side in Bruges – Michel Sittow, whowas born in Tallinn, and the Master of the Legend of Saint Lucywere responsible for executing the task.In this article, the author has highlighted new points of reference,which on the one hand explain the complex issues of attributionof the Tallinn Blackheads’ altar, and on the other hand, placethe greatest opus in the Baltics in a broader context, where, inaddition to aesthetic ambitions, both the client and the workshopthat completed the order, played an extensive role. In this way,identifying a specific artist from among the others would usuallyremain a matter of discussion. Tallinn was a port and a wealthycommercial city at the foregates of the East where it took decadesfor the spirit of the Renaissance to penetrate and be assimilated.Instead of an unobstructed view we are offered uncertain andoften mixed values based on what we perceive through the veil ofsemantic research.

2019 ◽  
Vol 141 (2) ◽  
pp. 182-224
Author(s):  
Christoph Petersen

Abstract The paper explains the broad reception of the ›Kaiserchronik‹ in the German culture throughout the high and late middle ages by its ability to give a historical shape and foundation to a social identity of the medieval German nobility. This identity is based on the Chronicle’s general concept of history and worked out in its series of narratives on the one hand, and mirrored by its reception in the textual tradition on the other. The paper shows that the ›Kaiserchronik‹ ascribes to the German nobility the identity of being the teleologically destined bearer of the Roman empire and that the manuscripts preserving the text contain various reflections of the fact that this identity was actually adopted by the Chronicle’s textual community from the late 12th to the 15th century. This is illustrated by the means of the continuation of the ›Kaiserchronik‹ in its so-called C-Version (I), its contextualization within the famous Vorau codex (II), the excerpt of the Adelger episode in a Vienna codex (III), and the copy of the final parts of the Charlemagne episode in a Munich single sheet (IV). Overall, the examples demonstrate that the ›Kaiserchronikʼs‹ function of shaping and founding a social identity of the German nobility also explains in a new manner its flagrant idiosyncrasies in representing the history of the Roman emperors.


2009 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-47
Author(s):  
Mark Noble

This essay argues that Ralph Waldo Emerson's interest in the cutting-edge science of his generation helps to shape his understanding of persons as fluid expressions of power rather than solid bodies. In his 1872 "Natural History of Intellect," Emerson correlates the constitution of the individual mind with the tenets of Michael Faraday's classical field theory. For Faraday, experimenting with electromagnetism reveals that the atom is a node or point on a network, and that all matter is really the arrangement of energetic lines of force. This atomic model offers Emerson a technology for envisioning a materialized subjectivity that both unravels personal identity and grants access to impersonal power. On the one hand, adopting Faraday's field theory resonates with many of the affirmative philosophical and ethical claims central to Emerson's early essays. On the other hand, however, distributing the properties of Faraday's atoms onto the properties of the person also entails moments in which materialized subjects encounter their own partiality, limitation, and suffering. I suggest that Emerson represents these aspects of experience in terms that are deliberately discrepant from his conception of universal power. He presumes that if every experience boils down to the same lines of force, then the particular can be trivialized with respect to the general. As a consequence, Emerson must insulate his philosophical assertions from contamination by our most poignant experiences of limitation. The essay concludes by distinguishing Emersonian "Necessity" from Friedrich Nietzsche's similar conception of amor fati, which routes the affirmation of fate directly through suffering.


2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 352-365
Author(s):  
Evgeny I. Zelenev ◽  
Milana Iliushina

This article is devoted to the study of the development of the theory and practice of jihad during the rule of the Circassian sultans in Egypt and Syria (1382–1517). The purpose of the study is to trace the development of key aspects of jihad, to identify features of its perception in the Mamluk state. An essential feature of the theory of jihad in the Mamluk period is the interpretation of jihad as farḍ al-ʿayn (the individual duty of every Muslim). While studying the theory of jihad, the authors rely on a holistic and balanced approach justified in the papers of M. Bonner and D. Cook and their interpretation of the concept of jihad, which has a centuries-old history of development and a sophisticated, multi-layered set of meanings. Another methodological basis of the present paper was the concept of minimalism and maximalism, developed by Yusef Waghid. The source base for the study of jihad theory is the works of Ibn al-Nahhas (d. 1411), a prominent philosopher of the Mamluk era. The interpretation of jihad as an individual duty of every Muslim, substantiated by Ibn al-Nahhas, was the foundation of the volunteer movement that developed in Egypt and Syria in the 15th century. The doctrine of jihad where the concepts of justice (al-‘adl) and truth (al-ḥaqq) play a key role, was used by the Mamluks and then by the Ottomans as a powerful ideological tool to manipulate the minds of Muslims. The relevance of the study is that the findings are not only true for the Middle Ages but are directly related to the present.


Author(s):  
Pavlo Nechytaylo ◽  
◽  
Olena Onohda ◽  
◽  
◽  
...  

The paper analyses ceramics and buildings remains of the second half 13th – first half 15th centuries, coming from excavations in Kamianets-Podilskyi. It aims to introduce materials into scientific circulation, to compare the collection with synchronous objects from adjacent territories, to trace interactions in the material culture development in late medieval towns. Ceramics of the Golden Horde and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania times began to be systematically researched relatively recently in Ukraine. Thus, the materials from Kamianets-Podilskyi contribute to deepening our knowledge of less-known periods in the history of Ukraine and Eastern Europe. Materials analyzed were obtained during rescue archaeological research on the Polish Market square in Kamianets. These were fragmented parts of underground and aboveground building structures, as well as a collection of various household items. Building materials were mostly local clays and loam, less often wood and stone were used. A set of clay ‘roll’ blocks set in one of the pits allows us to assume similarity with the Golden Horde building technologies. Finds of coins and Crimean polychrome bowls fragments also indicate the complex emerged during the Golden Horde period. However, certain groups of pottery and coins of European minting define the complex upper date within the first half 15th century. Diverse ceramic types range from the complex is an interesting local typological phenomenon. It reflects mutual influences of the pottery traditions development both in time and space. After processing artefacts collection, the main groups of pottery were identified according to technological features. Some of them are rooted in the local ancient Rus’ traditions, others were formed under the influence of Western trends, while samples of a ‘specific’ group were common for almost the entire territory of modern Ukraine during Late Middle Ages. Pots collection was preliminary systematized up to 5 most common types selection, based on rim profiles. Many of them have a wide range of analogies, locally from Kamianets, as well as from the Western Ukraine, in Poland, Moldova and Romania. In addition to pots, the collection includes other types of kitchen and tableware, such as makitras, lids, jars and other single samples of ceramics. The typological diversity correlates with the multi-layered processes which took place in Kamianets-Podilskyi life during the Golden Horde and the Lithuanian periods. Materials from the complex, as well as other finds from synchronous objects within the city, deepen our understanding of the city’s development large-scale picture, which, however, requires further research.


2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-155
Author(s):  
Adam Kożuchowski

This paper addresses the intersection of moral condemnation, national antagonism, and civilizational critique in the images of the Teutonic Order as presented in Polish historical discourse since the early nineteenth century, with references to their medieval and early modern origins. For more than 150 years, the Order played the role of the archenemy in the historical imagination of Poles. This image is typically considered an element of the anti-German sentiment, fueled by modern nationalism. In this paper I argue that the scale and nature of the demonization of the Teutonic Knights in Polish historiography is more complex, and should be interpreted in the contexts of pre-modern religious rhetoric on the one hand, and the critique of Western civilization from a peripheral or semi-colonial point of view on the other. The durability and flexibility of the black legend of the Order, born in the late Middle Ages, and adapted by Romantic, modern nationalist, and communist historians, makes it a unique phenomenon, surpassing the framework of modern nationalism. It is the modern anti-German stereotype that owes much to this legend, rather than the other way around.


Author(s):  
Karin de Boer

This chapter examines Hegel’s lectures on the history of modern philosophy in view of the tension between, on the one hand, his ambition to grasp philosophy’s past in a truly philosophical way and, on the other hand, the necessity to account for the actual particularities of a wide range of philosophical systems. Hegel’s lectures are put in relief by comparing their methodological principles to those put forward by his Kantian predecessor Tennemann. After discussing Hegel’s conception of modern philosophy as a whole, the chapter turns to his reading of Locke, Leibniz, and, in particular, Kant. In this context, it also compares Hegel’s assessment of Kant’s achievements to that of Tennemann. The chapter concludes by considering Hegel’s account of the final moment of the history of philosophy.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (46) ◽  
pp. 40-54
Author(s):  
Siegfried Zielinski

In this article, the author examines the contrasting worldviews of specific philosophers, architects, and physicists in an attempt to identify a position that would represent a viable alternative to the concept of universalization. In the history of civilization, he asserts, almost all wars have been of a territorial nature. Territories tend toward uniformity and universalization. He contrasts this worldview with reflections on oceanic thinking, which perceives bodies of water such as the Mediterranean as mediators between continents as well as between opposing worldviews, connecting and dividing at the same time. The sea, however, does not connect in order to homogenize but rather creates distance as an important prerequisite for true communication, thus linking multiplicity in all its variety as a viable alternative to universalism. The author moves on to scrutinize the cosmopolitan attitude as a paradox that on the one hand is oriented to the particular individual and on the other hand to an imaginary world community, that is, the universal. Taking this notion further to consider today’s world that is saturated with the imaginary and symbolic power of the Internet, the author proposes that cosmopolitanism could be understood as an adequate expression for the technologically advanced world community by its capability to strike a balance between the individual and the world as a whole, on one side, and synthetic identity generated by culture and technology, on the other. Nevertheless, deviating from all of these worldviews, the author concludes with a short reflection, inspired by two films, on an alternative to cosmopolitanism that he calls cosmoethics, which employs ethics as the guiding principle of thought and action and commits to a practice that stays in close contact not only with real but also with diverse realities.


1970 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 64-81
Author(s):  
Albrecht Wellmer

If one were to write a history of the philosophy of science in the spirit of T. S. Kuhn, one would have to consider the model of scientific explanation which Popper proposed and Hempel and Oppenheim developed to be one of the great paradigms of contemporary analytical philosophy of science. This analogue to the historically important paradigms of the individual sciences seems to me to be justifiable for the following reasons: first, the Hempel—Oppenheim model (or HO-model, as I shall call it) claims universal methodological validity; second, discussions on the problem of explanation have centred on this model for some time; third, the recent cognitive progress in this field has been largely the result of the interrelation between criticism of this model on the one hand and its improvement and explication on the other hand; and lastly, this model stands for a particular comprehension of the problems and possibilities of science, a concept of quite important practical consequence.


2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 426-467 ◽  
Author(s):  
STEFANO MENGOZZI

ABSTRACT Music-theoretical writings from the 13th to the 15th centuries maintained a basic distinction between two types of major sixth, customarily labeled hexachordum and deductio (or proprietas). The term hexachordum, more frequently called tonus (or semitonus) cum diapente, designated the interval of a major of minor sixth, frequently expressed by pitch letters only (such as G-e and A-F) and discussed independently of Guidonian solmization. On the other hand, proprietas and deductio indicated a ““virtual segment”” (the set of six syllables ut-la) that could be employed for the purpose of sight singing. Neither set challenged the conceptual primacy of the seven claves, expressed by the letters A-G. Hexachordum was routinely described as a portion of the octave, and the late-medieval notion of proprietas still reflected the principle of octave duplication, which had regulated musical practice since pre-Guidonian times. The ““two-tier”” model of diatonic space encountered in medieval music theory, based on the superimposition of Guido's six syllables onto the seven pitch letters, came to an end in the late 15th century, when authors such as Ramos de Pareja and Franchino Gafori began describing the Guidonian deductio——which they called hexachordum——as the primary mode of organization of the gamut that had superseded the Greek tetrachordum.


1991 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 53-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dina Rizk Khoury

The literature on merchants and trade in the early modern Middle East is still rudimentary. Although the period witnessed basic changes in trade patterns of the region, there have been very few regional studies addressing the nature of trade and the various groups engaged in it, either from an internal or local perspective or from an international one (Masters, 1988; Raymond, 1984; Abdel-Nour, 1982). For much of the Arab world there is a gap in the literature between Goitein's and Ashtor's works on the Middle Ages on the one hand, and the eighteenth century on the other when northern European companies acquired a strong foothold in the area (Goitein, 1966, 1967; Ashtor, 1978). For Iraq there exist almost no general works on the early Ottoman period and the Iraqi archives remain inaccessible. Thus, any conclusions on trade and merchants in Iraq during this period are by necessity tentative and general. There are a number of issues that can be raised with respect to early modern Iraq, however, which are relevant to the history of early modern trade in general.


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