scholarly journals Old Tales for a New Gens. Alberic of Trois-Fontaines’ Grafting of History

2022 ◽  
Vol 124 ◽  
pp. 149-179
Author(s):  
Antoni Grabowski

Throughout the Middle Ages, waves of people came to the lands once been a part of the Roman Empire. At the same time, lands yet unknown encountered the successors of the Empire. These gentes sometimes preserved a long history of their paths to their new homelands. The Longobards, the Saxons, and many others had an origo gentis, where gods played an important role. These narrations were incorporated into a historiography that was almost entirely Christian. This article is concerned with the methods used to find harmony between the past and present by Alberic of Trois-Fontaines when writing about the Semigallians. The narrative of their origins used established motifs and themes that made it possible to include the invented history of the gens into the then-established universal history. This was done through the etymology of names or the erudite use of the writings of other authors. These new gentes were grafted onto the trees of old tales.

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 353-367
Author(s):  
Maryam Seyidbeyli

At the beginning of the VII century in the political life of the Near and Middle East, fundamental changes have taken place. The Arabs conquered a colossal territory, which included the lands of Iran, North Africa, North-West India, the Asian provinces of Byzantium, most of the former Roman Empire. In the conquered cities of the caliphate, observatories, madaris, libraries were built. At the end of VII century, the first scientific center, an academy, the House of Wisdom, was founded in Baghdad, in which scholars who spoke different languages were assembled. Here the translation and commentary activity were very developed, the main works of ancient thought, such as the writings of Aristotle, Ptolemy were published in the 9th century in the Arabic-speaking world. For two centuries from 750 to 950 years, the works of ancient authors on philosophy, mathematics, medicine, alchemy, and astronomy were translated into Arabic, which indicates the high scientific potential of that time in the East. At the same time, in the XII century, Ibn Rushd composed 38 commentaries on the works of Aristotle, the “Republic” of Plato, the treatise “On the Mind” of Alexander of Aphrodisias, which subsequently had an important influence on the work of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi. Thus, this period in the history of Eastern scientific thought is marked by high intellectual potential. To this day, historians of medieval Arabic literature face a sufficient number of difficulties, since the vast majority of manuscripts remain inaccessible to them. The works of many renowned Arab authors of the middle Ages are more than 1000 years old, so it seems obvious that the manuscripts of the vast majority of authors have not survived to this day. The researchers of the history of Azerbaijan and neighboring countries in the middle Ages, with all the variety of available sources on which they rely, still attract little factual material related to the Arabic-language works of the historical and scientific genre. Undoubtedly, a comprehensive study of the entire complex of information of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi on the history of science in Azerbaijan is of great importance.


Author(s):  
Peter Mitchell

This chapter starts as the Roman Empire fragmented, encompasses the emergence of Christianity and Islam, and explores the donkey’s place in the history of the Middle Ages, as well as what Fernand Braudel termed ‘the triumph of the mule’ in the ensuing early modern period from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Being closer in time to the present, historical documents are generally richer and more plentiful than for earlier periods, but archaeological excavations and surveys—especially of post-medieval sites and landscapes—are still undeveloped in many regions. Inevitably, therefore, what I present draws as much on textual sources as it does on them. I look first at the symbolic value of donkeys and mules in Christianity and Islam. Next, I consider their disappearance from some parts of Europe in the aftermath of Rome’s collapse and their re-expansion and persistence elsewhere. One aspect of this concerns their continuing contribution to agricultural production, another their consumption as food, a very un-Roman practice. A second theme showing continuities from previous centuries is their significance in facilitating trade and communication over both short and long distances. Tackling this requires inserting donkeys and mules into debates about how far pack animals replaced wheeled forms of transport as Late Antiquity gave way to the Middle Ages. Wide-ranging in time and space, this discussion also provides opportunities for exploring their role in human history in areas beyond those on which I have concentrated thus far. West Africa is one, the Silk Road networks linking China to Central Asia a second, and China’s southward connections into Southeast Asia a third. According to the New Testament Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday seated on a donkey (Plate 20). The seventh-century apocryphal Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew also envisages donkeys carrying His mother to Bethlehem, being present at the Nativity, and conveying the Holy Family into temporary exile in Egypt. Donkeys thus framed both ends of Jesus’ life and, given their importance in moving people and goods in first-century Palestine, must have been a familiar sight. But the implications of their place in Christianity’s narrative were originally quite different from those that are generally understood today.


2008 ◽  
Vol 66 (3b) ◽  
pp. 765-769 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luiz Antonio de Lima Resende ◽  
Silke Weber

This study provides historical documents of peripheral facial palsy from Egypt, Greece and Rome, through the middle ages, and the renaissance, and into the last four centuries. We believe that the history of peripheral facial palsy parallels history of the human race itself. Emphasis is made on contributions by Avicenna and Nicolaus Friedreich. Controversies about the original clinical description by Charles Bell are also discussed.


1971 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonard Powlick

The past fifteen years have been a period of active revisionism in the study of the stage history of medieval England. Through the efforts of Richard Southern, Martial Rose, and others, we have gained a quite different perspective on the staging of the religious drama of the Middle Ages. Now the Cornish plays are no longer considered to be an aberration, for we have seen the principle of stationary performance extended to Wakefield and Lincoln, and enough questions have been raised concerning performance in York that processional staging even there seems doubtful. More and more we are being led to the conclusion that not processional staging on pageant carts, but stationary performance was the norm in England, just as it was on the Continent.


2017 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 662-663

Eric Tymoigne of Lewis and Clark College reviews “Money in the Western Legal Tradition: Middle Ages to Bretton Woods,” edited by David Fox and Wolfgang Ernst. The Econlit abstract for this book begins: “Thirty-three papers, most previously presented at conferences held in Cambridge in 2011 and 2012 and supported by the Gerda Henkel Stiftung, provide a history of some of the main topics in the monetary law of the civil law and common law systems at different stages of its development over the past eight hundred years, from the Middle Ages until the Bretton Woods agreements of 1944.”


2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (33) ◽  
pp. 96
Author(s):  
Hatmansyah Hatmansyah

The Umayyah dynasty became a major force in the development of propaganda spread throughout the world as well as being one of the first centers of political, cultural and scientific studies in the world since the Middle Ages. At the height of its greatness, its success in expanding Islamic power was far greater than that of the Roman empire. The history of Islamic preaching in the Umayyah Dynasty can be divided into two periods in the dynasty era in Damascus and in Cordoba. Islamic da'wah at this time was carried out in three stages, first the expansion of the da'wah area, the second was the development of science and the third was economic thought.


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