New Worlds, New Images: Picturing the Resurrection of the Body in Sixteenth-Century Germany

Author(s):  
Erin Lambert
Keyword(s):  
Semiotica ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 (208) ◽  
pp. 259-284
Author(s):  
Mohamed Bernoussi

AbstractAfter giving a synthesis about a possible semiotics of the body and its conditions, we will deal with the question of the semiosis of the body in sexual literature in two periods of the arabo-muslim culture. The first period concerns the second century of hegira (the eightieth century), a decisive period of young and already powerful arabo-muslim society. Through Al Jahiz’s works, a very busy and prolific writer, we will study different discourses on the body, notably on homosexuality, heterosexuality and the opposition between black and white bodies. The second example constitutes an occasion for us to grasp the evolution of the semiosis of the body in a new period and with a specific writer who is Al Soyouté, a scholar of the sixteenth century. We will focus particularly on Al Soyouté’s new ideas on the body and his original references to the Greek corpus, but also to the traditions of Coran and Hadith.


2014 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Stolberg

AbstractIn his personal notebooks, the little known Bohemian physician Georg Handsch (1529–c. 1578) recorded, among other things, hundreds of vernacular phrases and expressions he and other physicians used in their oral interaction with patients and families. Based primarily on this extraordinary source, this paper traces the terms, concepts and images to which sixteenth-century physicians resorted when they explained the nature of a patient’s disease and justified their treatment. At the bedside and in the consultation room, Handsch and his fellow physicians attributed most diseases to a local accumulation of impure, putrid or otherwise pathological humours. The latter were commonly said to result, in turn, from an insufficient concoction and assimilation of food and drink in the stomach and the liver or from an obstruction of the humoral flow inside the body and across its borders. By contrast, other notions and explanatory models, which had a prominent place in contemporary learned medical writing, hardly played a role at all in the physicians’ oral communication. Specific disease terms were rarely used, a mere imbalance of the four natural humours in the body was almost never inculpated, and the patient’s personal life-style and other non-naturals did not attract much attention either. These striking differences between the ways in which physicians explained the patients’ diseases in their daily practice and the explanatory models we find in contemporary textbooks, are attributed, above all, to the physicians’ precarious situation in the early modern medical marketplace. Since dissatisfied patients were quick to turn to another healer, physicians had to explain the disease and justify their treatment in a manner that was comprehensible to ordinary lay people and in line with their expectations and beliefs, which, at the time, revolved almost entirely around notions of impurity and evacuation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (18 N.S.) ◽  
pp. 59-80
Author(s):  
Samantha L. Smith

'Truth and the transunto' investigates the use of a hand-painted copy of the Holy Shroud which found its way to Bologna in the late sixteenth century. Used by the archbishop of Bologna, Alfonso Paleotti (1531-1610), this copy was the source of observations of the body of Christ, in the manner of an autopsy and is presented in Paleotti's book Esplicatione del Lenzuolo [...]. Early modern copies of the Holy Shroud are not however accurate copies, but present seemingly simplified replicas of the original. This article explores how such information, and indeed, level of trust, can come from these copies, which, to the modern eye, seem fallible. Previous studies have excused the strange appearance of these Shroud copies by considering them solely devotional instruments yet as the article shows, Paleotti's use of such an object shows that the copies might be better understood in the context of early modern natural historical studies and illustrations. The article draws on scholarship which discusses the emerging interest for visual evidence in early scientific practice and shows how certain types of images and image-making practices were able to evoke the idea of presence and clarify the indecipherable. Demonstrating that Paleotti's copy of the Holy Shroud was not just a religious tool, but also an epistemic image, this article shows how Paleotti's use of the term 'transunto' could be used as a valuable tool in gaining a more nuanced understanding of the concept 'copy' in Early Modern Europe.   On cover:ANNIBALE CARRACCI (BOLOGNA 1560 - ROME 1609), An Allegory of Truth and Time c. 1584-1585.Oil on canvas | 130,0 x 169,6 cm. (support, canvas/panel/str external) | RCIN 404770Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2021.


2017 ◽  
Vol 65 (4) ◽  
pp. 340-353
Author(s):  
Ruurd Halbertsma ◽  
Frits Scholten

It recently emerged that two bronze ‘doorknobs’ in the Rijksmuseum collection, decorated with Tritons blowing conch shells and with inlaid silver discs, came from the renowned collection of the Amsterdam merchant and burgomaster Nicolaes Witsen. They were listed in 1728 in the catalogue of the sale of his estate (in the Antiquiteyten section) and appear in an engraving in the third, enlarged edition of Witsen’s Noord en Oost Tartaryen of 1785. It was also possible to establish that they were not, as had long been thought, sixteenth-century objects, but Roman appliques dating from the first century AD. The pair probably came from a litter used to carry the body of a deceased to its burial place. The two pieces were recently transferred to the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden, where they have been reunited with other antiquities from Witsen’s collection.


2016 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-213
Author(s):  
Gábor Ittzés

In the wake of their rejection of purgatory Protestants had to rethink their eschatological views. The German Lutherans of the latter half of the sixteenth century developed a robust doctrine of the last things, including a teaching on what departed souls know prior to the resurrection. Following an overview of the sources and a brief reconstruction of the overall locus, this article focuses on an analysis of what and how disembodied souls are claimed to know. The evidence holds some surprises. First, while more than lip-service is certainly paid to the ways of knowing God, the authors’ real interest lies in the exploration of interpersonal relationships. Their primary concern is how other human beings, whether still on earth or already departed, may be known and what may be known about them. The implications are threefold. Knowledge of God and knowledge of human beings—ultimately, knowledge of self—are intertwined. Anthropology takes centre-stage, and ontology is thus superseded by epistemology. In all this, the body is never relinquished. The apparently unconscious importation of sensory language and conceptualisation of sense-based experience permeate the discussion of ostensibly disembodied knowledge. Knowing, for our authors, is ultimately a function of the body even if this means ‘packing’ bodily functions into the soul. In this doctrine, which may have had its roots in patristics but which has also demonstrably absorbed impulses from popular religion, knowledge of God is not only deeply connected with individual identity but also exhibits indelible social features and is inseparable from the (re)constitution of community.


2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 111-132
Author(s):  
Lindsay J. Starkey

In 2 Timothy 2:17, Paul compared the effects of false teachings on the Church to a disease. Rejecting previous translations that identified this disease as cancer, Jean Calvin (1509–64) insisted that it must be gangrene in his 1548 commentary on this epistle, citing and discussing medical texts to justify his translation. This article places his commentary in the context of these medical texts. The causes, courses, and treatments his contemporaries associated with gangrene provide insight into Calvin’s idea of the people likely to spread false teachings and of how they should be treated: because, for him, the experience of gangrene reflected the real effects of false teachings on the Church. This manuscript argues that consulting other areas of sixteenth-century knowledge, such as medicine, was a part of Calvin’s exegetical practice. It also suggests that modern scholars need to take these other areas of knowledge into account when analyzing sixteenth-century biblical commentaries. Dans 2 Timothée 2:17, Paul compara les effets des faux enseignements sur l’Église à une maladie. Ayant rejeté les traductions précédentes qui identifiaient cette maladie comme cancer, Jean Calvin (1509–1564), dans son commentaire de cette épître en 1548, soutint qu’il devait s’agir de la gangrène et il justifia cette traduction en citant et discutant des sources médicales. Cet article situe ce commentaire dans le contexte de ces textes médicaux. Les causes, les symptômes et les traitements associés à la gangrène, portent un discours sur ceux qui, selon Calvin, propageraient les faux enseignements, ainsi que sur la façon dont on doit les traiter. Pour Calvin, en effet, la réalité de de la gangrène reflète, dans l’expérience, les effets des faux enseignements sur l’Église. Cette étude examine de la pratique exégétique de Calvin, qui consulte d’autres domaines de la connaissance, comme la médecine, pour lire les textes. Aussi il propose que les savants modernes doivent prendre en compte ces autres domaines pour analyser les commentaires bibliques du XVIe siècle.


Author(s):  
Amanda Porterfield

Corpus Christi parades brought different groups together in medieval cities to venerate the eucharistic wafer, representing social order and membership in the body of Christ. When cities and trade recovered in the generations after the Black Death of the 1340s, the Eucharist became a source of contention, with reformers demanding that priests, cities, and merchant elites be held more accountable to Pauline ideals. Protest erupted in Florence as Medici bankers exploited Pauline ideals to manipulate kings, popes, and city government. Amsterdam’s ascendance as a hub of commerce in the sixteenth century depended on organizations of mutual trust rooted in Pauline ideals. London began its climb to overtake Amsterdam in commercial clout through the development of a nationwide system of law and taxation that coincided with new efforts to join commerce and Christianity.


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