Conceiving Prime Matter in the Middle Ages: Perception, Abstraction and Analogy

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicola Polloni
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Prime Matter ◽  
Epistemic Access ◽  
The Middle Ages

Abstract In its formlessness and potentiality, prime matter is a problematic entity of medieval metaphysics and its ontological limitations drastically affect human possibility of conceiving it. In this article, I analyse three influential strategies elaborated to justify an epistemic access to prime matter. They are incidental perception, negative abstraction, and analogy. Through a systematic and historical analysis of these procedures, the article shows the richness of interpretations and theoretical stakes implied by the conundrum of how prime matter can be known by human beings. In particular, the reasons behind the later medieval acceptance of analogy as the main way to unveil prime matter become clearer by pointing out the correlation between the ontological and epistemological levels of the medieval examination of prime matter.

Roman Assimilation of Greek Myths and Botany

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lincoln Taiz ◽  
Lee Taiz
Keyword(s):  
Gender Bias ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Pliny The Elder ◽  
Greek Myths ◽  
The One ◽  
Nicolaus Of Damascus ◽  
The Middle Ages

“Roman Assimilation of Greek Myths and Botany” traces the absorption of Greek botanical thought by the Romans. Although Roman thinkers—Cato the Elder, Varro, Virgil and Columella—wrote about agriculture, theoretical botany was largely abandoned, while the one—sex model of plants remained entrenched. Roman myths, many syncretized with Greek, reinforced the gender bias by which plants were associated with women. Chloris, Greek goddess of flowers, was assimilated to Flora, and Ceres to Demeter. Ovid recounts a story concerning Flora and Juno that symbolically connects flowers to parthenogenesis. Of Greek derived works on plants, only Pliny’s Historia Natura and Nicolaus of Damascus’ De Plantis were widely available in the Middle Ages. One interpretation of flowers by Pliny the Elder, that they were created to delight human beings, endured into of the Christian era, while St. Augustine sited the “degeneration” of plants grown from seed as “palpable evidence” for original sin.

Theory in Time

PMLA ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 130 (3) ◽  
pp. 759-767 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen Davis
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Cultural Critique ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Medieval Studies ◽  
Fully Integrated ◽  
Self Rule ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Middle Ages

To define or describe the middle ages is to take a political stance, wittingly or not. Controversy accompanies any period definition, of course, as recent skirmishes over the early modern, the modern, and modernity attest. But the politics of the Middle Ages has generally gone under the radar of literary and cultural critique, precisely because of the nature of its formation and its relation to the modern. In fact “the Middle Ages” is a colonial category, developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as (primarily western) Europeans worked to legitimize, classify, and make sense of colonial policies, practices, and encounters. The formation of medieval studies as a discipline, vital to the then incipient discipline of history, was also fully integrated with colonial bureaucracy and administration (Frantzen; Biddick; Dagenais and Greer; Ganim; Kabir; Davis; Davis and Altschul; Lampert-Weissig). As a form of temporal spacing, the category of the Middle Ages enabled the thought of Europe's difference from itself, thus making it possible not only to define European nations across time but also to establish a scale of comparison by which to measure others and to deny them coeval status—that is, equal standing as human beings in regard to law, trade, the capacity for self-rule, and so on.

Mother of Mercy, Bane of the Jews

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kati Ihnat
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Early Christianity ◽  
Daily Basis ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
Christian Identity ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Immaculate Conception ◽  
Cult Of The Virgin ◽  
The Middle Ages

This book explores a key moment in the rise of the cult of the Virgin Mary and the way the Jews became central to her story. Benedictine monks in England at the turn of the twelfth century developed many innovative ways to venerate Mary as the most powerful saintly intercessor. They sought her mercy on a weekly and daily basis with extensive liturgical practices, commemorated additional moments of her life on special feast days, and praised her above all other human beings with new doctrines that claimed her Immaculate Conception and bodily Assumption. Drawing from theological and legendary traditions dating back to early Christianity, monks revived the idea that Jews violently opposed the virgin mother of God; the goal of the monks was to contrast the veneration they thought Mary deserved with the resistance of the Jews. This book argues that the imagined antagonism of the Jews toward Mary came to serve an essential purpose in encouraging Christian devotion to her as merciful mother and heavenly Queen. Through an examination of miracles, sermons, liturgy, and theology, the book reveals how English monks helped to establish an enduring rivalry between Mary and the Jews, in consolidating her as the most popular saint of the Middle Ages and in making devotion to her a foundational marker of Christian identity.

scholarly journals Sex and Sexual Fantasy among the Arabs in the Middle Ages

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 96-116
Author(s):  
Hanan Bishara
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Female Circumcision ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Male Homosexuality ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Female Homosexuality ◽  
Two Stages ◽  
The Middle Ages

Dealing with the theme of sex among the Arabs in the Middle Ages requires distinction between two stages: the pre-revelation of the Koran and the life of Prophet Muhammad stage, and the post- Prophet stage, including the Umayyad and Abbasid ages. The Arabs were interested in the subject of 'sex' in an incomparable way, and this appears in their over-talking about everything that is related to the female sex organs and her reproductive system such as female circumcision, puberty, engagement, marriage, sexual intercourse, haymen, virginity and non-virginity. In addition, the Arabs dealt with the shortcomings of the wife, her childbearing and child birth, breastfeeding, nikaḥ al-mutʿah, literally "pleasure marriage", adultery, fornication, sexual deviation, male homosexuality (liwatt) and female homosexuality (lesbianism), which is called  "sihaq" in Arabic. Islam gave interest to 'sexuality' because the sexual passion is a human instinct and a phenomenon that affects the behavior of human beings Therefore, it should be cultivated and refined without going away from its reality and the human tendencies that God created in the human being. According to Islam, the human being does not have to nullify his instincts or control them just for control's sake, but he has to employ them according to the Islamic Law (Shariʿa).

scholarly journals El rigor y la gloria: el Juicio Final y su repercusión en la modernidad

Medievalia ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 53-70
Author(s):  
Cossette Galindo Ayala ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Image Of God ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Divine Intervention ◽  
Ancient Judaism ◽  
Last Judgment ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Image Of God ◽  
The Middle Ages

This work presents a historical journey on the doctrine of the Last Judgment, starting from its antecedents in ancient Judaism, its rise in the millennial ideology of the Middle Ages, until reaching certain perspectives of its repercussion in Modernity. The Final Judgment forms a doctrine that combines the image of God as a rigorous judge who executes the Law, applying the punishments or prizes related to the works carried out in life, with the vision of a glorious king who will manifest his messianic kingdom in which the human beings will be saved by grace of divine intervention.

Origen (c.185–c.254)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Hause
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The World ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
The Veil ◽  
Spiritual Exegesis ◽  
The Middle Ages

An ascetic Christian, prodigious scholar and dedicated teacher, Origen devoted his life to exploring God’s revelation. Much of his work takes the form of commentaries on Scripture. He argued that Scripture has three levels: the literal, the moral and the spiritual. The literal level veils the others, and we need God’s help to find the divine mysteries behind the veil. His commentaries directly or indirectly influenced the practice of exegesis throughout the patristic period and the Middle Ages. Origen used his spiritual exegesis, as well as arguments, concepts and models drawn from philosophy, to tackle the theological problems of his day: the compatibility of providence and freedom, the relation of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit to each other and to rational creatures, the problem of evil, and the origin and destiny of the soul. He is famous – or infamous – for arguing that the souls of angels, demons and human beings enjoyed a previous heavenly existence, but that they sinned and fell. God created the world to punish and remedy their faults.

British and American Yarn Count Systems: An Historical Analysis

1971 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 336-368
Author(s):  
David J. Jeremy
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Business Organization ◽  
Measuring Systems ◽  
Yarn Count ◽  
Textile Industries ◽  
The Middle Ages

Mr. Jeremy traces since the Middle Ages the interaction of technology and business organization in shaping the measuring systems for yarn in the British and later the American textile industries. Despite the attendant confusion and difficulties, a remarkable motley of such systems arose and has persisted.

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