Die Wirkmacht der Nachahmung. Tanzende Heilige und tanzende Klosterleute im hohen und späten Mittelalter

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 258-280
Author(s):  
Jörg Sonntag
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Role Models ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Image Of God ◽  
Symbolic Order ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Plural Society ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Fundamental Categories

AbstractThis article sets the dancing of religious and saints and their role models in the perspective of imitation in terms of an essential cultural technique of the Middle Ages. Since the religious were compelled in their search for God by the imitation of Christ and the saints, their dancing was also to be integrated into the symbolic order of the monastery. Given that dance and religious practice are both governed equally by two fundamental categories – regularity and ritualization on the one hand, and ecstasy, unboundedness from all being and in result ascension to God on the other – this heterogeneous phenomenon could not be seamlessly integrated into another phenomenon. Here, it clashed with the symbolic ordering of the monastery; the ambiguities contained in this dualism could be reinforced or cancelled out. With the individual and his or her conscience becoming more appreciated, and the ushering-in of a more plural society (that also dances), as well as the rearrangement of old role models which had been typical of mysticism towards Christ, had clear consequences for the image of God, which in the Late Middle Ages received a new more human face with the ‘playing’ God. As a result, believers re-anchored dance and all its facets in the order-oriented thinking of the European-Christian Middle Ages. Christ had become the best of all dancers, someone (not only) every believer had to imitate, at least in his or her soul.

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
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
The Other ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Working Together ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Veil ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual

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.

‘Inordinata locutio’: Blasphemy in Pastoral Literature, 1200–1500

Traditio ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
pp. 135-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edwin D. Craun
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Book Of Job ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Literal Sense ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Modern Thought ◽  
Pastoral Literature ◽  
The Way

Forbidden language, like forbidden knowledge, has always had its attractions. Of its many varieties, the inordinata locutio of blasphemy, speech which violates fundamental norms in the way it represents God, has held no small appeal for people in times of widespread religious practice. The late Middle Ages offers no exception to these two commonplaces of modern thought, judging from the number of civil statutes designed to extirpate blasphemy and from the stringent measures drawn up by influential clerics like Jean Gerson. This animus against blasphemy among the lettered, both lay and clerical, means that few blasphemous utterances, few of the words judged as blasphemous by someone other than the speaker, have come down to us. Preachers and compilers of catechetical handbooks, like theologians and glossators, are as silent about the actual words of blasphemers as they are eloquent about their temerity. Even the collectors of exempla, whose tales provide so much information about religious life, rarely record so much as a blasphemous phrase in their repertoire of tales about blasphemers. Perhaps these late medieval writers shared the reticence of the author of the Book of Job, who, according to the Priest (ps.- Jerome), wrote benedixerit for maledixerit, inverting the literal sense ‘quod non fuit ausus scriptor historiae ore suo in Deum dicere verbum blasphemiae.’

The Devil Wears White: Teutonic Knights and the Problem of Evil in Polish Historiography

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-155
Author(s):  
Adam Kożuchowski
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Other ◽  
Historical Imagination ◽  
Historical Discourse ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
The One ◽  
The Devil ◽  
Teutonic Knights

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.

Hermeneutik der Minne: Liebesdichtung und religiöser Diskurs bei Dante und Petrarca

2015 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerhard Regn
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
Courtly Love ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Dark Ages ◽  
The Will ◽  
The One ◽  
The Way

AbstractAn important characteristic of Italian minne-poetry in the late Middle Ages is the negotiation of the Sacred and the Profane. Nonetheless, Dante and Petrarch, the most important representatives of Italian minne-poetry, enter this negotiation in very different ways. Dante proposes to align mundane minne-poetry - as a form of minne-theology - with sacralization; with that, Dante seems to be in perfect harmony with his epoch, commonly referred to as Christian or theocentric Middle Ages. But looking more closely, Dante’s sacralization of courtly love reveals itself to be an outrageous provocation of Christian orthodoxy: Dante’s minne-poetry presents itself as a supplement to the Gospel’s promise of Salvation, and thus obviously competes with the institutionalized religion. Petrarch, very much concerned to be perceived as the one to overcome the ‘Dark Ages’ represented by Dante and from there as the founding authority of what we call Renaissance, quotes Dante’s sacralization of the courtly love in order to cancel demonstratively its claim to ontological substance. Different to Dante, Petrarch avoids all heretic appearance by presenting the divinization of the minne-lady as a mere phantasm which is finally recognized as the result of a morally erroneous conception of love. Therefore with Petrarch, Christian orthodoxy is not overtly contested. This paradoxically clears the way for a genuine worldly poetry in which art itself gains the aura of the sacred: thus with Petrarch, the will to balance religion and love becomes a driving force of secularization.

scholarly journals Zuiderzeestädte an der Ostsee

2020 ◽  
Vol 134 ◽  
pp. 39-59
Author(s):  
Louis Sicking
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Spatial Arrangement ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Regional Concentration ◽  
C 50 ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City

Zuiderzee towns in the Baltic. ‘Vitten’ and ‘Vögte’ – Space and urban representatives in late-medieval ScaniaThe Scania peninsula in the southwest of present-day Sweden was one of the most important trading centres of medieval Northern Europe due to the seasonal presence of immense swarms of herring which attracted large numbers of fishermen and traders. Streching back from the beach of Scania were the so-called vitten, which the traders, grouped by region or city, held as their own, legally autonomous trade settlements, from the Danish King. Initially, these were seasonal trading colonies that were occupied only for the duration of the fair, which began in August and ended in November. In the late Middle Ages the vitten developed into miniature towns, modest off-shoots from the traders‘ mother city. The presence on a small peninsula (c 50 km2) of so many fishermen and merchants who did business together and came from different cities could easily have led to tensions and conflict. What was the relationship between the spatial arrangement of the vitten at Scania and the urban representatives of the vitten, the so-called vögte or governors? This question is addressed by focusing on the vitten of the Zuiderzee towns. Their vitten, among which were numbered those of eastern Zuiderzee cities like Kampen and Zutphen as well as those of western cities like Amsterdam, Brielle and Zierikzee, were part of the Hanse. However, the vitten of these cities have been virtually neglected in historiography. The territorial or local-topographical development of these vitten was characterized by regional concentration: the Zuiderzee vitten were located close or adjacent to one another. The new vitten of Zierikzee and Amsterdam bordered on that of Kampen. Traders from cities and towns without their own vitte were housed in a vitte of a neighboring city: those of Deventer and Zwolle, for instance, in the vitte of  Kampen, those of Enkhuizen and Wieringen in the Amsterdam vitte and those from Schouwen island in the vitte of Zierikzee. The vitten of the eastern Zuiderzee towns were founded at the beginning of the fourteenth century, that is on average half a century earlier than those of the western Zuiderzee towns. The count of Holland and Zealand initially appointed the Zierikzee vogt or governor for all his subjects. Later on, the cities in his counties then had their own governors, first appointed by the count, later by the city (with or without the count‘s approval). The development of the representation of Holland and Zeeland towns in Scania differs from what was characteristic of the eastern Zuiderzee towns. Neither the Count /Duke of Guelders nor the bishop of Utrecht (as overlord of the Oversticht) attempted to interfere with the individual towns‘ governors or the vitten. The trend towards territorialisation in Scania was unmistakable. Although foreign traders, by reason of their origins, were subject to the jurisdiction of their mother city (the personality principle), a fact reflected in the responsibility of the vogt for the citizens in question, they were also increasingly spatially limited in Scania. This was a consequence of the limited space available, of the pursuit of control over one’s own community, and of the goal of allowing different urban groups to live together peaceably, prevent conflicts and guarantee the conduct of international trade. In this way the vitten, in particular those of the Zuiderzee towns that were further away from their mother cities, can be understood as urban colonies overseas.

scholarly journals Genoa: Colonizing and Colonized City? The Port City as a Pole of Attraction for Foreign Merchants (16th-18th centuries)

2019 ◽  
pp. 281-296
Author(s):  
Luisa Piccinno ◽  
Andrea Zanini
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Geographic Area ◽  
Port City ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
The One ◽  
Foreign Merchants

As Michel Balard pointed out with reference to the late Middle Ages and to the relations between Genoa and overseas cities, “Genoa, a colonizer in the East, is colonized by the Orientals”. The aim of this work is to verify whether and to what extent this concept is applicable also to the modern age and whether it involved a wider geographic area than the one examined by this French historian. In particular we outline the features of the presence of foreign merchants in Genoa between the 16th and 18th centuries as a phenomenon complementary to the better known “diaspora” of Genoese businessmen.

scholarly journals Die Illusion der ›einfachen Form‹

2012 ◽  
Vol 134 (3) ◽  
pp. 365-404
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Simple Form ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Ambivalent Attitude ◽  
The One

Abstract Saints’ lives occupy a fluctuating position between cult and art which challenges their claim to be a devout and unpretentious ‘simple form’. The following contribution traces the interplay in the genre between scepticism toward rhetoric on the one hand and fascination with it on the other. The greater the importance that attaches to a surplus of rhetoric and narration, the more contradictory the narrative order mandated by the genre becomes, and the more testing the conditions under which saints’ lives are narrated. The specific interference of religious and literary modes of speaking is illustrated from examples of narrative saints’ lives from the late middle ages. What tensions does the genre’s ambivalent attitude to rhetoric give rise to when telling stories about saints through the act of narratively transforming the miraculous?

scholarly journals The Oath of a New Burgess from the Comparison Point of View

2021 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 33-54
Author(s):  
Hana Komárková
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
General Context ◽  
Early Modernity ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
Urban Structures ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Individual

The Oath of a New Burgess from the Comparison Point of ViewThe role of immigration in the life of the late medieval and early modern town was important. A key part of this process (and best captured in the sources of urban origin) was the integration of a new burgher into existing urban social and economic structures. Like most of the power-economic relations of this time, the individual-burgher relationship to the group was based on mutual guarantees confirmed by an oath taken by a newly-accepted member. The essay will focus on the relevance and usability of early modern and modern codifications of urban oaths to explore the development of urban structures in the late Middle Ages and Early Modernity. It will also focus on comparing the content of the oath of the new burgher both in the general context of the oaths used in the urban environment and in the context of the specific development of the urban community in the area under consideration (Silesian and north Moravian towns based on Magdeburg rights) compared to the situation in the Western part of Holy Roman Empire.

scholarly journals Existential challenges of modernity and vector for their solution

2021 ◽  
pp. 12-21
Author(s):  
Vadim Markovich Rozin
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
Family Ties ◽  
Individual Life ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
Entire Society ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual

This article reviews the challenges and problems of modernity, as well as discusses the ideas and vectors for their solution. The first problem is demotes as the crisis of modern culture and the need to preserve life on the planet. It is associated with the nature and development of European sociality, which generated the ecological crisis, pandemic, and other problems. The author argues that the culture of modernity ceases and is about to be replaced by another culture (future culture). The second problem delineates “social theodicy”, i.e. development of attitude towards increasing evil. The main aspects of this phenomenon are discussed. The third problem pointed by the author, is the problem of salvation and righteous life. In this regard are examined two different models that determine cultural life: semantic view of life of the entire society, and scenarios of individual life. Comparison is conducted on the scenarios of individual life of the Middle Ages and Modern Age; the uncertainty of the latter is underlined (if not readiness for Parousia, then what: engagement in implementation of the project of modernity, but pursuing which purpose – enrichment, success, happiness, fulfillment of duty?). The pattern of the individual scenario of future culture is outlined. Within its framework, a person must solve the following dilemma –on the one hand, human is finite and mortal, while on the other, as a human of history and culture – infinite and immortal. The solution to this dilemma is offered. In conclusion, the author discusses the anchors that the person of the transitional era can rely on: critical and reflexive thinking, family ties, identity, creativity and art.

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