Die «bösen Reichen»

2020 ◽  
Vol 136 (2) ◽  
pp. 372-389
Author(s):  
Dietmar Rieger
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Cultural Activity ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Productive Structure ◽  
Formal Experiment ◽  
The Middle Ages

AbstractIn the Middle Ages, not only philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas, but also numerous troubadours have discussed with commitment issues of private property and its social obligations – up to expropriation. The discussion mainly took place in the context of their continuous polemics from about 1150 to 1300 in the form of sirventes and partimens, but also cansos, against the «evil rich barons», the rics malvatz. The antipathy towards this «incarnation of Malvestatz» and figure of greed, avarice and all varieties of immorality finds its outlet in many denunciations and hateful verbal aggressions in a wide rhetorical range – up to demands for prohibition of inheritance claims and suggestions for expropriation. The motivations for these insulting tirades are multiple and partly overlap: The ric malvatz is hated as rich and powerful and therefore often successful rival in love as well as one who refuses himself or his fortune for the Crusade, as a miser who denies the equality (including the poor) before God and above all as a territorial prince who tramples on his socio-cultural duty to promote and stabilize the troubadouresque cultural activity with its cultural-productive structure resulting from an important social compromise. It is remarkable, but also enigmatic, in which way a troubadour (Trobaire de Villa-Arnaut) combines his polemic against the rics malvatz with a formal experiment and how he legitimizes it with a clear reference to Giraut de Borneil.

The Enduring Interim

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Kenneth Galbraith
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Saint Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Middle Ages

This chapter discusses the basic economic life in the Middle Ages, noting the absence of trade or a market during the period. It first considers the legacy of the Romans with respect to economic and political life, including their commitment to the sanctity of private property and Christianity. In particular, it describes Christian attitudes toward wealth and the link between morality and the market. It also examines the ideas of Saint Thomas Aquinas and Nicole Oresme before turning to the role of markets in the Middle Ages, along with their special characteristics. Finally, it looks at other aspects of economic life during the medieval period, such as the intrusion of ethics on economics—the fairness or justice of the relationship between master and slave, lord and serf, landlord and sharecropper.

Venantius Fortunatus, Poems, edited and translated by Michael Roberts. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 46. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017, pp. 944.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 390-392
Author(s):  
Raymond J. Cormier
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Harvard University ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Cultural Climate ◽  
The Middle Ages

It doesn’t pay to sing about the poor! Literary patronage in the Middle Ages is as old as poetry itself. The aristocratic context guaranteed a rich intellectual focus, whether we consider the poetry of praise or blame, and whether fulsome or just simple. Authorized compositions offered to a patron implied a hope for favorable compensation, and with his (or her) audience assured, the ceremonial promotion of the kingdom by the poet brought glory to the sponsor. Following a benefactor’s tastes within a cultural climate of liberality and magnanimity might bring unimaginable rewards to a court poet. A quick example from the life of Fortunatus: the renowned Gregory of Tours rewarded the poet with gifts, such as an estate on the Vienne River.

scholarly journals Procesy i egzekucje „żywych trupów” przed sądami miejskimi i wiejskimi w XVI–XVIII wieku – przyczynek do wierzeń w magia posthuma na Śląsku

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (4 (1)) ◽  
pp. 77-92
Author(s):  
Daniel Wojtucki
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Expert Witnesses ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Living Dead ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Middle Ages

There are references reaching back to the Middle Ages, regarding the fear of the “undead” or “living dead” who would rise from their graves in a local cemetery to haunt and harm the community. The fear of the “undead” was extremely strong, and the entailing hysteria often affected entire communities. In the 16th to the 18th century, in Silesia, effective forms of coping with the harmful deceased were developed. Analysing the preserved source material, we are able to determine that the basic actions involved finding the grave of the “undead” in the cemetery, exhuming the corpse and destroying it. However, this did not always mean the total annihilation of the poor man’s corpse. The trial and execution of the corpse of a person suspected of the harmful activity against the living took place observing almost the same rules as in the case of the living. Apart from the authorities, who usually commissioned local jurors to handle the situation, opinions and advice were also sought from the clergy as well as gravediggers and executioners. The last were considered to be experts of sorts and were often called upon to see corpses of the suspected dead. In the analysed cases of posthumous magic (magia posthuma) in Silesia, we deal with two directions of handling the corpse accused of a harmful posthumous activity. In both cases, the main decision was made to remove such corpses from the cemetery’s area. Costs of the trial and execution of the “undead” were considerable. They included expenses incurred due to rather frequent court hearings at which sometimes dozens of witnesses were heard, payments to expert witnesses, payments to guards watching graves, costs of legal instructions, services of gravediggers who would dig up suspicious graves, and, finally, the remuneration of executioners and their people. In the second half of the 18th century, despite relevant decrees issued by supreme authorities, trials and executions of the dead were not completely abandoned.

Theologies of Salvation in the Middle Ages

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Julian Of Norwich ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Book Covers ◽  
The Devil ◽  
The Middle Ages

This overview chapter for the second part of the book covers the Middle Ages and includes chapters on Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, and Julian of Norwich. This chapter recounts the development of the theology of salvation through this period, where the life of Christ as the payment to the Devil for the souls under his authority became an increasingly popular notion. Over the course of the Middle Ages, this doctrine became known as the harrowing of Hell, due to the belief that when Jesus rose from the grave, the righteous were let out of Hell itself.

Paul Kersten. The Bookbinder’s Role in the Development of Decorative Paper

2017 ◽  
Vol 62 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 41-46
Author(s):  
Helma Schaefer
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Mass Production ◽  
Art Nouveau ◽  
Paper Production ◽  
Art Deco ◽  
Poor State ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
The Middle Ages

In her article, the author discusses the merits of the German craft bookbinder Paul Kersten (1865-1943) in the development of modern decorative papers as an expression of artistic individuality in the field of applied arts. From the Middle Ages, decorative paper had been used in decoration and bookbinding. Bookbinding workshops had traditionally made starched marbled paper. The interest of Paul Kersten, coming from a bookbinding family, in these papers had already dated from his youth. During his travels abroad, he was aware of the poor state of the bookbinding craft, which was affected by the mass production of books and book bindings as well as the industrialisation of paper production at the end of the 19th century. Kersten helped to introduce Art Nouveau into the design of German bookbinding and the methods of the modern production of decorative papers. At first, he worked as a manager in German paper manufactures and then as a teacher of bookbinding. His work was later oriented towards Symbolic Expressionism and he also tried to cope with the style of Art Deco.

scholarly journals Vrou as beeld van God, Deel 1: 'n Historiese ondersoek - Vanaf Genesis tot die Middeleeue

2000 ◽  
Vol 56 (2/3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yolanda Dreyer
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Image Of God ◽  
Patriarchal Society ◽  
Genesis 1 ◽  
Historical Investigation ◽  
The Asymmetry ◽  
Christian Thought ◽  
The Image Of God ◽  
The Middle Ages

Woman created in the image of God, Part 1: a historical investigation - from Genesis to the Middle Ages. This study indicates that the traditions in the Pentateuch, especially the creation traditions, implied the egalitarian status of man and woman as image of God. The context of this traditions, however, was patriarchal and thus opened the possibility of the exploitation of women. Though Genesis 1:27 does not specifically attest to the asymmetry between man and woman in patriarchal society, the fate of women in general was bound up with the presentation of God as a male creator. The implications of this presentation can be clearly seen in texts of the intertestamental period. The study points out the degree to which Philo's view of a hierarchy concerning man and woman as immanent to God's order of creation, strongly influenced Christian thought on the place of women. Since the "fall of woman" necessitates a "soteriology", women in general are portrayed negatively in patristic texts. Mary is seen as the positive counterpart of Eve. The image of women then becomes that of submission on account of their alienation from God. The article concludes with the view of Thomas Aquinas that the subservience of slaves is less than that of women, because in their case it is not an order of creation.

Resistance to Tithes in the Middle Ages

1962 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 172-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giles Constable
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Income Tax ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Medieval Church ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The Middle Ages

The system of compulsory tithes in the Middle Ages has long been used by protestant and liberal historians as a stick with which to beat the medieval Church. ‘This most harassing and oppressive form of taxation’, wrote H. C. Lea in his well-known History of the Inquisition, ‘had long been the cause of incurable trouble, aggravated by the rapacity with which it was enforced, even to the pitiful collections of the gleaner’. Von Inama-Sternegg remarked on the growing hatred of tithes in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, especially among the small free landholders, ‘upon whom the burden of tithes must have fallen most heavily’. Gioacchino Volpe said that tithes were ‘the more hated because they oppressed the rich less than the poor, the dependents on seigneurial estates less than the small free proprietors to whose ruin they contributed…. At that time tithes were both an ecclesiastical and secular oppression, a double offence against religious sentiment and popular misery’. G. G. Coulton, writing before the introduction in England of an income tax at a rate of over ten per cent., proclaimed that before the Reformation tithes ‘constituted a land tax, income tax and death duty far more onerous than any known to modern times, and proportionately unpopular’.

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