The Man with the Pale Face, the Shroud, and Du Fay's Missa Se la face ay pale

2010 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 377-434 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Walters Robertson
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Emotional Expression ◽  
Sacred Music ◽  
Mass Composition ◽  
Physical Aspect ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Great Love

Guillaume Du Fay composed his Missa Se la face ay pale, based on his ballade of the same name, during his final sojourn at the Court of Savoy in Chambééry from 1452 to 1458. It has been suggested that the piece celebrated the consummation of the wedding of Amadeus of Savoy and Yolande de France in 1452, but the basis for assigning it to this occasion ——that a song about a man whose "face is pale" for "reason of love" might refer to a bridegroom——is weak. A fresh look at this seminal composition points to a different rationale, one stemming from examination of the affective theology of the fifteenth century that influenced art in all its forms. Late medieval Passion treatises, dialogues, sermons, lives of Christ, along with related paintings often depict Christ as the man with the pale face. In his final hours on the Cross, Christ's physical aspect is described as "pale" or "pallid." The "reason" for his disfigurement is his "great love" for mankind. In sacred dialogues between Christ and the female soul ("anima"), the Man of Sorrows conveys his love and encourages her to "see" or "behold" his wounds and study his "bitter" passion. The language of Du Fay's ballade is strikingly similar: "If the face is pale / The cause is love, / That is the main cause; / And so bitter to me / Is love, that in the sea / Would I like to see myself." What prompted Du Fay to use this song in his Missa Se la face ay pale? This article proposes that an important Christological relic, the Holy Shroud, acquired by Du Fay's patron Duke Louis of Savoy in 1453 (and not moved from Chambééry to its present location in Turin until 1578), lies at the heart of the work, and that the composer incorporated theological symbols in the Mass to associate it with this sacred remnant. Recognition of early Christ-Masses such as the Missa Se la face ay pale helps to redefine the word "devotional" and illuminates the beginnings of Mass composition with secular tunes and of emotional expression in sacred music.

New sources of English fourteenth- and fifteenth-century polyphony

1983 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 123-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Bowers ◽  
Andrew Wathey
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Steady Flow ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Sacred Music ◽  
Late Medieval

Recent years have witnessed a steady flow of newly discovered sources of late-medieval English sacred music. These have served both to document familiar repertories and practices more fully, and also to establish the identity and character of those that are more peripheral and idiosyncratic. Five of these new sources are described here. Four contribute to the hitherto relatively poorly represented indigenous sources and repertories of Mass music of the middle and the second half of the fifteenth century; one, Lincoln Cathedral MS 52, supplements the known body of fourteenth-century polytextual music.

Drama in Danzig

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia Nowakowska
Keyword(s):  
Full Scale ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Social Elites ◽  
The Face ◽  
Secular Terms

Royal Prussia was the most urbanized part of Sigismund I’s monarchy, its Hanseatic ports profoundly affected by Luther’s message from 1518. This chapter traces the Polish Crown’s responses to Reformation in this province—the Crown’s strange inaction in the face of Danzig’s radicalization and full-scale Lutheran revolt (1518–25), the King’s armed reversal of that Reformation in 1526, and his return to passivity thereafter as Royal Prussia’s social elites tacitly rolled out Lutheran reform in town and countryside. These events are analysed first through a geopolitical or ‘realpolitik’ lens, which stresses royal fears of a wholesale secession of Royal Prussia from Poland. Application of a religious lens shows, however, that the Crown read the revolt in ‘secular’ terms, avoided the language of heresy, and enacted only a minimal urban ‘re-Catholicization’ in 1526. It is argued that this was a pre-confessional anti-Reformation policy, reflecting late medieval perceptions of Lutheranism.

A Mathematical Turn

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Oosterhoff
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
University Reform ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Nicholas Of Cusa ◽  
Devotio Moderna ◽  
Court Politics ◽  
Spiritual Reform ◽  
The University

Lefèvre described his own mathematical turn as a kind of conversion. This chapter explains what motivated his turn to mathematics, considering the place of mathematics in fifteenth-century Paris in relation to court politics and Lefèvre’s own connections to Italian humanists. But more importantly, Lefèvre’s attitude to learning and the propaedeutic value of mathematics drew on the context of late medieval spiritual reform, with its emphasis on conversion and care of the soul. In particular, Lefèvre’s turn to university reform seems to have responded to the works of Ramon Lull, alongside the devotio moderna and Nicholas of Cusa, which he printed in important collections. With such influences, Lefèvre chose the university as the site for intellectual reform.

Public and Private: The Late Medieval Wall Paintings of Haddon Hall Chapel, Derbyshire

2006 ◽  
Vol 86 ◽  
pp. 179-205
Author(s):  
Mellie Naydenova
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Wall Paintings ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Public Statement ◽  
The Public ◽  
Parish Church ◽  
Public Persona ◽  
Private Devotion

This paper focuses on the mural scheme executed in Haddon Hall Chapel shortly after 1427 for Sir Richard Vernon. It argues that at that time the chapel was also being used as a parish church, and that the paintings were therefore both an expression of private devotion and a public statement. This is reflected in their subject matter, which combines themes associated with popular beliefs, the public persona of the Hall's owner and the Vernon family's personal devotions. The remarkable inventiveness and complexity of the iconography is matched by the exceptionally sophisticated style of the paintings. Attention is also given to part of the decoration previously thought to be contemporary with this fifteenth-century scheme but for which an early sixteenth-century date is now proposed on the basis of stylistic and other evidence.

“The Last Enemy Is Death”

1989 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 380-392
Author(s):  
Charles E Brown
Keyword(s):  
The Face ◽  
The Cross

Paul's reflections on the universal curse of death and its conquest by the resurrection of God's son who shared that curse in his own death on the cross help define the pastoral approach to those who suffer humanity's common anxiety in the face of death

The Essence of Christianity and the Cross of Christ

1914 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 538-594
Author(s):  
Benjamin B. Warfield
Keyword(s):  
New Haven ◽  
Liberal Theology ◽  
Religious System ◽  
The World ◽  
Cross Of Christ ◽  
The Face ◽  
Divinity School ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Cross ◽  
The Right

In a recent number of The Harvard Theological Review, Professor Douglas Clyde Macintosh of the Yale Divinity School outlines in a very interesting manner the religious system to which he gives his adherence. For “substance of doctrine” (to use a form of speech formerly quite familiar at New Haven) this religious system does not differ markedly from what is usually taught in the circles of the so-called “Liberal Theology.” Professor Macintosh has, however, his own way of construing and phrasing the common “Liberal” teaching; and his own way of construing and phrasing it presents a number of features which invite comment. It is tempting to turn aside to enumerate some of these, and perhaps to offer some remarks upon them. As we must make a selection, however, it seems best to confine ourselves to what appears on the face of it to be the most remarkable thing in Professor Macintosh's representations. This is his disposition to retain for his religious system the historical name of Christianity, although it utterly repudiates the cross of Christ, and in fact feels itself (in case of need) quite able to get along without even the person of Christ. A “new Christianity,” he is willing, to be sure, to allow that it is—a “new Christianity for which the world is waiting”; and as such he is perhaps something more than willing to separate it from what he varyingly speaks of as “the older Christianity,” “actual Christianity,” “historic Christianity,” “actual, historical Christianity.” He strenuously claims for it, nevertheless, the right to call itself by the name of “Christianity.”

The Roots of ASEAN: Regional Identities in the Strait of Melaka Region Circa 1500 C.E

2001 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth R. Hall
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
World Order ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Economic Success ◽  
Local Networks ◽  
Cultural Centers ◽  
Self Confidence ◽  
The Face

AbstractSoutheast Asian sources that report regional connection with the Majapahit and Angkor polities reflect upon a rapidly changing fourteenth and fifteenth century world order, the result of new trading opportunities as Europeans were becoming more direct participants in affairs beyond their Western home-lands. In the face of the individualistic and destructive tendencies of the wider global community circa 1500, in the Strait of Melaka region there was less dislocation and isolation than is supposed by many twentieth century scholars. Despite the number of political and religious transitions underway, in the Southeast Asian archipelago and mainland there was a sense of regional self-confidence and progress among societies who had enjoyed over two hundred years of widespread socio-economic success. These successes were the product of the functional international, regional, and local networks of communication, as well as a common heritage that had developed in the Strait of Melaka region during the pre-1500 era. This study not only addresses the role of Majapahit and Angkor in the shaping of regional inclusiveness circa 1500, but also explores the enduring (and often exclusive) legacy of these two early cultural centers among Southeast Asia's twentieth century polities.

scholarly journals Zlatari Pavao i Stjepan Petrovi iz Kotora-majstori gotičkih ophodnih križeva iz Nina, Božave, Ugljana i Kali?

Ars Adriatica ◽  
2014 ◽  
pp. 125
Author(s):  
Marijana Kovačević
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Archival Material ◽  
The Cross

The article presents substantial and hitherto mostly unpublished archival material concerning two master goldsmiths who were active in Zadar during the late fourteenth and the first half of the fifteenth century. Originally from Kotor, these goldsmiths acquired considerable reputation as well as possessions through the versatility of their work over the course of several decades. The fact that both came from Kotor and shared the same patronymic taken together with the information obtained from archival records, especially those which confirm their contacts point to the possibility that they may have been brothers. This would strengthen the existing hypothesis that goldsmith Pavao Petrov made the processional cross from Božava, dated to the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century, as well as the possibility that Stjepan Petrov was responsible for a similar cross now from Nin. Professor Ivo Petricioli linked cautiously the cross from Nin, signed by a master goldsmith called Stjepan, with Stjepan Crnjina, also known as Francoj, who collaborated with goldsmith Francesco da Milano, and saw it as part of a group of crosses displaying similar iconographic and stylistic features, all of which come from the island parishes across the Zadar archipelago, including the aforementioned cross from Božava. For this reason, it seems opportune to dedicate this article to the memory of professor Petricioli and mark the anniversary of his death by examining the attribution of Gothic processional crosses from the Zadar region as a theme which benefitted enormously from his scholarly contributions.

scholarly journals El perfil de las elites pecheras en los concejos bajomedievales: prácticas y trayectorias. Piedrahíta en el siglo XV

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. e038
Author(s):  
Rocío Bello Gay
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Late Medieval

El estudio de la documentación concejil de Piedrahíta da cuenta de la creciente consolidación de miembros provenientes del estamento pechero que a lo largo del siglo XV ocupan cargos políticos y de gestión tanto a nivel urbano como a nivel rural, al mismo tiempo que desarrollan procesos de acumulación de distinto tipo. El seguimiento de algunas de las figuras destacadas de los no privilegiados permite aportar a la caracterización de las prácticas, estrategias y trayectorias de dichos sectores en los siglos bajomedievales. Palabras claves: elites pecheras-prácticas-trayectorias- Piedrahíta-Siglo XV Title: The profile of the elites pecheras in the late medieval councils: practices and trajectories. Piedrahíta in the Fifteenth Century.

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