Quintilian and the Rhetorical Revolution of the Middle Ages

1995 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 231-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
John O. Ward
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Original Length ◽  
Rhetorical Practice ◽  
Good Advice ◽  
Training Courses ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
Full Utilization ◽  
The Middle Ages

Abstract: It is often asserted nowadays that the medieval period “fragmented” the classical rhetorical inheritance, while the Renaissance restored it to its former coherence. The story of the assimilation in the Middle Ages and Renaissance of Quintilian's Institutes of Oratory is examined here in order to demonstrate the problems inherent in such a position. It is argued that the full utilization of the text of Quintilian's Institutes of Oratory in the Renaissance, along with the discrediting of the Ad Herennium (as a work of Cicero) that is associated with the name of Raffaello Regio in the last decade of the fifteenth century, are not the instances of the “recovery” of antiquity and supersession of “medieval philology” that they are often thought to be. Instead the opposite seems to be the case. The philological “recovery” of Quintilian led away from the incorporation of the Institutes into contemporary rhetorical practice and towards philology for its own sake. This, together with the bitter professional jealousies among the Italian schoolmen of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, led, almost “accidentally” as it were, to a “sundering” of the “whole” that the Middle Ages had put together out of rhetorical fragments from antiquity. The medieval period, less concerned with philological niceties than with the practical utility of good advice from the past, constructed a new kind of rhetorical text from an amalgam of old texts: the Ad Herennium commentary, made up of the text of the Ad Herennium, explanations, summaries, and discussions from the medieval schoolroom, and portions of Boethius' De differentiis topicis, Quintilian's Institutes, and other classical sources. This serviceable “unity” the Renaissance “sundered” by (a) discrediting the Ad Herennium as an authoritative Ciceronian text, and (b) placing the Institutes far beyond the practical capabilities of contemporary rhetorical training courses by restoring it to its original length (vis-à-vis the abridgements and assimilations of the medieval period). In this process of turning the classical texts into icons, the Renaissance scholars were predictably unable to re-create the kaleidoscopic, one-thousand-year reality of rhetorical attitudes and texts in antiquity, from the fragments that the Middle Ages had used to build up their new form of integrated text. Much had been lost, but what had been gained?

Preaching to the Laity in Fifteenth-Century Germany: Johannes Nider's ‘Harps’

1983 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Dahmus
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Religious Literature ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
The Middle Ages

Bernd Moeller concludes in his often-quoted study of late medieval German piety that ‘one could dare to call the late fifteenth century in Germany one of the most churchly-minded and devout periods of the Middle Ages’. In his review of Moeller's work, W. D.J. Cargill Thompson points out that the ‘profound conservatism’ of this religiosity, which included devotion to the mass, veneration of saints and their relics, and the reading of vast amounts of religious literature, poses a problem for our understanding of the causes of the Reformation. How does one reconcile this traditional churchliness with the ‘remarkable suddenness’ of its collapse after 1520? One would have expected greater resistance to Lutheran ideas than actually occurred.

Mega-structures of the Middle Ages: the construction of religious buildings in Europe and Asia,c.1000–1500

2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 381-406 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maarten Prak
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Modular Design ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Construction Work ◽  
Religious Buildings ◽  
Modern Engineering ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
The Middle Ages

AbstractHow did medieval builders manage to construct some of the tallest structures in the world without access to modern engineering theories? Construction drawings were limited to details and, with only a handful exceptions, manuals for builders only appeared in the late fifteenth century. By implication, the relevant knowledge had to be transferred on a personal basis. Its underlying principles must therefore have been reasonably simple. This article shows how a modular design, combined with on-site experimentation, guided much of the construction work on large projects such as European cathedrals, Middle Eastern mosques, Indian temples, and Chinese pagoda towers.

The Meaning of ‘carruca’ in the ‘Leges Barbarorum’

Traditio ◽  
1984 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 297-300
Author(s):  
Theodore John Rivers
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Transitional Period ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Medieval Latin ◽  
Original Meaning ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
The Middle Ages

The term carruca (or carruga), like many other terms in medieval Latin, acquired a new and different meaning in the Middle Ages in place of its original classical meaning. There is no confusion over the meaning of carruca in Roman historical and literary sources: it clearly means a four-wheeled wagon or carriage. However, its original meaning was modified during the medieval period so that by the early ninth century carruca denoted a wheeled plow. Although the medieval plow is often called a carruca (whereas the Roman plow is called an aratrum), one should not infer that all references to carruca in medieval sources signify a plow, particularly if these sources are datable to that transitional period during which the classical meaning of the word was beginning to be transformed into its medieval one. Characteristic of the sources which fall within this period are the Germanic tribal laws (leges barbarorum), and of these, three individual laws in particular are of interest: the Pactus legis Salicae 38.1, Lex Ribuaria 47.2, and Lex Alamannorum 93.2.

Gelehrte Autorität und die Ordnung der Dinge. Über Wissen, Macht und die Vermessung der Wirklichkeit im Mittelalter

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-66
Author(s):  
Marcel Bubert
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Organizing Principles ◽  
The Middle Ages

AbstractAlthough the medieval period was not part of Michel Foucault’s seminal study on ‘The Order of Things’, there are good reasons to believe that the learned cultures of the Middle Ages were to a certain degree based on specific epistemic orders, general organizing principles which were unconsciously presupposed in concepts of reality. Nevertheless, the extent as to which these concepts are in fact committed to the assumption of a metaphysically determined measuring of reality, is not altogether clear. This article aims to discuss this question in general, based on recent views of the role of the ‘subject’ in epistemic orders.

scholarly journals Las técnicas constructivas en las murallas medievales de Almería

X ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pedro Gurriarán Daza
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Rammed Earth ◽  
Construction Techniques ◽  
Typical Scheme ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Middle Ages

Building techniques in the medieval walls of AlmeríaAlmería was one of the most important cities in al-Andalus, a circumstance that was possible thanks to the strength of its port. Its foundation as an urban entity during the Caliphate of Córdoba originated a typical scheme of an Islamic city organized by a medina and a citadel, both walled. Subsequent city’s growths, due to the creation of two large suburbs commencing in the eleventh century, also received defensive works, creating a system of fortifications that was destined to defend the place during the rest of the Middle Ages. In this work we will analyse the construction techniques used in these military works, which cover a wide period from the beginning of the tenth century until the end of the fifteenth century. Although ashlar stone was used in the Caliphate fortification, in most of these constructions bricklayer techniques were used, more modest but very useful. In this way, the masonry and rammed earth technique were predominant, giving rise to innumerable constructive phases that in recent times are being studied with archaeological methodology, thus to know better their evolution and main characteristics. 

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.

Before the Middle Ages

2021 ◽  
pp. 22-57
Author(s):  
Rita Copeland
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Separate Study ◽  
Philosophical Approach ◽  
Rhetorical Practice ◽  
The Middle Ages

Chapter 1 traces the millennial length of a theoretical discourse about affectio that begins with Cicero’s De inventione before turning to a tradition of stylistic teaching that arose in parallel with that speculative rhetorical thought and that was to have much more profound consequences for medieval rhetorical practice. Cicero’s De inventione was the main Latin rhetorical treatise, along with Rhetorica ad Herennium, that the Middle Ages inherited from antiquity. Cicero treats emotion (affectio) as a topic of invention, and understands it in philosophical terms as a perturbation of the soul. That philosophical approach was elaborated in medieval commentaries. The chapter then turns to late antique handbooks of style. Style came to constitute a separate study; through these influences, style also became the main conduit for teaching emotion and rhetorical persuasion.

Why This Time and Place?

Born to Write ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 10-19
Author(s):  
Neil Kenny
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Social Position ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Social ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
The Revolution

From about the late fifteenth century onwards, literature and learning acquired increased importance for the social position of noble and elite-commoner families in France. One reason is the expansion and rise to prominence of the royal office-holder milieu, which had no exact equivalent in, say, England, where the aristocracy was much smaller than the French nobility and where there was no equivalent of the French system of venality of office. In France, family literature often helped extend across the generations a relationship between two families—that of the literary producer and that of the monarch. From the late Middle Ages, the conditions for family literature were made more favourable by broad social shifts. Although this study focuses mainly on the period from the late fifteenth to the mid-seventeenth century, it is likely that the production of works from within families of literary producers thrived especially up to the Revolution.

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