Yoni of Kamakhya

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paolo E. Rosati
Keyword(s):  
Gender Identity ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Historical Evolution ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Northeastern India ◽  
Gender Theories ◽  
The Middle Ages

The mythology of the yoni of Sati was introduced in the early medieval Kalikapurana (ninth–eleventh century ce), a sakta text that linked the sexual symbol of the Goddess to the Kamakhya-pitha in Assam. This article will analyse the medieval Puranas and Tantras compiled in northeastern India—focusing on their mythological accounts of the cosmogony of the yoni pitha—in order to outline a historical evolution of the yoni symbol through the Middle Ages. Combining leftist Freudian, post-structuralist and post-gender theories with religious studies, the yoni will be considered both as a source of power and as a battlefield of sex–gender identity. In conclusion, this article will challenge the idea of a static yoni but will underline a sex–gender evolution of its identity, which encompasses and transcends both male and female powers.

The Early Middle Ages and the Christianization of Europe

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Marenbon
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Christian Belief ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Classical Culture ◽  
The Middle Ages

This chapter looks at the ease with which the ancient pagan culture was adopted and adapted to fit into a Christian world (without in many cases being actually Christianized) during the Early Middle Ages. In writing which was not strictly theological or philosophical, early medieval scholars used ancient models and language freely within a Christian context. They took the compatibility of pagan culture and Christian belief so much for granted that the Problem of Paganism did not arise; and the same is true for their predecessors in the sixth and seventh centuries as for some tenth- and eleventh-century writing. This broad, unproblematic acceptance of classical culture set what would remain the mainstream view throughout the Middle Ages. The chapter also looks at how Christian Europe came about only as the result of a long process.

Stages in Diplomatic Production

2020 ◽  
pp. 610-618
Author(s):  
Olivier Guyotjeannin
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Middle Ages

This chapter examines administrative documents of the Middle Ages and the major scholarly studies of them. It surveys the number of preserved documents and the problems surrounding the lack of documents in different periods and places. The author discusses the role and influence of the Church in the increased production and preservation of documents beginning in the eleventh century, leading to an enormous increase in the production of documents during the last three centuries of the Middle Ages.

Ritual and reality in the early medieval ordines

1975 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 41-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janet L. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Know How ◽  
Full Picture ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
The Way

To know what was generally believed in all ages, the way is to consult the liturgies, not any private man’s writings.’ John Selden’s maxim, which surely owed much to his own pioneering work as a liturgist, shows a shrewd appreciation of the significance of the medieval ordines for the consecration of kings. Thanks to the more recent efforts of Waitz, Eichmann, Schramm and others, this material now forms part of the medievalist’s stock in trade; and much has been written on the evidence which the ordines provide concerning the nature of kingship, and the interaction of church and state, in the middle ages. The usefulness of the ordines to the historian might therefore seem to need no further demonstration or qualification. But there is another side to the coin. The value of the early medieval ordines can be, not perhaps overestimated, but misconstrued. ‘The liturgies’ may indeed tell us ‘what was generally believed’—but we must first be sure that we know how they were perceived and understood by their participants, as well as by their designers. They need to be correlated with other sources, and as often as possible with ‘private writings’ too, before the full picture becomes intelligible.

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. 

Muslim Roma in the Balkans

2000 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
David M. Crowe
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Word Meaning ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Byzantine Empire ◽  
Wild Animals ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
The Middle Ages

The Roma entered the Balkans from India during the Middle Ages. They reached Persia sometime in the ninth century and by the eleventh century had moved into the Byzantine Empire. According to the eleventh-century Georgian Life of Saint George the Athonite, the Emperor Constantine Monomachus asked the Adsincani to get rid of wild animals preying on the animals in his royal hunting preserve. Adsincani is the Georgian form of the Greek word Atsínganoi or Atzínganoi, from which the non-English terms for Roma (cigán, cigány, tsiganes, zigeuner) are derived. Adsincani means “ner-do-well fortune tellers” or “ventriloquists and wizards who are inspired satanically and pretend to predict the unknown.” “Gypsy” comes from “Egyptian,” a term often used by early modern chroniclers in the Balkans to refer to the Roma. Because of the stereotypes and prejudice that surround the word “Gypsy,” the Roma prefer a name of their own choosing from their language, Romani. Today, it is preferable to refer to the Gypsies as Rom or “Roma,” a Romani word meaning “man” or “husband.” Byzantine references to “Egyptians” crop up during this period as Byzantine political and territorial fortunes gave way to the region's new power, the Ottomans. There were areas with large Roma populations in Cyprus and Greece which local rulers dubbed “Little Egypt” in the late fourteenth century.

Invoking the Authority of the Middle Ages in Nineteenth-Century Ireland: The ‘Irish Crosses’ of Earley & Powells

2020 ◽  
pp. 185-206
Author(s):  
Colleen M. Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Networks ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Culturally Diverse ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
The Middle Ages

This essay challenges the claim of the antiquarian artist Henry O’Neill that the publication of his 1857 book on early medieval crosses in Ireland sparked the nineteenth-century Celtic cross industry. While acknowledging O’Neill’s contribution as a founding researcher of medieval high cross scholarship, it argues that the design and significance of Celtic crosses developed in Victorian Ireland through social networks of antiquarians, monument makers and their culturally diverse, elite clients. Highlighted is the Irish ecclesiastical decorating firm, Earley & Powells, which began producing Celtic cross monuments in the 1860s. The significance of the Celtic cross silhouette which featured in landscape paintings alongside medieval ruins is considered in view of the conflicted relationship between landscape and Irish aristocracy. The essay concludes with a discussion about two of Earley & Powells’ clients and the monumental Celtic crosses they commissioned.

Parable, Allegory and Romance in the Legend of Barlaam and Josaphat

Traditio ◽  
1958 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 359-366
Author(s):  
W.F. Bolton
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
English Renaissance ◽  
Ancient India ◽  
Wide Readership ◽  
Allegorical Interpretation ◽  
The Middle Ages

The medieval versions in Greek and Latin of the legend of Barlaam and Josaphat made generally available to Christian writers a considerable amount of Eastern story material. The legend itself enjoyed wide readership in these and vernacular languages, and individual episodes provided the basis for further expansion. The viability of the legend in this regard owes much to the ten moral tales, or apologues, which appear during the course of the main story. These little fables proved attractive to writers for centuries, throughout and even after the Middle Ages, and they have long engaged the efforts of scholars to trace their route from ancient India to the English Renaissance stage. The apologues merit attention, however, in the form in which they were used in the eleventh century, for their application in the hagiographical context provides an interesting example of post-Scriptural parables and the allegorical interpretation of what might be termed ‘romance’ materials. This paper seeks to examine the attitudes toward parable, allegory and romance implicit in the ten apologues of the Vita.

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