scholarly journals Peltae subacquee e specchiature marmoree La forma dell’acqua tra storia dell’arte e filosofia

Author(s):  
Luca Marchetti ◽  
Beatrice Spampinato

This paper focuses on two canonical representations of water in 12th-century Venetian churches: (i) the so-called ‘peltae pattern’, usually defined as ‘geometric decoration’ and recognized as the symbol of water; and (ii) the ‘marble slab’, usually included among non-iconic decorations and recognized as il mare. Why did the medieval masters represent the same natural element in the same type of location in these two different ways? Our hypothesis is that (i) represented the turbulent water of terrestrial life, while (ii) represented heavenly water. We argue that support for both claims can be found by retracing the sources of the two decorative models and looking at them from an art historical point of view, and by analyzing them from a philosophical and perceptological standpoint in order to retrieve universal perceptual patterns that can sustain the iconological reading.

2013 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giuseppe E. De Benedetto ◽  
Amedeo Savino ◽  
Daniela Fico ◽  
Daniela Rizzo ◽  
Antonio Pennetta ◽  
...  

A multidisciplinary research, currently in progress at the University of Salento in collaboration with the Lecce Provincial Museum, interests different artistic expressions widespread in the Salento peninsula (South Italy). In the present study, the characterisation of organic and inorganic materials used in the oldest pictorial cycle found in the 12th century monastery Santa Maria delle Cerrate was carried out thanks to a multi-analytical approach. Previous investigations have focused on the problem of dating the frescoes mainly on the basis of the stylistic aspects and the material characterisation has been definitely underinvestigated. Chromatographic and spectrometric techniques were used: micro-Raman spectroscopy was used for recognising pigments and gas chromatography with mass spectrometric detection for analysing organic binders. These techniques enabled us to characterise pigments and binders. The presence of both true fresco and tempera bound pigments was assessed. Among the different pigments detected, the results relevant to the blue paints were interesting: two different blue pigments were, indeed, identified, lapis lazuli and smalt (cobalt blue glass) both unexpected. As a result, Santa Maria delle Cerrate appears to be the first known example of their use in South Italy. From a conservation point of view, moreover, the knowledge of the palette permitted to highlight the reason of observed decay of some paints: for instance, lead white was used in some panels, explaining their blackening.


2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 699-709 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zekâi Şen

Although water resources have been developed throughout the centuries for the service of different civilizations, at different scales and in different regions, their use in automation has been conceived only recently. Research into the history of water from an automation point of view has led to some unknown or hidden facts. Starting from the ancient Greek period before the prophet Christ and after about the 12th century, many researchers tried to make use of water power for working some simple but effective devices for the service of mankind. Among these are the haulage of water from a lower level to a higher elevation by water wheels in order to irrigate agricultural land. Hero during the Hellenistic period and Vitruvius of the Roman Empire were among the first who tried to make use of water power for use in different human activities, such as water haulage, watermills, water clocks, etc. The highlights of these works were achieved by a 12th century Muslim researcher, Abou-l Iz Al-Jazari, who lived in the southeastern part of modern day Turkey. He reviewed all the previous work from different civilizations and then suggested his own designs and devices for the use of water power in automation of excellent types. He even combined animals and water power through early designs of valves, pistons, cylinders and crank mills, as will be explained in this paper. His works were revealed by German historians and engineers in the first quarter of the 19th century. Later, an English engineer translated his book from Arabic into English, revealing the guidelines for modern automation and robotic designs originating from the 12th century. This paper gives a brief summary of the early workers' devices and Abou-l Iz Al-Jazari's much more developed designs with his original hand-drawn pictures.


2019 ◽  
Vol 70 (7) ◽  
pp. 2538-2544 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ion Sandu ◽  
Cosmin Tudor Iurcovschi ◽  
Ioan Gabriel Sandu ◽  
Viorica Vasilache ◽  
Ioan Cristinel Negru ◽  
...  

The present paper is the first instalment of a series focused on establishing some archaeometric characteristics of the modern finishings (mortars, fresco and layers of whitewash) of the Church of the Holy Archangels from Cic�u, Alba County, Romania, in order to assess the shape, with the structural-functional integrity and architectural and artistic aspect of the monument for the last historical context, between 1710 and 1790. This period is the most extensive and less known of the church�s stages of transformation: 11th�12th century (unknown), 15th century (known) and 18th century (partially known), which was very tumultuous from the socio-economic and political point of view. Thus, in the following pages we present the resulting archaeometric characteristics of optical microscopy (OM), scanning electron microscopes in combination with energy-dispersive X-Ray spectrometry (SEM-EDX) and thermal derivatography (TG/DTA/DTG) analyses of two pigments from the exonarthex fresco (made in 1781) and the later eight layers of whitewash applied over it, which allowed assessing the periods with marked changes in the architecture and polychrome finishings.


Author(s):  
Stanisław Rosik

The cult of Triglav in the Polabian-Pomeranian territory in the 12th century confirms an evolution of the religious system of the local Slavic communities towards monolatry, largely affected by confrontation as well as a cultural dialogue with the Christian culture. At first, at the time of the Pomeranian missions of Saint Otto of Bamberg in the 1120s, attempts at suppressing the cult did not bring about long-term effects. However, a wave of the so-called pagan reaction led to some sort of a compromise made in Szczecin, leading to official coexistence of the cult of Triglav and the newly introduced cult of Jesus Christ. From the point of view of mythology, the competences of the two divine figures turn out to be convergent and universal, yet still, as part of the Szczecin “religious dualism”, no attempt was made to identify them (following the rule of interpretatio Slavica of the elements of Christianity). The belief in the autonomy of Triglav and Christ (“A German God”) was confirmed in Szczecin in the course of Otto’s evangelization which resulted in a Christian community in the city. The phenomenon of syncretism, present there until Otto’s second mission (1128), was therefore an attempt at maintaining unity in a religiously divided society following the first mission of the Apostle of Pomeranians (1124-1125).


Slovene ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 340-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roman N. Krivko

The article is dedicated to the linguistic features of the Didactic Gospel by Constantine the Presbyteros, who is also known as Constantine of Preslav or Constantine of Bregalnica. The earliest witness of the original text, which Constantine wrote down at the end of the 9th century in the First Bulgarian Kingdom, is the Old East Slavonic manuscript dating to the end of the 11th–beginning of the 12th centuries (this manuscript is sometimes dated to a later period). The manuscript is remarkable for its graphic and orthographic features characteristic only for the earliest Church Slavonic sources of East Slavonic provenance; these sources are dated to the 11th century or to the beginning of the 12th century. At the same time, the manuscript attests phonetic innovations caused by the initial stage of the loss of the jer-vowels, such as “new jat’” and the change of e into o. On the basis of the earliest manifestations of the change of e into o in the written sources, the author argues that this phonetic change took place in the southern part of the East Slavonic area and first of all in the prefinal syllable before the final jer in the absolute weak position. Phonetic and orthographic peculiarities of the East Slavonic witness of the Didactic Gospel testify to the southwest Balkan provenance of its South Slavonic protograph, which must have been a Cyrillic one. (On the basis of lexical data, the southwest Balkan origin of Constantine’s archetype was argued by the author elsewhere.) From the point of view of verbal morphology, the earliest witness of the Didactic Gospel seems to be one of the most archaic East Slavonic manuscripts, which is particularly testified by a number of forms of the root aorist. Special attention is devoted to the construction called “relativer Attributivkonnex” (Ch. Koch). It was discovered by scholars in a number of South Slavonic sources or in East Slavonic manuscripts which go back to the South Slavonic tradition, and is to be observed in the Didactic Gospel, too.


Author(s):  
Anna Plisecka

AbstractContrary to the dominant opinion of contemporary Roman law studies, accessio and specificatio were not considered in ancient Roman law as independent modes of acquisition of ownership. They became regarded as such only in the 12th Century. In ancient Roman law, what later came to be called accessio caused only an extension of the ownership of the principal thing to include also the accessory without, however, giving rise to a new ownership. On the other hand, what later came to be called specificatio caused the extinction of the object, both from the physical and from the juridical point of view. If, in place of the extinguished thing a new one came into existence it could have been acquired by occupatio. Since the technical juridical terms accessio and specificatio were unknown to the Roman jurists, the cases provided by ancient sources cannot be clearly divided into these categories. Furthermore such classifications, since external to the sources, create superfluous problems. In order to attribute ownership the Roman jurists examined the identity of an object rather than classified cases as accessio or specificatio. The principal texts on which the argumentation is based are: D. 6.1.5.1pr.–1, D. 6.1.3.2, D. 41.1.7.7 und D. 41.1.7.8–9.


2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-142
Author(s):  
Adina-Lucia Nistor

Abstract The aim of the present paper is to analyse the trilingual Transylvanian toponyms (German, Hungarian an d Romanian) from the Terra ante Silvanum (The Realm Beneath the Forest) and to reconstruct and explain them. When the Saxons arrived in Transylvania, in the 12th Century, they met Szekler, Hungarian and Romanian ethnic groups. The Realm Beneath the Forest represents, from a historical point of view, the Western border of the Transylvanian territory inhabited by the Saxons, which was not a compact area and which was divided into three districts (Sibiu, Brașov, and Bistrița) and two ‘seats’ (Mediaș and Șeica). The Realm Beneath the Forest included three ‘seats’ (Lat. sedes, judicial and administrative forums): Orăștie, Sebeș and Miercurea Sibiului. All the areas of the Realm Beneath the Forest, both those inhabited by German and/or Hungarian and Romanian populations and those inhabited only by Romanian people, have corresponding toponyms in all three languages. The toponyms Orăștie, Romos, Aurel Vlaicu, Pianul de Jos, Petrești, Sebeș, Câlnic, Reciu, Gârbova, Dobârca, Miercurea Sibiului, Apoldu de Sus, Amnaș that are analysed in the paper can be classified according to the following criteria: according to their founder, to the river that flows through the area, to the local toponyms, to their origin and their way of formation. A series of toponyms contributed to the apparition of some autochthonous family names such as Broser, Hamlescher, Kellinger, Mühlbächer, Polder, Rätscher, Urbiger.


Author(s):  
A. Hryhorak

The article deals with the systematization and analysis of authentic ancient Ukrainian texts dedicated to the topic of the Last Judgment with the author's purpose to reconstruct the worldview of Ukrainian population of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Times. The source base of the study included eschatological literature as the most popular and numerous during that ages as well as Holy Bible, hagiographic works, prophecies and the graffiti of St. Sophia Cathedral of Kyiv. The dominant idea in the works found was the idea of the Last Judgment. Through the prism of this idea the most urgent moral problems, which were of acute concern to society, are recovered: the problem of the fall of spirituality, social inequality, the decline of morality etc. The author also verified the foreign influences on Ukrainian eschatological literature as well the influence of preachers and polemicists of that time on public opinion about the signs of the end of the world. Revealing works in the medieval and early-modern Ukrainian literature devoted to the most fateful subjects, analyzing their content for reflection of eschatological ideas, systematizing the main ideas related to responsibility for terrestrial life, comparing these visions with those translated in literature, revealed the presence of the eschatological ideas on the common background of the general cultural and historical context of the studied ages. A study of Ukrainian eschatological literature led the author to the conclusion that the whole range of written eschatological sources gives us a linear development of the idea of the Last Judgment, from the dissemination of eschatological ideas of the 12th century to their concretization, development, popularization with each new period. Summing up the analysis of the works of eschatological literature, distributed on Ukrainian lands in the 17th – 18th centuries, the opposition of secular and religious thinking becomes noticeable, which is quite clearly reflected in the literature.


2021 ◽  
pp. 325-341
Author(s):  
Johannes Kandler

The Ludus Danielis, a spiritual game in the Latin language from the late 12th century, is not only a stroke of luck from the point of view of music history, but also from the point of view of media theory. Completely preserved and thoroughly composed through, it represents the possibility of systematically analysing questions such as the specific relationship between the media involved – text and music or melody. Translations inevitably come into view: from text to melody and vice versa. With the help of the monophonic solo song “Surge frater” from the Ludus Danielis, this essay will examine the translation processes in terms of Pierce’s sign types. At issue will be the exercise to carry out a categorical trace-back of text and melody (space, time, movement). A condition for this seems to be a specific semantic momentum of its own in both media, which, in the case of the formation of coherent statements by the interpreter, reveals itself as interference with increasing performative potentials.


2016 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 43
Author(s):  
Rodrigue Tréton

RESUMO:Nos estados cristãos do Ocidente mediterrânico, o notariado apareceu no século XII quando o escrevente da Alta Idade Média se tornara um oficial instituído pela autoridade pública, possuindo a capacidade simbólica, pela invenção do signum, de conferir um caráter autêntico a suas escrituras, preliminares (notas e breves) ou elaboradas (mundum, instrumento). A conservação de livros de ata, propriedade do notário e de seus herdeiros, permitia a preservação do registro completo ou de seu extrato muito tempo após a primeira redação. Em matéria de direito privado, essa inovação, consecutiva à renovação do direito romano, devia substituir vantajosamente o antigo procedimento, complexo, aleatório e limitado a certo tempo, da autenticação pela prova testemunhal. O empreendimento de descrever os primeiros tempos do notariado público no condado de Roussillon não é uma tarefa cômoda, principalmente em razão das carências da documentação, que se mostram, deste ponto de vista, particularmente incapacitantes. Não subsiste, de fato, nos arquivos locais, qualquer texto legislativo ou administrativo se referindo, de algum modo, à regulamentação e às condições de exercício deste ofício antes da metade do século XIII. Para este período inicial, que consiste na data de aparição da instituição notarial, seguindo sua difusão e buscando conhecer as primeiras etapas de sua evolução, a história somente tem o recurso de se apoiar no estudo diplomático dos registros privados. Trata-se, por consequência, de um trabalho particularmente extenso, consistindo em examinar atentamente as fórmulas da autenticação dos documentos da prática, a fim de discernir modificações ou variações significativas, suscetíveis de nos informar sobre as primeiras etapas da organização do ofício público. Foi a partir do reinado de Jaime Ide Aragão que apareceram os primeiros regulamentos visando enquadrar a prática notarial. Iniciava-se, então, um segundo período, cobrindo a segunda metade do século XIII e a primeira metade do século XIV, para o qual dispomos de um corpus de textos normativos que testemunham a natureza das questões ligadas ao controle de um ofício essencial, cujos profissionais, notários e escreventes públicos, tinham por principal função garantir a legalidade das transações econômicas e sociais de uma população eminentemente contratual e de preservar fielmente a memória disso. ABSTRACT:In the christian states of the mediterranean West, the notary appeared on the 12th century when the scribe of the High Middle Age has turned into an official set by the public authority, possessing the symbolic capacity, through the invention of signum, to confer an authentic character to your scriptures, preliminaries (notes and briefings) or elaborate ones (mundum, instrument). The conservation of record books, property of the notary and of its inheritors, would allow the preservation of the complete registry or of your extract a long time after the first redaction. When it comes to private law, this inovation, consecutive to the renewal of the roman law, should replace advantageously the old procedure, which was complex, random and limited to a certain time, of the authentication through the w itness test. The enterprise of describing the first moments of the public notary at the county of Roussillon is not a comfortable task, mostly because of the shortage of documentation, which show, from this point of view, particularly crippling.In fact, it doesn't subsist, in the local archives, any legislative or administrative text referring itself, in some way, about the regularization and the exercising conditions of that office before half of the 13th century. For this initial period, which consists on the apparition date of the notary institution, following its difusion and seeking knowledge about the first steps of your evolution, the history only has the resource to support the diplomatic study of the private records. As a consequence, it's about a particularly extense work, consisting on examining closely the authentication formulas of the practice documents, intending to discern modifications or significative variations, susceptible to inform us about the f irst organization steps of the public office. It started with the reign of Jaime Ide Aragão, when the first regulations appeared, seeking to frame the notary practice. Therefore, it was starting a second period, covering the second half of the 13th century and the first half of the 14th century, to which we disposed of a corpus of normative texts which wtiness the nature of questions connected to the control of an essential office, which all of the professionals, notaries and public scribes, had the function to guarantee the legality of the social and economic transactions of a population that is eminently contractual and to preserve accurately all of its memory.


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