scholarly journals Magnum miraculum est homo. . . . The Phenomenon of Man in the Light of Hermetic Excerpts: Lactantius, Div. inst. 7.13.3

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 707-734
Author(s):  
Agata Ewa Sowińska
Keyword(s):  
Characteristic Feature ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Reference Point ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Dual Nature ◽  
Corpus Hermeticum ◽  
Range Of Influence ◽  
The Middle Ages

The aim of this paper is to present the question of human nature in a hermetic approach based on the source texts of Asclepius and Corpus Hermeticum. As the reference point for a research on hermetic anthropology serves one of the hermetic fragments found in Lactantius’ Divinae institutiones (i.e. Div. inst. 7.13.3), who focused on a characteristic feature of every human being: their dual nature – both divine and hylic. The analysis of Div. inst. 7.13.3 is preceded by a short study, based on the anthology by M.D. Litwa, of the range of influence of hermetic texts on literature from antiquity to the Middle Ages.

Receiving the Ars Poetica

2019 ◽  
pp. 244-272
Author(s):  
Jennifer Ferriss-Hill
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Reception History ◽  
Artistic Process ◽  
Literary Achievement ◽  
Ars Poetica ◽  
Made In ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
Making Art

This epilogue traces the themes and concerns of the previous chapters throughout the Ars Poetica's considerable reception history. If the Ars Poetica's poetic qualities have not always been clear to scholars of literature, they seem to have been more evident to the practicing writers who, inspired by Horace's poem, wrote artes poeticae of their own. Indeed, practicing poets have long discerned what many literary scholars have not: that the poem's value lies not so much in its stated contents as in its fine-spun internal unity; in its interest in human nature and the onward march of time; in the importance of criticism—both giving and receiving it—to the artistic process; and in the essential sameness of writing, of making art, and of living, loving, being, and even dying. The argument made in this study for reading the Ars Poetica as a literary achievement in its own right may therefore be viewed as a return to the complex, nuanced ways in which it was already read in the Middle Ages, through the sixteenth century, and into the twenty-first. The authors of the later works examined in this chapter read the Ars Poetica as exemplifying and instantiating the sort of artistry that it opaquely commands, and they reflected this in turn through their own verses.

Hume and the Legacy of Academic Scepticism

2019 ◽  
pp. 39-76
Author(s):  
Peter S. Fosl
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
David Hume ◽  
General Framework ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Early Modernity ◽  
Treatise Of Human Nature ◽  
Pierre Bayle ◽  
The Middle Ages

Chapter Two of Hume’s Scepticism charts the development of Academic scepticism from Cicero and Augustine, through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and into early modernity. The exposition is organized around sceptical ideas that anticipated or may have influenced David Hume, who describes himself an ‘academical’ sceptic. The chapter also sets out Cicero’s influence upon Hume, scepticism at the college in La Flèche where Hume wrote much of A Treatise of Human Nature, and Hume’s self-conception of Academic scepticism. Accounts of sceptical ideas in Marin Mersenne, Simon Foucher, John Locke, Pierre-Daniel Huet, and Pierre Bayle set the stage for Hume’s own Academicism. The chapter closes with a five-point General Framework defining Academic Scepticism.

scholarly journals The Laws of the Temple and the Proper Sleep in Biblical and Rabbinic traditions

2018 ◽  
pp. 12-32
Author(s):  
Svetlana Babkina
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Being ◽  
The Third ◽  
The People ◽  
Bed Form ◽  
The Temple ◽  
The Middle Ages

This article deals with the idea that the bed should be placed north to south and not from west to east formulated in B. Berakhot 5b. As the later tradition says, this rule stays actual during the middle ages and till these days. According to the commentators this rule is based on the idea, that the Shekhinah lays from west to east, so this direction became sacred. There are three reasons to avoid this position during the sleep. All of them are connected to the ritual impurity. The first is nocturnal emission, which can happen to a man or a woman and which make that person impure. The second reason is the connection of sleep to death, which is the «father of fathers of impurities». The third is the vulnerability of the human being from the side of the different kind of night demonic creatures, who can kill the people (and make them ritually impure). All the ideas have deep biblical roots, but were combined only in rabbinical period when the prescription to put the bed form north to south first appeared. The problem is, that the practice could be very much older than the rabbinic tradition. This the rule formulated in Talmud can serve as a good example of adaptation of popular beliefs toward the official religion. From the other side this example shows that inside the monotheistic tradition there always was a place for ideas rooted in archaic societies: here we can see the clearly formulated idea, that by the manipulation sleeping space one can influence prosperity.

The Manuscript Evidence and its Implications

2018 ◽  
pp. 288-301
Author(s):  
Ali Bonner
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Christian Teaching ◽  
The Middle Ages

This chapter presents data on the numbers of surviving manuscript copies of Pelagius’ works. The large number of surviving manuscript copies shows that, travelling under false attributions, Pelagius’ writings were widely available throughout the Middle Ages. The chapter offers an analysis of the manuscript evidence and its significance, showing that without an external authority identifying a work as by Pelagius, his works passed as orthodox and did not attract comment. It also discusses the evidence of marginalia, showing that readers could not see a difference between Pelagius’ letters and Jerome’s; a discussion of further myths about Pelagius—that his works were dangerous to Christianity, that they were expelled from Christian teaching, and that questions over the Biblical account of human nature and how salvation was determined were ever resolved in western Christianity.

Miron Costin și epoca în care a trăit

Transilvania ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 91-96
Author(s):  
Carmen Oprișor
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Complex Structure ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Cultural Conditions ◽  
The Middle Ages

In the present article we pointed out the historical context in which our culture came into being. We also showed what social and cultural conditions of the Middle Ages influenced the evolution of our civilization. Miron Costin`s work, a Romanian historian from the 17th century, was imbued with literary features. He was educated in Poland and he became an important scholar. Costin was very concerned with writing a chronicle with a complex structure and with elaborate sentences. He created memorable human portraits in vivid colours, and his remarks upon history and human nature are still relevant to us today. He was also the first writer whose chronicle proved to be the work of a gifted memorialist.

scholarly journals Biagio Pelacani’s Astrological History for the Year 1405

1998 ◽  
Vol 2 (01) ◽  
pp. 24-32
Author(s):  
Graziella Federici Vescovini
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Reference Point ◽  
Political Conflicts ◽  
Dark Ages ◽  
Political Game ◽  
The Middle Ages

The years between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance were troubled by political conflicts and plots generated by an unbridled ambition for power. In those dark ages the figure of the astrologer stands out as a firm reference point in the shrewd and often merciless political game. Biagio Pelacani of Parma perfectly embodies this character of learned adviser. The actions of the powerful men of the time depended on his predictions.

After Certainty

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Pasnau
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
New Science ◽  
Initial Expectation ◽  
The World ◽  
Explanatory Depth ◽  
Looking Back ◽  
The Middle Ages

No part of philosophy is as disconnected from its history as is epistemology. After Certainty offers a reconstruction of that history as the story of an epistemic ideal first formulated by Plato and Aristotle, later developed throughout the Middle Ages, and then dramatically reformulated in the seventeenth century. In watching these debates unfold over the centuries, we come to understand why epistemology has traditionally been embedded within a much wider sphere of concerns about human nature and the reality of the world we live in. We also come to see why epistemology has become today a much narrower and specialized field, concerned with the conditions under which it is true to say, in English, that someone knows something. Looking back to earlier days, this study makes its way through the various and changing ideals of inquiry that have been pursued over the centuries, from the expectations of certainty and explanatory depth to the rising concern over evidence and precision, as famously manifested in the new science. At both the sensory and the intellectual levels, the initial expectation of infallibility is seen to give way to mere subjective indubitability, and in the end it is unclear whether anything remains of the epistemic ideals that philosophy has long pursued. All we may ultimately be left with is hope.

«A’ quai Lucan seguitava». Su Boccaccio lettore della Pharsalia

2020 ◽  
pp. 93-114
Author(s):  
Niccolò Gensini
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Reference Point ◽  
Literary Production ◽  
Different Ages ◽  
The Middle Ages

Lucan was one of the most widely read and studied classical authors during the Middle Ages, a reference point for teaching, historiography and literature. The essay attempts to outline Giovanni Boccaccio’s profile as a reader of Pharsalia in the different ages of his literary production and in his critical judgment, placing him in the context of fourteenth-century reception. The different ways of reading Lucan’s masterpiece, from the almost literal imitation of some scenes in the Filocolo, to the punctual references to situations, images and characters in the works of maturity, testifies the inexhaustible attention of Boccaccio towards the poet of «plus quam civilia bella».

scholarly journals Two Treatises on Astronomical Instruments by cABD Al-Munc IM Al-cĀmilī & Qāsim cAlī Al-Qāyinī

1987 ◽  
Vol 91 ◽  
pp. 215-225
Author(s):  
S.M. Razaullah Ansari ◽  
S.A. Khan Ghori
Keyword(s):  
Characteristic Feature ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Measuring Instruments ◽  
Trigonometric Functions ◽  
West Central ◽  
Astronomical Instruments ◽  
Angle Measuring ◽  
The Middle Ages

A characteristic feature of Arab-islamic astronomy during the Middle Ages is the promotion and tremendous growth of practical astronomy which was in turn manifested primarily by the establishment of scores of observatories in West-Central Asia, from Abbasid Caliph al-Māmūn (813-833) to the Turkish king Murād III (1574-1595), and by the production of copious literature on astronomical Tables (the zījes) as well as on astronomical instruments (ālāt al-rasad). The enormity of the literature on the latter could be gauged by the list of extant works as given by Matvievskaya and Rosenfeld (1983) in their recent Biobibliography: 349 treatises on astrolabes, 138 on sine-instruments, 81 on quadrants, 4 on sextants and octants, 41 on armillary spheres and celestial globes, 77 on sundials and again 77 on “other instruments”—in all 767 treatises. As a matter of fact the instruments developed by Arab-islamic astronomers could be broadly classified into four groups: a) Time measuring instruments (e.g. sundials, shadow quadrants), b) Angle measuring instruments for astronomical parameters (e.g. armilla of various kinds, dioptre and parallactic rulers), c) instruments for transformation of system of coordinates and/or solving nomographical problems (e.g. astrolabes, quadrants, dāstūr instrument), d) Mathematical instruments for evaluating trigonometric functions, (e.g. sinequadrants). Apart from the fourth and the most important of all, the astrolabe, which in turn embodies all the four groups of instruments to a certain extent, works on “other instruments” were compiled in almost every century (down from 9th to 18th A.D.), also by well-known Arab-Islamic astronomer-mathematicians.

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