Espiritus de Invierno

2020 ◽  
pp. 36-56
Author(s):  
Yannick Cormier
Keyword(s):  
Iberian Peninsula ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Basque Country ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
Wild Man ◽  
Traditional Societies ◽  
Evil Spirits ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Middle Ages

In many parts of Europe and especially in the Iberian Peninsula (Spain, Portugal, and the Basque Country), archaic and mysterious figures regularly haunt carnival rites since the Middle Ages (but referring, according to some specialists like A. Darpeix, member of the historical and archaeological society of Perigord, to a distant shamanic and Neolithic antiquity). They are masks adorned with skins of animals, vegetables, and straw, surrounded by bells and bones, often crowned with horns and pieces of wood. Thus arises the wild man within modern paganism to symbolize the rebirth of nature emerging from winter. The figures are essentially ambiguous, at the crossroads of nature and culture. The masks always speak of the mysteries of existence: in traditional societies, they were or still are the figures of ancestors and spirits of the dead, that of protective or evil spirits.

scholarly journals La lengua vasca en la Península entre Antigüedad y Edad Media. Observaciones a la "Communis opinio" / Basque language in the Iberian peninsula between Antiquity and Middle Ages. Some remarks on the "communis opinio"

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (1/2) ◽  
pp. 553
Author(s):  
Matías Múgica
Keyword(s):  
Iberian Peninsula ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Basque Country ◽  
Linguistic History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Middle Ages

The author argues, developing an idea proposed by French phoneticist Henri Gavel in the fifties, that the examination of the clearly Latin ancient toponymy of Upper Navarre suggests that the linguistic stratification usually proposed for the Middle Navarre (Navarra Media), an area where Basque was intensely spoken throughout the Middle Ages, should be reviewed and that in that area the Latin can be chronologically prior to the Basque, which would satisfactorily explain some unresolved knots of the linguistic history of the Basque Country and its surroundings.

Ghosts in the Middle Ages: The Living and the Dead in Medieval Society

2000 ◽  
Vol 105 (2) ◽  
pp. 598
Author(s):  
Allen J. Frantzen ◽  
Jean-Claude Schmitt ◽  
Teresa Lavender Fagan
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Middle Ages

scholarly journals Procesy i egzekucje „żywych trupów” przed sądami miejskimi i wiejskimi w XVI–XVIII wieku – przyczynek do wierzeń w magia posthuma na Śląsku

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (4 (1)) ◽  
pp. 77-92
Author(s):  
Daniel Wojtucki
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Expert Witnesses ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Living Dead ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Middle Ages

There are references reaching back to the Middle Ages, regarding the fear of the “undead” or “living dead” who would rise from their graves in a local cemetery to haunt and harm the community. The fear of the “undead” was extremely strong, and the entailing hysteria often affected entire communities. In the 16th to the 18th century, in Silesia, effective forms of coping with the harmful deceased were developed. Analysing the preserved source material, we are able to determine that the basic actions involved finding the grave of the “undead” in the cemetery, exhuming the corpse and destroying it. However, this did not always mean the total annihilation of the poor man’s corpse. The trial and execution of the corpse of a person suspected of the harmful activity against the living took place observing almost the same rules as in the case of the living. Apart from the authorities, who usually commissioned local jurors to handle the situation, opinions and advice were also sought from the clergy as well as gravediggers and executioners. The last were considered to be experts of sorts and were often called upon to see corpses of the suspected dead. In the analysed cases of posthumous magic (magia posthuma) in Silesia, we deal with two directions of handling the corpse accused of a harmful posthumous activity. In both cases, the main decision was made to remove such corpses from the cemetery’s area. Costs of the trial and execution of the “undead” were considerable. They included expenses incurred due to rather frequent court hearings at which sometimes dozens of witnesses were heard, payments to expert witnesses, payments to guards watching graves, costs of legal instructions, services of gravediggers who would dig up suspicious graves, and, finally, the remuneration of executioners and their people. In the second half of the 18th century, despite relevant decrees issued by supreme authorities, trials and executions of the dead were not completely abandoned.

Segregation or Choice?

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maristella Botticini ◽  
Zvi Eckstein
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Iberian Peninsula ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Alternative Explanation ◽  
Historical Information ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
History Of ◽  
Salient Features ◽  
The Middle Ages

This chapter assesses the argument that both their exclusion from craft and merchant guilds and usury bans on Christians segregated European Jews into moneylending during the Middle Ages. Already during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, moneylending was the occupation par excellence of the Jews in England, France, and Germany and one of the main professions of the Jews in the Iberian Peninsula, Italy, and other locations in western Europe. Based on the historical information and the economic theory presented in earlier chapters, the chapter advances an alternative explanation that is consistent with the salient features that mark the history of the Jews: the Jews in medieval Europe voluntarily entered and later specialized in moneylending because they had the key assets for being successful players in credit markets—capital, networking, literacy and numeracy, and contract-enforcement institutions.

scholarly journals Saints, Martyrs, and the Reformation: Reflections on Robert Bartlett's Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things?

2016 ◽  
Vol 85 (4) ◽  
pp. 803-809
Author(s):  
Euan Cameron
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Cult Of Saints ◽  
Religious Aspects ◽  
The Middle Ages

Robert Bartlett's book on the cult of saints in the Middle Ages clearly constitutes a major achievement. Its scope is vast; its approach ranges from the chronological to the thematic; it embraces many cultural, as well as theological and religious, aspects of the subject. Finally, it is informed by a rich comparative vision that includes wide-ranging discussion of other religions.

Living with the dead in the Middle Ages (review)

Parergon ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-258
Author(s):  
J. S. Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Middle Ages

Miguel de Unamuno und Antero de Quental Iberische Religionskritik, einbrechende Moderne und die Tragik des Verlustes

2007 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 311-330
Author(s):  
Steffen Dix
Keyword(s):  
Iberian Peninsula ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Religious History ◽  
Miguel De Unamuno ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Catholic Religion ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
The Middle Ages

AbstractIn recent years the study of local religious histories, especially in Europe, has gained in prominence. Because of the encounters between different cultural traditions in the Middle Ages and the voyages of discovery, the religious history of the Iberian Peninsula became one of the most complex in Europe. This article focuses on one portion of this history around the turn of the 19th/20th century, and in particular on two attempts to blame the Catholic religion for the general crisis in Spain and Portugal at the start of the modern era. These two forms of critiquing religion are illustrated by the examples of Miguel de Unamuno and Antero de Quental, whose writings were characteristic of the typical relationship between religion and intellectuals in this period. Not only were the Spanish philosopher and the Portuguese poet influential on their own and later generations, but they are also truly representative of a certain tragic ”loss“ of religion in the Iberian Peninsula.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document