‘Ista est Jerusalem’. Intertextuality and Visual Exegesis in Peter of Poitiers’ Compendium historiae in genealogia Christi and Werner Rolevinck’s Fasciculus temporum

Author(s):  
Andrea Worm

This chapter analyses the circular plan of Jerusalem in Peter of Poitiers' Compendium historiae in genealogia Christi, a synopsis of history widely disseminated and frequently adapted. The plan of Jerusalem reveals how Peter of Poitiers modified and fused different sources, including Peter Comestor's Historia scholastica, to create a visually persuasive image of perfect formal and social order, with six gates foreshadowing the twelve gates of the Heavenly Jerusalem. The visual alignment of the plan of Jerusalem and other diagrams in the Compendium prompts the beholder to reflect on analogies of structures and events, and thus on the order and meaning of history. This argument extends to the late fifteenth-century diagram of the heavenly Jerusalem in Werner Rolewinck's Fasciculus temporum, which functions at the same time as a visualization of the Creed and as an allegorical image of the church, predetermined and eternal.

1978 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Harper-Bill

The episcopate of John Morton has received little attention from historians, possibly because it falls in time between the traditional interests of medievalists and of reformation specialists. Previous treatments, notably that of dean Hook in his Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury and the biography by Woodhouse, published in 1895 and heavily reliant on Hook, have concentrated on Morton's political role as ‘foster father of the Tudors’, and while Professor Claude Jenkins provided an excellent survey of the Canterbury register, he was more concerned with the evidence which it provides for die condition of the Church in die late fifteenth century than widi the archbishop himself. The purpose of this paper is to outline the salient characteristics of the episcopate and to examine the ecclesiastical policies pursued by Morton. Two qualifications must immediately be added. First, despite the wealth of material in the archiepiscopal register, supplemented by the records of the cathedral priory, there is almost nothing of a personal nature, and as always it is more difficult to estimate the character or sentiments of a fifteenth-century bishop than of his twelfth-century counterpart Secondly, it has been remarked how a hard and fresh look has upgraded the reputation of Hubert Walter, ‘that old model of secular prelacy’.


2008 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-222
Author(s):  
Dean Drayton

AbstractThe accepted view that the modern state arose out of the 'wars of religion' is countered with evidence that the late fifteenth century reification of the state used a new category of religion as a human universal impulse to disempower the church and contain the church within the bounds of the state. As a further five successive forms of the state have come into existence new forms of communal and religious life have emerged: first, religious toleration; secondly, the development of a new 'public' realm; thirdly, the denominational form of church; fourthly, the appearance of mass media; fifthly, the embedding of the private citizen in a media world. In this last context either the church opts to reify the denominational church emphasizing individual democratic religious experience, or it realizes that an eschatological view of the gospel calls it to be a public church with a public theology.


2014 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 379-428 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanni Zanovello

Detailed payment records and notes preserved in the Archivio di Stato di Firenze allow us to reconstruct the relationship of music and space in the Florentine church of Santissima Annunziata. In the late fifteenth century different musical styles and repertories came to define ritually the composite space of the church, one of the main houses belonging to the mendicant order of the Servants of Mary. This special role of music came into focus in the early 1470s and even more in the 1480s, when subsequent priors increased the musical activities, possibly to negotiate the new spatial features of the church after a consequential remodeling. Music thus helped organize key areas that had undergone architectural transformations, linking each part of the building to the specific rituals performed there through special sounds directed at the likely participants. The remodeling also involved a shift in the balance of power, with private patrons coming to control the virtual totality of the church. Music helped address this problem as well, by acoustically marking and reclaiming certain spaces as the friars' dedicated ritual sites, but also creating in its variety a nuanced representation of the community—both ordained and lay—that frequented the building.


2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 182-240
Author(s):  
Clare Bokulich

Notwithstanding the reputation of Josquin’s Ave Maria…virgo serena as a touchstone of late–fifteenth-century musical style, little is known about the context in which the piece emerged. Just over a decade ago, Joshua Rifkin placed the motet in Milan ca. 1484; more recently, Theodor Dumitrescu has uncovered stylistic affinities with Johannes Regis’s Ave Maria that reopen the debate about the provenance of Josquin's setting. Stipulating that the issues of provenance and dating are for the moment unsolvable, I argue that the most promising way forward is to contextualize this work to the fullest extent possible. Using the twin lenses of genre and musical style, I investigate the motet’s apparently innovative procedures (e.g., paired duos, periodic entries, and block chords) in order to refine our understanding of how Josquin’s setting relates to that of Regis and to the Milanese motet cycles (motetti missales). I also uncover connections between Josquin’s motet and the music of earlier generations, above all the cantilena and the forme fixe chanson, that offer new insights into the development of musical style in the fifteenth century. The essay concludes by positioning the types of analyses explored here within a growing body of research that enables a revitalized approach to longstanding questions about compositional development and musical style.


Author(s):  
Antonio Urquízar-Herrera

Chapter 3 approaches the notion of trophy through historical accounts of the Christianization of the Córdoba and Seville Islamic temples in the thirteenth-century and the late-fifteenth-century conquest of Granada. The first two examples on Córdoba and Seville are relevant to explore the way in which medieval chronicles (mainly Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada and his entourage) turned the narrative of the Christianization of mosques into one of the central topics of the restoration myth. The sixteenth-century narratives about the taking of the Alhambra in Granada explain the continuity of this triumphal reading within the humanist model of chorography and urban eulogy (Lucius Marineus Siculus, Luis de Mármol Carvajal, and Francisco Bermúdez de Pedraza).


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