Journal articles on the topic 'Medieval History and criticism'

AbstractOver the last decades social scientists have alleged that violence has decreased in Europe since late medieval times. They consider homicide rates a valid indicator for this claim. Thorough source criticism, however, raises serious doubts about the decline thesis having any substantial empirical foundation. Forms and contents of the sources are immensely heterogeneous and a closer look at the alleged richness of the data uncovers remarkable gaps. Furthermore, medieval and early modern population estimates are highly unreliable. Thus, we argue that historical research on violence should return to focus on specific historical constellations, accept the need for painstaking source criticism and pay careful attention to the contexts of violence.

Pullman’s Northern Lights is considered by many as a representation of negative criticism toward religion, especially Christianity, for its depictions of the Magisterium. Many researches aim to unravel Pullman’s criticism and prove whether or not the novel is about ‘killing God’, resulting in the general perception that Northern Lights is a condemnation of religion. By comparing the novel to the history of Medieval Church and the power of Magisterium to the Bible, this analysis means to prove whether or not the criticism is addressed to religion and to figure out who really ‘kills God’ that becomes the essential point of Pullman’s criticism in the novel. Using Marxism and its relation to power abuse, this analysis attempts to relate Pullman’s Magisterium to the real Magisterium and how the institution gains its power from God as mentioned in the holy Bible. Magisterium in Northern Lights does not represent God’s will. It serves instead as a critic of who kills God and therefore, it is not a form of literature to condemn religion.Keywords: magisterium; medieval church; scripture; fantasy; power abuse

In this special issue of Nova Religio four historians of medieval and early modern Christianities offer perspectives on basic conceptual frameworks widely employed in new religions studies, including modernization and secularization, radicalism/violent radicalization, and diversity/diversification. Together with a response essay by J. Gordon Melton, these articles suggest strong possibilities for renewed and ongoing conversation between scholars of “old” and “new” religions. Unlike some early discussions, ours is not aimed simply at questioning the distinction between old and new religions itself. Rather, we think such conversation between scholarly fields holds the prospect of productive scholarly surprise and perspectival shifts, especially via the disciplinary practice of historiographical criticism.

Abstract This article sketches a short history of Latin literature of the Middle Ages (as academic discipline) in Italy; defines its possible boundaries and relationships with other disciplines; lists the peculiarities of textual criticism when applied in the specific field of Latin medieval texts; highlights the methodological contribution brought by the scholars of this discipline, in order to build a ‘global philology’.

AbstractInformed by theoretical considerations distinguishing "visual culture" from "art history" as articulated by W. J. T. Mitchell, this essay compares the editorial programs of two neonatal, overlapping, yet distinct journals: Ars Judaica and Images. The essay concludes by considering passages from two medieval Jewish authorities, Joseph Albo and Judah Alharizi, that suggest new horizons in criticism made possible by Images. Among these horizons are "investigations of the negative and repellent."

In this article, the author focuses on the analysis of Mieczysław Józefczyk’s book: Kościół i społeczeństwo w Prusach krzyżackich. Teksty źródłowe do dziejów chrześcijaństwa w Pomezanii i Pogezanii (Church and Society in Teutonic Order Prussia. The Textual Sources for the History of Christianity in Pomesania and Pogesania), published by the Warmińskie Wydawnictwo Diecezjalne in Elbląg in 2017. A detailed criticism of the author’s methodology of the book is presented, with the correction of many errors related to the historical geography of medieval Prussia, medieval chronology and philology. The book, in which we find Polish translations of 548 documents, has numer�ous mistakes that distort the picture of the settlement in the area of Pomesania, Pogesania and Warmia. This article also highlights numerous errors in the translations from Latin and German. The medieval terminology used in the book is also corrected. There were many errors relating to the methodology of working with a medieval source. Translated by Aleksander Pluskowsk

Abstract: How were maps conceived in the Middle Ages? Using the words “map”, “travel” and “exploration”, historians must be wary of anachronism. Medieval maps, like ours maps, are always materialized thought-objects and are thus interpretations of the world, inevitably variable and subject to criticism; in this respect, “modernity” has neither invented nor changed anything. The article addresses some anachronisms about the role of mappae mundi in mental journeys, their function in maritime travels and their role during the great “discoveries”; it claims that no other pre-modern civilization, except perhaps the Chinese, was ever so imbued<br />with cartographic culture.

The article shows the development of historical and philosophical problems in Neo-Scholasticism and Neo-Thomism. There are two key goals that authors of historical and philosophical models of the development of intellectual culture sought to solve: primarily, this is the legitimation of Scholasticism as a philosophical tradition, and secondly, its actualization in the context of the philosophical and theological discussions of their time. After the 1840s catholic intellectuals realized a gap to the medieval and post-medieval scholastic tradition, and their historical and philosophical research ceased to be a tool for legitimizing of interpretation of Thomism, which claims to be authoritative. Intervention of scholasticism into the problems of philosophy in the 19th century led to a determination of their relationship to Kant and post-Kantian projects of transcendental philosophy. As a result, Joseph Maréchal SJ formed a project of Transcendental Thomism: he moved from the strategy of legitimizing scholasticism through historical and philosophical material to the strategy of transformation of Thomism to form the program of Scholasticism that would correspond to the “Epoch of Criticism”.

Abstract Coinciding with the cultural turn in the humanities, a critical discussion in literary studies has begun in recent years that relates to the problems of rejecting social questions and an associated turning away from social history. Against the backdrop of this debate, my research report offers an overview of the conceptual possibilities and methodological problems in a ›return of society‹ within medieval philology. This is based on three established research areas of socio-historical literary studies: postcolonial literary criticism, literary ecocriticism and literary economics.

This article deals with the numerous images of the Slavic tribes between the Elbe and the Oder in archaeological interpretations. The position taken by East German archaeologists was to integrate the Slavs explicitly into the theoretical constructions of historical-materialism; in the ideological struggle between East and West the Slavs, as victims of medieval feudal developments politically supported the picture of a common socialist identity and history. In contrast West German archaeologists on the basis of rigid source criticism placed the Slavs behind the scenes of the historical stage.

AbstractCriticism of authority was a prominent feature of medieval philosophical writing. In this study the critiques of two contemporaneous scholars, Moses Maimonides and Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, are compared. Maimonides criticized Hellenistic authorities, mainly Aristotle. However, the starting point for his critique was Aristotle's admission of the limitations of his own inquiries. Maimonides admired Aristotle's questioning of his own conclusions; indeed, his own thought was characterized by constant self-doubt. Al-Rāzī criticized an earlier Muslim scholar, Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna), an intellectual giant whose imprint was strongly felt in philosophy and medicine. Al Rāzī used his commentaries on a number of Ibn Sīnā's books as a stage for criticizing the master and for arguing for his own, alternative viewpoints.

“Our age is retrospective,” Emerson observed in 1836. “It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism.” Emerson identified a phenomenon far greater than the literary production of the New England Renaissance. He put his finger on an attitude toward the past that was quite new, yet was imitative rather than provincial and idiosyncratic. The Americans of Emerson's time developed a commemorative consciousness similar to that of the English and French. Following revolutions, all three nations attempted to redefine their pasts in material as well as literary terms. Inspired by Enlightenment philosophy, they considered the processes of nature metaphors for history, and they looked to the Arcadian periods of classical civilizations for precedents of the balanced blending of Art and Nature indicative of a certain sense of the past not associated with their own medieval histories.

AbstractFrom the early sixteenth century, uroscopy lost much of the great appeal it had possessed among medieval physicians. Once valued as an outstanding diagnostic tool which ensured authority and fame, it became an object of massive criticism if not derision. As this paper shows, growing awareness of theoretical inconsistencies, the new medical empiricism and humanistic opposition against Arabic and medieval predecessors can explain this drastic revaluation only in part. Uroscopy, it is argued here, came to be perceived above all as a threat to the physicians' professional authority. Faced with persistent demands that they diagnose diseases primarily if not exclusively from urine, they were left with an awkward choice. They risked making fools of themselves by blatant misdiagnosis, but if they rejected the patients' demands people would deem them incapable of a task which many of their less educated competitors were perfectly happy to perform. In the end, in spite of the physicians' massive campaign against it, uroscopy remained very much alive. On the highly competitive early modern medical market patient power had once more prevailed.

In Heidegger’s extensive work, the presence of mentions and analyzes dedicated to recognizably Neoplatonic authors is minimal. It is proposed, then, to investigate the reception of Neoplatonism by Heidegger from a metaphysical perspective, confronting a part of Neoplatonism - medieval Christian - to the criticism carried out by Heidegger about the history of metaphysics, characterized by the forgetfulness of being and by its onto-theological constitution, taking as a hypothesis that it is possible to discern a certain primacy of a negativity in Neoplatonic metaphysics that allows evading Heidegger’s critique. As the world, god and the human being are thought of from a perspective that goes beyond traditional ontology and theology, based on a notion of thought and language, it is expected to highlight the proximity between Neoplatonic and Heideggerian metaphysics. From this hypothesis, an attempt is made to present the thoughts of three significant representatives of medieval and Christian Neoplatonism, namely, John Scottus Eriugena, Meister Eckhart and Nicholas of Cusa.

Abstract The modernist epistemic disconnect from the “medieval Islamic republic of letters,” Muhsin al-Musawi argues, is attributable both to the incursion of Enlightenment-infused European discourse and a failure to read the import of the republic’s significant cultural capital. This article explores the effects of Eurocentric incursions on transformations in literary value in two of the earliest known works of comparative Arabic literary criticism: Rūḥī al-Khālidī’s Tārīkh ʿilm al-adab ʿind al-ifranj wa-l-ʿarab wa-fiktūr hūkū (The History of the Science of Literature of the Franks, the Arabs, and Victor Hugo, 1902) and Aḥmad Ḍayf’s Muqaddimah li-dirāsat balāghat al-ʿarab (Introduction to the Study of Arab balāghah, 1921). I employ the various theoretical formulations of the decolonial school of thought, primarily Walter Mignolo’s coloniality/modernity complex, in tracing these epistemological shifts in literary value and focus on the internalization of Eurocentric critiques of Arabic literary capital. I also discuss the politics involved in such processes, presenting a decolonial perspective on these modernists’ engagement with their Arabic critical heritage.

Portrait of a not so common ‘Romanist’: Jean Acher (1880–1915) – Jean Acher, known to only a few specialists in Medieval Roman law, was an unusual scholar of Roman law. He was born in Lodz (Poland) in 1880. He studied first at St Petersburg, then in Berlin, where he attended B. Kübler’s teaching, and continued his studies at Montpellier, where he was awarded a law degree. He obtained a licence in law in 1904. At the same time, Acher also studied Romanic languages and literature. Legal and Romanic studies were the subjects of the many articles and reviews he then started publishing in several distinguished journals. In 1906, he settled in Paris. Acher became involved in the (at the time, highly controversial) issues around the methods of legal teaching, appearing as a harsh critic of the then prevailing approach to Roman law teaching. A great admirer of H.H. Fitting, he criticised specifically the exclusive focus on classical Roman law. In turn, Acher was the target of criticism by V. Arangio Ruiz and Ch.L. Appleton, which led to a confrontation with legal scholars. J. Bédier, professor at the Collège de France, supported him and, as a result, Acher devoted his work almost exclusively to the study of Romanic philology and literature. He obtained French citizenship in September 1914 and died the following year as a soldier on the frontline.

A rare copy of a first edition of La Légende des Flamens, now in Trinity College Dublin, reveals a number of facts about its position in that library, probably a mid-nineteenth-century acquisition but acquired in the context of existing similar holdings of medieval and early modern French historical writings. Unlike these writings, however, the text takes an explicitly anti-Flemish and pro-French royalist stance. Criticism levelled at the two most recently deceased popes — or at the English — may explain why the author has decided to remain anonymous, or the text may have been conceived as a compilation of documentary sources without need for an author. This article examines the way that the text deploys sources, including a lost work by Giles of Rome, and draws some conclusions about the situation of the author of the text. Publisher François Regnault is considered as a possible author.

The article examines how Hegel’s negative view of Byzantium is different from the Enlightenment’s critique and especially from Voltaire’s criticism of medieval history. In order to account for the Hegelian specificity of interpretation an effort is made to translate the chapter on Byzantium from the Philosophy of History in terms of the analysis of the Phenomenology of the Spirit and, more precisely, on the basis of the chapters on sensible certitude and on the domination and servitude. Considering that for Hegel every philosophical school possesses an autonomous value, one has to wonder why the Byzantine moment of the Spirit is destined to stagnation. The question about Hegel’s Neoplatonism, especially his affiliation with Proclus’s system, shows how the distance separating the Hegelian system from the Proclusian one explains the inadequacy of the latter as to drawing the consequences from the Byzantine spiritual stagnation.

This article investigates the religious practice of suffering for others in the early Middle Ages. In proxy penance, one person completed a penitential work for another, who received the spiritual benefit. This practice was based on the idea that one person could stand in for another to bear his burden. Using penitential, conciliar, liturgical, and epistolary sources, I uncover two types of proxy penance. First, priests shared in the penance of those who confessed to them. Liturgical texts include Masses in which the priest completes the penance for someone who could not complete it himself. Penitential texts admonish the priest to “share in the foulness” with the sinner in order to bring about the remission of his sin. Second, there was both a promotion and a criticism of proxy fasting among the laity. Thissic et nonrhythm shows that early medieval penitential culture could not control the demand for proxy penance. Some attention is also paid to the practice of proxy penance in the eleventh-century monastic milieu of Peter Damian. This article broadens the scope of current scholarship on penance by focusing on its substitutionary ability. Also, this article explores the changing notions of and metaphors about sin in this period—from medical to economic—that fueled proxy activity.

En el presente artículo pretendemos analizar las estrategias de supervivencia llevadas a cabo por las viudas del Reino de Sevilla en el período comprendido entre 1392 y 1550, fundamentalmente a través de los protocolos notariales disponibles para las ciudades de Sevilla y Jerez de la Frontera. Estudiaremos sus opciones vitales, su patrimonio y las diversas actividades financieras que llevaron a cabo para sacar adelante la economía familiar y preservar y aumentar los bienes heredados por sus hijos. Asimismo, reflexionaremos sobre los inconvenientes, pero también sobre las ventajas que la condición de viuda aportaba a las mujeres. De este modo, contribuiremos al conocimiento de la realidad socioeconómica de los grupos intermedios de la sociedad castellana de la Baja Edad Media y de los albores de la Modernidad. Palabras clave: viudas, actividades económicas, protocolos notarialesTopónimos: Sevilla, Jerez de la FronteraPeríodo: Baja Edad Media, siglo XVI ABSTRACTThe aim of this paper is to analyse the survival strategies employed by the widows of the Kingdom of Seville between 1392 and 1550. The article is based on the affidavits available for Seville and Jerez de la Frontera. The work examines their life choices, their patrimony and the financial activities they undertook for the sake of their own livelihood and their children’s futures. There is also a reflection upon the disadvantages but also the advantages implicit in widowhood for a woman. Thus, a contribution will be made to knowledge of the socio-economic reality of middle-class Castilian society in the Late Middles Ages and Early Modern Period. Keywords: widows, economic activities, affidavitsPlace names: Seville, Jerez de la FronteraPeriod: Late Middle Ages, Early Modern Period REFERENCIASAbellán Pérez, J. 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Heritage conservation and cultural tourism are central features of academic debates, as this relationship has not been always peaceful. This paper seeks to evaluate the correlation between the extensive conservation and restoration of the wall and castle of the medieval town of Óbidos (1930–1950) and the tourism-oriented projects developed since this period. Due to the criticism of several previous studies, one of the primary aims of this research was to assess whether this Portuguese town constitutes a good example of medieval reconstitution, or if it is a fanciful twentieth-century intervention. Another main goal was to establish our position regarding the challenges inherent to the management of this historic centre, especially those concerning current tourism challenges and the preservation of and regard for historical buildings and monuments. By means of a long-term study based on the common history of art methodology (cross-analysis of bibliography, archival research, in situ observation of the heritage and attendance of festivals and events), we were able to make the following contributions to advance the debate: although the earlier interventions in Óbidos abided by strict criteria which merited international praise, the management model of the town as a tourist destination over the last two decades calls for a revaluation, placing greater importance on history, historic and artistic heritage and the identity of the location.

This paper presents a review on some of the concepts traditionally developed by History and Literary Criticism regarding the very conception of the Middle Ages in the Iberian Peninsula, focusing on the political, social and cultural relations that took place between the cultures during this period, in particular, the troubled relations between Islam and Christianity. Based on the classic works of Américo Castro, regarding the history of Spain (2004) and with Maravall's (1954) proposals, it seeks to demonstrate the theory of a not only cultural, but, above all, social and political coexistence between cultures that populated the Peninsula, which opened up the possibility of a tangible influence on literary manifestations of the time, with the subsequent intertextuality. Arab culture also received an undoubted influence from the East, which made that romance literature have another source of inspiration. The medieval peninsular creator was responsible for the task of adapting these references to the spatiotemporal reality of their contemporaneity, especially in the scope of religiousness.

Abstract In recent decades, a significant amount of Western scholarship on traditional Chinese poetry and poetics has either proposed or assumed a vision of the art underwritten by the supposed “monism,” “nonduality,” and “immanence” of traditional Chinese worldviews. This essay argues that although these were important ideas in certain periods and contexts, they cannot be taken as unproblematically defining the world of thought in which poetry operated during the Tang dynasty. Instead, Tang writers more routinely drew in their discussions of art upon the epistemological tensions and discontinuities posited by medieval intellectual and religious traditions. For this reason, they often outlined models of poetry very different from those most common in contemporary criticism.

History was grist to the mill of Nazi propaganda, and the medieval Hanse was no exception. Fritz Rörig, a historian, was heavily involved in the instrumentalisation of Hanseatic history during the Third Reich. This paper analyses his writings before and during the Nazi period. What narrative patterns, phraseology and political content do they exhibit? The articles Rörig wrote in the first half of the 1940s display the typical stylistic devices and narrative patterns – indeed the buzz words – of Nazi propaganda, but impacts of racial ideology are not discernable. Indeed, some sections of these essays could be seen to constitute criticism of those in power. Despite this, the conclusion is unavoidable that Rörig was ready and willing to instrumentalise Hanseatic history for Nazi propaganda purposes. However, even before 1933, Rörig had viewed the Hanse through the lens of political ideology. What changed was not the Instrumentalisation of Hanseatic history itself, but Rörig’s political position and, in consequence, the picture of the Hanse he presented. Before the Nazi period, Rörig had been something of a free-market liberal, albeit one of a distinctly conservative and nationalist bent. Accordingly, he spotlighted the vital role of the bourgeoisie in the development of the Hanse, particularly in lectures for a broader public.

In this article we analyze Scandinavian medieval documents, the Yngvar Saga víðförla (Saga of Yngvar, the far travelled) and the Eymundar þáttr Hringssonar (The tale of Eymundr Hringr). Both sources report events supposedly occurred in Kievian Russia. In the first one the main focus is the expedition that was made by the title’s hero, while in the second one the story is quite different, focused on the characters of Eymund and on the kings Burislaf, Jarisleif and Vartilaf. With the help of Mikhail Bakhtin’s ideas we propose the hypothesis that there is in Eymundar þáttr Hringssonar the possibility of critical and social reactions against ideological and even christian elaborations of Yngvar Saga víðförla. This criticism was made with use of comical and humoristic aspects, the same kind of “laughter” studied by Bakhtin in his work about cultural history in Middle Ages.

AbstractThe essay discusses the interpretation of Aristotle's natural right teaching by Leo Strauss. This interpretation ought to be seen as the result of an investigation into the history of philosophy and of an attempt to philosophically address political problems. By virtue of this twofold origin, the Straussian commentary is unorthodox: it deviates from traditional Aristotelianism (Aquinas and Averroes) and it seems alien to the text of the Nicomachean Ethics. Strauss's criticism of medieval variants results from their incapacity—shared by contemporary political thought—to address a perplexing issue: political exception. He sees in Aristotle's political teaching a way to escape from this failure: the unification, in natural right, of the requirements of statesmanship and ethics. The discovery of this way allowed Strauss to produce an interpretation of natural right that articulates important points pertaining to Aristotelian political science.

The article considers the first experience of interpretation and criticism of the Kantian doctrine of knowledge on the part of neo-scholastic thinkers in 1st half of the 19th century. It is shown that the transition from confessional polemics, which hadn’t philosophical in­terpretation, to the presentation and analysis of Kantian epistemology in Cesare Baldinotti’s treatise “Tentaminum metaphysicorum” (1817), when scholar takes an under­standing of Kantianism as radical skepticism. At the same time, he left unanswered ques­tions about what type of traditional concepts Kantianism refers, and how it can be de­scribed in the language of scholasticism. The first problem was solved by the Italian thinker Gaetano Sanseverino, who tried to correlate Kantianism with models traditionally opposed to scholasticism (like averroism). The second problem was solved by Jaime Balmes and Joseph Kleutgen, who outlined the boundaries of the compromise between scholasticism and Kantianism, trying to describe Criticism in terms of Thomism and show possible intersection points between these doctrines. As a result of these efforts, it becomes clear that the mechanical transfer of solutions developed in medieval scholas­ticism to the problems of modern European philosophy is not a successful polemic strat­egy. It was necessary to update the scholastic philosophy in a modern European context, which was subsequently carried out by Matteo Liberatore and the Neo-Thomists who fol­lowed him.

Thomas Rickman has been credited, perhaps for too long, as the first figure to ‘discriminate’ the styles of medieval architecture and create a chronological analysis of Gothic architectural forms. Not only were there several authors who published on the subject immediately before Rickman, but there was also, as early as the mid-seventeenth century, considerable interest in the discernment and classification of periods in medieval architecture. One of the chief figures in this was John Aubrey, who pioneered a method for deducing the date of a medieval building by analysing the shapes of its windows. This intellectual initiative, 150 years before Rickman, has been either overlooked or interpreted as a ‘false start’ in Gothic revivalism. It is, however, worthy of fresh appraisal as a significant development in historical method and as an indicator of one way in which architecture was understood in the seventeenth century. Aubrey’s idea was that objects of a given type, in this case medieval windows, had a particular shape during a particular historical period, and that their morphology could be used to create a system for establishing the date of any given building. The context for this scheme was the innovative proposal of several early modern antiquaries that shapes in themselves could convey historical information, and that specific historical periods had their own distinctive forms. These scholars, many of whom were associated with the Royal Society, took faltering steps towards taxonomies of historical form which foreshadowed the methods of analysis that became — and arguably remain — central to the discipline of architectural history. That their interest focused upon medieval architecture at a time when the Gothic was largely rejected as irregular and barbarous is also notable. Examining the origins of a technique for dating historic buildings through visual analysis reveals how an intellectual circle of the seventeenth century perceived and understood architecture at a time when in England architectural commentary and criticism were still in their infancy.

AbstractThe aim of this paper is to examine the medieval posterity of the Aristotelian and Pyrrhonian treatments of the infinite regress argument. We show that there are some possible Pyrrhonian elements in Autrecourt's epistemology when he argues that the truth of our principles is merely hypothetical. By contrast, Buridan's criticisms of Autrecourt rely heavily on Aristotelian material. Both exemplify a use of scepticism.

Abstract This article examines Robyn Cadwallader’s 2015 novel The Anchoress as an interpretation of the early thirteenth-century saint’s life Seinte Margarete. The Anchoress is at once a scrupulously researched historical novel and what the author calls a “critical fiction,” that is, a work of fiction that undertakes the same analytical project as conventional literary criticism: it self-consciously interprets a narrative through its own narrative and investigates many of the same issues that are explored in more familiar forms of literary scholarship and cultural history. The author analyzes The Anchoress’s critical strategies and considers how it can prompt us to think in new and creative ways about Seinte Margarete and the devotional culture that produced it. As it interprets Seinte Margarete, this article shows, Cadwallader’s novel mimics the medieval text, producing a Saint Margaret for a twenty-first-century secular audience. Despite their limitations, which are also considered, critical fictions such as Cadwallader’s can deepen our appreciation of the past we love and stimulate us to rethink its relation to the present we inhabit.

The argument that the presence or absence of widespread literacy constitutes the central criterion to distinguish “savage” from “domesticated” society, presented by Goody in a number of works (1968, 1977, 1986, 1987), makes close associations between alphabetic literacy and the growth of knowledge and between restricted literacy and traditional societies. In this essay, I will challenge these associations by presenting material from medieval Europe, in which the milieu of restricted literacy is creative, and from Muslim Africa, in which widespread literacy does not lead to criticism or the revision of basic religious tenets. Second, I will deal with some of the reasons for the vitality of Islamic reform in West Africa, concerning myself principally with the impact of Western education on village society and the response of reformers through the promotion of Arabic literacy. A consideration of Western education and acculturation is vital for an understanding of scriptural reformed Islam's appeal. The latter issue will emerge from the material to be presented, but I will deal exclusively with the literacy debate for the moment.

A long tradition concerning the causes of the planetary movements existed as to the movements on the earth: the so called problem de motu locali. Starting from late middle Ages many criticisms were carried out against the Aristotelian doctrine of natural and violent motions. A well accredited and historically coherent theory to explain the movement and the change of movement was the medieval theory of impetus substantially developed by Jean Buridan (ca. 1300–ca. 1360) and by Nicolas d’Oresme (1320? 1325?–1382) on the basis of ideas that came back to John Philoponus (490–570).

The abundant Russian historiography of the medieval history of Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Lithuanian-Russian State) has become in the last decades the centre of the discussions and is often subject to groundless criticism. This historiography was not very lucky in the Soviet period of the 20th century either, as it was severely criticized from the Marxist-Leninist position. When discussing Russian historiography the author of this article is consciously committed to the Russian positions. There are no reasons to consider this historiography branch either Byelorussian or Ukrainian one, as that was really Russian historiography, - the phenomenon that formed under the favorable specific conditions of Russian Empire before the beginning of the 20th century. The said phenomenon can be studied in different ways: according to the existing then main trends and schools or according to their affiliation with specific universities of Russian Empire. But according to the author of this article the best way to study the issue is in accordance with the main concepts of history. And then the pre-revolutionary historiography appears as an integral scientific paradigm that turns out to be the most divaricate branch of the Lithuanian studies of the time. It created, in its turn, the most vivid and objective historical picture that can still serve as the basis for the studies of Lithuanian-Russian state.

AbstractSacrilegious attitudes toward the Eucharistic host are one of the most commonplace accusations leveled against Jews in premodern Europe. Usually treated in Jewish historiography as an expression of anti-Judaism or antisemitism, they are considered a hallmark of Jewish powerlessness and persecution. In medieval and early modern Spain, however, Jews and conversos (Jewish converts to Christianity and their descendants) were not the only proclaimed enemies of the Eucharist. Reports about avoidance, rejection, criticism, and even ridicule and profanation of the consecrated host were similarly leveled against Muslims and moriscos (Muslim converts to Christianity). This essay seeks to assess the parallels and connections between the two groups through a comparative examination of accusations of sacrilegious behavior towards the host. The first part of the essay analyzes religious art, legal compendia, and inquisitorial trials records from the tribunals of Toledo and Cuenca in order to show some evident homologies between the two groups. The second part of the essay focuses on the analysis of the works of Jaime Bleda and Pedro Aznar y Cardona, two apologists of the expulsion of the moriscos, and draws direct connections between Jewish and morisco sacrilege. By exploring the similarities and differences between accusations against conversos and moriscos, this essay aims to offer a broader reflection on Jewish exceptionalism.

Abstract The restoration of the Baroque cathedral of Kalocsa was led by Ernő Foerk between 1907 and 1912. During these years the facades of the church were renewed, a Neo-Baroque ambulatory was added, and excavations were carried out within the sanctuary and in front of the south facade. Based on these excavations, Ernő Foerk published theoretical reconstructions of the first and second medieval cathedrals and criticised the results of the previous research, conducted by Imre Henszlmann. Foerk, being also a scholar of the history of architecture, based his results on analogies. This paper intends to point out the elements which are outdated in the reconstruction of Foerk and his methodology that is still relevant.

AbstractIn the history of medieval semantics, supposition theory is important especially in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In this theory the emphasis is on the term, whose properties one tries to determine. In the fourteenth century the focus is on the proposition, of which a term having supposition is a part. The idea is to analyse propositions in order to determine their truth (probare). The Speculum puerorum written by Richard Billingham was the standard textbook for this approach. It was very influential in Europe. The theory of the probatio propositionis was meant to solve problems both in (empirically oriented) scientific propositions such as used by the Oxford Calculators, and theological propositions, especially those about the Trinity. The book is original, concise, but not clear in every respect. Studying medieval commentaries may help us to understand Richard's book. In the present paper three commentaries are presented. The commentators discussed problems about the status of Richard's book, and about its doctrine: what is the relation between probatio and truth, what is the relation between probatio and supposition, what exactly are mediate and immediate terms (e.g.is the pronoun 'this' mediate or immediate?). The commentators sometimes criticize Richard. For example, one of them argues, against Billingham, that the verb 'can' ampliates its subject term and is therefore mediate.

After being exiled from nazi germany and completing the extraordinary mimesis in istanbul in 1946, erich auerbach wrote from Princeton University in 1952, “Literary criticism now participates in a practical seminar on world history. … Our philological home is the earth: it can no longer be the nation.” Auerbach, who must be reckoned one of the great synthesists and literary historians of the twentieth century, was expressing a sentiment that will be familiar to anyone who has thought about world literature from a postcolonial perspective. While postcolonial literary studies may have helped define the parameters of the practical seminar on world history, its full implications are still somewhat obscured by the arguments about periodicity that are often taken as a terminological necessity in applications of the term postcolonial. This is the burden imposed by the temporalizing post-. However, closer scrutiny of the postcolonial suggests that it contains mutually reinforcing periodizing and spatial functions. Many of the most common ideas that circulate in the field, such as colonial encounter, neocolonialism, nationalism and postnationalism, hegemony, transnationalism, diasporas, and globalization, are organized around often unacknowledged spatial motifs. The concept of space that implicitly structures usages of postcolonialism is far from inert: there is an active dimension of spatializing in them that helps shape the field's distinctiveness. This is because even when the term is deployed exclusively for periodizing purposes, as in showing that the medieval period or Russia today is amenable to a postcolonial analysis, the nature of what is highlighted insistently invokes spatial practices. Once the spatial logic of postcolonialism is brought to the foreground, the complexity of its critical diagnostic as applied in the practical seminar on world history becomes clearer.

The Old English Descent into Hell fits uneasily into the poetic corpus remaining to us from Anglo-Saxon England. The poem is an oddity both thematically and genetically, and (insofar as it has attracted any attention at all) the history of its criticism has been an unrewarding search for sources. The Descent presents a sourcing problem at its most basic, for its parts are so disparate that it is difficult even to construct a horizon of expectations from which to read the work. I hope to suggest here a new analogue, as well as a new way of thinking about sources and analogues in Old English literary studies, that may prove fruitful. The more rewarding context for comparative study of the Descent into Hell is not textual, but pictorial; I argue that visual exegesis of the psalms reveals both the source and the nature of the connection between the poem's two primary topics. In particular, iconography derived from the enormously influential Utrecht Psalter (Utrecht, Universiteitsbibliotheek, 32) provides a structural model, if not for the composition of the text in the most direct sense, then certainly for both medieval and modern understanding of it.

Galen’s astrological doctrine of the critical days, as found in his De diebus decretoriis (Critical Days), Book III, was at the center of a long discussion in the Latin West about the relationship between astrology and medicine. The main problem was that Galen’s views could not be made to square with the prevailing cosmology, which derived both from Aristotle and Abū Maʿshar. The views of selected Latin thinkers concerning the critical days, from Pietro d’Abano, down through Girolamo Cardano, are considered in the context of a fourfold scheme that aims to classify the main approaches to the critical days. The criticisms of Pico della Mirandola are discussed, as well as two kinds of responses to him: the progressive views of Giovanni Mainardi and Girolamo Fracastoro, as well as the conservative views of Thomas Bodier and Girolamo Cardano.

The subject of the paper is prochronism, e.g. the teaching which says that the world was created with the appearance of old age. It is shown that the sources of prochronism could be traced to the medieval doctrine of double truth and philosophy of Descartes, who suggested that cosmological theories on the origin of the Universe are purely conditional, while in fact the world was instantly created complete and mature. The idea of apparent, but non-existent past gained much credence during the first half of the 19th century, when paleontological and geological discoveries raised a question on how to square the age of the Earth and the life on it with the six days of Genesis. The hypothesis of prochronism was most fully developed in «Omphalos: an attempt to untie the geological knot» (1857), the book by the English naturalist P. Gosse. During the Darwinian time the interest in this doctrine was shown not only by Christian thinkers, but also by secular philosophers and science fiction writers. Elements of prochronism were also present in the writings of Scriptural geologists in the 19th century and their successors, the young earth creationists in the 20th century. The main objections against prochronism are critically considered. According to the most popular of them, if God had made the world appear older that it is, He thus would have deceived people. But from the point of view of prochronism, the creation of traces of never existed past was necessitated by the logic of causality, which required God to actualize all the consequences of historical epochs skipped by Him. The link between prochronism and the problem of pre-human sufferings is outlined. The conclusion is made that this doctrine, despite being counter-intuitive and rather notorious, is intellectually consistent and immune to the criticism.