Medieval Origins Research Articles

Incipit: On Poetry and Crisis

Incipit:On Poetry and Crisis Thomas C. Connolly and Liesl Yamaguchi For the next installment of this dialogic series, the journal asked Thomas C. Connolly (Yale University) and Liesl Yamaguchi (Boston College) to reflect on Stéphane Mallarmé's fleeting glimpse of a world without poetry, offering the following citation from "Crise de vers" (1897) as a prompt: "Seulement, sachons n'existerait pas le vers: lui, philosophiquement rémunère le défaut des langues, complément supérieur." They composed their initial essays without knowing the content of their interlocutor's essay; the ensuing exchange, by e-mail, took place in the order presented below. If, in his earlier writings, Mallarmé often turns to the preposition "après," his later writings are frequently inflected by the modifier "presque." I show how "presque" is a key instrument in Mallarmé's "jeu de la parole," a word that enables the "Glorieux Mensonge" that is literature, and that, in the case of "Crise de vers," appears to undermine central statements on language, Hugo, and vers libre. As a device that makes believe, as much as it removes the veils of illusion, "presque" is not unrelated to the roles played by magic and mysticism in Mallarmé's concept of rhyme, as well as the historical role of religion in French prosody, explored here, alongside a close reading of the central pages in "Un coup de dés." A signature term in Mallarmé's poetics, "presque" reminds us to return to notions of "play" and the "game," even where Mallarmé claims to speak of "crisis." (TC) The broad strokes of literary and art history offer a portrait of Stéphane Mallarmé as the author of "Un coup de dés": the poem that pivoted poetry away from metrical forms and toward visual ones. But how does rhyme figure in this narrative? An indispensable component of French verse from its medieval origins through the late nineteenth century, rhyme was as central to Mallarmé's conception of verse as it was to his process of composition. This essay investigates rhyme's role in Mallarmé's thinking about le vers at the moment of its crisis, finding the poetic structure to bear a peculiar capacity to mirror the mind. The essay proposes that critical attentiveness to this capacity—which is also identified as poetry's condition of possibility in "Crise de vers"—might point the way to a more coherent account of the crise, Mallarmé, and indeed the whole of modern poetry. (LY) [End Page 1] "Une exquise crise": Rhyme in Crisis liesl yamaguchi Seulement, sachons n'existerait pas le vers: lui, philosophiquement rémunère le défaut des langues, complément supérieur. – Stéphane Mallarmé, "Crise de vers" What would it take for poetry not to exist? Mallarmé omits the dependent clause on which his conditional sentence hangs, evading the syntactic structure that would have obliged him to name it ("Only, be aware [that if X were the case], poetry would not exist").1 At the same time, his italicized warning seems to assert that such a clause could be formulated. It is indeed possible to conceive of conditions under which poetry would not exist. It would therefore also seem possible to identify poetry's condition of possibility. As the paragraph preceding this quotation establishes, this condition is an absence: the absence of a supreme language in which human beings would be able to express themselves in words whose material forms would coincide perfectly with thought. Were such a language to exist, Mallarmé warns, poetry would not; poetry makes up for this fault, or failing, of languages. Poetry, then, is born of the friction between thinking and saying, between thought and linguistic expression. The possibility of poetry thus emerges as our compensation for the frustrating condition of never being able to say just what we mean. This is a rather different conception of poetry from the one generally associated with Stéphane Mallarmé. The broad strokes of literary and art history offer a portrait of the poet as, first and foremost, the author of "Un coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hasard": the poem that propelled verbal art onto the printed page...

O romance ibérico da Donzela Guerreira e a Balada de Mulan: uma leitura comparada

This article proposes a comparative reading of the Iberian ballad The Warrior Maidenand a well-known Chinese poem –the Ballad of Mulan, both from medieval origins and passed by oral transmission. Our study begins with the internal specificities of the different Portuguese versions of the ballad. Then, taking into account the textual heterogeneity of the Iberian ballad, we compared the path of the warrior maiden and that of Mulan, in order to elucidate the meaning of the configuration of female identity ineach of the cultural spheres related.From a general point of view, the distinctive symbolic construction in the Chinese and the Portuguese ballads manifest different ways of expressing the prevailing ideologies of the respective societies. On the other hand, under the apparent cultural divergences, interesting convergence can be found by showing some female images of autonomies.

Studies in Medievalism XXIX: Politics and Medievalism (Studies) ed. by Karl Fugelso

Reviewed by: Studies in Medievalism XXIX: Politics and Medievalism (Studies) ed. by Karl Fugelso Kevin J. Harty Fugelso, Karl, ed., Studies in Medievalism XXIX: Politics and Medievalism (Studies), Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 2020; hardback; pp. 242; 21 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. US$99.99; ISBN 9781843845560; eBook US$24.99; ISBN 9781787448957. The most recent volume of Studies in Medievalism offers five shorter essays on contemporary political uses of medievalism and nine longer essays on other appearances of medievalism across multiple genres. Esther Liberman Cuenca explores how failed American vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin appropriated the vilely anti-Semitic charge of blood libel from the Middle Ages to characterize herself as a victim. Sean Griffin looks at the ways both Vladimir Putin and the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church have manipulated the medieval life and legend of Saint 'Equal-of-the-Apostles' Prince Vladimir to justify continued Russian aggression toward Ukraine. A third misreading of the Middle Ages, Daniel Wollenberg argues, informs the embrace of the 732 Battle of Tours not only by the white supremacist Australian terrorist who murdered fifty-one people in an attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, but also by those who would excuse the actions of the Trump administration at the United States– Mexico border. Linkage between Brexit and the medieval is hardly surprising, as the argument to stay or to leave is inevitably tied to what the terms 'Britain' and 'England' have meant now and in the past. Two essays in this volume discuss this linkage in very different ways. Borrowing vocabulary from Patrick J. Geary's The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe (Princeton University [End Page 219] Press, 2002), Andrew B. R. Elliott sees the argument over Brexit as an extension of a pan-European crisis of identity that was part of the fallout from the end of the Cold War. The defenders of Brexit do not so much celebrate their nation as instead summon up an imagined medievalist notion of 'us' versus 'them' in order to vanquish those now deemed enemies of the people. Christopher Jensen sees Brexit as backdrop for Joe Cornish's 2019 film The Kid Who Would Be King; the problem with Jensen's reading of the film is that its final admonition borders on the Pollyanna-esque. Patrick Stewart's Merlin tells the central characters that children have an abundance of inherent goodness and nobility and that the future is theirs. The film is not exactly a cutting-edge commentary for our times. Nor is Guy Ritchie's King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017), which Mary Behrman takes to task for erasing the Welsh elements from the Arthurian legend. Behrman may give Ritchie too much credit, though, given the dismal critical reception that his film received. Political uses of medievalism can be found across a variety of genres, as the remaining essays in this volume show. Ali Frauman finds, not surprisingly, that the internet can be both a blessing and a curse, especially when Alternative Right online fora distort the medieval to support their beliefs by filtering discrimination towards one historically oppressed group through an ostensible celebration of another. Laura E. Cochrane argues how medievalism and political polemic inform an 1880 portrait of the child-emperor Honorius by Jean-Paul Laurens. M. J. Toswell lays the groundwork for a reconsideration of the importance that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow played in establishing American medievalism. Victoria Yuskaitis and Laura Varnam address the influence of another historical figure, Julian of Norwich, on medievalism's legacy, though in decidedly different ways. Yuskaitis argues for an archaeological investigation of the remains of Julian's cell and belongings as a means to explicate her writings and those of her colleagues. Varnam looks for evidence of Julian in an entirely different place, the Harry Potter series, which she argues subtly promotes a Julian notion of pity. The relationship between medievalist texts and maps informs Anna Fore Waymack and John Wyatt Greenlee's discussion of the functions of fantasy maps in the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, George R. R. Martin, and the authors of other fantasy medievalisms. Usha Vishnuvajjala finds evidence of manipulation of the medieval...

Medieval Origins of the European State System: The Catholic Church as Midwife

AbstractThe received view in international relations (IR) is that the European multistate system was created when the medieval religious order broke down in the centuries following the Reformation. This view, which sees the medieval Catholic Church as a factor that hindered the advent of the multistate system, ignores a key insight of medieval historians, namely that the deeper historical precondition for the European multistate system was that the Church challenged the notions of empire and hegemony after the eleventh-century conflict of church and state. By mining this body of historiography, this paper shows how the end of the fusion of lay and religious authority in general and the Church's persistent interest in avoiding that one secular polity outmatched the others in particular contributed to the development of the European multistate system. These insights not only question dominant historiographic assumptions of IR, but may also be said to challenge the epistemological approaches of much of this scholarship.ResumenEl criterio aceptado en Relaciones Internacionales (RI) es que el sistema multiestatal europeo se creó tras el colapso del orden religioso medieval en los siglos posteriores a la Reforma. Este criterio, que considera a la Iglesia católica como un factor que dificultó el advenimiento del sistema multiestatal, ignora un conocimiento clave de los historiadores medievales, específicamente, que la condición previa histórica más profunda del sistema multiestatal europeo fue que la Iglesia desafió las nociones de imperio y hegemonía después del conflicto entre la iglesia y el estado en el siglos XI. Al indagar exhaustivamente este cuerpo de historiografía, este informe demuestra cómo el fin de la fusión entre autoridad laica y religiosa en general y el interés persistente de la Iglesia por evitar que una forma de gobierno secular supere a las otras en particular contribuyeron al desarrollo del sistema multiestatal europeo. Estas conclusiones no solo cuestionan las conjeturas historiográficas dominantes de RI, sino que puede decirse que también desafían los abordajes epistemiológicos de gran parte de esta erudición.ExtraitLe point de vue généralement accepté dans les relations internationales est que le système multiétatique européen s'est constitué lorsque l'ordre religieux médiéval s'est effondré dans les siècles qui ont suivi la Réforme. Ce point de vue, qui voit l’Église catholique médiévale comme un facteur ayant empêché l'avènement du système multiétatique, omet une perspective clé des historiens médiévaux, c'est-à-dire que l'une des conditions historiques préalables plus profondes à l’établissement du système multiétatique européen a été le fait que l’Église avait remis en question les notions d'empire et d'hégémonie après le conflit entre Église et État du 11e siècle. En exploitant ce corpus historiographique, cet article montre comment la fin de la fusion des autorités laïques et religieuses en général, et l'intérêt persistant de l’Église à éviter qu'un régime laïque ne dépasse les autres en particulier, ont contribué au développement du système multiétatique européen. Ces perspectives remettent non seulement en question les hypothèses historiographiques dominantes, mais nous pouvons considérer qu'elles remettent également en question les approches épistémologiques d'une grande partie des recherches dans ce domaine.

The Presentation of the Speaker of the Commons in Tudor Parliaments: Pageantry, Persuasion and Management*†

AbstractThis article analyses the presentation of the Commons’ Speaker in the Tudor age. It traces the medieval origins of this ceremony, arguing that it served not only as an opportunity for flamboyant rhetoric, but also as a politically significant event designed to impress upon the Commons its inferiority in the parliamentary hierarchy. The article also suggests that Elizabethan Speakers used their orations as a means of presenting counsel to the queen herself.

El officium de Cisneros: ¿origen hispánico o neomozárabe?

Los cuatro cantorales mozárabes copiados en Toledo por orden del Cardenal Jiménez de Cisneros como parte de la restauración del rito hispánico contienen las melodías de la misa completa y de una pequeña parte del oficio. Este trabajo está centrado en el primero de los cantos del propio de la misa, el officium. Su antífona sigue parcialmente un sistema de composición formularia identificado por Imbasciani, pero hasta ahora no se había abordado el análisis de sus versículos. En este trabajo se aborda por primera vez dicho estudio, comprobándose que, en la mayoría de los casos, todos siguen una misma y sencilla estructura de composición. Esto permite plantear un debate acerca de su posible ascendencia medieval: por un lado, su extrema sencillez podría haberles permitido sobrevivir a lo largo de los siglos por tradición oral, pero, por otro, se trata de un esquema modal derivado con mucha probabilidad del canto gregoriano.

Nuns in Action: A Graphic Investigation into a Graphic Issue

This article in comics form looks at an under-investigated phenomenon of nun characters appearing in contemporary comics as a unified trope. Appearing with a strong degree of uniformity, these stock characters share a unique costume, weaponry, repeated storylines, and most importantly, are couched in medievalism. To explain the development of these characteristics, which can seem wholly contemporary, the comic looks back at the textual and visual representation of nun and religious female characters —such as saints— from their early medieval origins, through their visual recodification in the Victorian era, up to applications of the nun character in the twentieth century. Examining this issue from different perspectives, this article argues that despite the presence of nuns in the contemporary world, the stock character in comics is dependent on some degree of medievalization, and maps these characteristics as they evolved over time, finding that, thanks to the medievalization itself, nun stock characters present a unique model of superheroine in comics.

Interfaces entre a poesia épica, o romance e o romanceiro em paratextos do século XIX

Resumo: Nos começos do Romantismo, o romance, no sentido de poema narrativo longo de matriz medieval, será tomado como modelo para a renovação literária. Contudo, ainda que o foco das atenções recaia sobre o romance, que na Península é relacionado à tradição local do romanceiro (as “baladas ibéricas”), o gênero épico será mantido no horizonte. O trabalho procura demonstrar como, expressando intenções de filiação de gênero, mas também constituindo e negociando posições para autores e obras no campo literário, os paratextos de poemas narrativos longos refletem essa situação.

First Piano Concerto by Ivan Karabyts in terms of the renewal of concertо genre in Ukraine

First Piano Concerto by Ivan Karabyts in terms of the renewal of concertо genre in Ukraine

The Medieval Origins of Smithian Growth: The Proliferation of Occupations and Commodities in Japan, 1261–1638

AbstractWhile early-modernists tend to believe that the period around 1600 saw a structural break in Japan’s economic history, research by medievalists since the mid-1970s has suggested that a market economy was on the rise from the 14th century onwards. This article examines several listings of occupations and commodities compiled between the 13th and the early 17th centuries to see if a proliferation of non-agricultural activities was underway before c.1600. As Adam Smith envisaged, the separation of one productive activity from another, i.e. an increasing division of labour, will lead to economic growth. Since this type of market-led change, often called Smithian growth, has been considered an ‘early modern’ phenomenon by economic historians, it is worth examining if there were signs of an increasing division of labour in late medieval Japan. The article’s findings indicate that some signs of occupational and product differentiation appeared by the 16th century. As far as Smithian growth is concerned, therefore, the article concludes that there was some degree of continuity between the medieval and the early modern periods.

THE RESTORATION OF THE REFORMED CHURCH OF AITON 2018–2020 CASE STUDY, CONDITION SURVEY BY FACILITY CONDITION INDEX

The professional restoration of an initially Catholic, and then, after an 18th-century reconstruction, Reformed, single-tower church of medieval origin, having mixed walls and an eclectic roof structure, following two consecutive, incorrect interventions.
 The technical condition of listed buildings is the indicator of their general structural condition. To assess errors and damage, I have compiled a new method that includes a sample to follow, as well as damage assessment tables, recommended procedures, and calculations. This calculation method shows the structural condition of listed buildings and the value of the approximate restoration costs. I present this procedure through the presently ongoing survey and restoration process of a listed building in Aiton, near Cluj-Napoca, Transylvania.

The Principle of Double Effect and Just War Theory

The paper explores the relationship between the Principle of Double Effect (PDE) and Just War Theory (JWT), with emphasis on their relationship in the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. Both PDE and JWT are of Medieval origin (the former with St. Thomas Aquinas and the latter with St. Augustine), and are classical exponents of medieval moral philosophy. The main connection between them is, however, that they can both be viewed as theories about permissible violence and harm, that is theories about when it is morally permissible to harm and possibly kill another human being. The final point of the paper is that PDE is an important element within JWT, or rather that when just war theorists manage to justify a certain types of violence they do so by extensive use of PDE. This only applies to one part of JWT, jus in bello, which concerns the actual morality of fighting, not the right to war itself. If these assumptions can be reasonably fleshed out, and if it is possible to show that PDE is of crucial importance to certain elements of jus in bello, such as methods for justifying civilian casualties, that would entail that our own moral examinations of warfare differ precisely because we either accept or don???t accept PDE as a viable and reasonable principle in normative ethics.

The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages, Geraldine Heng

Reviewed by: The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages by Geraldine Heng Celeste Chamberland The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages. By Geraldine Heng. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. 493 pages. $49.99 (cloth). Categories of race and ethnicity have long elicited heated debate about the complex ways in which structural conditions and differential access to power have shaped identity and social relations in the modern world. While such discussions have shed much light on contemporary racial paradigms, they have focused less on the pre-modern origins of racial thought. Canonical race theory, in particular, has provided crucial insight into the historical connections between systemic racism and cultural perceptions of race, but has typically focused on the construction of race as a modern phenomenon that emerged in tandem with colonial encounters alongside the Spanish Conquest and the Atlantic Slave Trade. While early modern [End Page 196] constructions of race undeniably aligned with practices of plunder and hegemony in the era of colonialism and imperialism, their ancient and medieval origins are generally overlooked by scholars who have typically regarded the category of race as too presentist to appropriately characterize categories of identity prior to the sixteenth century. As Geraldine Heng persuasively asserts in The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages, however, long before the advent of modern constructions of epidermal race, Europeans developed discourses of colonialism as ideological justification for occupying the territories of others and marginalizing Jewish and Muslim communities in their midst. Heng’s masterful analysis traces the nebulous formation of race alongside configurations of power and discourses of difference in medieval Europe. Identifying the development of pre-modern racial disparity and prejudice, as Heng asserts, is not only vital to our understanding of medieval history, but also illuminates contemporary categories of race, since the interplay of the past and the present continues to inform racial thought and the pervasiveness of systemic racism. By providing heretofore widely overlooked historical context through the lens of an innovative multidisciplinary methodological framework, The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages will undoubtedly initiate crucial scholarly discussions about the pre-modern origins of race that will likely be of great interest to medieval scholars and critical race theorists alike. Inasmuch as the construction of pre-modern racial thought reflects the shifting intersections of religious dogma, legal theory, mercantile capitalism, and expressions of cultural belief, The Invention of Race adopts a thematic scheme of organization that effectively underscores the complex processes of othering that unfolded from the twelfth through the fifteenth centuries. As Heng incisively contends, ideas of race in medieval Europe were not only formed as a result of colonial encounters in Africa, Asia, and the Americas, but were also expressed in the cultural treatment of Jews, the conquest of neighboring Christian countries, and anti-Islamic sentiment in the high and late Middle Ages. By focusing on themes [End Page 197] of state, color, empire, slavery, and the European imagination across Europe, Heng’s analysis effectively reflects the complexities of numerous sites and contexts of racial formation. The book, moreover, assesses nascent pre-modern racial thought through the methodological lens of medieval studies and draws theoretical inspiration from an array of disciplines, ranging from Queer Studies to Postcolonial Theory. Rather than merely cataloguing or describing taxonomies of race and ethnicity in medieval Europe, Heng’s aim is to provide new paradigms and an appropriate model with which the notion of pre-modern race can be approached. By considering the construction of race within the context of early Christian Europe, Heng’s brilliant volume not only contributes a sorely needed dimension to the existing scholarship on race, but also sheds light on a central, but long overlooked, component of the socio-cultural history of medieval Europe. In recent years, some medievalists, notably Robert Bartlett and Peter Biller, have addressed the concept of race in medieval Europe, but they have generally focused exclusively on the somatic and biological features of race, such as bloodline, purity, and physiognomy. As Heng ably demonstrates in this shrewd work, however, such narrow focuses overlook the socio-cultural determinants of race in the Middle Ages, particularly religion and concepts of barbarity and civility...

Inventing the Berbers: History and Ideology in the Maghrib by Ramzi Roughi

Reviewed by: Inventing the Berbers: History and Ideology in the Maghrib by Ramzi Roughi Yaiza Hernández Casas Ramzi Roughi, Inventing the Berbers: History and Ideology in the Maghrib (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2019) 312 pp., 4 ills. Inventing the Berbers is a suggestive title, to say the least. In fact, "no one was a Berber in northwest Africa before the seventh century" (8), when the Arab raids in the Maghrib started. Arab sources after the conquest of the territory are the first to refer to the Berbers as the inhabitants of the Maghrib. This process, which Ramzi Roughi refers to as "Berberization"—a term for which the very title is a synonym—is therefore the main subject of this historical and ethno-anthropological study, which unfolds almost in parallel to the phenomena of Arabization and Islamization, being practically a product of them. From the first narratives of the Arab-Islamic conquest to the colonial rule in Algeria and Morocco and to the present day, the work becomes somewhat thorny, considering, in line with Michael Brett and Elizabeth Fentress, that "Berbers had been silenced by Pan-Islamic sentiments, French colonial policies, and the political Left's tendency to 'suppress ethnic differences'" (The Berbers [Oxford 1998] 8). Ramzi Roughi is Associate Professor of Middle East Studies and History at the University of Southern California. He is also the author of The Making of a Mediterranean Emirate: Ifrīqiyā and Its Andalusis, 1200–1400, where he discusses the significant role played by Andalusian emigrants, following the decisive advances of the armies of Castile and Aragon in Iberia, who joined the Ḥafṣid court, supporting economic arrangements and political relationships. As in this work, he stands out for his mastery of the handling of written sources, being aware of all the historiography built from the moment of its writing until the present day. Thus, while European historiography seems to glimpse the replacement of concepts such as invasions by migrations, and the barbarian peoples begin to define and differentiate themselves ("Burgundians," "Ostrogoths," "Francs"), in the scope of North Africa, Berber maintains the meaning that medieval sources gave it at the time: the one who babbles, the one who, in this case, speaks not Latin but Arabic. This issue is accentuated by the "Khaldunization" of knowledge about the Maghrib initiated in the nineteenth century, when the Histoire des Berbères by Ibn Khaldūn was translated into French by William McGuckin de Slane, giving language and structure to modern studies about the medieval Maghrib. As Roughi explains, the quality of Ibn Khaldūn's thinking and the breadth of his work gave the text almost immediate authority, as did the fact that he is considered the last proper medieval author, especially since many other medieval texts were not yet known nor easily accessible, and because those who studied his work preferred the French translation to the original Arabic (10–11). Focusing now on the object of our review, the study is preceded by an introduction and followed by a masterful conclusion and is divided into three parts, each with two chapters. Part 1—"Medieval Origins"—covers the question [End Page 295] of the Berbers' origin from a historical perspective. Part 2—"Genealogy and Homeland"—shifts the focus to how medieval authors imagined Berbers as a people and the Maghrib as their homeland. Finally, Part 3—"Modern Medieval Berbers"—deals with modern Berberization, focusing on French colonial rule in Algeria and demonstrating the centrality of Slane's French translation of Ibn Khaldūn. Part 1 includes chapter 1—"Berberization and Its Origins"—and chapter 2—"Making Berbers." On the one hand, the first chapter "treats the question of origins as one about chronology and tries to ascertain the historical conditions that best illuminate the earliest references to the Berbers in Arabic" (11). Special attention is therefore paid to futūḥ, or chronicles of conquests, such as those by al-Wāqidī, al-Balādhurī, or Ibn-'Abd al-Ḥakam, in which Berbers appear as "an essential ingredient and a vital catalyst enabling and ordering the narration" (24). But these are not to be understood as "a conquest of the Berbers," only as raids on particular tribes...

The Central Town Square in Medieval Towns in the (Southern) Low Countries: Urban Life, Form, and Identity between Social Practice and Iconographic Identity

The central town squares of the medieval towns in the Low Countries are considered to be the theatres of late medieval urban identity and are not rarely associated with the origin of the towns, or at least their glory as merchant towns in the past. In reality, these emblematic places have often complex biographies, in which selected memories were attributed to them in different historical contexts. In this paper, we will explore how these changing townscapes interacted with the social agents at their medieval origins. We will use both archaeological data as well as historical writings in order to reconstruct their biographies and show how their development was not path-dependent but followed deliberate strategies and aims by different actors that used this space.

The Medieval Origin of the Factory or the Institutional Foundations of Overseas Trade: Toward a Model for Global Comparison

The aim of this article is threefold. First, it argues in favor of continuity into the early modern world overseas of the institutional family of trading stations around the medieval Mediterranean. The Portuguese feitoria represents a missing link between the medieval funduq and fondaco and the early modern factory overseas. Second, it puts the supposed colonialistic nature of early modern trading stations overseas in perspective by comparing these stations with their medieval counterparts around the Mediterranean and the Black Sea on the one hand and by showing that early modern factories more often than not could be founded and exist only thanks to some sort of recognition by local powers. Finally, it offers a functional model for global comparison of trading stations which allows to cross existing temporal and spatial divides, mainly those between medieval and early modern historiography and between the study of trading stations around the Mediterranean and those in the rest of Africa, Asia, and America.

Las fuentes de la astrología durante el Renacimiento: algunas consideraciones

During the Renaissance period, the recovery of the main texts of ancient astrology, particularly Ptolemy, made possible a movement to reform pseudoscience that sought to eliminate allelements of medieval origin, linked to Arabic astrology. However this target was not achieved, motivated by limitations in Ptolemaic doctrines. In this paper we will analyze some of the main sources from which astrological practice was nurtured mainly during the 15th and 16th centuries, and in what way they contributed to shaping the astrological art of that time.

Karin Vélez, The Miraculous Flying House of Loreto: Spreading Catholicism in the Early Modern World

American Religion 27, no. 1 (Fall 2019), pp. 158–162 Copyright © 2019, The Trustees of Indiana University • doi: 10.2979/amerreli.1.1.12 Book Review Karin Vélez, The Miraculous Flying House of Loreto: Spreading Catholicism in the Early Modern World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019) Brandon L. Bayne University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA In February of 1701, the Milanese Jesuit priest Juan María de Salvatierra set out on an exploration of northwestern Mexico, joined by fellow missionary Eusebio Kino, several native allies, and a small military escort. Their goal was to explore the convergence of the Colorado River and the Gulf of California to finally establish the peninsularity of California and survey a possible overland route from mainland New Spain. Before the group ventured north from the settlements of northern Sonora into what they considered an untamed indigenous frontier, they gathered themselves beneath a large, framed banner. Emblazoned on its canvas was an image of the Madonna of Loreto, a powerful, personal devotion for Salvatierra as well as the patroness for the California missions that he had inaugurated just a few years earlier. As the group proceeded, Father Salvatierra counted on the Lauretian Virgin’s protection against raiding Apache and her power to pacify recently rebellious O’odham in the region. Baptizing sick children and wooing reticent elders in the towns of Tubutama and Caborca, Salvatierra brought fearful converts to the foot of Loreto’s banner and assured them of the eternal gifts secured by the Mother of Christ. Marching under that same standard, Fathers Salvatierra and Kino then moved forward, optimistic about the advance of Christendom into this expanding corner of Spanish North America. Brandon L. Bayne 159 The invocation of the Virgin of Loreto pointed away from the Pacific Ocean, where Salvatierra and Kino hoped to spread the Catholic religion, back across the Atlantic, through the Mediterranean, and up the Adriatic coast to the Italian port city of Loreto. Beyond traversing space, the image meant to transport devotees back in time to 1295 to that small coastal village. It is then and there that, according to tradition, the very house of Mary had fallen from the sky to the astonishment of the region’s residents. In The Miraculous Flying House of Loreto, Karin Vélez tracks the story of this Casa and its Madonna, beginning with early accounts of its incredible transportation from Nazareth to Dalmatia and eventually across the waters to Loreto. Ultimately, Loreto’s Flying House would spread even further to Germany and Britain, and then to New France, New Spain, Peru, and Paraguay in the Americas. In this fascinating study, Vélez explores Loreto’s “mythohistory” in both its medieval origins and global expansion across early modern Catholic networks . Plumbing material, visual, and written sources, she produces a remarkable account of a far-flung devotion that crosses both centuries and oceans. Throughout, the author displays an impressive mastery of diverse sources and intellectual boldness as she crosses disciplinary lines between history, religious studies, and literary analysis. The Miraculous Flying House is expansive, creative, and theoretically rich. In eight chapters, Vélez takes us from the first authors and patrons who established the ideal visual and literary markers of the Loreto story to the myriad pilgrims, Popes, priests, and native people who took up those tropes and made them their own. Throughout, she urges the reader to abandon the illusive search for stable authenticities or essentialized practices, and instead prompts us to see the way participants copied, created, rehearsed, and recapitulated the Flying House for their own diverse purposes. In the process, Vélez moves her readers beyond dominant scholarly binaries, calling attention to shared participation rather than mere imposition or resistance . This is one of the more controversial elements of the work as she maintains that a focus on violence, empire, and “the combative side of Christian expansion ” (40) has reduced our understanding of colonial religion to political and utilitarian concerns. While admitting that violence was important, Vélez nevertheless contends that “aggressive imposition alone cannot explain the reach and hold of Catholic devotion in the early modern period” (41). Instead, The Flying House features the untidy, quotidian, and...

Muhammad ibn al‐Zain's basin (baptistère de Saint Louis)

AbstractThe traditional baptismal font of the kings of France for centuries, the so‐called baptistère de Saint Louis is part of 1750s–1900s French national legend. Against all evidence, the name suggests that it is the spoils of Louis IX's crusade of 1250–1254. In fact, that large, copper vessel of exceptional quality, with gold and silver figural decoration, was probably produced in Damascus or Cairo in 1320–1340, almost a century after French downfall at the hands of the Mamluks in Northern Egypt in 1250. As part of the crown treasure of France and because of its outstanding artistry, it is one of the most thoroughly researched Islamicate objects in the Louvre. The association with Louis IX is pure fiction that illustrates the nonsensical and yet persuasive economies of French national legends. Paradoxically, the ransom that the French army paid to leave Egypt in 1250 was one of the stepping stones for the rise of the Mamluk dynasty, renowned for gold and silver incrusted metalwork objects, such as the basin. In another paradoxical turn, the Mamluks who ruled the Central Islamic area from 1250 to 1517 are the military elite recruited from enslaved non‐Muslims, including Turkic and Christian populations. The basin invites us to connect the points on the archipelago that includes France, the Eastern Mediterranean (fall of Acre, 1291), Cyprus and Armenia under the Lusignans, Sicily, Naples, and the South of Italy under the Angevins. Further still, this splendid and still enigmatic work of art brings together Ming China, Mongol Persia, Mamluk Islam, and Gothic France. This paper includes the earliest French description of the basin, from 1606, published in 1642 and reproduced later, including in 1742 (Piganiol de la Force, 1742). The paper also discusses the French tradition of medievalists opposing white supremacist fantasy of white, Christian medieval origins of the French nation. Finally, the paper notes some differences between French and U.S. mentalités in relation to race, in the context of recent events (2019), based on the French ideal of republican universalism, citing such symptomatic events as the replacing of the word “race” by “sex” in the French constitution, the reluctance to base activism on collective identitaire claims, the reluctance to think in terms of race and use race‐related or communautariste terms with which to think about complex social, historical, or artistic rights and responsibilities, and the prohibition to collect race‐based statistics, but also, often in advance of similar laws enacted in other countries, such acts as the Taubira law of 2001 that recognizes France's responsibility for slavery and slave trade beginning in the fifteenth century as a crime against humanity and provides for teaching, research, and commemoration.

A lógica socioespacial da favela

O presente trabalho tem como objetivo principal analisar a configuração da favela a partir de seus padrões socioespaciais, buscando entender o fenômeno em sua escala global. Adota-se para o estudo a Sintaxe Espacial enquanto abordagem teórica, metodológica e ferramental, permitindo a leitura do objeto em sua complexidade espacial. São comparados 120 assentamentos localizados ao redor do mundo, explorados segundo um conjunto de 26 variáveis configuracionais (entre qualitativas e quantitativas, geométricas e topológicas). Os resultados são, também, balizados por amostra de 45 cidades portuguesas de origem medieval (exemplares da cidade orgânica) e pela pesquisa de Medeiros (2013) para 44 cidades brasileiras (ilustrativas de estruturas urbanas contemporâneas). Busca-se a existência de um padrão espacial na favela e entender em que medida a favela reproduz padrões espaciais inerentes à cidade orgânica e historicamente consolidados. A pesquisa sustenta-se na hipótese de que a configuração da favela revela padrões espaciais provenientes das suas práticas de auto-organização, que são responsáveis por dinâmicas urbanas de sucesso. Os achados revelam que a favela se organiza dentro do sistema maior que a recebe, partilhando lógicas comuns e transversais a várias regiões do mundo e contextos culturais. Reconhecem-se, ainda, padrões comuns aos que estruturam cidades orgânicas revelando processos semelhantes de desenvolvimento.