Medieval Views Research Articles

Ancient and Medieval North Pole Stars


 
 
 In this article, the identification in different civilizations and eras of some cir-umpolar stars as the north pole star are reviewed, the main principles behind and crucial considerations in the past for forming the criteria for north pole star identification are scrutinized, and some profound differences in ancient and medieval views of it are discussed. The point of departure is the identification of the north polar star in Euclid’s Phaenomena as the star HR 4646, and its identification in the Pahlavi Bundahišn and al-Ṣūfī’s Ṣuwar al-kawākib as HR 4893. Because of the inevitable transitory nature of the north pole star, the location of al-Ṣūfī’s north pole star in the manuscript tradition of his magnum opus during the centuries after him is also investigated in detail. A supplementary discussion is included on the confusion between two different entities—the pole of the celestial sphere and the pivot of an indigenous Arabic asterism envisioned as a millstone—in philological, lexical, and literary Islamic works, which chiefly stems from the vague terminology employed.
 
 

Reasoning from the impossible: early medieval views on conditionals and counterpossibles

ABSTRACT Impossible antecedents entered the scene of medieval logic around the 1120s and soon started to dominate this scene, becoming one of the most debated issues from the second half of the twelfth century onwards. This article focuses on theories of counterpossibles from this period and aims to offer an overview of the different responses offered by twelfth-century logicians on whether everything, something, or nothing follows from an impossible statement. Rather than trying to historically reconstruct the positions of the different authors – an operation that may be premature given the insufficient notions we still have of the authorship and dating of sources – I aim to provide a provisional map of the main arguments that were advanced in favour of or against the ex impossibili quodlibet principle. The article also aims to show that the strategies developed by twelfth-century logical schools in their approach to counterpossibles survive in logical discussions of the same topic during the thirteenth and the early fourteenth century, especially in the syncategoremata and sophistaria traditions.

Evolution of the concept of history: a critical and comparative analysis

This scholarly article investigates the evolution of the concept of history and its influence on the discipline of history. It begins with the medieval view of history as a source of moral lessons and progresses to Renaissance historicism, which emphasizes the contextual understanding of the past. It then explores the historical positivism of modernity, which seeks universal patterns and laws in history, followed by Marxist historical dialectics, which interprets the past as a class struggle. Subsequently, contemporary perspectives, such as cultural history, gender approaches, and global history, which broaden the understanding of history through new lenses, are addressed. In addition, the impact of digital technologies on the historical discipline is examined. A critical review of the various historical perspectives is undertaken, highlighting their contributions and limitations. This article underscores the importance of ongoing critical revision in the historical discipline to maintain its relevance and to consider ethical and political issues in historical narrative.

Toward a Theoretical and Analytical Framework for the Study of Sexual Humour in Chaucerian Fabliaux

The present study offers an examination of laughter in comic texts from a range of fabliau in The Canterbury Tales, framing them within discussions of medieval views of eroticism that draw from religion, medicine, philosophy, and literature. These texts feature males and females who laugh and make jokes in sexual themes and plots which involve deception and sexual misbehaviour. First, the article explores medieval attitudes toward laughter in religious, medical treatises and literature. It then discusses a number of predominant themes in the Reeve’s Tale, the Miller’s Tale, the Merchant’s Tale and the Shipman’s Tale in the context of Chaucer’s the Canterbury Tales to try to tease out how these particular themes may have worked to bring erotic pleasure to the reader of the comic texts. The comic themes discussed in this article are briefly cuckoldry, culinary humour, exposure of the genitals and farting. These subjects and how they are represented are very different from modern erotic representations. They are based both on a different understanding of the body and on a different social and cultural landscape, and their complexity resists simple interpretations about misogyny or functionality that are suggested by feminist perspectives on sexual humour. All quotations from the Canterbury Tales are taken from The Riverside Chaucer, edited by Larry D. Benson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).

Gender and Succession in Medieval and Early Modern Islam: Bilateral Descent and the Legacy of Fatima

Gender and Succession in Medieval and Early Modern Islam: Bilateral Descent and the Legacy of Fatima

La cosmología aristotélica y su influencia en la astrología de la baja edad media

Aristotelian cosmology and physics received by the medieval occident justify the scientific view of the (medieval) astrology. How so? Well, let’s consider the aristotelic theory of the tripartite man: body, soul and pneuma (as the link between both and as the reason of the ability of the soul to catch inmaterial knowledge from the material one). Now, let’s consider the aristotelian view of the cosmos as a system of celestial spheres –moved by the Unmoved mover – and that influences on earth in a way that they produce its movement. These two prior considerations will serve as a support to talk about the relation man-cosmos throughtout the pneuma (made from the aristotelian quintessence, the eter). This view, altogether, will be useful to justify some medieval views about the astrology as a scientific discipline, as starting in natural philosophy. Once this cosmological system falls, the magic-astrological believes that were supported by so will subsequently lose their epistemic-scientific level.

Sacred Sisters: Gender, Sanctity and Power in Medieval Ireland

Sacred Sisters: Gender, Sanctity and Power in Medieval Ireland

“Unable to Defend Him”: Conflicting Views of Female Violence in Swedish Medieval Law

“Unable to Defend Him”: Conflicting Views of Female Violence in Swedish Medieval Law

Prior’s Turn to Medieval Logic

Abstract The peculiar aspect of medieval logic, that the truth-value of propositions changes with time, gradually disappeared as Europe exited the Renaissance. In modern logic, it was assumed by W.V.O. Quine that one cannot appreciate modern symbolic logic if one does not take it to be tenseless. A.N. Prior’s invention of tense-logic challenged Quine’s view and can be seen as a turn to medieval logic. However, Prior’s discussion of the philosophical problems related to quantified tense-logic led him to reject essential aspects of medieval logic. This invites an evaluation of Prior’s formalisation of tense-logic as, in part, an argument in favour of the medieval view of propositions. This article argues that Prior’s turn to medieval logic is hampered by his unwillingness to accept essential medieval assumptions regarding facts about objects that do not exist. Furthermore, it is argued that presentists should learn an important lesson from Prior’s struggle with accepting the implications of quantified tense-logic and reject theories that purport to be presentism as unorthodox if they also affirm Quine’s view on ontic commitment. In the widest sense: philosophers who, like Prior, turn to the medieval view of propositions must accept a worldview with facts about individuals that, in principle, do not supervene (present tense) on being, for they do not yet exist.

The Beatific Vision and the Metaphysics of Conscious Experience in John of Ripa

Does human happiness consist in God, as the widespread medieval view that God is the last end of human beings would suggest, or does it consist in the experience of God, the view suggested by medieval readings of Aristotle? In response to this theological problem, the important fourteenth-century philosopher John of Ripa developed one of the most innovative and subtle late medieval theories of the metaphysics of awareness. This article provides an account of Ripa’s theory of awareness and shows how the theory was both motivated by and intended to solve this central theological problem for late medieval thought. In Section 1, I present the theological problem. In Section 2, I examine Ripa’s innovative theory of the metaphysics of awareness. In Section 3, I show how Ripa uses his account of the metaphysics of awareness to offer a solution to the theological problem.

The Voice of Reason: Medieval Contemplative Philosophy

Scholastic debates about the activity of our final end—happiness—become famously heated in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, with intellectualists claiming that the primary activity through which we are joined to God is intellective ‘vision’ and voluntarists claiming that it is love (an act of will). These conversations represent only one set of medieval views on the subject, however. If we look to contemplative sources in the same period—even just those of the Rome-based Christian tradition—we find a range of views on our final end that runs the gamut from ‘self-less union with an unknowable God’ to ‘embodied fulfilment of human nature.’ In this article, I argue that these differing conceptions push their holders to develop a correspondingly wide range of attitudes toward the human faculty of reason, particularly with respect to its value (or lack thereof) in helping us achieve our ultimate end. Medieval thinking on this topic is thus much more complex—and offers more points of connection with contemporary philosophical theology—than is typically recognized.

Keckermann, System, and the Rise of the Subject

This paper is an investigation into the introduction of the term ‘system’ and its conceptual background in the writings of Bartholomew Keckermann. This includes a brief summary of the literature and evidence identifying Keckermann as the first to make significant usage of the term in logic, philosophy, and theology. Then, after a survey of his life, work and milieu, this paper will look closer at three of Keckermann’s own ‘systems’; Systema logicae (1600), Praecognitorum Logicorum (1606), and Systema SS. Theologiae (1602). Finally, I will touch on the influence Keckermann’s innovation had on subsequent ideas of method in modern philosophy, especially how his innovative use of this term gives the logician the directing role as a technical expert in mining the truth of theology, philosophy, and other sciences. This, of course, flies in the face of the medieval view of the Church and its elders controlling that role, characterizing the discovery and refinement of knowledge as being a process of electing and using worthy passive subjects as conduits of divine knowledge. Thus Keckermann’s systems can be considered an important step away from this, towards the early modern epistemology requiring an active thinking subject, best characterized in Descartes’ Meditations.

Studying the Dharma: Moral Qualities of a Disciple

The topic of the article is early medieval Indian Buddhist views on the problem of monks selection for the study in monastery universities. Basing on the analysis of Vasubandhus treatise The Encyclopedia of Abhidharma and the commentary on it (Abhidharmakośa, Abhidharmakośa-bhāṣya), the author demonstrates that the criteria of the selection elaborated by Kaśmīr Vaibhāṣikas included only moral qualities of competitors. Only monks inspired with determination to achieve the soteriological aim of the Buddhas Teaching to eradicate the root of suffering could be regarded as appropriate for the study. The object of special attention was virtuous behavior of a competitor and strict observance of monastic vows. Those who were diligent, abstinent from sin, content with minimal material goods (clothes, food, bed, and seat), and see happiness in monastic ascetics and religious practices regarded as worthy competitor.

Our Pigs, Ourselves

Our Pigs, Ourselves

ROMANTIC HUMAN STUDY: PECULIARITIES OF PERSONALITY PHILOSOPHY IN THE LITERATURE OF THE 1820-1830-IES.

Purpose. The purpose of the study is to show the connection of romanticism with the anthropological doctrine that goes back to Hegelianism and Kantianism, and at the same time – with the concepts of the future, structuralism and postmodernism. Theoretical basis. The man is a central figure of the Romantic literary, therefore it makes sense to single out romantic human anthropological doctrine and the image of man associated with a specific historical and cultural era called the "epoch of romanticism"; to show that many romantic philosophical positions remained relevant to the basic foundations of contemporary anthropological research and coincide with it in analytical and critical thinking about a man, a person, his historical and evolutionary fate. Originality. The romantic worldview determined the specifics of anthropological discourse, both logical and illogical, remaining symbols and attaching, as for example, a real historical anecdote, a popular history, a philosophical thought, a myth, a famous literary episode and the arts multiplied by creative inspiration and imagination. This tendency determined the fragmentation of thinking and the scientific image of man as a dual being, nevertheless, presented and described in all the variety of relations with the world and with himself, that allows us to call this area of thought "the romantic human science". Conclusions. Structural analysis of numerous romantic texts allows us to draw the following conclusion: with mythopoetic imagery and anthropological thought about a man, romantic writers introduced the reader to any wisdom, to philosophical understanding of their human essence, to past and modern teachings, in a way processed antique, medieval and enlightening views, in which an important place was given to reflections on the place of man in nature, society, and history. Correlating the well-known statements about a person as a descendant of the "old Adam", "person", "personality", "soul", with the modern idea of historical and social development, about the evolution of the consciousness of a person who revealed himself as an individual in modern times, with scientific and aesthetic views, the writers of the first half of the XIX century gave romantic thought anthropological meaning and, in fact, laid the foundations of historical, social, psychological, cultural and psychoanalytic anthropology.

María Jesús Soto-Bruna (ed.), Causality and Resemblance. Medieval Approaches to the Explanation of Nature, Europaea Memoria, Reihe, I, Band: 127. Hildesheim, Zürich, and New York, Georg Olms Verlag, 2018, 182 pp. ISBN: 9783487156866. Cloth: €34.99

Causality and Resemblance. Medieval Approaches to the Explanation of Nature is an edited volume consisting of eleven articles – in both English and Spanish – on accounts of cau-sality in late classical and medieval thinkers such as Gregory of Nisa, Augustine, Eriugena, Philip the Chancellor, and Thomas Aquinas. In the introduction, Maria Jesus Soto-Bruna, the editor, explains that the theme of this collection prioritizes the question of unity and multiplicity within the cosmos. The emphasis on causality in Neoplatonic accounts on the unity and multiplicity of the Logos, Soto-Bruno explains, presents a «new perspective in medieval studies» which manifests the diverse understandings of medieval views of cau-sality, particularly within a Neoplatonic framework.

Aquinas’s Eschatological Historiography: Job, Providence, and the Multiple Senses of the Historical Event

Drawing primarily from Thomas’ commentary on the Book of Job and the Summa Theologiae, I argue, first, that Aquinas views history and historiography in primarily eschatological terms; second, that Thomas’ eschatological reading of the events of history lead him to view those selfsame discrete punctiliar events as having multiple, providentially determined senses or meanings; and third, that despite his seeing each historical happening as a verdically layered and eschatologically drawn event, Aquinas is nevertheless preserved from collapsing history into eschatology by his privileging of “the literal sense.” I then explore the continuities Aquinas’ medieval view of history and historiography share with our own late modern accounts through their mutual deference to “the literal sense” of events. But I hope ultimately to display from both his reading of the Book of Job and the Summa the various ways in which, for Thomas, the happenings of history are, unlike modern historiographies, providentially saturated phenomena.

Reframing the World: The Materiality of Two Mappaemundi in BL, Add. MS 28681

ABSTRACT In the field of medieval cartography, the Psalter World Map (BL, Add. MS 28681, fol. 9r) has come to stand in scholarship as an exemplar of the medieval world view. While the World Map has received wide attention, its relationship to the List Map on the verso and the psalter manuscript as a whole has been less discussed. A close material analysis of folio 9 reveals that the two maps were pasted into a frame which had been cut out of the folio. Thus, the maps were constructed separately from the psalter text itself. Moreover, a codicological examination of the first ten folios of the manuscript shows multiple moments of rearrangement and intervention, reinforcing the importance of material analysis in the study of maps and manuscripts. The new information concerning the insertion of the World Map and the List Map into folio 9 opens up unexplored possibilities regarding their place of origin and dating since they can no longer be tied to the 1262 date of the manuscript.

The Beast with Two Backs

Today, the comparison of male homosexuality to bestiality is unfortunately too well-known from homophobic polemics. Yet this comparison has a history in the Anglophone world, and it emerged in the early European Middle Ages seemingly not in order to dehumanize men who had sex with men but in order to make bestiality appear serious by comparing it to male-male sexual acts. The eighth-century Paenitentiale Theodori—which collects the judgments of the Byzantine-born Archbishop Theodore—is the earliest extant English text to connect male-male sexual acts with bestiality. This comparison does not occur in the previous penitentials, but, after its appearance in the Paenitentiale, this comparison traveled throughout Western Europe. No scholarship to date examines the global origins of such a comparison. This paper argues that later medieval views of bestiality as perverse and as a serious sexual offense emerged from bestiality’s early comparison to same-sex acts (rather than vice-versa). Prior to the Paenitentiale Theodori, European theologians described bestiality as a minor sin akin to masturbation. Theodore borrowed the comparison of bestiality and male-male sex acts from a Latin mistranslation of the 314 Greek Council of Ancyra and from the Byzantine theologian St. Basil the Great. Since the early penitentials accorded male-male sexual acts some of the most serious penances, the comparison of bestiality to these acts elevated bestiality for the first time in Western Europe to the status of a serious and unnatural sin. Through connection to effeminizing male-male sexual acts, bestiality gained a reputation as a serious, boundary-violating sin in its own right.

Historicising stress: anguish and insomnia in the middle ages.

While the concept of 'stress' in the modern sense is a twentieth-century innovation, many of the symptoms we associate with the modern condition appear in historical materials going back many centuries. But how did premodern people understand and experience these symptoms and their relation to sleep? This study focuses on the rich materials from the central middle ages in Western Europe, a period during which understandings of the body, mind, emotions and sleep were radically different from the present. It analyses two examples, nightmares and insomnia, disease categories which illustrate medieval views of the impact of worries and anguish on sleep. Medical and other sources identified a number of ways in which the mind and body interacted with one another in complex ways which disrupted the humoral and mental balance of the individual.