Thirteenth-century Treatise Research Articles

Geological elements in the in thirteenth-century treatise “La Composizione del Mondo” (The composition of the World) by Ristoro d’Arezzo

This contribution analyses the geological elements sensu lato found in the “La composizione del mondo colle sue cascioni” (The composition of the world with its causes) written by Ristoro d’Arezzo at the end of the thirteenth century. In the treatise is possible to find numerous references to ‘geological’ products and processes ranging, from the shape and structure of the Earth, distribution of emerged lands and seas, geomorphology, sedimentology, to earthquakes and meteorological phenomena, formation and erosion of mountains, references to specific lithotypes and their formation. Most of these phenomena and interpretative hypotheses are essentially inherited from the Meteorologica of the master Aristotle. The Composition of the Word represents an open window on the ‘scientific’ naturalistic-astronomical knowledge at the end of the thirteenth century, in a crucial stage of rediscovery of Aristotelian hypotheses and of his commentators, representing the foundation ofall the knowledge and advances of the western world. Even if in the opening Book Ristoro rejects the use ofmiracles to explain nature, the author resorts to the central action of the Heaven as the main shaping agent for Earth structure, living beings, mountains, and mines. Furthermore, God is present throughout the text along with the concept of the scala naturae, with humans representing the pinnacle of perfection among living beings. However, Ristoro can be considered among the first ‘disseminators’ of science, presenting in vernacular Italian the theories of ancient thinkers and thus allowing access to this interpretative world to a wider audience. Furthermore, Ristoro did not limit himself to simply report the theories of past authors, but especially with regard to geological processes (mountain formation, explanation of fossils, mineralizations), he provided completely original interpretations which indicate a direct analytical observation of the natural world. The treatise by Ristoro was certainly the basis for authors of the following centuries with regard to natural phenomena in general and astronomical ones in particular, with influences certainly on contemporary and slightly later authors such as Brunetto Latini and Dante Alighieri.

Indian Rhythmic Gesture and Tinta in French Operas of the Second Half of the 19th Century and Early 20th Century

"As part of a larger study which compresses three layers of analyses — dramatic, visual, and musical — the present article deals with the rhythmic component of the musical phenomenon in French operas within a half century timeframe, 1862–1923. Orientalism and exoticism were represented through melody, rhythm, timbre, and libretti in operas by F. David, G. Bizet, L. Delibes, J. Massenet, and A. Roussel. The melodic dimension, discussed in a previous study, offered perhaps more opportunities for the evocation of an allegedly oriental sound than rhythm and meter deliver within the operas, while the timbre of various instruments proposes the sensuality of the Orient — an accepted Western stereotype regarding the East. To identify certain rhythmic formulae of Indian inspiration and to understand the concept of tāla, several studies and works of Indian musicians and authors have been consulted, among these Sãrngadeva’s Sangītaratnākara, a thirteenth century treatise considered one of the most important Indian musicological texts. Whether invented or extracted directly from its original source, the article aims to identify composers’ rhythmic gestures. The blend of personal musical language with the Indian tinta reflected in rhythmic patterns create a romantic texture cognoscible to the discussed French exotic operas: David’s opéra-comique Lalla-Roukh, Bizet’s Les Pecheurs de perles, Delibes’ Lakmé, Massenet’s five-act grand-opéra Le Roi du Lahore, and Roussel’s opéra-ballet Padmâvatî. Keywords: Hindu rhythm, ethnomusicology, French opera, orientalism, Indian tinta, timbre "

Cushions, Kitchens and Christ: Mapping the Domestic in Late Medieval Religious Writing by Louise Campion

Reviewed by: Cushions, Kitchens and Christ: Mapping the Domestic in Late Medieval Religious Writing by Louise Campion Luke Penkett Louise Campion, Cushions, Kitchens and Christ: Mapping the Domestic in Late Medieval Religious Writing ( Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2022), xviii + 190 pp. The Religion and Culture in the Middle Ages series from the University of Wales Press is a notable addition to research on the Middle Ages, bringing to the fore both studies that engage with texts that significantly shaped medieval religion and culture and those that highlight understudied aspects of these two areas. One of their latest publications is Cushions, Kitchens and Christ—the first monograph [End Page 236] by independent scholar Louise Campion, who has a particular interest in religious texts translated from Latin into Middle English during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and in their impact on the literary culture of late medieval England. Beginning as a doctoral thesis, Cushions, Kitchens and Christ focuses on four such texts: The Doctrine of the Hert (a thirteenth-century treatise), Nicholas Love's The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ (a fifteenth-century translation of a fourteenth-century vita), Bridget of Sweden's Liber Celestis (a translation of over 700 of her visions), and another collection of visions experienced by Mechthild of Hackeborn in her Booke of Ghostlye Grace (written after 1290 and translated into Modern English by 1450). One of the connections between these four texts is their "repeated and consistent recourse to the language and imagery of the domestic sphere as a means of explicating the salient concerns of their authors, from the proper conduct of spiritual practice to the key events of Christ's life, to vociferous criticism of corrupt Church officials" (2). As such, Campion's book contributes to the relatively new and illuminating area of materiality research, studying the place of the domestic in relation to both religion and culture, significant patterns of domestic imagery, and the growing importance attached to the household in the late Middle Ages. After a useful introduction, Campion begins with a chapter titled "The Kitchen of the Heart, Spiritual Furniture and Noble Visitors." The mid-thirteenth-century guidance text and preaching manual De doctrina cordis was a hugely popular text, full of homely vocabulary, read in its Middle English translation by monastics and laypeople alike. Campion highlights the sharing of the Eucharist with Christ in the private household of the recipient's heart as well as the household as a locus to receive divine messages from the Eucharistic visitor. This last point prepares the modern-day reader for Campion's next two chapters. Both Mechthild and Bridget regarded domestic images as central to their visionary vocabulary. Mechthild goes further and allegorizes the heart as a house. Along with Bridget and, also, Catherine of Siena and Elizabeth of Hungary, Mechthild's spirituality—at the same time as her "approuyd wymmen"–—is orthodox; and yet, it is inevitably shaped by circumstance. In Mechthild's case, her "conventual community and her joyous relationship with Christ" (39) is addressed in the second chapter, "The Domesticity of the Sacred Heart." Chapter 3, "Marriage, Storehouses and Celestial Visitors, focuses on Brigid's use of household language, which "facilitates a deep engagement with the religious and political anxieties of the later Middle Ages" (61). Unlike Mechthild, Campion clearly points out that Bridget's domestic vocabulary allows her to sharply comment on "a broad range of ecclesiastical leaders and spiritual ideas" (61). Like Margery Kempe, her fifteenth-century counterpart, Bridget eschews her home in favour of multiple pilgrimages. Bridget's Liber not surprisingly reflects her place in the world, through which she describes her "distinctiveness as a conduit of the divine message" by commenting upon ecclesial corruption, moral apocalypse, spiritual union, the prospect of salvation, her understanding of God, and the proper conduct of bishops (87). In the final chapter, "From Wanderer to Householder: The Domestication of Jesus, the Disciples and the Holy Family," Campion convincingly argues that "the domestic sphere is the primary affective framework through which [End Page 237] [Nicholas] Love invites his reader to identify with Christ" (112). "Domestic space," she reminds us, "is the environment to hear about Christ, listen to his...

The Regulation of “Sodomy” in the Latin East and West

The Regulation of “Sodomy” in the Latin East and West

The Praxis of the Tractrix

This essay analyzes Zorns Lemma (1962–1970), a film made by American artist Hollis Frampton (1936–1984). Noting Frampton’s use of Robert Grosseteste’s thirteenth-century treatise De luce [‘On Light’] as a key aspect of the film’s soundtrack, the essay argues that Grosseteste’s investigations of light as a medium played a key role in Frampton’s theorization of cinema. As such, his interest in medieval light theories spurred him to develop a powerful, idiosyncratic response to prevailing discourses of media and medium specificity during the 1960s. When examined in light of contemporaneous projects by Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922–1975) and Roland Barthes (1915–1980), Zorns Lemma points up the significance of medieval thought in the period’s conceptions of art and time.

History: A medieval multiverse

Ideas in a thirteenth-century treatise on the nature of matter still resonate today, say Tom C. B. McLeish and colleagues.

Alchemical Gold and the Pursuit of the Mercurial Elixir

This article focuses on the analysis of two Tibetan treatises on iatrochemistry,The Treatise on the Mercurial Elixir(Dngul chu grub pa’i bstan bcos) and theCompendium on the Transmutation into Gold(Gser ’gyur bstan bcos bsdus pa). These texts belong to therasaśāstragenre that were translated from Sanskrit into Tibetan by Orgyenpa Rinchenpel (O rgyan pa Rin chen dpal, 1229/30–1309) and integrated into the Tibetan Buddhist Canon of theTengyur(Bstan ’gyur). The treatises deal with the processing of mercury, which is indispensable to convert metals into gold (gser ’gyur) and to accomplish the ‘mercurial elixir’ (dngul chu’i bcud len). The texts start with the description of a ‘pink-coloured’ (dmar skya mdog) compound, which is described as the amalgam of ‘moonlight-exposed tin’ (gsha’ tshe zla ba phyogs), gold, and copper. According to the texts, mercury has to be ‘amalgamated’ (sbyor ba) with ‘minerals that devour its poisons’ (za byed khams) and with ‘eight metals that bind it’ (’ching khams brgyad); at the same time, mercury is cooked with ‘red substances’ (dmar sde tshan) and other herbal extracts, types of urine and salts, and reduced to ashes. Starting with an outline of the earliest Tibetan medical sources on mercury, I analyse the two treatises with regard to their entiremateria alchemicaand the respective purification methods aimed at ‘obtaining essences’ (snying stobs), which are then to be absorbed by mercury. I argue that the two thirteenth-century treatises were particularly significant in the process of consolidating pharmaceutical practices based on mercury and the merging of alchemical and medical knowledge in Tibet.

Qu’apprend-on aux rois ? La physiognomonie dans le Secret des secrets

According to physiognomy, the character of men may be inferred from their outward physical appearance. Physiognomy is found in some encyclopedias, in medical works and occasionally in political treatises ; in the later Middle Ages, it holds a privileged place in the Secret of Secrets, a work that is at the intersection of several genres. However, the text of the French translation of the Secretum secretorum (itself based on an Arabic treatise) modified the contents of the original chapter on physiognomy, which also now figures at the end of the work. The study of this branch of medieval science in three thirteenth-century treatises reveals its medical and political function. In the case of the Secret of Secrets, some differences between the vernacular version and the Latin text appear significant. This science was no longer being used for medical or political purposes. Rather, its role was now pedagogical : physiognomy thus invites the reader to claim a certain autonomy vis-a-vis scientific tradition.

Das Falken- und Hundebuch des Kalifen al-Mutawakkil (review)

Reviewed by: Das Falken- und Hundebuch des Kalifen al-Mutawakkil Emilie Savage-Smith Muhammad ibn 'Abdallāh al-Bāzyār : Das Falken- und Hundebuch des Kalifen al-Mutawakkil. Ein arabischer Traktat aus dem 9 Jahrhundert. Edited and translated by Anna Akasoy and Stefan Georges. Wissenkultur und Gesellschaftlicher Wandel, no. 11. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2005. 198 pp. €69.80 (3-05-004199-4). The history of medicine has tended to focus upon the ailments of humans. The volume under review, however, presents a ninth-century Arabic text concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of ninety-one diseases and afflictions particular to sporting birds. In the Islamic world, hunting with birds—called bayzara ("flying hunt")—was not restricted to falconry and hawking but encompassed a large range of sporting birds, including kites and kestrels. The favorite was the goshawk, while in Europe the falcon was preferred to the goshawk. The treatise edited and translated in this volume was written in Baghdad for the caliph al-Mutawakkil (reg. 847–61 AD) and hence titled al-Kitāb al-Mutawakkilī [End Page 434] (The Book for al-Mutawakkil). The author was Muh.ammad ibn 'Abd Allāh al-Bāzyār, the name al-Bāzyār meaning "the master of the hawking-pack." The manual was one of the earliest on the topic to be composed in the Islamic world, and it concerned not only the sporting birds but also the hounds that were trained for hunting with the raptors. The history of this particular text, however, is complex and confusing. The treatise is not preserved today in its entirety but is known only through extensive excerpts in a thirteenth-century compilation in which it is cited simply as "al-Mutawakkilī." The thirteenth-century treatise containing the excerpts was titled al-Kitāb al-Mansūrī fī al-bayzara (The Book for Mansūr on the Flying-Hunt) and was compiled for a ruler of the Hafsid dynasty in Tunisia. The earlier book composed for al-Mutawakkil was also translated into Castilian in the thirteenth century, and it formed the basis of the major portion of a Latin compilation on the topic, known as Moamin, that was made for the emperor Frederick II of the Hohenstaufen dynasty. The Arabic text of al-Kitāb al-Mansūrī, using three manuscripts, was edited in 1965 by Detlef Möller. Two copies were used in 1989 for an edition made by 'Abd al-Hafīz? Mansūr, who was unaware of the previous edition. The 1989 edition by Mansūr then formed the basis of a partial English translation published in 2001 by Terence Clark and Muawiya Derhali. The Castilian text of al-Kitāb al-Mutawakkilī by al-Bāzyār was edited in 1987 by José Manuel Fradejas Rueda and Anthony J. Cardenas, but without comparison with the Arabic, while the Moamin was analyzed by one of the present editors, Stefan Georges, in his dissertation submitted at the Universität Frankfurt am Main. Pages 16–30 contain a synoptic table displaying the relationship between the quotations of al-Bāzyār's treatise found in the three major traditions: the Latin Moamin, the Castilian Libro de los animales que cazan, and the Arabic al-Kitāb al-Mansūrī. Then follows an Arabic edition and German translation of the long section concerned with the diseases of sporting birds, supplemented by an Arabic German glossary of materia medica, a German-Arabic glossary of the same material, and a bibliography of sources cited. The reviewer found the numbering of the different sections rather confusing and would have liked an additional glossary of anatomical and medical (disease) terms. A sequel to the study, placing the therapies within the broader context of medical care in general, would also be welcome. While no medical theory is presented in the treatise by al-Bāzyār, and little description of symptoms, the ailments and their recommended therapies would be interesting to compare with those advocated in ninth- and tenth-century Baghdad for similar conditions in humans. For example, the eye condition known today as pterygium (al-zafara), rendered here as Kralle (pp. 62–63), is said to be...

"None's Slave": Some Versions of Liberty in Donne's Satires 1 and 4

His skeptical, exploratory temperament inspires not only a search for freedom but also, as its inseparable correlative, an inquiry into its meaning and worth. In his elegies and lyrics, Donne explores different ways to remain “free” in love and sexual relations. In Satires 1 and 4, the focus of this essay, Donne explores different modes of asserting his freedom against a corrupt court, an oppressive legal system, and potentially enslaving social bonds. 3 Donne’s poetic representations of freedom were galvanized by his engagement with infl uential but diverging treatments of freedom in ancient poetry and moral philosophy concerning liberty as “doing what one pleases” and the value and limits of free speech. Historians of early modern conceptions of liberty have tended to focus on explicitly political and religious texts in relation to constitutional and ecclesiological controversies. 4 They have accordingly neglected the various ethical and poetic traditions out of which an early modern writer like Donne could articulate new visions of liberty. 5 While the defense of a person’s “freedom to do as he likes” (to quote John Stuart Mill) has often been associated with modern liberalism, the formulation is ancient. 6 Justinian’s Institutes defi ned libertas as the “natural faculty” of “doing what one wishes” [quod cuique facere libet] unless “prohibited by force or law,” a defi nition adopted in Henry de Bracton’s thirteenth-century treatise, De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae, which remained an authoritative textbook on English law in the early modern period. 7 Yet early modern ethical discourse often followed ancient philosophers in denying that liberty was equivalent to simply doing as one pleases, which was rather an instance of immoral “license,” that is, an excess or abuse of liberty. 8 In Plato’s Republic, Socrates identifi ed doing just as one pleases as a form of license typical of democratic regimes, in which men confuse lawlessness with liberty.

“True Anchoresses Are Called Birds”: Asceticism as Ascent and the Purgative Mysticism of the Ancrene Wisse

“‘True Anchoresses Are Called Birds’: Asceticism as Ascent and the Purgative Mysticism of the Ancrene Wisse.” This article engages in the longstanding debate over the mysticism of Ancrene Wisse, an early thirteenth-century treatise for female recluses. With few exceptions, critics have answered the question in the negative, finding it difficult to fit its spirituality into a Pseudo-Dionysian model of mysticism defined by schema of spiritual ascent and experience of union with God. This article contends that study of patristic and monastic texts that employ images of birds and flight as metaphors for contemplative experience reveals that the Wisse author also uses bird imagery to describe the contemplative lives of the anchoresses for whom he writes. Furthermore, the way that the bird imagery resonates with crucifixion imagery fuses the two, teaching that the penitential suffering of the anchoritic life enables contemplative flight and unites the anchoresses with Christ crucified. In Ancrene Wisse, asceticism and penance are ascent and union, hence what this article calls a purgative mysticism.

"Lex mercatoria" and Legal Pluralism: A Late Thirteenth-Century Treatise and Its Afterlife. Mary Elizabeth Basile , Jane Fair Bestor , Daniel R. Coquillette , Charles Donahue, Jr.

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Lex Mercatoria and Legal Pluralism: A Late Thirteenth-Century Treatise and its Afterlife, edited, translated and introduced by Mary Elizabeth Basile, Jane Fair Bestor, D.R. Coquillette [and] Ch. Donahue Jr.. Ames Foundation, Cambridge (Massachusetts) 1998. 212 + 2 x 42 + (bibliography and index) 75 p.

Lex Mercatoria and Legal Pluralism: A Late Thirteenth-Century Treatise and its Afterlife, edited, translated and introduced by Mary Elizabeth Basile, Jane Fair Bestor, D.R. Coquillette [and] Ch. Donahue Jr.. Ames Foundation, Cambridge (Massachusetts) 1998. 212 + 2 x 42 + (bibliography and index) 75 p.

Lex Mercatoria and Legal Pluralism: A Late Thirteenth-Century Treatise and Its Afterlife

Lex Mercatoria and Legal Pluralism: A Late Thirteenth-Century Treatise and Its Afterlife

Lex Mercatoria and Legal Pluralism: A Late Thirteenth-Century Treatise and Its Afterlife

Lex Mercatoria and Legal Pluralism: A Late Thirteenth-Century Treatise and Its Afterlife

Myles Dillon and others (tr.): The Nātakalaksanaratnakośa of Sāgaranandin: a thirteenth-century treatise on the Hindu theater. Translated by Myles Dillon, Murray Fowler and V. Ragkavan. (Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series, Vol. 50, Pt. 9.) 74 pp. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1960. $2.

Myles Dillon and others (tr.): The Nātakalaksanaratnakośa of Sāgaranandin: a thirteenth-century treatise on the Hindu theater. Translated by Myles Dillon, Murray Fowler and V. Ragkavan. (Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series, Vol. 50, Pt. 9.) 74 pp. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1960. $2.

The Origins of the Office of Coroner

ONLY a hundred years ago the question whether or not there had been coroners in Roman Britain could still be seriously discussed, for two pieces of evidence had created a widespread belief that they had existed long before the Conquest. The Mirror of Justices, a thirteenth-century treatise, credits king Alfred with the appointment of coroners and sheriffs in every county, and a rhyming charter, purporting to have been granted by Athelstan to Beverley Minster, restricts the holding of inquests upon dead bodies within its liberty to its own bailiffs, specifically excluding any ‘other coroner’. Later legal writers, especially Coke, strengthened and prolonged the authority of The Mirror of Justices: they unquestioningly accepted the section on the coroner and embodied it in their works. Maitland, however, has brilliantly exposed the wilful mendacity of its author. The rhyming charter is an obvious forgery; the earliest extant version of it has been attributed on palaeographical and linguistic grounds to the reign of Edward II, when it was probably composed.