Turning Toward Death: The Medievals’ Terrestrial Treatment of Death in Art During the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries
Throughout the Middle Ages, religious iconography was a main theme of art and the Church heavily patronized works that embodied virtuous ideals. Art was often used as a religious implement in which the Church instructed the illiterate masses. However, art can also represent pain and trauma acting as an outlet for the artist.
Northern Renaissance? Burgundy And Netherlandish Art In Fifteenth-Century Europe
Everyone who has studied medieval or modern history knows that the periodisation of the eras on either side of the Renaissance provides much food for thought. This contribution aims irst to address the usefulness of the widespread concept of the ‘Northern Renaissance’.
Emotions and Cognitions : Fourteenth-Century Discussions on the Passions of the Soul
Medieval philosophers clearly recognized that emotions are not simply “raw feelings” but complex mental states that include cognitive components. They analyzed these components both on the sensory and on the intellectual level, paying particular attention to the different types of cognition that are involved.
The Medieval Understandings of Participation
Richard Cross, Stephen Gersh and Douglas Hedley speaking at the University of Notre Dame
Boethius’s Misguided Theodicy: The Consolation of Philosophy
Anicius Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy (c. 524) is a bold attempt to reconcile the gravity of the author’s imprisonment and impending death with a world governed by a just God.
Hobbes, Augustine, and the Christian nature of man in Leviathan
Scholars of Thomas Hobbes can be loosely divided into two camps: those who believe Hobbes retained strong medieval elements in his philosophy and those who argued that Hobbes’ philosophy marks a clear break from both Ancient philosophy and Christianity.
Res et significatio : The Material Sense of Things in the Middle Ages
This essay serves as an introduction to Friedrich Ohly’s life and work and offers an analytic orientation to the methodological and historical questions taken up by this special issue of Gesta dedicated to medieval conceptions of significationes rerum (the signification of things).
Men Who Talk about Love in Late Medieval Spain: Hugo de Urriés and Egalitarian Married Life
In the last third of the fifteenth century, Hugo de Urriés’s work can offer the modern reader a very rare and informative perspective from the points of view of social history and history of ideas.
Cecco D’Ascoli and Church Discipline of Natural Philosophers in the Middle Ages
Probably the only natural philosopher of the Middle Ages to be burnt at the stake at the behest of the Church was one Francisco degli Stabili (c. 1269 – 1327) in Florence in late 1327.
Do Animals Go to Heaven? Medieval Philosophers Contemplate Heavenly Human Exceptionalism
Beginning in about the second century C.E., Christian philosophers reflected upon the nature of human beings, our purpose on earth, and our path to the promised afterlife. In the course of these reflections, they considered our relationship to nature, and the non- human animals that share our world.
‘The Torrent of the Human Race:’ The Concept of Movement in the Works of Saint Augustine and Its Impact on the Medieval Imagination
For Augustine, movement was essential in four respects. First, it described the nature of the relationship between an eternal God and a finite, temporal, material world. Second, movement constituted the basic imperative of the Christian message: man’s soul is compelled to move toward God or perish eternally.
Marvels and Allies in the East. India as Heterotopia of Latin Europe in the 12th Century
It has long been said that Latin Europe lost its connection to the East, specifically to Asia, in the early Middle Ages. But this is only part of the truth. From late Antiquity on, there were Christians in many places between the Mediterranean Sea and China.
Reading the Ancients: Remnants of Byzantine Controversies in the Greek National Narrative
In the eyes of his contemporaries, as Anna Komnene suggests in her Alexiad, Italos was a pagan wolf in the clothing of a Christian sheep, anxious to overcome Christianity in favour of Hellenic (i.e. pagan) philosophy
Charisma, Medieval and Modern
Popularized by the mass media, Max Weber’s sociological concept of charisma now has a demotic meaning far from what Weber had in mind. Weberian charismatic leaders have followers, not fans, although, exceptionally, fans mutate into followers.
The medieval principle of motion and the modern principle of inertia
Aquinas’s First Way of arguing for the existence of God famously rests on the Aristotelian premise that “whatever is in motion is moved by another.” Let us call this the “principle of motion.” Newton’s First Law states that “every body continues in its state of rest or of uniform motion in a straight line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it.” Call this the “principle of inertia.
Leonardo’s Literary Writings: History, Genre, Philosophy
This dissertation, conceiving Leonardo as a moral philosopher, provides interpretations that lead to the conclusion that his thought pervades both his major and minor works and that these literary writings must be viewed as an extension (and result) of Leonardo’s greater notions of the world and of how all parts relate to one another.
Literature, Logic and Mathematics in the Fourteenth Century
This thesis assesses the extent to which fourteenth-century Middle English poets were interested in, and influenced by, traditions of thinking about logic and mathematics.
Political Science in Late Medieval Europe: The Aristotelian Paradigm and How It Shaped the Study of Politics in the West
While scholars have provided many interesting insights into the role of Aristotle in shaping later political theory, I argue that they are inadequate to explain the rapid “Aristotelianization” of political thought in the later Middle Ages.
Connecting Theory and Practice: A Review of the Work of Five Early Contributors to the Ethics of Management
Boethius, Gregory the Great, Alfred the Great, Stephen Langton and Thomas More
Avicenna’s Concept of Cardiovascular Drug Targeting in Medicamenta Cordialia
Avicenna (980 – 1037 AD) known as the prince of physicians in the west was one of the most prominent Persian thinkers, philosophers, and physicians. Owing to his interests in cardiology, he authored considerable works on different aspects of cardiology.
‘Cast out into the hellish night’: Pagan Virtue and Pagan Poetics in Lorenzo Valla’s De voluptate
Valla wrote about Epicureanism before the Renaissance rediscovery of classical Epicurean texts. Poggio Bracciolini had not yet circulated his newly-discovered manuscript of first century Epicurean philosopher Lucretius’ De rerum natura, and Valla wrote without access to Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of the Philosophers, which discussed Epicurus’ teachings in greater detail.
Duns Scotus: A Brief Introduction to his Life and Thought
Duns Scotus, from his early years as a philosopher and theologian was confronted with this problem from within Aristotelian philosophy. And he gave a novel answer to it, one which differed from the Thomistic account.
Mental Disability and Intellectual Impairment in the Middle Ages: Some Preliminary Research Findings
This interesting paper was one of the four given in the Mental Health in Non-medical Terms session at KZOO. It looked at philosophy, iconography and the way mental disability was viewed in the Middle Ages.
Late Medieval Attitudes on the Evil in Warfare: Honoré Bouvet’s Arbre des batailles and its Sources
My approach in this paper will be to look at Bouvet’s view on the nature of warfare under these broad guidelines, and to treat them as a part of the greater tradition of medieval thought that was fed simulatenously by both pagan and Christian writings.
Penance and Peter Abelard’s Move Within
Of the many individuals in the twelfth century whose fame in their own time has reached down to ours, figures like Thomas Becket, Frederick Barbarossa and Bernard of Clairvaux, there is no one whose fame surpassed that of Master Peter Abelard and no figure more public. Indeed, fame was something Abelard coveted, something he consciously built.