Monastic Meditation Transformed

2020 ◽  
pp. 15-65
Author(s):  
Mark Chinca
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Spiritual Exercise ◽  
Monastic Education

The chapter has two purposes: to provide a survey of monastic traditions of meditation from roughly the sixth century to the end of the twelfth century, and to describe the transformation of those traditions in the thirteenth century into a systematic regimen of spiritual exercise with clear and explicit instructions that could be followed by users who did not have the resources of a monastic education and community to draw on. The key figure in this transformation is Bonaventure; the chapter concentrates on the ways in which he introduced greater technical rigor into the practice of meditation and endowed it with the directive quality of a method.

Mon–Aslian contacts

1992 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 532-537 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Bauer
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Fine Arts ◽  
Language Shift ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Southern Thailand ◽  
Epigraphic Evidence

In an article concerning the prehistory of Kelantan G. Benjamin provided an etymology for the toponym ‘Lebir’ as deriving from the Old Mon [OM] word for ‘sea, river’, OM Iḅir, Iḅīr, modern Mon LM ḅś, SM /бi/. He went on to say that there is evidence to assume early Malay–Mon contacts; in fact, it was only by the twelfth century A.D. that a language-shift at the expense of Mon occurred in an area of what is today southern Thailand and northern Malaysia. By implication this might also mean that there were contacts between groups speaking Aslian languages and Mon.In support of his hypothesis Benjamin referred to epigraphic evidence, in particular to Mon inscriptions from southern Thailand as the earliest written in any vernacular. In fact, there are only two inscriptions, previously claimed to be written in Mon, Nś. 2, discovered in 1971, from Nakhorn Sri Thammarat [Ligor] and Nś. 3 from the same area. The Thai Government's Fine Arts Department [FAD] dates Nś. 2 to the later half of the thirteenth century A.D., at a time when Benjamin assumes the language-shift Mon > Malay/Thai in the peninsula to have already taken place. But the difficulty is not only how to reconcile the comparatively late date—based on palaeographical grounds—with Benjamin's chronological framework; the inscription is largely illegible and classed by the FAD in its most recent publication as written in ‘Old Mon and Old Burmese’. The other inscription which the FAD has interpreted as Old Mon is Nś. 3/RIS XXVII, dated by Cœdès to the sixth century. But Cœdès himself was unable to determine the language of this one line inscription, and it cannot be ascribed to Old Mon.

A Short Survey of Yemeni Sufism from Its Inception up to the Thirteenth Century

2009 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Muhammad Aziz
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Mountainous Area ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Short Survey ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Intellectual Activities

This paper analyzes the historical conditions of Yemen’s Sufi movement from the beginning of Islam up to the rise of the Rasulid dynasty in the thirteenth century. This is a very difficult task, given the lack of adequate sources and sufficient academic attention in both the East and theWest. Certainly, a few sentences about the subject can be found scattered in Sufi literature at large, but a respectable study of the period’s mysticism can hardly be found.1 Thus, I will focus on the major authorities who first contributed to the ascetic movement’s development, discuss why a major decline of intellectual activities occurred in many metropolises, and if the existing ascetic conditions were transformed into mystical tendencies during the ninth century due to the alleged impact ofDhu’n-Nun al-Misri (d. 860). This is followed by a brief discussion ofwhat contributed to the revival of the country’s intellectual and economic activities. After that, I will attempt to portray the status of the major ascetics and prominent mystics credited with spreading and diffusing the so-called Islamic saintly miracles (karamat). The trademark of both ascetics and mystics across the centuries, this feature became more prevalent fromthe beginning of the twelfth century onward. I will conclude with a brief note on the most three celebrated figures of Yemen’s religious and cultural history: Abu al-Ghayth ibn Jamil (d. 1253) and his rival Ahmad ibn `Alwan (d. 1266) from the mountainous area, andMuhammad ibn `Ali al-`Alawi, known as al-Faqih al-Muqaddam (d. 1256), from Hadramawt.

The Four Branches of the Mabinogi, ed. and trans. by Matthieu Boyd, with the modernization assistance of Stacie Lents. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 2017, 119 pp., 5 b/w ill, 1 map.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 401-401
Author(s):  
Albrecht Classen
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
English Translation ◽  
English Version ◽  
Personal Names ◽  
University Teachers ◽  
Link Type ◽  
Welsh Literature

Welsh medievalists have long recognized the canonical quality of The Four Branches of the Mabinogi (late eleventh or early twelfth century), resulting in a long series of editions and translations. William Owen Pughe was the first to offer a modern English translation in 1795. The <?page nr="402"?>recent translation by Will Parker (2005) is available now online at: <ext-link ext-link-type="uri" xlink:href="http://www.mabinogi.net/translations.htm">http://www.mabinogi.net/translations.htm</ext-link>, and I suspect that many university teachers happily rely on this one because of its easy accessibility and clarity of the English version. Now, Matthieu Boyd, who teaches at Fairleigh Dickinson University (Florham Campus, Madison, MD), offers a new rendering, which is specifically targeting undergraduate students. This explains his strategy to modernize the medieval Welsh as much as possible, and to turn this marvelous text into an enjoyable read even for contemporary students, without moving too far away from the original. This modernization was carried out with the assistance of his colleague, the playwright Stacie Lents. This entails, for instance, that even some of the medieval names are adapted. Many times the conservative reader might feel uncomfortable when words and phrases such as “to shit,” “to egg on,” “to nip at the heels,” or “Manawydan & Co” (60–61) appear. The adaptation of personal names is not carried out systematically, but the overall impression of this translation is certainly positive, making the study of this masterpiece of medieval Welsh literature to a real pleasure.

Bastard Feudalism and the Framing of Thirteenth-Century England

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Coss
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Great Work ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

In the introduction to his great work of 2005, Framing the Early Middle Ages, Chris Wickham urged not only the necessity of carefully framing our studies at the outset but also the importance of closely defining the words and concepts that we employ, the avoidance ‘cultural sollipsism’ wherever possible and the need to pay particular attention to continuities and discontinuities. Chris has, of course, followed these precepts on a vast scale. My aim in this chapter is a modest one. I aim to review the framing of thirteenth-century England in terms of two only of Chris’s themes: the aristocracy and the state—and even then primarily in terms of the relationship between the two. By the thirteenth century I mean a long thirteenth century stretching from the period of the Angevin reforms of the later twelfth century on the one hand to the early to mid-fourteenth on the other; the reasons for taking this span will, I hope, become clearer during the course of the chapter, but few would doubt that it has a validity.

University Education and English Ecclesiastical Lawyers 1400–1650

2011 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 132-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Helmholz
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Legal Education ◽  
University Education ◽  
Legal Practice ◽  
Negative Opinion ◽  
Ius Commune ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Church ◽  
Academic Study

Most recent historians have expressed a negative opinion of the quality of legal education at the English universities between 1400 and 1650. The academic study of law at Oxford and Cambridge, they have stated, was easy, antiquated and impractical. The curriculum had not changed from the form it assumed in the thirteenth century, and it did little to prepare students for their careers. This article challenges that opinion by examining the inner nature of the ius commune, the law that was applied in the courts of the church, and also by examining some of the works of practice compiled by English civilians during the period. Those works show that the negative opinion rests in part upon a misunderstanding of the nature of legal practice during earlier centuries. In fact, concentration on the texts of the Roman and canon laws, as old-fashioned as it seems to us, was well suited for the tasks advocates and judges would face once they left the academy. It also provided the stimulus needed for advance in the law of the church itself; their legal education made available to potential advocates and judges skills that would permit a sophisticated application of the ius commune, one better suited to their times. The article provides evidence of how this happened.1

Byzantine Scyphate Bronze coinage in Greece

1961 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 42-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. M. Metcalf
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
The Other ◽  
Purchasing Power ◽  
Byzantine Empire ◽  
Market Place ◽  
Fourth Crusade ◽  
Unusual Form

The Byzantine coinage in the twelfth century was of three kinds. There were gold nomismata, with a purchasing power which must have been a good deal greater than that of a present-day five-pound note, and also nomismata of ‘pale gold’—gold alloyed with silver—of lower value; at the other extreme there were bronze coins, smaller than a modern farthing, which were the coinage of the market-place; intermediate, but still of low value, there were coins about the size of a halfpenny, normally made of copper lightly washed with silver. The silvered bronze and the gold were not flat, as are most coins, but saucer-shaped. The reason for their unusual form is not known. Numismatists describe them as scyphate, and refer to the middle denomination in the later Byzantine system of coinage as Scyphate Bronze, to distinguish it from the petty bronze coinage. Scyphate Bronze was first struck under Alexius I (1081–1118). Substantive issues were made by John II (1118–43), and such coinage became extremely plentiful under Manuel I (1143–80) and his successors Isaac II (1185–95) and Alexius III (1195–1203). After the capture of Constantinople in the course of the Fourth Crusade, the successor-states to the Byzantine Empire at Nicaea, Salonica, and in Epirus continued to issue scyphate bronze coinage, although in much smaller quantities, until after the middle of the thirteenth century.

Remembering Pope Gregory VII: Cardinal Boso and Alexander III

2013 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 87-98
Author(s):  
John Doran
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Gregory The Great ◽  
Christian Thought ◽  
Near Future ◽  
The Church

In the conclusion to his masterly biography of Pope Gregory VII (1073–85), H. E. John Cowdrey notes the paradox that the pope so lionized by modern historians, to the extent that the age of reform bears his name, was largely forgotten in the twelfth century and made little impact on Christian thought, spirituality or canon law. Cowdrey is not alone in his observation that Gregory ‘receded from memory with remarkable speed and completeness’; when he was remembered, it was as a failure and as one who brought decline upon the church. For Cowdrey, the answer to this conundrum lay in the fact that Gregory VII was in fact far closer to the ideals of the sixth century than of the twelfth; he was a Benedictine monk and shared the worldview and oudook of Gregory the Great (590–604) rather than those of the so-called lawyer popes Alexander III (1159–81) and Innocent III (1198–1216). Yet within a century of Gregory’s death he was presented by Cardinal Boso as a model pope, who had overcome a schismatic emperor and the problems which his interference had precipitated in Rome. For Boso, writing for the instruction of the officials of the papal chamber, the very policies set out by Gregory VII were to be pursued and emulated. Far from being a peripheral and contradictory figure, with more in common with the distant past than the near future, Gregory was the perfect guide to the beleaguered Pope Alexander III, who was also struggling against a hostile emperor and his antipope.

Simon of Pattishall, Pioneer Professional Judge

1977 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph V. Turner
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Civil Servant ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
Middle Years ◽  
Magna Carta ◽  
English Law

The latter part of the twentieth century may not find many of us wishing to pay tribute to bureaucrats, but as Helen Cam reminded us, the civil servant “deserves more credit than he has yet had for building up and maintaining our precious tradition of law and order.” In the late twelfth century and the thirteenth century the process of “bureaucratization” first got underway in England. An early professional civil servant, one specializing in judicial activity, was Simon of Pattishall. His name surfaces in the records in 1190, and it disappears after 1216. His time of activity, then, coincides with an important period for English common law: the years between “Glanvill” and Magna Carta.Simon was one of that group of royal judges who might be termed the first “professionals,” a group that took shape by the middle years of Richard I's reign. By the time of John, about ninety men acted at various times as royal judges, either at the Bench at Westminster, with the court following the king, or as itinerant justices. Many of these had only temporary appointments, making circuits in the counties; but a core of fifteen, who concentrated on the work of the courts, can be regarded as early members of a professional judiciary. Simon of PattishalPs is perhaps the most respected name among the fifteen. He had the longest career on the bench, from 1190 until 1216. He founded a judicial dynasty, for his clerk, Martin of Pattishall, became a judge, as did his clerk, William Raleigh, who had as his clerk Henry of Bracton, author of the great treatise on English law.

The Montpellier Codex, Part 2

1978 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Subsequent Research ◽  
Polyphonic Music

The Montpellier Codex is the largest and most sumptuous extant manuscript of thirteenth-century polyphonic music. The works it contains represent the music of the entire thirteenth century, and perhaps that of the late twelfth century as well. Inspired by Yvonne Rokseth's earlier transcriptions, the present edition draws on nearly four decades of subsequent research to offer improved readings of many motets, and comprehensive collation and analysis of all concordances. The musical transcriptions are included in parts I–III; part IV provides text commentary and translations, an index of first lines, and guides to pronunciation.

A Short Survey of Yemeni Sufism from Its Inception up to the Thirteenth Century

2009 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Muhammad Aziz
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Mountainous Area ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Short Survey ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Intellectual Activities

This paper analyzes the historical conditions of Yemen’s Sufi movement from the beginning of Islam up to the rise of the Rasulid dynasty in the thirteenth century. This is a very difficult task, given the lack of adequate sources and sufficient academic attention in both the East and theWest. Certainly, a few sentences about the subject can be found scattered in Sufi literature at large, but a respectable study of the period’s mysticism can hardly be found.1 Thus, I will focus on the major authorities who first contributed to the ascetic movement’s development, discuss why a major decline of intellectual activities occurred in many metropolises, and if the existing ascetic conditions were transformed into mystical tendencies during the ninth century due to the alleged impact ofDhu’n-Nun al-Misri (d. 860). This is followed by a brief discussion ofwhat contributed to the revival of the country’s intellectual and economic activities. After that, I will attempt to portray the status of the major ascetics and prominent mystics credited with spreading and diffusing the so-called Islamic saintly miracles (karamat). The trademark of both ascetics and mystics across the centuries, this feature became more prevalent fromthe beginning of the twelfth century onward. I will conclude with a brief note on the most three celebrated figures of Yemen’s religious and cultural history: Abu al-Ghayth ibn Jamil (d. 1253) and his rival Ahmad ibn `Alwan (d. 1266) from the mountainous area, andMuhammad ibn `Ali al-`Alawi, known as al-Faqih al-Muqaddam (d. 1256), from Hadramawt.

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