Julian of Toledo and Don Yllán de Toledo:

2021 ◽  
Vol 137 (2) ◽  
pp. 362-382
Author(s):  
E. Michael Gerli
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
The Other ◽  
Don Juan ◽  
Santiago De Compostela ◽  
Conde Lucanor ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Other World ◽  
The Middle Ages

Abstract Exemplum XI of Don Juan Manuel’s Libro del Conde Lucanor (“De lo que contesçió a un deán de Sanctiago con don Yllán, el grand maestro de Toledo”, ca. 1331‒1335) relates the encounter of Don Yllán de Toledo, a learnèd necromancer, and the ambitious Dean of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. Exemplum XI is one of the best known and most celebrated stories in the book for its seemingly preternatural turn in the plot’s action and the characters’ visit to the Other World. The article seeks to identify Don Yllán with Archbishop Julian of Toledo (642‒690), author of the Prognosticon futuri saeculi (687), an important theological tract that circulated widely during the Middle Ages and that served as the basis for the doctrine of Purgatory. The Prognosticon contains illustrative anecdotes of dialogs with the dead and journeys to and from the Other World. As such, it endowed Julian with the legendary reputation of necromancer and probably served as inspiration for Don Juan Manuel’s Exemplum XI of El Conde Lucanor.

Remembrance of the Deceased in Annual Rituals in Poland

Anthropos ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 115 (2) ◽  
pp. 527-534
Author(s):  
Zdzisław Kupisiński
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
The Other ◽  
Theological Interpretation ◽  
Folk Beliefs ◽  
Life After Death ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
The People ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Other World ◽  
Christian Beliefs

The article presents beliefs and rituals related to All Souls’ Day typical for folk Catholicism in Poland. It is based on the results of the ethnographic fieldwork conducted by the author in Radom and Opoczno regions (central Poland), in the years 1980-1983, 1990-1993 and 1998-2005 (a total of 414 days, 650 interviews with 998 informants), as well as on the literature concerning this and other regions of Poland. The popular remembrance of the dead and care for their graves is noticeable throughout the year. Cemeteries in Poland are often visited by people whose relatives passed over to “the other world,” who place flowers and candles on the graves, tidy them up, and pray. Commemoration of the dead takes on a special dimension such days as Christmas, Easter, All Saints’ and All Souls’ Day. Many old All Souls’ rituals disappeared already in the Middle Ages as a result of Christianization and eradication of pre-Christian beliefs. Still, until the 1970s one could observe or reconstruct (relying on the memory of informants) many pre-Christian beliefs and customs that used to be regulated by the ancient ritual calendar based on the solar cycle and the worship of ancestors. The presence of those ancient elements in folk beliefs and rituals indicates a strong faith of the people in life after death, exhibited also by the inhabitants of the area under study both in past centuries and today, although today those customs are given a Christian theological interpretation.

ISLAMIC COINS FROM EASTERN GIZA (EGYPT)

2020 ◽  
pp. 57-62
Author(s):  
E. Yu. Goncharov ◽  
◽  
S. E. Malykh ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Human Activity ◽  
The Other ◽  
Dynamic Nature ◽  
14Th Century ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Ancient Egyptian ◽  
Ancient Rock ◽  
Oriental Studies ◽  
The Middle Ages

The article focuses on the attribution of one gold and two copper coins discovered by the Russian Archaeological Mission of the Institute of Oriental Studies RAS in the ancient Egyptian necropolis of Giza. Coins come from mixed fillings of the burial shafts of the Ancient Egyptian rock-cut tombs of the second half of the 3rd millennium B.C. According to the archaeological context, the coins belong to the stages of the destruction of ancient burials that took place during the Middle Ages and Modern times. One of the coins is a Mamluk fals dating back to the first half of the 14th century A.D., the other two belong to the 1830s — the Ottoman period in Egypt, and are attributed as gold a buchuk hayriye and its copper imitation. Coins are rare for the ancient necropolis and are mainly limited to specimens of the 19th–20th centuries. In general, taking into account the numerous finds of other objects — fragments of ceramic, porcelain and glass utensils, metal ware, glass and copper decorations, we can talk about the dynamic nature of human activity in the ancient Egyptian cemetery in the 2nd millennium A.D. Egyptians and European travelers used the ancient rock-cut tombs as permanent habitats or temporary sites, leaving material traces of their stay.

Ghosts in the Middle Ages: The Living and the Dead in Medieval Society

2000 ◽  
Vol 105 (2) ◽  
pp. 598
Author(s):  
Allen J. Frantzen ◽  
Jean-Claude Schmitt ◽  
Teresa Lavender Fagan
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Middle Ages

Espiritus de Invierno

2020 ◽  
pp. 36-56
Author(s):  
Yannick Cormier
Keyword(s):  
Iberian Peninsula ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Basque Country ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
Wild Man ◽  
Traditional Societies ◽  
Evil Spirits ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Middle Ages

In many parts of Europe and especially in the Iberian Peninsula (Spain, Portugal, and the Basque Country), archaic and mysterious figures regularly haunt carnival rites since the Middle Ages (but referring, according to some specialists like A. Darpeix, member of the historical and archaeological society of Perigord, to a distant shamanic and Neolithic antiquity). They are masks adorned with skins of animals, vegetables, and straw, surrounded by bells and bones, often crowned with horns and pieces of wood. Thus arises the wild man within modern paganism to symbolize the rebirth of nature emerging from winter. The figures are essentially ambiguous, at the crossroads of nature and culture. The masks always speak of the mysteries of existence: in traditional societies, they were or still are the figures of ancestors and spirits of the dead, that of protective or evil spirits.

Aristotle's Unmoved Movers

Traditio ◽  
1946 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 1-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Merlan
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
The Other ◽  
World Picture ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Concentric Spheres ◽  
The One ◽  
The Universe ◽  
The Middle Ages

According to Aristotle all heavenly movement is ultimately due to the activity of forty-seven (or fifty-five) ‘unmoved movers'. This doctrine is highly remarkable in itself and has exercised an enormous historical influence. It forms part of a world-picture the outlines of which are as follows. The universe consists of concentric spheres, revolving in circles. The outermost of these bears the fixed stars. The other either bear planets or, insofar as they do not, contribute indirectly to the movements of the latter. Each sphere is moved by the one immediately surrounding it, but also possesses a movement of its own, due to its mover, an unmoved, incorporeal being. (It was these beings which the schoolmen designated as theintelligentiae separatae.) The seemingly irregular movements of the planets are thus viewed as resulting from the combination of regular circular revolutions. The earth does not move and occupies the centre of the universe. Such was Aristotle's astronomic system, essential parts of which were almost universally adopted by the Arabic, Jewish, and Christian philosophers of the Middle Ages.

scholarly journals Procesy i egzekucje „żywych trupów” przed sądami miejskimi i wiejskimi w XVI–XVIII wieku – przyczynek do wierzeń w magia posthuma na Śląsku

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (4 (1)) ◽  
pp. 77-92
Author(s):  
Daniel Wojtucki
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Expert Witnesses ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Living Dead ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Middle Ages

There are references reaching back to the Middle Ages, regarding the fear of the “undead” or “living dead” who would rise from their graves in a local cemetery to haunt and harm the community. The fear of the “undead” was extremely strong, and the entailing hysteria often affected entire communities. In the 16th to the 18th century, in Silesia, effective forms of coping with the harmful deceased were developed. Analysing the preserved source material, we are able to determine that the basic actions involved finding the grave of the “undead” in the cemetery, exhuming the corpse and destroying it. However, this did not always mean the total annihilation of the poor man’s corpse. The trial and execution of the corpse of a person suspected of the harmful activity against the living took place observing almost the same rules as in the case of the living. Apart from the authorities, who usually commissioned local jurors to handle the situation, opinions and advice were also sought from the clergy as well as gravediggers and executioners. The last were considered to be experts of sorts and were often called upon to see corpses of the suspected dead. In the analysed cases of posthumous magic (magia posthuma) in Silesia, we deal with two directions of handling the corpse accused of a harmful posthumous activity. In both cases, the main decision was made to remove such corpses from the cemetery’s area. Costs of the trial and execution of the “undead” were considerable. They included expenses incurred due to rather frequent court hearings at which sometimes dozens of witnesses were heard, payments to expert witnesses, payments to guards watching graves, costs of legal instructions, services of gravediggers who would dig up suspicious graves, and, finally, the remuneration of executioners and their people. In the second half of the 18th century, despite relevant decrees issued by supreme authorities, trials and executions of the dead were not completely abandoned.

scholarly journals Early Slavic housing from Belz surroundings

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 224-234
Author(s):  
Taras Mylian
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Key Words ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
The Other ◽  
Compacted Clay ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Big City ◽  
Conservation Research ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Middle Ages

Territory of the upper reaches of Western Bug River, especially the annalistic of Belz in Solokiya and its surroundings, is rich in archeological sites. In 2016, as part of the Program «Protection and Preservation of the Cultural Heritage of the Lviv Region for 2016–2018», conservation research was conducted at the settlement Belz 22 (Hora). It is a multi-layered settlement with cultural and chronological horizons from the final Paleolithic to modern times. Information and research on it were conducted with advantages during XX century however, for the first time in the settlement; remains of a Slavic dwelling-semi-dugout (object 20) of the Prague culture were discovered and studied. Research has shown that dwelling had two periods of functioning. Traces of restructuring were confirmed, which led to a reduction of the area and changing of the shape – from rectangular to square. Evidence of the reconstruction was the remains of two clay ovens, the oldest of which was partially cut down by a later wall. Under the remains of this wall above the furnace a Roman denarius of the II century was found. Ovens are built on special sites made of compacted clay. The older oven has a dome lined with special rollers. Discovered material is represented mainly by handmade ceramic pots, some of them are reconstructed. Some of the forms of utensils were common during the late V – early VI centuries, and the other part – during the second half of VI – early VII century. This division corresponded to the periods of housing. An important find was the weights for the loom, which were reused to build the oven. An additional evidence of the development of weaving in the settlement is a bi-conical spinner with flat platforms, which comes from dwelling. The settlement on the outskirts of the annalistic Belz is characterized by permanence and genetic connection throughout the Middle Ages – from individual Slavic settlements in this region to the creation of a separate principality around the big city. Key words: Prague culture, Belz, Solokiya, dwelling, oven, ceramics, denarius.

scholarly journals Saints, Martyrs, and the Reformation: Reflections on Robert Bartlett's Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things?

2016 ◽  
Vol 85 (4) ◽  
pp. 803-809
Author(s):  
Euan Cameron
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Cult Of Saints ◽  
Religious Aspects ◽  
The Middle Ages

Robert Bartlett's book on the cult of saints in the Middle Ages clearly constitutes a major achievement. Its scope is vast; its approach ranges from the chronological to the thematic; it embraces many cultural, as well as theological and religious, aspects of the subject. Finally, it is informed by a rich comparative vision that includes wide-ranging discussion of other religions.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document