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This article discusses an observable revival of the interest in the Middle Ages in Germany. This phenomenon—sometimes called medieval renaissance—manifests itself particularly in various areas of popular culture. To prove the thesis posed, the author analyses a handful of these areas, that is: exhibitions, historical reconstructions and imitations of medieval fortresses and settlements, social and computer games as well as reconstructed medieval fairs and chivalry contests. The article presents a survey of the past and present cultural events serving as evidence in favour of the main thesis. At the same time, the author asks about the reasons for this increased interest in the Middle Ages. Representative opinions of historians and other specialists, as well as fans of the Middle Ages seem to suggest one clear answer: the 21st-century man yearns for an alternative reality, dissimilar to the fast and noisy contemporaneity. The Middle Ages offer a shelter based on the strong foundations of the fixed medieval reality and the stable system of values.
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The article is devoted to impersonal sentences with form of the genitive case in the language of Old Russian Northwestern monuments. A total of 204 sentences were analyzed, of which only 5 do not contain negation. As a result, the semantics of predicates in constructions of this type are described, statistics concerning the peculiarities of the use of forms of moods and tenses is presented. The use of the lexeme нѣтъ (acting in the function ‘there is no’ in the present tense) and its variants in impersonal constructions are analyzed. It is revealed that constructions without negation function in two types – dialectal northwestern construction with the verb быти and constructions with full-valued verbs.
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The article reviews the manuscripts of medical content (fundamental works - Medical Book ("Thsigni Saakimoi"), "Yadigar Daud", "Incomparable Qarabadin" (“Ustsoro Karabadini”), collections, separate works, qarabadins), the chronological framework of which includes the 10th-19th centuries, they reflect information about infectious diseases and their treatment; also, medical references in the memoirs with a focus on the public perceptions, causes, and management of these diseases. The article presents the material in terms of belonging to the chronological, sectoral and cultural environment: the role of the authors or translators of the works in terms of knowledge about epidemiological diseases, the establishment of special terminology, the introduction of Eastern and European traditions. The Georgian manuscripts reflect the diagnosis of some infectious diseases - plague, cholera, leprosy, smallpox, typhoid - the influence of regional and social characteristics of the infected on the spread and course of diseases, traditional, folk, and contemporary scientific methods of treatment, including vaccination, isolation/lockdown, and escaping tactics, other anti-epidemic measures. These manuscripts contain references to Eastern, Muslim, and European, as well as Russian physicians and scientists (Galen, Jenner, and others); To some extent, it presents the details of society's approach to infectious diseases, in general, the general knowledge and picture of the development of medicine in a specific historical context.
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Review of: Magdalena Skoblar, ur., Byzantium, Venice and the Medieval Adriatic: Spheres of Maritime Power and Influence, c. 700-1453, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021, 400 stranica
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This paper considers the topic of sacred spaces in North America through the vantage offered by Chacoan roads, monumental avenues constructed by Ancestral Four Corners people of the US Southwest from ca. AD 850–1200. I begin with a critique of the concept of the “sacred” as applied to the Chacoan past, suggesting instead that the Indigenous North American concept of power (in the sense of potent, generative force infused throughout the environment) offers a more culturally relevant framing. Next, I present three examples of locations along Chacoan roads that I argue were recognized as places of power due to the inherent landscape affordances of these locales. I close by briefly describing some of the practices carried out along Chacoan roads and drawing a connection between the understanding of “sacredness” evidenced through the archaeology of Chacoan roads and contemporary Native American activist efforts to protect landscapes of great power and meaning.
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The increasing environmental changes and the progressive climate crisis are forcing a constant search for the causes of the problem. It is seen not only in technological progress, industrialization and consumptionism, but in man’s negative attitudes towards nature. One of its solutions is the formation of a new pro-ecological attitude, which operates not only in the natural, but also in the social and cultural context. A manifestation of contemporary ecological thought are gardens, which have now acquired the status of a timeless ecological topos and are becoming an ecosymbol of man's relationship with the environment. In this sense, gardens are a place of coexistence between man and nature, which is treated as a common home — an oikos. The purpose of this article is to explain the contemporary idea of ecological gardens and to try to trace their origins in Roman agronomic literature and medieval gardens. In addition, to relate the garden practices and solutions of the time to the modern ecological meaning.
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The article explores a big number of lexical and figurative similarities concerning the passions of the soul conveyed in the works of two authors who take significant place in the history of the medieval and modern Bulgarian literature – the first one is the XIV century author of religious anthems – Efrem and the second is Yavorov – one of the most famous Bulgarian poets from the very beginning of the XX century. Efrem’s views about the fall, passions and contrition of the soul, as well as the connections of these views with the Christian penitential literature and st. Paul’s letter to the Romans are regarded in details. Special attention is paid to Efrem’s soteriological notion of inferno which is rooted in psalms and the Christian idea of Jesus’ victory over death. This soteriological notion essentially differs from the mythological notion of inferno taking place in other literary traditions from the same period. In respect to the passions of the soul the analysis of the poetry of Yavorov reveals a big number of figurative and lexical similarities with Efrem’s anthems. I conclude that the similarities in question are not result of cultural continuum between Yavorov and Efrem but originate from common dramatic experiences exceeding epochs and the peculiarities of literary genres. These common experiences give rise to similar metaphysic language used by both authors.
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In attempting to summarize in a few sentences the achievements of the medieval scholars of the Polish school of ius gentium, we must emphasize that by employing the inherited legal and philosophico-theological tradition and intellectual achievements of the University of Kraków, coupling it with their own genius, they manager to create a coherent and universal system of international law. It was a system so modern, wise, tolerant and universal that it was able to be applied not only in solving the painful problem stemming from the lengthy conflict between Poland and the Teutonic Knights but was also used in resolving global problems of the contemporary Christian’s world conflict with the non-Christian one. That legal system, based upon the eternal principles of Divine and natural law, taking account of the Gospel Law of Love and inseparably connecting law with morality and justice with truth, remains valid even today.
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The death of a person is a complex issue fact that older law looked at in two ways. First and foremost, death represented a consequence; the application of a legal sanction. The oldest law considered execution more as a means of healing, as a ritual, and only in the late Middle Ages was execution thought of as a deterrent or a means of retaliation towards a criminal. In the second approach, death could be a prerequisite for a range of legal consequences. For example, a marriage ends with a death, and after the canonical form of marriage was instituted, death was the only legal method of ending a marriage. Naturally, death was key in inheritance law, as it is a prerequisite for obtaining family assets. Legal holdovers from the Árpád period regulated in particular the protection of widows and the interests of the presently forming nobility among the population.
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The paper discusses cross-linguistic interference observed while studying Latin humiliatio, humilitas (and additionally homagium, venia) and Old Polish pokora, referring to the statutory and customary legal practice of ‘public humiliation of the culprit, most often the murderer, and their request for forgiveness’. The research focuses on the linguistic and socio-cultural changes that made the juridical meaning of humiliatio, humilitas emerge. The paper offers a diachronic analysis of the development of a set of words that share the root humil*, followed by a synchronic study of the vocabulary attested in Old Polish, Old Czech, and in Medieval Latin used in other countries. The article discusses linguistic and socio-cultural factors that might have contributed to the development of the juridical sense of humiliatio, humilitas in Medieval Latin in Poland, and concludes with a hypothesis that the described sense emerged as a calque of one of the senses of the Polish word pokora.
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The image of the Byzantine Empire in the mid-fifth century and the perception of its rulers in the Old Rus’ writing was formed on the basis of the Orthodox Slavonic translations created in the Balkans of the works of three Byzantine historians: John Malalas (sixth century), George the Monk called Hamartolos (ninth century), and Constantine Manasses (twelfth century). The use of their accounts by the authors of chronicles, even in the second half of the 16th century, testifies to the exceptional longevity of Byzantine hi-storiography and the peculiar timelessness of the works of the aforementioned historians. It should be noted, however, that Pulcheria, Theodosius II, Athenais-Eudocia and Marcian did not only attract the attention of Old Rus’ historiographers as persons with real influen-ce on the course of events in the past. Orthodox Slavs of the late Middle Ages viewed the mid-fifth century primarily as the era of the great disputes over the nature of Christ, culmi-nating in the convening of the ecumenical councils of Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451). Some of the emperors and empresses involved in the theological controversies of their time were venerated as saints in the realm of Slavia Orthodoxa. Analysis of the Old Rus’ chronicles from the 14th-16th centuries allows us to assume that hagiography influenced the creation of the images of such figures in historiography. In order to reconstruct the overall image of Pulcheria and Athenais-Eudokia in Old Rus’ literature, it would therefore be necessary to examine the hagiographic texts dedicated to them.
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The article presents an unpublished iconographic image of St. Cyril and Methodius from the early 20th century found at the “St. Dimitar” church in the town of Byala Cherkva, Tarnovo region. It is an illustration of a scene from the life of the Slavic Enlighteners, which depicts a moment from their Khazar mission. The compositional solution is entirely original. The placement of the scene is also unusual – it is placed on a panel of the iconostasis, under the royal icon of the Slavic Enlighteners. The image in question adds a new touch to the Cyril and Methodius pictorial tradition, which, although a local and isolated decision, reflects the ideas and perceptions of the Bulgarians of the early 20th century about their medieval history.
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Although it is known that there are songs and dances belonging to different nations in the history of music, there are also songs and dances whose origins are unknown. Many of them are said to have originated in ancient times,some deriving from church music; others were created by travelling musicians in the Middle Ages. In addition to Gregorian chant, the melodic repertoire created by itinerant musicians, which evolved more naturally into a major-minor tonality, formed the basis of both religious and secular music in the following centuries. Travelling musicians, who were both poets and musicians, travelled from province to province, staying in towns and castles and spreading news and events through their songs. These talented and experienced poets-musicians based their fame on their poems and songs, especially those dealing with "pure and noble" love. Travelling musicians, who spread across Europe for centuries, were known by different names at different times, in different countries and regions. These travelling musicians were called "troubadour" in Southern France and Provence, "trouvère" in Northern France, "minnesänger" and later "meistersinger" in Germany and Austria, "minstrel" and "gleeman" in England, "travatore" in Italy and "trovador/trobador" in Spain. Apart from these, "jongleur", "ménestrel" and "goliard" are also important representatives of this tradition. The common theme of the travelling musicians in their works is the mysterious love that they cannot reach. It is known that some travelling musicians, who sang, recited poetry and even danced while playing instruments, added a different dimension to music with the cymbals they wore on their bodies, and even performed one-man shows by juggling and clowning to music. In medieval Europe, non-religious songs and dances accompanied many aspects of everyday life, not only entertaining crowds in marketplaces but also adding colour to special events such as royal visits and religious festivals.
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The subject of the present study is the Paulicians. With their native homeland in Anatolia and different Christian doctrine, the Paulicians were a purely underground movement, influential in the 7th-12th centuries. Perceived as heretical by Orthodox Christianity, they were forced to act secretly. However, they were influential in Byzantium and the Orthodox Church when they were strong. Orthodox and Armenians were responsible for their disappearance in Anatolia, which led to the emergence of different doctrines and movements in the following centuries and their spread in the Balkans. Constantinos, the Paulicians’ first leader, was pronounced a didaskalos in 655. In the first half of the 9th century, divided into two, the movement lost its power in Anatolia. Constantinos and later leaders identified themselves as Christians. The Paulician doctrine accepts some texts from the New Testament, but they interpret the Scriptures, Jesus Christ, and rituals such as baptism and evharistiya differently from Orthodox Christians. Although often associated with dualist doctrines, neither their form of organization nor their orders and prohibitions are similar to the dualist ones. Their association with Christianity is based on more detailed data; however, they have different ideas about central issues, such as the Trinity and the position of Jesus Christ as God. The Paulicians adopted a significant number of New Testament texts, especially the Gospels and the Epistles of Paul. Thus they adopted a new interpretation of Christianity, which, combined with their belief that deviated from the primary religious admissions, led to a negative perception. Due to their different interpretations, they were declared heretical by the Armenian Church in the east and the Orthodox Church, and the Catholic Church in the west. As a result, they were persecuted and forced to migrate or go underground; thus, the inauthentic information about them increased. Since there are no Paulicians living today, there is no way to study the subject in its own reality.
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This article strives for a combined approach consisting of historical geography and art and church history in the research of Duklja and Raška in the times of Stefan Nemanja. The article’s first part addresses the circumstances of the birth of Stefan Nemanja and the question of Nemanja’s two baptisms. Moreover, data on the churches and monasteries, their patrocinia and the stećci (funeral monuments) in the area of research has been gathered and then analysed with digital tools to offer a map-based reconstruction of the “Sacred Landscape”. The second part focuses on the early medieval church of St. Stephen in Sušćepan, located near Herceg Novi in today’s Montenegro. Among its church furnishings and sculptural decorations, a parapet slab, most probably from the 11th century, stands out. Besides highlighting similar solutions on the parapet slabs of churches along the eastern coast of the Adriatic, the paper draws attention to iconographic solutions as well as floral and geometric motifs and their importance within the sacred space of the church. The third and final part of the article introduces an analysis of selected written sources illuminating the relationship of Duklja with the Latin Church, particularly with the Apostolic See in Rome, in the 12th and 13th centuries. It deals with the communication of the Papal Chancellery with the archbishops of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) and Antivari (Bar) from the backdrop of the ongoing disputes over the church hierarchy in Southern Dalmatia.
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