The Cathars became a major movement, while having some influence in the Rhineland, Northern Italy and Northern France the movement was strongest in southern France (especially the Languedoc region) and northern Italy. By the 12th century the Cathar popular movement had gained a substantial following in urbanized southern France.
The dualistic…[Read more]

A pesar de que ya el clásico de Cicerón sobre la amistad enfatizaba cuántos daño podría producirse al considerarla “como compañera de los vicios” en vez de “ayudante de las virtudes”, en realidad el concepto medieval de las malas amistades, dejando al margen el significado de ‘amistad’ como ‘tratado’ o ‘confederación’, se explica mejor en términ…[Read more]

The Four Primary Drives: The Need for Meaning, the Need to Belong, the Need for Ideology, and the Spiritual Drive
Religious beliefs are primarily created and generated by four very basic and fundamental “Needs” or “Drives.” From a rather practical and pragmatic approach, in general, religions could be said to involve meaning or purpose, others…[Read more]

George Barton, PhD: “Disaster and sorrow compel either a soul or a nation to seek anew the foundations of life. Times of sorrow are accordingly times of religious growth. The Babylonian exile was no exception. Indeed, the influence of this exile upon the religion of Israel was enormous. This was in part due to the fact that the exile was the e…[Read more]

Eighteenth-century Spanish music experienced a golden age thanks, especially, to the proliferation of centers such as the chapels, which articulated and structured the musical life of our cities: the main sound activity was centered on ecclesiastical music, both liturgical and paraliturgical, with which religious festivities were solemnized.…[Read more]

Geertz, perhaps the most influential of the anthropologists, contends that symbolism and meaning are central to religion: “The view of man as a symbolizing, conceptualizing, meaning-seeking animal, which has become increasingly popular both in the social sciences and in philosophy over the past several years, opens up a whole new approach not o…[Read more]

Uno de los muchos manuscritos de la Crónica de Enrique IV de Enríquez
del Castillo,1 en concreto el que hoy reposa en la Biblioteca de El Escorial
(X.II.15), se abre con unos curiosos versos seguramente redactados por el
anónimo amanuense autor de esta copia, fechada en la primera mitad del
siglo XVI.2 El poemita, que creo es inédito (algo lóg…[Read more]

This is pre-publication preview introduces the major questions, methods, and insights of my book When a Human Gives Birth to a Raven: Rabbis & the Reproduction of Species (UC Press, 2023).

This chapter presents the significance of both Spanish cancioneros and Portuguese cancioneiros for the scholarly examination of medieval Jewish history and literature on the Iberian Peninsula. Through a close integration of historiographical and literary analysis, all major cancioneros are examined and contextualized based on exemplary…[Read more]

Public art at Campbelltown has been used to lift and invigorate run-down parts of the city centre. The City Council has commissioned murals to brighten otherwise dull streets and laneways.
The city has effectively adopted the definition of public art from the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art. This position states that public art is ‘an…[Read more]

Du sage Varnava la merveilleuse apparition de sa vision avec exemple pour tous, cette traduction-recréation roumaine en vers du Dialogus du poète baroque hongrois Nyéki Vörös Mátyas, effectuée en Transylvanie en 1670, peut être considérée comme la première œuvre du pope Ioan de Vintz. Sur le plan européen, sa Vision de Varnava représente l…[Read more]

The Burragorang Valley is one of those lost places that people fondly remember from the past. A place of imagination and dreaming where former residents fondly re-tell stories from their youth. These places create potent memories and nostalgia for many people and continue to be places of interest. They are localities of myths and legends and…[Read more]

The National Herbarium of New South Wales wins the AILA 2023 NSW Australian Institute of Landscape Architects Awards in the category of Health & Education. Designed by Australian architects and design studio Architectus the building was inspired by the seed pod of the waratah, the floral symbol of NSW. This is one of the newest facilities at…[Read more]

Pese a su prestigio académico y a la importancia de su producción poética, el valenciano Juan Fernández de Heredia es un poeta cancioneril de cuya vida y obra todavía albergamos bastantes lagunas. Un factor que podría explicar esta situación es que sus poesías completas, editadas por Rafael Ferreres a mediados del siglo pasado, (Fernández de Hered…[Read more]

La hipersexualización de personajes femeninos en la literatura de todos los tiempos responde a varios patrones culturales bastante determinados y convenientemente analizados por la teoría literaria, tanto la de rango más generalista (Dworkin 13-47) como la dedicada de forma específica a las literaturas hispánicas (García Velasco 292-307). En el…[Read more]

El artículo analiza el neogoticismo y su incidencia en la propaganda ideológica dispersa en la Edad Media hispánica desde los siglos IX al XV. Se estudia su apogeo en las crónicas medievales y su posterior desaparición, así como su recuperación entre los siglos XV y XVI de la mano de obras genealógicas y de cancioneros poéticos. Específi…[Read more]

For the 16th birthday of the hereditary prince Carl August of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach on 3 September 1773, his teacher Christoph Martin Wieland had the play “The Choice of Hercules”, a “dramatic cantata”, performed at the Weimar court theatre. Did Wieland thus connect to a tradition of the Hercules myth connected with the dynasty or the place…[Read more]

This essay traces the transformations of aristocratic representation using the example of the Russian Tsar’s daughter Maria Pavlovna (1786–1859), who was married to the Weimar court in 1804. Maria Pavlovna endeavoured to put her informal ruling techniques, charitable undertakings as well as her patronage and memorial ambitions in Weimar’s ‘…[Read more]