Angels, as mythical beings, appear and disappear suddenly throughout Biblical Texts, without any clear explanation of their origins or metaphysical ranks. Whether they are considered circumstantial theophanies or entities with granted self-existence and specific divine functions; such metaphysical entities have a vital presence in the religious…[Read more]

The literary text is born with its criticism methodology and its criticizer. The creator
stretches his hands out to the reader/criticizer to take their first step towards the text
and remove any ambiguity, symbolism, or metaphors that may be present.
He extends bridges between him and the society that produced the text, or bluff to
find the…[Read more]

After the period of splendour experienced by the musical chapel of the Collegiate Church of Santa María la Mayor in Talavera de la Reina during the 18th century, we witnessed a period of decline, which was part of the crisis experienced by Spanish religious music during the 19th century. The effects of the War of Independence, the successive…[Read more]

This article focuses on the personal and artistic career of one of the most representative composers of Spain in the second half of the 18th century and the first third of the 19th century. Ramón Garay, born in 1761 in Asturias, held the post of Chapel Master of Jaén Cathedral for 36 fruitful years, which saw the birth of an extraordinary p…[Read more]

This article focuses on the decline of Spanish ecclesiastical music from the beginning of the 19th century, coinciding with the outbreak of the War of Independence. This decline worsened as a result of the application of successive disentailments by the various liberal governments and the signing of the Concordat of 1851. To remedy this situation,…[Read more]

This article examines Mary Magdalene’s biblical identity and poetic representation in selected sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish texts. An alternative reading or “re-visioning” (Adrienne Rich’s term) of the narratives that tell her story reclaims her figure from masculinist characterizations of Mary Magdalene that have made an enduring…[Read more]

A theological biography of Michael Sattler and an examination of some of his final written correspondence prior to his execution. Sattler’s biography was particularly influential because of its unique circulation and historical reception.

In this book chapter, Dr. Davis examines the depiction of a dissimulated desire for material improvement (mejora) as it is expressed in the epic poetry of imperial Spain, particularly in Alonso de Ercilla’s La Araucana. She shows that within the aristocratic context of the times, the desire for personal betterment or “mejora” is always contingent…[Read more]

The nautical motif of the ex-voto (votive offering) is a lyric genre that reflects poetically the possible experience of a shipwreck survivor. Paradoxically, many of the poets who evoke the perils of sea travel never left Spain or, at most, sailed only the waters of the Mediterranean. Their writing of the sea remained consistently codified in…[Read more]

The biographical trajectory of the Franco-Flemish composer Josquin des Prez can be described as exciting and his musical contribution as transcendent in an era of sublime creativity that coincided with the artistic and intellectual rediscovery of the values of classical Greco-Latin antiquity. A contemporary of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo,…[Read more]

Study on the personal and artistic career of the master from Lleida, José Cortasa Rives, chapel master of the Collegiate Church of Santa María la Mayor de Talaveta de la Reina.

This is the first monographic work to be published on one of the most important musical centres and chapels in the Valencian Community: the cathedral of Segorbe, which until now had not been researched. Thanks to the work carried out in the archives of the cathedral on the chapter minutes, factory books and other unpublished documentation, it has…[Read more]

In his response to the Dauphin, his threats before Harfleur’s walls, and his St. Crispin’s Day oration, Henry V deploys what we might call proleptic histories of the present as a means of rhetorical persuasion. Henry invites his audiences, that is, to imagine themselves in the future, understanding the present as part of their own history. Hen…[Read more]

In this early article, written in the wake of the publication of Alessandro Martinengo’s _La astrología en la obra de Quevedo_ (Madrid: Alhambra, 1983), Dr. Davis focuses on the astrological tropes in a Quevedo sonnet on the nativity of Christ to see whether this poetic text can shed additional light on the poet’s documented penchant for…[Read more]

Professor Davis’s early article on appropriations of the Indies by Spanish poets who remained in Spain invites us to contemplate a body of poetry that plays the idea of American treasures against the value of true, spiritual riches.

Several of Francisco de Quevedo’s hagiographic poems are puzzling because of their irreverent tone. Edward M. Wilson and Jose Manuel Blecua both noted that “la relacion entre las dos caras de un Quevedo es cuestión difícil y delicada para los modernos;” indeed, the writer’s particular blend of “las burlas con las veras” has attracted attention s…[Read more]

This essay analyzes the work of the poetic function as defined by Roman Jakobson in poems by Francisco de Quevedo that concern themselves with the trope of the rending of the rocks at the moment of Christ’s death on the cross, and in other poetic texts of Quevedo.

This book was the result of the Prize ‘X Premio-Beca Serapio Múgica’, awarded in 2008 on a competitive basis by the City Council of Irún to develop the research project ‘La música en Irún en el siglo XIX: La capilla de música de la Iglesia de Santa María del Juncal’ (Music in Irún in the 19th century: The music chapel of the Church of Santa María…[Read more]

Because of its material characteristics, the sonic poses a challenge to the influential paradigm of religion as mediation. This article makes a case for a neo-phenomenological analytic of atmospheres in order to do justice to the sonic in anthropological approaches to religion. Approaching the sonic as atmospheric half-things, I propose a…[Read more]

Journal article about the organization of the music chapel at the royal monastery Descalzas in Madrid during the 18th century