Specula Revista de Humanidades y Espiritualidad

Quella cotale presenza della sua umanità passionata: Images and affections in the Specchio di Croce by Domenico Cavalca

Alfredo Troiano — Wed, 31 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Taking up medieval monastic spirituality, together with the patristic tradition, Domenico Cavalca (1380s-1341), of the Order of Preachers of Pisa, became a positive catalyst for images with a strong visual and affective impact, promoting for an audience of devout lay people a gradual path of education to affectivity. Trained especially at the school of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Cavalca promotes Christianity not as a "religion of the Book", but as a religion of the Word, of an Incarnate and living Word, unique and personal. The Deus-homo crucifixus is the Book written in the incarnate Word, and asks the meditator to contemplate, as if to 'see' and 'feel' together, this passage.

Adoration of the cross then becomes the model of an affective meditation that gives rise to images capable of transposing Paul's testimony to the Galatians into the spirit as well as into the body, Christo confixus sum cruci. Exploiting a psychological key common to preachers (the man composed of cogitatus, affectus and memory), Ours re-proposes what was the positive (or impulse) of monastic spirituality, that is, the return to God through the Man of the Son, and thus recover that image imprinted on the creature before sin.

Practical interest and didactic approach as the fundamental principles of the Castigos y dotrinas que un sabio dava a sus hijas

Sergio Montalvo Mareca — Wed, 31 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0100

This article proposes the analysis of the Castigos y dotrinas que un sabio dava a sus hijas, a short treatise presumably anonymous and dated around the last years of the 15th century. In terms of subject matter, the text is part of the corpus of publications that examine the nature of women and, in particular, their instruction, essentially aimed at their role as perfect wives.
The Castigos y dotrinas que un sabio dava a sus hijas transcends the philogino-misogino debate in favour of a new organisation, the didactic-doctrinal one.
This organisation would experience its apogee in the next century with such
distinguished texts as those legated by Luis Vives, Erasmus of Rotterdam and Luis de León. In this way, our article emphasises the practical component that derives from the instructions offered throughout the text, as well as the didactic strategies that the sender (a father) follows to efficiently convey the doctrine to his receivers (his daughters).

In talk with death: ways to the last trance in the literary dialogue of the Spanish Golden Age

Germán Redondo Pérez — Wed, 31 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0100

In this article a study is made on a corpus of five arts of dying conceived as literary dialogues. For this, texts written in different stages of the Golden Age of Spanish literature have been selected: 1539, 1565, 1582, 1593 and 1612. The purpose has been to observe how similar themes are treated in different or similar ways in texts with identical aims, but created at different times. The result has been the delimitation of several predominant aspects in the five works, exemplified by citations from each of the texts studied, which allow a comparison with each other to establish the characteristics of the dialogic ars moriendi of the Spanish Golden Age.

Simile and mystical experience. The Gertrudis de la Santísima Trinidad’s Spiritual Confessions

Mª. Àngels Herrero Herrero — Wed, 31 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Gertrudis de la Santísima Trinidad (Elx, 1660-Cocentaina, 1736), abbess of the convent of Nostra Senyora del Miracle (Cocentaina, Valencian Kingdom), was a prolific women writer under the obedience of the spiritual confessor. As a mystic, the use of the simile in her spiritual confessions will serve us as an example to deepen her spirituality and intimate and devotional
religiosity within the cloister between the 17th century and the 18th century.
This resource allows the nun to communicate through a mystical and symbolic style, which at the same time helps to understand the intimate female religiosity between the seventeenth centuries and to understand a way of intimate feminine religiosity between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the
Kingdom of Valencia.

After the franciscan question? Sources and historiography on Francis of Assisi

Alfonso Marini — Wed, 31 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0100

The article presents considerations on the Franciscan question,
born with Sabatier, believing that it is not completely overcome by historiography, but that some Franciscan questions remain. The author starts from the
consideration that two methodological points of Sabatier are still valid: the use of the writings of Francis as a touchstone of the biographical sources and the consideration that all sources are biased and those that hide their bias are more dangerous on a historical level. With the addition of a third point that derives from the discoveries of Sabatier, developed with that of Delorme of the Legenda antiqua Perusina/Compilatio Assisiensis, that is, that the testimonies of the companions are fundamental, even if the latest research shows that the contraposition between the sources must be attenuated since they are intertwined with each other. Some problematic blocks remain some Franciscan questions on which there is no uniformity among historians. 1. The hierarchy of sources. 2. The reductive readings of Francis' historical relevance, both in the sense that he could not escape the mould of his time, and in the sense that his images are produced by the culture and ideologies of the different historical periods. 3. Continuity or caesura between Francis and the Order of Minors.
4 Francis' relationship with popular movements. 5. His relationship with the pope and the ecclesiastical hierarchy. 6. Extension of his preaching of peace in Christianity also to the "infidels".

The beautiful fortresses of Monstrelet’s chronicles and their continuation in Georges d’Amboise’s manuscripts (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Ms. 2678-2679)

Christiane Raynaud — Wed, 31 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Monstrelet’s Chronicles laconically mention fortresses, with adjectives that are not very explicit. The descriptions are few and incomplete.
For Jean Pichore and the Master of Philippe de Gueldre, charged with illustrating these accounts, this was no mean feat. However, the images they give
are among the most successful, whatever the extent of stereotypes or elements
borrowed from reality. An inventory of what define the beauties of these forts and citadels - tall and emblematic silhouettes, imposing masses with sober or overloaded decorations, luxurious interiors - sheds light on the evolution of contemporary tastes and sensibilities between French tradition and Italian influence. Cardinal Georges d’Amboise, the bibliophile who commissioned these manuscripts and owned fortifications he built or refurbished, was thus able to recognize and appreciate the architectural discourse, concepts and lexicon of his time, despite a few improbabilities and clumsiness

Traslado das santas relíquias em Portugal e no Brasil: um fenômeno de longa duração

José Carlos Giménez, Renata Cristina De Sousa Nascimento — Wed, 31 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0100

The possession of relics can symbolically project a territory as sacred, protected by God and his saints, through something tactile, visible, concrete, a spirituality that passes through the materiality and divine protective manifestation of a region and special people, considered separate and chosen. Faced with the possibility of remembering the Holy Land (and transposing its relics), the medieval Christian West recreated and readapted in its territory locations that would be recognized as sublime spaces, depositing special traces there, which could guarantee the exceptionality of the places. A long-lasting phenomenon, the transfer of bodies and objects has permeated the history of the Christian religion, since its beginnings. The promotion of cities and sanctuaries, guaranteed by the presence of the tactile divine, produced and solidified the cult of relics. The transfer of sacred remains constitutes important moments in the strengthening of this cult, pilgrimages, performances, rituals and symbols corroborate the emotionality of this movement. In this article we intend to discuss the transfer of holy relics as a long-lasting phenomenon, taking as a case study the solemn receipt of the Holy Relics, which were translated from the See of Coimbra, to the Real Mosteyro of Santa Cruz and the trajectory of Saint Dulce dos Pobres, the first woman born in Brazil to be canonized by the Catholic Church, whose bodily remains were deposited in the Chapel of Relics, built for this purpose. This set of common memories is an identity factor, the product of a forged, constructed and gradually established tradition.

Introducción

Anna Isabel Peirats Navarro — Wed, 31 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0100