The military use of the icon of the Theotokos and its moral logic in the historians of the ninth-twelfth centuries (original) (raw)
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La movilidad de las fronteras entre la historia y la ficción ha sido un viejo problema para la historiografía, que desde muy antiguo incorporó leyendas panegíricas, profecías y experiencias ficticias, articuladas con la tradición del saber, la revisión de las fuentes a la luz de la crítica y la cultura política de la época. Del mismo modo, el presente y el pasado adquieren una relación ambigua y conflictiva para los historiadores, conscientes en muchas ocasiones de las limitaciones de su oficio. Desde dichas premisas, esta intervención pretende analizar la práctica histórica y literaria de la Ilustración en España; en un momento de amplio debate sobre el patriotismo, la dialéctica entre barbarie y civilización y la masculinidad. Estas polémicas atraparon la memoria cultural del rey Pedro I de Castilla (1334-1369) –personaje discutido y negociado, absolutamente problemático en relación a los valores culturales del XVIII– cuya recreación se enmarcó en las necesidades de aquel presente distante. Analizar los compendios históricos de la época, la prensa, las crónicas y las apologías del rey permiten reflexionar sobre los desacuerdos que tuvieron lugar en la configuración de una práctica histórica siempre producto de sus circunstancias y contextos. Las fuentes permiten, además, discutir la idea de distancia histórica y diálogar con una noción del pasado que, de la mano de los historiadores, literatos y periodistas, pasó a jugar un papel político en la sociedad de finales del Antiguo Régimen. Desde posiciones absolutamente plurales y discrepantes, la figura del rey otorgó significado a la sociedad que lo producía y funcionó como refuerzo de los estereotipos que sobre España y la Edad Media se estaban construyendo desde otros ámbitos de la cultura.
Many critics have studied Memorias by Leonor López de Córdoba as an independent account of the aftermath of the execution of Leonor’s father, Martín López de Córdoba, maestre of Alcántara and Calatrava, by Enrique II. No one has considered the extent to which Memorias is similar to other testimonials of the miracles of the Virgin, but the narrative clearly states its intention is to record such miracles performed on Leonor’s behalf so that they can be remembered after her death (‘sepan la relación de todos mis echos é milagros que la Virgen Santa Maria, me mostro, y es mi intención que quede por memoria’ [Ayerbe-Chaux 16]). This essay examines how Memorias is and is not similar to other such testimonials in the manner it refers to historical events and manipulates objects that share some of the same metaphoric associations: cadenas and collares de oro in the early part of the story, and the rosario or chain of prayers in the second part.
NO ES ESTO SINO HYSTORIAS DE LOS ANTIGUOS: BETWEEN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN NARRATIONS
Juan Andrés' treaty Confusión o confutación de la secta Mahomética y del Alcorán is a meaningful example of how the typically medieval topics of anti-Islamic polemics are adapted into the Early Modern literally moulds. The interest in confuting Islam with the aid of the Qur'ān had been fuelling the literature of religious controversy long before Juan Andrés converted to Christianity and took up the quill to rebut his old faith. Nevertheless, his analysis of the content of the Qur'ān differs from the ones conducted before him. Moreover, the Quranic quotations inserted in Juan Andrés' polemical text happen to coincide with the Latin translation of the Qur'ān commissioned by Egidio da Viterbo and its glosses. Therefore, the aim of this paper is twofold: firstly, to revindicate Juan Andrés' autonomy and independence from Medieval polemics ; secondly, to highlight the similarities and correspondence between Juan Andrés' Confusión o confutación and Egidio da Viterbo's Latin translation of the Qur'ān.
From the nineteenth century onward a considerable number of hostile actions against the portraits of royalty and religious art have been recorded. This icono clasm which, before the nineteenth century, was blamed on foreigners, began to become more common among Spaniards early in the century, increasing with the Carlist wars. Due to their increased frequency, such violent actions against these types of representation, both monarchical and religious, came to acquire a very characteristic social function, becoming rites dramatizing popular support for prog ress. The moments of greatest violence against these works took place during the Spanish civil war, including burning and sacking of churches and even murders of priests. With the rise of Francoism, the dictator cast the blame on foreign govern ments, which seems to suggest a generalized tendency by the Spanish authorities to attribute such acts alien forces.
Revista de Antropología y Filosofía de lo Sagrado, 2018
A very special kind of feast belongs to the Christian Orthodox tradition: there is a specific liturgical celebration of the Images in the so-called Sunday of Or-thodoxy. While in many cultures images are employed in order to celebrate an historic event, this is the only feast in which, on the contrary, images are celebrated for themselves. Nonetheless, the role of images in Orthodoxy is not univocally and positively accepted. In fact, the title's expression «the wolf as a shepherd» belongs to a Desert Father and refers to the role of images in our mental life. This is not reported by a heretical iconoclastic document, but by the well-known Philokalia, a kind of handbook of Orthodox Aesthetics. This paper aims to present these two aspects in their paradoxical partnership. First, I will present some historical, symbolic and liturgical aspects of this feast. Thus, we should be able to understand better why many contemporary authors claimed that the origins of our visual culture can be traced in this Feast. However, if we comprehend the philosophical value of Byzantine icons, we realise that they have little to do with our contemporary images, no matter whether we mean artistic, religious or media images. We often talk about the «power of images», but just to blame them-as if they were autonomous entities-or to praise them, in a generalized aestheticization of contemporary life. Iconophobia and iconodoulia, I claim, are emerging as ontologically impoverished versions of the former Byzantine theoretical models. What falls into oblivion is the paradoxical status of the image as «appearance of the essence of Being» that demands as a condition of its own existence its self-sublation. These dialectics, conceptually inspired by the Hegelian logic, are fully present in Byzantine Aesthetics, where the feast is considered as a precarious image, held in memory of a future image loss event known as eschaton.