Book chapter
Warum pflegten deutsche Könige auf Altären zu sitzen?
The article analizes the ritual of setting of ecclesiastical and secular princes upon altar'a mensa during inauguration rituals, practicised in the Middle Ages.
In book
The article is centered on the custom of using of such a specific insignia as parasol in processions of western princes during the Middle Ages.
Often in the Middle Ages corpse of a dead ruler became centre of intesive ritual activity. One of its specific forms was plundering of the dead body or/and exhibiting it naked without any sort of insignia. The author disputes with explanations of this custom proposed in academaic publications of the last decades and demonstrates new cases, concerning secular rulers, mainly kings of England.
One of the first more or less extensive Russian official accounts, describing Muscovite embassies to European courts, depicts the mission of Vladimir Plemiannikov and Istoma Maloy to Emperor Maximilian I in 1517. Its reliability can now be examined anew due to several documents recently found (or reassessed) in state archives in Moscow and Innsbruck. This documentary evidence reveals the official report of the ambassadors to be not ingenuous and complete description of all relevant events (as it presents itself on the first glance) but rather a sophisticated construct. The authors' specific narrative strategy was based on selectivity of their account (where dubious episodes were omitted) and accentuation of those sides of their activity, that could show them in the most favourable light (as most devoted and skilful servants) in the eyes of the Grand Duke and his counsellors.
The paper examines different attempts to define philosophy as a discipline in Spain between 1557 and 1627 and thus fills a gap in scholarship on early modern philosophy, in which an analysis of how the early moderns defined philosophy as a discipline is by and large lacking. In the sources under examination, three main strategies for defining philosophy can be distinguished: an analysis of the meaning of ’philosophy’, leading to reflections on the complicated relation between philosophy and wisdom, or an analysis of the end of philosophy, evoking debates on the relevance of practical philosophy and the good life, or an analysis of ’philosophical objects’, discussing the question whether philosophy is a ’science of everything’ and whether it can be scientific at all.
The paper demonstrates that early modern Spanish Aristotelians were united by a common methodology and shared questions rather than by a unified body of doctrine. And it shows that attempts to define philosophy had largely didactic relevance and should not be misunderstood as ’metaphilosophical’ in the contemporary sense of the word.
This book brings together a group of leading experts on the political history of Germany and the medieval Empire from the Carolingian period to the end of the Middle Ages. Its purpose is to introduce and analyze key concepts in the study of medieval political culture. The representation of power by means of texts, buildings and images is a theme which has long interested historians. However, recent debates and methodological insights have fundamentally altered the way this subject is perceived, opening it up to perspectives unnoticed by its pioneers in the middle of the twentieth century. By taking account of these debates and insights, this volume explores a series of fundamental questions. How was power defined in a medieval context? How was it claimed, legitimized and disputed? What were the moral parameters against which its exercise was judged? How did different spheres of political power interact? What roles were played by texts, images and rituals in the maintenance of, and challenges to, the political order? The contributors bring varied and original approaches to these and other questions, illuminating the complex power relationships which determined the changing political history of medieval Germany.
The author compares the final report of ambassodors of the Grand Duke of Moscow after their mission in Innsbrick in 1518 with contemporary accounts concerning the same embassy survived in Austrian archives.
The author discusses the meaning of zhe term "the Middle Ages".