Volume 23, Issue 1

Starting from the deficiencies of current approaches regarding the description of the hero in medieval narratives, this article aims to functionalise exorbitance ( unmâze ) as a new category of literary history. Unlike the conceptual and binary typing of the protagonist as ‘hero’ resp. ‘knight’, this category promotes a flexible model that operates relationally and hence enables gradual differentiations between the texts.Examples of medieval (heroic) epic (‘Nibelungenlied’) and (chivalric) romance (‘Flore und Blanscheflur’, ‘Wigalois’) will show the narrative treatment and stylisation of the exorbitant hero. The focus will be on the varying assessments of his acts: If the epic hero is able to defy social norms and current laws (cf. Siegfried’s courtship, Hagen’s murdering of Siegfried) without being penalised, the exorbitance in the romance falls within the scope of ‘ratio’. Thus, exorbitance is on the one hand confined and ‘assessed’, on the other hand excessive acts are rigorously sanctioned and inhibited. Referring to the current manifestations of exorbitance in the socio-political context, the concept of exorbitance emerges as an unchanged productive pattern. Its socio-political relevance encourages a literary-historical, epoch-spanning use of this concept, whose scope is a re-assessment of the history of literature as the history of exorbitance.

The present contribution deals with excess in medieval and early modern monastic asceticism. It claims that excess, in this context, is not an individual option, but a general problem inherent to Christian asceticism. By giving priority to self-denial, this type of asceticism promotes a self-regulated, autonomous subjectivity which is clearly an unintentional by-product of the asceticism. Therefore individual asceticism oscillates between prohibited self-fashioning and, as a response, intensified self-denial. The problem is outlined in an introductory chapter about ‘De exterioris et interioris hominis compositione’ by David of Augsburg. Following this, two early modern Spanish books are used to illustrate how spiritual texts deal with the ambivalences of asceticism. The ‘Exercitatorio de la vida spiritual’ by García Jiménez de Cisneros regulates asceticism in detail, while the ‘Subida del monte Sión’ by Bernardino de Laredo allows the subject more room for interpretation; this however comes at the price of a fictionalisation of asceticism.

Although the medieval period was not part of Michel Foucault’s seminal study on ‘The Order of Things’, there are good reasons to believe that the learned cultures of the Middle Ages were to a certain degree based on specific epistemic orders, general organizing principles which were unconsciously presupposed in concepts of reality. Nevertheless, the extent as to which these concepts are in fact committed to the assumption of a metaphysically determined measuring of reality, is not altogether clear. This article aims to discuss this question in general, based on recent views of the role of the ‘subject’ in epistemic orders.

On the cusp of the 14th century, a new means of visualizing plants arose in the herbal manuscript tradition of South Italy. Unlike the previous medieval tradition’s stylized plant representations or antique manuscripts with their lifelike representations, these new images are characterized by their similarity to nature and pressed herbs. Based on two ‘Tractatus de herbis’ manuscripts, namely the MS lat. 6823 in Paris and the MS Egerton 747 in London, this article examines such a new form of nature as a measurement for art. The images themselves alternate between naturalistic impressions, fantastic creations, and pure aesthetic pleasure for the beholder. Together with the accompanying medical treatise they address the boundaries between measurements and excessiveness pertaining not only to artifice but also the body, which has come out of the balance of the four humors and therefore has lost its right measure.

In the late Middle Ages, Nicholas of Cusa renders human cognition as creative, asymptotic assimilation—humans creatively approach their objects of cognition without ever fully reaching them. Questions about measuring are an important part of Nicholas’ model of cognition in two regards: On the one hand, he explicitly calls human cognition a ‘measuring’ ( mensurare ), moving the concept into the centre of attention. On the other hand, measuring in the sense of evaluating epistemic activities is an issue for Nicholas. He describes humans as living images of god who ‘enfold’ ( complicare ) the ideas of all things within themselves in a specific way. They measure, i. e. judge, their epistemic activities looking at what they enfold. However, Nicholas provides little information about what exactly that means. He is thus threatened with a serious epistemological problem: the lack of a satisfying criterion of epistemic activities. In my paper, I discuss options of how to deal with this problem. After briefly describing (1) Nicholas’ notion of human cognition and (2) what he has on offer regarding a criterion of epistemic activities, I (3) try to clarify what ‘enfolding the ideas of all things’ can mean. Presenting and discussing two plausible interpretations of this expression—a static and a dynamic one—sheds light on possible answers Nicholas can give as well as the limitations these answers are confronted with.

This paper traces the reception of the Aristotelian definition of time from its earliest (Boethus of Sidon) to its most authoritative interpretations (Alexander of Aphrodisias), and describes how their readings pave the way for a sophisticated amalgamation of divergent Aristotelian and Platonic elements in the temporal theory of Avicenna. The focus of attention lies on specific perceptions of the relation between time and motion, more precisely on the contrary descriptions of time as the measure of motion and motion as the measure of time. The latter leads to a conception of time as a universal self-subsisting substance beyond all measure, and the former to an understanding of time as an accident providing all motion with its particular measure. It is the antagonism between these two conceptions, both inherent in the Arabic term miqdār (“measure, magnitude”) at the heart of Avicenna’s definition of time, which arguably informs the Latin tradition and thereby also shapes the early modern contrast between objective and subjective theories of time.

This paper deals with the question, how an abstract practice like ‘violence’ can be measured. On a methodological level, there are two possibilities: On the one hand, a quantitative approach that tries to determine homicide rates allegedly allowing comparisons over regions and time. On the other hand, there is a qualitative approach that analyses key concepts like ‘cruelty’ in order to define the limits of acceptable violence. However, both approaches have clear shortcomings. This article proposes another perspective: Using the example of France in the later Middle Ages, it scrutinises contemporary ideas of violence as they were expressed in chronicles and treatises. By focussing on decidedly negative descriptions of violent acts, we can pinpoint several characteristics that show which cultural aspects were of special importance for the contemporaries, e. g. the social standing of the people involved, the context of the act itself as well as the physical integrity of the nobles’ bodies.

The Byzantine philosopher Michael Psellos (1018–1078 AD) describes in his ethics two kinds of virtue: practical and intellectual virtues. Practical virtues are defined as a middle term between two extremes as is known from the Aristotelian tradition. His innovation is to define also a middle regarding the intellectual virtues. He says that the highest object of knowledge is not graspable for the human intellect because it exceeds his powers. Whoever strives to understand the highest object of knowledge, the essence of god, is determined to fail. Thus, the best objects that the human intellect can contemplate are situated below god, in the “middle”. The concept of the middle is thus present twice in Psellos’ ethics: once in the practical virtues and once in the intellectual virtues.

This article examines four medieval views on the subject of theology. Thomas Aquinas, Giles of Rome, John Duns Scotus, and Peter Auriol were all confronted with an idea based on Aristotle’s theory of knowledge according to which any scientific discipline is unified by its proper subject. In defining this subject of theology, however, the theologians had to confront one thorny problem: God, whom they considered to be the subject of theology, cannot be grasped by any concept accessible to the human mind. In their respective discussions, two distinct strategies to solving this puzzle emerged. Aquinas and Giles, on the one hand, argued for a concept proportionate to human cognition. This concept or ratio functioned as a placeholder for the quidditative concept of God. Scotus and Auriol, on the other hand, elaborated on a concept which they believed grasped God’s quiddity, albeit in a somewhat approximative way. Their theories, therefore, figure as attempts to find a concept, that is, the concept of being, that in itself was as boundless as to grasp God’s immensity.