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Optional video-On World Cycles 1: The Great Year Doctrine in Antiquity (2)

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Magic in the Middle Ages

Universitat de Barcelona

4.6 (887 calificaciones) | 66K estudiantes inscritos

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Magical thought has always attracted human imagination. In this course we will introduce you to the Middle Ages through a wide conception of magic. Students will have an approach to medieval culture, beliefs and practices from the perspective of History and History of Science. Popular magic, as well as learned magic (alchemy, geomancy and necromancy) will be addressed. Moreover, we will also deal with how eastern practices and texts influenced western culture. In July 2016, the course will contain a brand-new module devoted to astrology. Magic in the Middle Ages offers a captivating overview of medieval society and promotes reflection about certain stereotypes associated with this period. At the end of the course, the students: a) will have overcome the usual prejudices about the Middle Ages, b) will be able to analyze historical documentation from the Middle Ages and recognize the most common patterns of juridical documents regarding witchcraft, and c) will be capable of distinguishing between popular magic and the magic of the learned people; will have a notion of which spiritual practices were allowed in medieval Europe and which ones were related to the devil, and will be aware of the link between a cultural product and the society that produced it. This course is taught in English, although subtitles in English, Catalan and Spanish will also be provided. COURSE SYLLABUS Week 1. Introduction to medieval magic (Pau Castell). Week 2. Magic & Heresy (Delfi I. Nieto-Isabel). Week 3. From Magic to Witchcraft (Pau Castell). Week 4. Magic in Islam (Godefroid de Callataÿ and Sébastien Moureau). Week 5. Astrology & Geomancy (Theo Loinaz, Delfi I. Nieto-Isabel, Godefroid de Callataÿ and Blanca Villuendas). © Gemma Pellissa Prades (coord.), Delfi I. Nieto-Isabel and Joana Palau Mumany Magic in the Middle Ages by Gemma Pellissa Prades (coord.), Delfi I. Nieto-Isabel and Joana Palau Mumany is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Destrezas que aprenderás

Middle East, Astronomy, History, Anthropology

Revisiones

4.6 (887 calificaciones)

5 stars
584 ratings
4 stars
238 ratings
3 stars
44 ratings
2 stars
15 ratings
1 star
6 ratings

CB

Apr 07, 2019

I learnt a lot from this module. The lessons are incredibly interesting especially for those who are interested in the Medieval Ages and the beliefs of the people back then

AJ

Aug 26, 2019

Overall I like this course because I interest in this topic, and love historical. I can't wait to attend another course about demonology, and hidden/ unsolved history.

De la lección

UNIT 5: ASTROLOGY & GEOMANCY

Medieval Astrology: Between Science and Magic5:57

The Melting Pot of Medieval Astrology6:10

Early Medieval Astronomy: the Moon, the Zodiac, Thunders and Dreams7:08

Horoscopes and World Events: the Doings of High-End Astrology6:37

Optional video-On World Cycles 1: The Great Year Doctrine in Antiquity (1)5:42

Optional video-On World Cycles 1: The Great Year Doctrine in Antiquity (2)7:14

Optional video-On World Cycles 2: The Great Year Doctrine in the Middle Ages (1)9:52

Optional video-On World Cycles 2: The Great Year Doctrine in the Middle Ages (2)6:35

Impartido por:

Godefroid de Callataÿ - University of Louvain
Professor
Dr Pau Castell Granados
Research and Teaching Scholar at University of Barcelona
Sébastien Moureau - University of Louvain
Chargé de recherches du F.R.S.-FNRS
Dr Gemma Pellissa Prades
Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow
Delfi I. Nieto-Isabel
BSc, BA, MA
Blanca Villuendas
PhD Candidate

Prueba el curso Gratis

Transcripción

[MUSIC] Hello again. Ancient sources, both Greek and Latin, contain many references to this conjunctional Great Year. Aristotle, the author giant of Greek philosophy, seems to have been much concerned with the theory as well. Unfortunately, the treatise in which it was discussed the Protrepticus has been lost. In the Latin world, we find that Cicero was also much interested in the doctrine. He refers or alludes to it in at least six of his works. In ancient literature, we also find miscellaneous lists of periods allegedly understood as great years in the Platonic sense. But these clearly do not correspond to it in reality. They include short, loony solid periods, as for instance, the so-called Saros cycle. This famous astronomical cycle of about 18 years and 11 days enable the ancients to predict, with a fair degree of accuracy, the return of solar and lunar eclipses. The same lists also mention truly gigantic world cycles. These include a cycle of 120,000 years ascribed to the legendary Orpheus and even a period of 3,006,000 years ascribed to certain Cassandras. But it goes without saying that these kinds of great years do not have anything to do with Plato's conjunctional Great Year. But we do also find in ancient literature a wide variety of sources discussing the Great Year in Plato's sense. What this material reveals, however, is an increasing tendency among authors to move the original theory, which is fundamentally a problem of mathematical astronomy into, the realm of astrological speculations and beliefs in the doctrine of the eternal return. It thus became a habit with many scholars to adopt extremely deterministic views on the universe. They affirmed that, cycle after cycle, great year after great year, every event in the world here below would happen again in exactly the same order as in the previous cycle. This tendency is best illustrated by this passage taken from the Naturales Quaestiones of the Latin Stoic philosopher, Seneca. Here, the Great Year doctrine is said to be derived from the speculations of the Babylonian priest and scientist, Berosus and linked to apocalyptic events such as universal floods and conflagrations. I quote, both flood and conflagration will occur when it seems best to God for the old things to be ended and better things to begin. Water and fire dominate earthly things. From them is the origin, from them is the death. Therefore whenever a renewal for the universe is decided, the sea is sent against us from above, like raging fire, when another form of destruction is decided upon. Berosus, who translated Belus, says that these catastrophes occur with the movements of the planets. Indeed, he is so certain that he assigns a date for the conflagration and the deluge. The rest of the passage explains that the universal conflagration will take place when all the planets come together under the sign of Cancer, the place of the summer solstice. The universal flood will occur when they all meet under the sign of Capricorn, which is the place of the winter solstice. Many other references of the same kind could be supplied to show that the assumption that the general conjunction of the planets was the cause of the floods, ocnflagrations, and other events in this world, had become the norm among the principal schools of thought in late antiquity. The only serious position to this belief in the absolute power of the stars was to come from Christian milieux with intellectuals such as Origen or Saint Augustine. These authors thoroughly condemned this view. In particular, they emphasized that such a periodical recurrence of events was only incompatible with Jesus Christ incarnation. In the City of God we find an interesting passage in which Augustine seeks to ridicule his adversaries on this issue. At the same time, he tries to justify the famous phrase, there is nothing new under the sun as altered by Solomon in the Bible. His line of argument consists and imagining a model in which the philosopher Plato would find himself in an endless repetition of cycles constrained to teach the same things to the same students with absolutely no change from one cycle to the next. Relying on the sacred text, he concludes, I quote, Heaven forbid, I say, that we should believe that. For Christ died once for our sins, but rising from the dead he dies no more, and death shall no longer have dominion over him. It's certainly not by chance that Augustine puts Plato at the center of his example. The fame of the passage on the Great Year led most people in antiquity and in later periods to hold him responsible also for all sorts of beliefs in line with the theory of planetary conjunctions. At the same time, we can measure the degree of distortion which the original conception had undergone over the centuries. It is quite evident that Plato himself would never have subscribed to the rigid and deterministic view denounced by Augustine. In the next unit, which is devoted to reception of the Great Year doctrine in the eastern and western Middle Ages, we shall see that another series of amalgamations and confusions affected the original theory, distorting it almost beyond recognition. [MUSIC]

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