El confesor real en la Castilla de los Trastamara: 1366-1504

The knowledge about the figure of royal confessor has been, until recent times, very limited for the period of medieval Castile. A lot of studies have been done for Modern Age, when the institution of the kinǵs confessor played an important role in the Court of the Hispanic Crown. It is evident that this figure didńt appear ex nihilo in the Sixteenth Century and there existed some origins. Many historians mentioned some medieval confessors in their studies about any other subjects. Actually, it was not clear if those clerics could be properly considered as confessors. Our first aim has been to find all the references which exist in the sources and bibliography about kinǵs confessors in the Middle Ages and verify their nature as confessors. We fixed the beginning of the period of study with the reign of Enrique II, and its end with the death of Isabel I in 1504. The main reason is the fact that both sovereigns are the first and last monarchs of Trastamara dinasty, a very significant period in the origin of Modern State in Castile. The Church was an essential element in this process, on account of the service which many clerics enlisted to the Crown in different tasks (diplomacy, bureaucracy, Counsel and Counselling, etc.) and their ideological support to this endeavour. In this context, the royal confessor could perform an important work as personal advisor and a loyal subject to the person of the king in so many activities. This is well-known for Modern Age and also fort the reign of transition between this period and the precedent: the period of Catholic Kings. But it isńt for the times backwards...

Una aproximación a la cosmovisión y a la historia de occidente en la obra ensayística de Czeslaw Milosz

This thesis aims to identify the world-view of Czesław Miłosz as it underlies his work; a world-view which comprises historical, philosophical and theological perspectives. With this aim an analysis has been made of the books of essays and the collections of articles of the Polish writer. These form a major part of his literary production: twenty seven of the thirty eight volumes. The work The Land of Urlo (1977) has a special relevance to this endeavour. Two principal hypotheses have been formulated: 1. The world-view of Czesław Miłosz grew out of the assimilation of a series of intellectual influences. The catholic education in his childhood. The encounter in his youth with the gnostic Christian Oskar Miłosz and with Marxism. His contact during the period of the Second Word War and at the beginning of its sequel with the hegelian philosopher Tadeusz Kroński. This world-view had crystalized during his exile. From then he completed his reading of Simone Weil, Emanuel Swedenborg, and William Blake. 2. The world-view of Czesław Miłosz is directly related to his understanding of the History of the West from the beginnings of Christianity to contemporary times. The difficulty in understanding the Weltanschauung of Czesław Miłosz is not of a technical nature (expression in an excessively complex language, dispersion of his work in multifarious archives, collections of letters, etc.). It arises – and only to a lesser degree in his political and philosophical-religeous and biographical essays – out of the author's use of a cryptic language with the intention of hiding a part of his message from view...