From breathing to respiration.

The purpose of breathing remained an enigma for a long time. The Hippocratic school described breathing patterns but did not associate breathing with the lungs. Empedocles and Plato postulated that breathing was linked to the passage of air through pores of the skin. This was refuted by Aristotle who believed that the role of breathing was to cool the heart. In Alexandria, breakthroughs were accomplished in the anatomy and physiology of the respiratory system. Later, Galen proposed an accurate description of the respiratory muscles and the mechanics of breathing. However, his heart-lung model was hampered by the traditional view of two non-communicating vascular systems - veins and arteries. After a period of stagnation in the Middle Ages, knowledge progressed with the discovery of pulmonary circulation. The comprehension of the purpose of breathing progressed by steps thanks to Boyle and Mayow among others, and culminated with the contribution of Priestley and the discovery of oxygen by Lavoisier. Only then was breathing recognized as fulfilling the purpose of respiration, or gas exchange. A century later, a controversy emerged concerning the active or passive transfer of oxygen from alveoli to the blood. August and Marie Krogh settled the dispute, showing that passive diffusion was sufficient to meet the oxygen needs. © 2014 S. Karger AG, Basel.

Estructura y tipología de las "estimes-manifests" en Cataluña (Siglos XIV-XV)

Este artículo es una recapitulación y una puesta al día de nuestros actuales conocimientos sobre los libros de estimes o de manifests confeccionados en los municipios catalanes durante la Edad Media. Para ello se revisa la situación historiográfica, se plantea el estado de la cuestión sobre la materia y se abordan los principales problemas planteados entorno a la confección de los libros de estimes o de manifest a partir de un significativo elenco de ejemplos locales. Además del particularismo geográfico, el trabajo no olvida el enfoque evolutivo. Pese a la variadísima casuística existente, debida a que no existió un marco normativo único o general, se analizan los criterios que cada municipio puso en práctica en la elaboración de las estimes o manifests y se repasan los procedimientos seguidos tanto en la declaración de los bienes como los relativos a la tipología de la riqueza anotada.

Mehrsprachigkeit im Mittelalter. Kulturelle, literarische, sprachliche und didaktische Konstellationen in europäischer Perspektive. Mit Fallstudien zu den "Disticha Catonis"

Communication and the literary production of the Middle Ages were an integral part of a complex linguistic situation. Latin, the Western European language of education and administration, stood in contrast to the vernacular languages, which in turn were divided into different dialects. Different vernacular languages often existed in the same geographic area. This anthology approaches this topic, which has not been systematically covered until now, from an interdisciplinary perspective. It discusses fundamental methodological issues and surviving linguistic and literary documents from the 8th up to the 16th century.

L'autre du même : emprunts et répétitions dans le "Roman de Perceforest"

Issu de la fin du Moyen Âge, le Roman de Perceforest est le plus long texte que le Moyen Âge nous ait laissé. Il entend décrire la vie des ancêtres préchrétiens d'Arthur et de ses chevaliers en les faisant descendre d'Alexandre le Grand. Au fil de son récit, l'auteur met en place une véritable poétique de la reprise, tant externe qu'interne. Il multiplie les références à des textes préexistants issus de différentes matières et va même jusqu'à en intégrer des morceaux entiers. Il reprend par ailleurs des parties de sa propre oeuvre, n'hésitant pas à reproduire des schémas, voire des séquences narratives précises. Cette esthétique répétitive a plusieurs conséquences, tant sur l'appartenance générique du texte, sur sa construction, que sur sa réception par le lecteur. Elle est au coeur de notre étude. Nous nous intéressons plus spécifiquement à un phénomène particulier de reprise qui montre l'intégration d'une séquence préexistante dans un contexte distinct de son apparition d'origine et que nous qualifions d'emprunt. Notre travail s'organise autour d'un examen successif des différents types d'emprunts qui apparaissent au sein du texte, tant intertextuels qu'intratextuels. À terme, c'est la cohérence et l'individualité du Perceforest, ainsi que la conception de l'écriture qui anime son auteur que nous mettons en avant, tout en proposant des jalons pour une théorie générale de l'emprunt. - The Roman de Perceforest, the longest known text from the Middle Ages, aims to describe the life of Arthur's pre-christian ancestors and knights, presenting them as descendants of Alexander the Great. Along the storytelling, a genuine poetics of external and internal repetition takes place: the Perceforest s authors multiply the references to previous texts belonging to several materials, integrating sometimes entire parts of other texts. Furthermore the narrative reproduces its own patterns and particular sequences in different places of the text. Throughout this research, we consider the influence of such repetition aesthetics on the literary genre definition, on its construction as well as on the reader's reception. In this dissertation, we explore a specific category of repetitions where pre-existing sequences are embedded in a narrative context that differs from the original context of occurrence, which we called emprunt (s). Reviewing the species of inter- and intra-textual recurrences occurring within the text, we reveal some overlooked aspects of the consistency, the specificity of the Perceforest and its author's idea of writing, striving to groundwork on general theory of «emprunts» that shall thereby be laid.

"Sobre tenir lo Studi de Lleyda en Tortosa"

The lower medieval Catalan model of the estudi general (university) exemplified by the case of Lleida emphasises the weight achieved by the students as a body, the jurisdictional conflicts and, especially, the serious economic difficulties, that poisoned the relations with the poorly paid teaching staff and made the centre impossible to run. In that sense, the monarchy’s incapacity to provide the jurisdictional and financial bases, pushed higher education under a growing ecclesiastical weight snd municipal dependence. The local government, for its part, would have to increase the means of taxation needed to produce the necessary financing. All together, this generated difficulties that would burden the estudis generals throughout the lower Middle ages and into modern centuries, until their closure in the 18th century.

Fer mapes per conèixer la Història: aportacions de la cartografia a l'estudi de l'Alta Edat Mitjana

To make maps to know history: contributions from the cartography to the study of the early middle ages. The accomplishment of maps can allow us to know many aspects that documents written do not allow us to have knowledge. This paper focuses on the boundaries of the townships or the parishes, on the routes and ways, and on the place names or on the invocations of the churches, in order to get to know like it was the territory in the early medieval centuries. One reaches the conclusion that often the limits, the ways and the settlements were created at early middle ages. This study allows to raise the ruptures and the continuities that took place throughout these centuries in the settlement.

Noves aportacions a l'arbre genealògic de la família Montcada, senyors de la Baronia d'Aitona

Montcada’s family had in Middle Ages the Baronia d’Aitona in the land known as Baix Segre, in Lleida. His properties included the villages of Serós, Aitona, Mequinensa, Faió, Vallobar and Maials. This part of the family, who lived in Lleida, is really unknown. Documents from the Arxiu Ducal de Medinaceli a Catalunya have shown new members of this part of the family unknown since now. This new information has allowed to complete the genealogical trees of the Montcada’s family in Lleida.

"Et hoc facimus propter necessitatem famis...". Possibilitats de les fonts documentals catalanes per a l'estudi de les crisis alimentàries dels segles X-XIII

European studies of famines before the thirteenth century have been based principally on chronicles and especially on information from monastic annals. These sources, which are especially numerous during the so-called Carolingian Cultural Renaissance, offer abundant evidence of a phenomenon scarcely mentioned in other types of sources, including archival sources: the frequency and gravity of crises of food supply in some regions of continental Europe during the central middle ages, an epoch which, being situated between the terrible famines of the carolingian period and the great panademics of the fourteenth century, has been considered a period “without famines.” The object of this article is to shed light on the limitations of medieval catalan chronicle sources for the reconstruction of food-supply crises which affected the catalan counties in the tenth through the thirteenth centuries and illustrate, in contrast, the multiple opportunities offered by sources from the lordly archives. A significant part of these archival sources are connected in a direct and indirect manner to the difficulties of the rural and urban populations during famines and therefore, in a broad sense, can be considered a consequence of these crises.

La historia medieval en las escuelas: ¿una visión deformada?

A menudo se acusa a los libros de texto escolares de transmitir una imagen falsa, peyorativa, de la Edad Media. Aunque semejantes reproches puedan parecer nuevos, las protestas contra la hostilidad a la Edad Media, que rechazan el tópico del oscurantismo medieval, han estado a la orden del día durante los dos últimos siglos. Sin embargo, es muy difícil encontrar en los modernos libros de historia nada que justifique la acusación de haber exagerado las tinieblas medievales. En general, los historiadores modernos, tanto liberales como socialistas, han mantenido una opinión favorable de las instituciones y la cultura medievales, llegando incluso a encomiar la obra de la Iglesia como resguardo de la civilización, pero sin ocultar sus aspectos irracionales y reaccionarios. Las acusaciones que Jacques Heers y Jeffrey Burton Russell dirigen contra una presunta falsificación de la historia medieval apuntan explícitamente contra la influencia del darwinismo y el anticlericalismo, lo cual nos pone sobre la pista de sus verdaderas motivaciones ideológicas.

"Quien pone su esperanza en mujer flaca": una lectura de los sonetos de Lope de Vega

En este trabajo se ofrece un análisis de las representaciones femeninas en los sonetos de Lope de Vega a partir de la lectura de tres de sus obras mayores -Rimas (1602), Rimas sacras (1614) y Rimas humanas y divinas del licenciado Tomé de Burguillos (1634)- con el propósito de valorar su relación con la tradición medieval y renacencista, así como la originalidad de su tratamiento.

Sodoma, del Viejo al Nuevo Mundo

Las primeras obras historiográficas castellanas que relatan la “Conquista” de América ofrecen una de las mejores vías para comprender los discursos, religiosos y políticos, en torno a la sexualidad europea a fines de la Edad Media, especialmente relevante si analizamos las representaciones de la sodomía y del homoerotismo. A partir de textos de Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Bernardino de Sahagún, Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Bartolomé de Las Casas, en este artículo se reflexiona sobre las significaciones de Sodoma (como geografía cultural e ideológica) en el contexto ibérico posterior a la “Reconquista”.