MEDIEVO (Pensamiento, Cultura y Temor) - Documental
La Edad Media fue una época caracterizada por el teocentrismo. Los reinos y nobles de Europa occidental se identificaron como pertenecientes a una misma cristiandad que respondía a la autoridad del Papa, aunque esto no impidió la existencia de conflictos.
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00:00The medieval era is a distant culture.
00:04The mentality that guides tastes and defines identity is very different,
00:08as are the mechanisms of power.
00:11Daily life and the imagination that feeds the fantasy of human beings are also different.
00:16The medieval era is a distant culture.
00:19The mentality that guides tastes and defines identity is very different,
00:23as are the mechanisms of power.
00:26Daily life and the imagination that feeds the fantasy of human beings are also different.
00:38A time when religion played a crucial role in giving meaning to life and reality.
00:44But at this time there are also other forms of cognition
00:49that go from magic to science.
00:53social customs, symbolic universes, cultural strata, values, traditions and obsessions.
01:00All this makes up the social picture of the Middle Ages,
01:03linked to a political, economic and institutional reality,
01:07very far from ours,
01:09but in which we can rediscover the origin and ascendancy of today's Europe.
01:23THE SIGNS
01:31Because of the appearance and extinction of the signs,
01:35of the suppositions and conjunctions,
01:38of the benefic and malefic aspects,
01:41disparate and contradictory events occur in this world.
01:45THE SIGNS
01:49The signs are the prelates of the Church or the princes of the world,
01:54since they originate from all the events of this world,
01:59war and peace and anything else.
02:03THE SIGNS
02:27The Middle Ages is the time of feudalism,
02:30of a power that is based on the ownership of the land
02:33and that obtains the wealth of agriculture and livestock.
02:37Feudalism is a long-term consequence of the fall of the Roman Empire
02:42and represents a phase of arduous political reestablishment.
02:47At the base of the feudal system is the oath of loyalty
02:50that a lord, called vassal,
02:53deposits in the hands of a lord, richer and more powerful,
02:56in exchange for military benefits and protection.
02:59THE SIGNS
03:02The essence of the vassal feudal system
03:05is found in this personal relationship
03:08that is established between two individuals,
03:11between a lord and another lord.
03:14THE SIGNS
03:17This oath of loyalty, this declaration,
03:21is also carried out through a ceremony
03:24that involves, for example, the Imixtio Manum,
03:27that is, putting the hands between the hands of the other.
03:32It is a way of entrusting oneself to the other,
03:35which can end with the kiss,
03:38which is the most intimate form of a personal relationship.
03:41THE SIGNS
03:44I will serve you faithfully in everything I know and can,
03:49with the help of God, without cheating or deception,
03:53and with the advice and help of my profession and person,
03:56so that the power that God has granted you,
03:59you can keep it,
04:02and exercise it according to your will,
04:05and for the salvation of you and your faithful.
04:23THE SIGNS
04:39Also, an important aspect of feudalism
04:42is its relationship with religion,
04:45the seal that the Church grants to justify this system.
04:48Deep down, God is the Lord par excellence,
04:51He is the true guarantor of the feudal world,
04:54and He is at the center of everything.
04:57His representatives on earth, princes and sovereigns,
05:00are the ones who have the mission to make His peace and His justice reign.
05:04For a long time now,
05:07the philosophy of the Gospel ruled the States.
05:10When the strength and sovereign influence of the Christian spirit
05:13had deeply settled in the laws,
05:16in the institutions, in the customs of the peoples,
05:19the religion of Jesus Christ,
05:22solidly established in that pedestal of honor,
05:25flourished in the shadow of the favor of the princes
05:28and the due protection of the magistrates.
05:35The feudal society remains united
05:38because each of the members that make it up,
05:41has a specific function.
05:44The powerful protect the weak,
05:48a formula capable of giving rise to an ideal order
05:51that must be conserved and respected.
05:59When the priesthood and the empire proceeded in concord,
06:02happily united among themselves
06:05by the friendly reciprocity of favors.
06:18Ordered by this Gospel,
06:21the society obtained valuable fruits to never believe again,
06:24whose memory persists and will persist,
06:27deposited in numerous historical monuments
06:30that no enemy artifice can falsify or darken.
06:47Go now. Thank you.
06:50I bless you.
06:53Thank you, sir.
07:07The idea of God that can be found in the Middle Ages
07:10involves concrete and singular features.
07:13It is a God who comes from the East,
07:16a God who defines the decisive step
07:19from polytheism to monotheism.
07:22A God that can be visually represented,
07:25unlike the Jewish Yahweh or the Islamic Allah,
07:28and therefore anthropomorphic.
07:31In the High Middle Ages,
07:34the idea of God is that of the God of the armies,
07:37of the victorious God, of the God who conquers,
07:40who reigns, who emperors,
07:43and who leads his missionaries in their work of evangelization.
07:46It is a God to be feared, a powerful God.
07:49A God that in the medieval West has no rivals.
07:52The others are only false idols.
07:58He who does not declare that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit
08:01have a single nature or substance,
08:04a single virtue and power,
08:07a single divinity to worship among hypostases or persons,
08:10will be anathematized and excommunicated.
08:13One, in fact, is the Father God,
08:16from whom all things come.
08:19One is our Lord Jesus Christ,
08:22through whom all things are.
08:25One is the Holy Spirit,
08:28in whom all things are.
08:32This God, incarnate in Jesus Christ,
08:35is at the same time the almighty God of the Old Testament.
08:38A choleric and vengeful God,
08:41but also a good God, a charitable God.
08:44In any case, it is an inaccessible God
08:47who governs the universe, surrounded by two opposing worlds.
08:50On the one hand, the angels, and on the other, the demons.
08:54God, who has created the universe
08:57and has subordinated earthly things to men,
09:00and has ordained the elements of heaven
09:03for the ripening of fruits and the alternation of seasons,
09:06and has established a divine law on them.
09:09This God commanded the care of men
09:12and of children,
09:15and of all things,
09:18and of all things,
09:22and he commanded the care of men
09:25and of all things under the heavenly vault to the angels,
09:28who have been established for such an end.
09:31Then, particularly in relation to the development
09:34of the Christian proposal of St. Francis of Assisi
09:37and the pleading orders,
09:40the idea of God is re-formed
09:43in that of a lamenting God,
09:46the God who loves us,
09:49who we must love and imitate in the figure of Christ.
09:53Thus, two different ways of approaching God are defined.
09:57On the one hand, faith as a path of rational deepening conditioned by the clergy.
10:03On the other, instinctive mysticism.
10:07As the Middle Ages advances, this idea deepens and becomes that of the God who is within each of us,
10:14which is the inner God, the God of the mystics,
10:17the God that we must rediscover within ourselves.
10:22In the end, this is the idea of rediscovery of the values of the individual,
10:27which will later characterize humanism and the Renaissance.
10:31The concept of time is a basic category typical of each era,
10:45an unequivocal sign of a very specific mentality and consciousness of the world.
10:49The ringing of the church bells marks the cadence of the days.
10:54At each moment, certain prayers and religious services correspond to it.
10:59The times of nature, the time cadenced by the trajectory of the sun,
11:08and the times of prayer, for example in the monasteries, were, if not identical, at least very similar.
11:15The church bells were the ones that marked the rhythm of the day,
11:19even of the worker, mainly of the farmer.
11:26Only after the recovered centralism of the cities, after the year 1000,
11:31a different time is imposed, the time of the merchant,
11:35united to the rise and consolidation of this new social figure.
11:39An exact and calculable time, far from the sacred time of the ecclesiastical calendar.
11:45A time that discovers new ways of being measured and divided into equal parts.
11:51Instead of the time of the church, perhaps it is not so convenient to say instead of,
11:57but parallel to the time of the church, the time of the merchant begins to consolidate.
12:03But it is not only the time of the merchant, but also of the workshops.
12:07It is the time of activities in the big cities,
12:10where there are not only forms of artisanal activity,
12:13but also others that we could define as pre-industrial or pre-business.
12:18A time that becomes an instrument at the disposal of the human being,
12:22to optimally organize his work, his activities and his day.
12:28As immutability and change coexist, the Middle Ages is defined as a time of transition,
12:34where culture, social relations and new technologies influence each other,
12:39giving rise to a progressive transformation.
12:49Each historical epoch has common places that characterize its imagination,
12:55reflected in literature, but also spread more generally in the common sense of society.
13:02The fundamental contrast that the Middle Ages expresses between the human being and the animals,
13:08is articulated in more detail in the confrontation between culture and nature,
13:13between civilization and the wild.
13:16And the wild, the arcane and the mysterious medieval have their home in the forest.
13:28I saw infinite evil plants sucking the blood of ancient vines,
13:34rooted in secular trunks.
13:39And the whole forest is similar to a swamp of rotten foliage.
13:45But from the scorching earth in the twilight, where twisted and strange plants sprout,
13:52an admirable flowery mantle spreads.
13:56For you, new forest, now is life.
14:04A threatening and protective place at the same time.
14:07Inhospitable but populated by strange beings, like lonely lumberjacks, wild men and vagabonds.
14:14A place of adventures where to test the value of each one.
14:18A place of encounters and supernatural appearances.
14:21The forest was very inhabited.
14:24The idea we have of the medieval forest is the one that was imposed little by little in the cities,
14:29especially in the area of Italy and more than anything from 1200.
14:33It is the forest that is reflected in the novels, where ambushes occur, where there are mischief.
14:38Until then, the forest had been a large reserve of economic resources.
14:42It was populated by shepherds, hermits, holy men, gentlemen.
14:46It was also populated by mysterious presences, which, however, are friendly.
14:51It is the inhabitants of the cities who turn the forest into something unknown and disturbing.
14:58As a counterpoint to the forest is the city, characterized in turn by a background ambiguity,
15:05since sometimes it represents the vanguard of the civilizing process,
15:09and others the center of evil and depravity, in tune with the image that is suggested in the Bible.
15:17The earthly city has created false gods for itself,
15:21to whom to pay tribute, to whom men make sacrifices,
15:26while the heavenly city, which walks on earth, does not create false gods,
15:31but is created by the true God, to whom true sacrifice is offered.
15:41On horseback between the opposite poles of Jerusalem and Babylon,
15:44the city can seem a space where beauty, dynamism and wealth coexist,
15:49or also a bubbling container of evil, violence and amalgam of cultures.
15:57The city can be the realization on the land of heavenly Jerusalem,
16:02which surely many liked.
16:05But for them, the city can also be a place where one gets lost.
16:10In addition to this, the cities are large laboratories of social experimentation and economic experimentation.
16:18They are test laboratories where you can see everything.
16:21For example, the organization of work in the large workshops,
16:25where you entered with the click of the bell, and from which you left with the click of the bell.
16:32Thirty years ago, it would have been defined as a pre-capitalist or capitalist work.
16:39And there is also the experimentation of a political nature.
16:44On the one hand, the city is the place where new values of shared belonging,
16:49work and active citizenship are developed.
16:52On the other hand, it is seen with suspicion by traditional social groups,
16:56such as monks or gentlemen,
16:58although over time it manages to attract the powerful who manage the rural feuds,
17:03and becomes the preferred destination of the mendicant orders that carry their preaching there.
17:09Towards the thirteenth century, the city was already reborn.
17:13It is no coincidence that these religious orders are developed.
17:17They are the new mendicant orders, typically urban.
17:21At the beginning, the Franciscans have a period of exchange between the city and the countryside,
17:26but finally the option is clearly urban.
17:29This is not obvious so that during the entire Middle Ages, tensions arise.
17:36On the one hand, the city is seen as Babylon,
17:40for example, as in the vision of Saint Bernard, a Cistercian monk.
17:44And on the other hand, it is seen as Jerusalem.
17:51The fact is that it exists and is perpetuated.
17:57In any case, it must be thought that Christianity is a religion rooted,
18:01above all, in the city.
18:04And this precisely because of its success, its luck.
18:12A very singular place in all this medieval imaginary is the purgatory,
18:16which only after the twelfth century is fully defined as an intermediate space between hell and paradise,
18:22after a long theological and doctrinal debate.
18:26Overcoming the fears of the first centuries of the Middle Ages,
18:29related to the imminent end of the world and the consequent final judgment,
18:33the conditions for the birth of this new space in the beyond are created.
18:38An intermediate space where you have to remain for a time,
18:41depending on the gravity of the sins committed on earth.
18:47In the thirteenth century, the idea of the final judgment is consolidated as a single day
18:53of anger.
18:56Suddenly, God intervenes and judges.
18:59It is a doctrine that renews everything that had been said until then,
19:03because until that moment, the judgment was not a day,
19:06but a stage whose duration no one knew,
19:09and that had a series of rhythms.
19:15The other world is the representation of morality.
19:19Hell is a representation of evil or malice.
19:23Paradise is the representation of good or virtue.
19:27The purgatory is the passage from one to another through repentance and penance.
19:36Therefore, the other world is the representation of the different states in which man finds himself in this life.
19:44For the deceased, the behavior he has had at the moment of his death is fundamental.
19:49He must express repentance and contrition.
19:52But above all, it is very important that the deceased may receive help from those who have not yet gone.
19:58Donations and legacies in favor of the Church and the community.
20:14The Church, weakened in its power over the increasingly secular earthly time,
20:19and in tune with the new social and economic pulse,
20:22strictly controls time in the afterlife through offerings,
20:26such as prayer, alms and mass.
20:29This depends on the waiting time of the deceased in this ultraterrestrial place.
20:36Even St. Augustine had foreseen a higher gain,
20:40a higher stratum of hell from which one could be redeemed,
20:43although it had never been formalized officially.
20:46At the precise moment in which the Church is no longer the only one who decides the rhythm of life of people,
20:51it establishes its supremacy on the other side.
20:54It begins to present itself, more and more,
20:57as an organ that determines in advance the fate of souls in the afterlife.
21:03The new time in purgatory also reflects the growing value
21:07that in the last centuries of the Middle Ages,
21:10personal responsibility is granted, and therefore the individual,
21:13to his merits and his demerits,
21:16regardless of the social function exercised.
21:22God is the creator, and he must be led by all things visible.
21:27Despite this, the medieval man is curious about the world,
21:31and he strives to know it and catalog it.
21:34The basic elements that make it up are four.
21:37Air, water, earth and fire.
21:41Deep down, man is a microcosm in close relationship with the macrocosm.
21:46No one is separated from what surrounds him,
21:49and nothing is observable in isolation.
21:52The fluids of which it is believed that man is composed are four.
21:56Blood, phlegm, yellow bilis and black bilis.
22:00The body of man contains blood, phlegm, yellow bilis and black bilis.
22:07This is the nature of the body.
22:10This is the cause of health or disease.
22:13In these conditions, one enjoys perfect health,
22:18in these conditions, one enjoys perfect health,
22:21when these moods are in the perfect proportion between them,
22:24whether in quality or quantity.
22:27Health, disease and death depend on the variations of relationship between these fluids.
22:33There is disease when one of these moods,
22:36in too small or too large quantity,
22:39is isolated within the body, instead of mixing with the others.
22:45However, what gives life to the human being is the soul.
22:49Created by God has no end and grants reason,
22:52which is what distinguishes man from animals.
22:59The mentality of each era, apart from stimulating the creation of an imaginary,
23:04also embodies the concretion of the social organization.
23:08If the mentality of the medieval man attributes positive value to sedentarism,
23:12to the fact of being radical, to being an active part of the community,
23:16all those who do not satisfy these conditions are contemplated with rejection.
23:21Society draws the limits of normality.
23:25Beyond is everything that is different, and for this reason must be marginalized.
23:32The citizen rebirth has entailed, on the one hand, the increase of wealth,
23:37but on the other hand, also the increase of poverty.
23:42The poor are often considered the peasants, the rustic,
23:47and obviously also those who suffer a disease.
23:51Then among the poorest are the lepers.
23:55That is, in this case, the deformed are also included,
24:00and those who suffer a disease that has a symbolic meaning.
24:05The leper who has complained of leprosy must wear rags and have his head uncovered.
24:11He must cover his beard and scream,
24:14Inmundo! Inmundo!
24:17He will be filthy while he has leprosy.
24:20He is filthy, he must be alone, he will live outside the camp.
24:29There is also a marginalization related to the body and the disease.
24:33The contempt for the lepers, whose deformities are related to the devil,
24:38is also found in the rigid separation that society imposes on those who do not enjoy good health.
24:45This increase in the number of poor makes them considered as a social danger,
24:51as possible rebels, vagabonds or malevolent.
24:56And it is no coincidence that at the end of the 13th century, basically,
25:00and later in all the late medieval era,
25:03appears the figure of the poor who is ashamed and becomes a favorite of beneficence.
25:11The poor who is ashamed is the one who feels his own misery as a sin,
25:17which aspires to overcome this condition and therefore is less disturbing at the social level.
25:23While the poor who is still poor is a danger that must be marginalized.
25:54The life of men and women of the Middle Ages is not only linked to the different social roles they must perform,
26:00to the work they must do or to the great political and institutional events that transform their day to day.
26:07Everything that is above or below the reality of social practice,
26:12represents a complex universe,
26:14which throws new light to understand in depth a very abygal time.
26:19From the 4th century, Christianity becomes the dominant religion in the West.
26:25Thus, it must find its own system of interpretation of dreams and the dream phenomenon in general.
26:38In the Old Testament, dreams appear mentioned more frequently than in the New.
26:43And for more signs, they come from God.
26:46But not all dreams are clear and understandable visions.
26:50Its meaning can also be dark or scary.
26:53Some are very dangerous because they do not come from God.
26:57They are deceptions or temptations or proofs that must be overcome.
27:06The fantasy of man.
27:08While he is thinking or dreaming, he creates innumerable types of things.
27:13And although they are not corporeal, they quickly adopt a corporeal form.
27:22Dreams are related above all to the dead and the afterlife.
27:26They are shadows, ghosts, they are related to hell.
27:30They can be generated by the spirit of the human being,
27:33or perhaps by the immortal spirits or the gods.
27:36When the senses of man are asleep and tired, the corporeal figure can appear,
27:42it is not known in what way, in the senses of other people.
27:46Thus, the bodies of men lie alive in a certain place,
27:51with the senses much stronger and tenaciously closed than in sleep.
27:56While the fantasy is shown to the senses of another person,
27:59sometimes transmuted in the form of an animal.
28:03And man has the same feeling as if he were in a dream.
28:14For the Christianity of the Middle Ages,
28:16the dream of man is the same as the dream of God.
28:22For the Christianity of the Middle Ages,
28:24the dream is a motive of curiosity and at the same time of terror.
28:34On the one hand, the dream is often related to a conversion,
28:37and it is very common in those who suffer a martyrdom,
28:40so it represents a possibility of getting in touch with God.
28:44On the other hand, dreams are associated with magic and the infernal,
28:48and they have great relevance in many sects considered to be ethical.
28:53Christianity strictly prohibits the divinatory practices
28:57and interpretations of specialists,
29:00thus generating confusion and disorientation in people
29:04regarding the sphere of the dream.
29:11The Church addresses the dream phenomenon with utmost caution,
29:15because dreams have several readings.
29:18They can be celestial visions,
29:21they can indicate the path of redemption,
29:24they can be premonitory dreams that announce a victory,
29:28the discovery of a relic.
29:31In short, they can have a very positive value.
29:40Associated with the body, and therefore with the devil,
29:43the dream becomes a transmitter of carnal temptations,
29:46and cannot be accepted as a premonition of future events,
29:49because the future belongs only to God.
29:53In this way, a repression of the dream activity is attended in all order,
29:57with a rejuvenation of the controls by the Church.
30:05But the dream can also have a profoundly negative value,
30:09in that it has been inspired by the devil to deceive.
30:13This is evidently its vanity and the danger it can represent.
30:31The close ties that are established between oral culture,
30:34academic culture and popular culture,
30:37show in medieval society the complexity and the relations
30:41between these different models of knowledge.
30:45The academic culture, which uses Latin, is exclusive of the erudites,
30:50contains cult quotes and references, and is transmitted through writing.
30:56It is often forgotten that until the 14th century,
30:59the language of all official acts, but also of minor transactions,
31:03such as the purchase and sale of a property,
31:06is always in Latin.
31:10Despite all the exchanges between the academic and the popular,
31:14they are very frequent.
31:15Between the cult elites and the people,
31:17there are common cultural mentalities and attitudes,
31:20characterized by superpositions and mutual contaminations.
31:25All the clues we have are clues of contamination.
31:29Therefore, folk culture is mainly a reproduction of high culture,
31:34adapted to the low or low literacy levels of the plain people.
31:38It is the low translation of high culture.
31:42Popular culture is instinctively linked to the religious theme,
31:46and is nourished by sermons, preachings, stories, apparitions and miracles,
31:50transmitted from generation to generation,
31:53and intended for an audience of men and women of low extraction.
31:59There is a great collective ritual, which consists of going to listen to the preaching.
32:03People go to mass, but often also to the square.
32:06It is known that frequently the pulpits were installed in the square.
32:11And there is the preacher.
32:13The preachers want to hammer the ideas in the heads of those who listen to them,
32:18and for this they use frescoes,
32:20the sculptures of the entrances of the cathedral,
32:24and he points them out as they speak.
32:27In any case, on both sides, and at the base of the frescoes,
32:31there are written texts.
32:33We know that 90% of the inhabitants of that time were illiterate.
32:38For them, the written text had no meaning.
32:43But if those texts accompanied the words of the preacher,
32:48and the images that he showed,
32:51those same written signs began to acquire a certain meaning
32:55for the one who listened and observed.
32:58In the Middle Ages, it is not so much a problem of faith,
33:01but of how far to explain what happens.
33:08These preachings, supported by images and writing,
33:12aroused such strong feelings that caused a phenomenon
33:15that we could define as false memory.
33:19How many pilgrims returned from sacred lands,
33:22convinced that they had seen holy places that they had not actually seen,
33:26told the friends of the town that they had been to holy places
33:30that they had not actually visited.
33:34But that was the memory they had left.
33:37They believed they had seen them because it was the memory
33:40of the images they had seen represented in paintings
33:43or in the church of their little town,
33:45or in the cathedral of some city where they had gone on some occasion.
33:50Fantasy is a true imaginative and cognitive support,
33:54and represents one more contribution in the transition
33:57from oral culture to written culture.
34:01On the one hand, the poor illiterate acquires greater prominence,
34:05participating in certain aspects of collective life.
34:08On the other hand, it introduces elements of distortion,
34:12in the sense that the image is explained,
34:15it is more convincing than the personal control of the places visited.
34:21And this also introduces a reflection on the present.
34:25A well-explained image is more effective, if it fits,
34:28than touching a test with your hand.
34:39Another phenomenon that permeates all social layers and cultural levels
34:43is magic, which appears as a true cross between academic culture
34:47and popular culture.
34:52This relationship that has existed since time immemorial
34:55between magic and the people is a very close bond,
34:59almost like the feudal bond that unites the lord with his vassal.
35:08Magic is the vision of life and everything,
35:11of symbols and instruments to dominate and direct the forces of nature.
35:18Astrology represents the certainty of the union between things,
35:23the domain of celestial bodies,
35:26at the same time also living beings, with their souls,
35:29who dominate men and things.
35:32Magic is closely linked to astrology,
35:35which finds application in many areas of medieval life,
35:38including one of the most widespread and practiced activities of this time,
35:42the war.
35:44Without taking anything away from religious principles
35:47and the participation in Christian faith,
35:50astrologers were an important part of the court
35:53and accompanied the king in his wars.
35:56According to a chronicler, Guillermo I de Altavilla,
35:59Guillermo el Malo, we are in the middle of the twelfth century,
36:03he did not start the battle without having previously consulted his astrologers.
36:08Especially from the twelfth century,
36:11in the Western war practice, the resource of astrological guessing is disseminated.
36:16This includes, for example, the election of the date and time to start a battle.
36:21Princes and lords, but also representatives of the municipalities,
36:25ask their astrologers for advice before starting a conflict.
36:30And sometimes their opinions count more than those of their own military advisers.
36:41Tonight will be the birth of the morning star, neither before nor after.
36:45So it is pronounced in the great water.
36:48We do not have to challenge the stars.
36:51Fate has already been adverse to us.
36:53We must not disobey the heavenly orders.
36:56I will not delay any disobedience.
36:59Tonight the stars ask for a glass of blood.
37:03Because of the appearance and extinction of the signs,
37:07of the oppositions and conjunctions,
37:10of the beneficial and malefic effects,
37:13disparate and contradictory events occur in this world.
37:17The signs are the prelates of the Church or the princes of the world,
37:22since all the events of this world come from them.
37:27War and peace and anything else.
37:40War and peace and anything else.
38:11Like any historical epoch,
38:14the Middle Ages is also plagued with true obsessions,
38:17born of their singular mentality.
38:20Faced with all sin, closely linked to the Christian religion,
38:24the fear of eternal condemnation,
38:27slows the impulses and instincts of men and women,
38:30orienting their behavior according to the rigid ethics proposed by the Church.
38:41He will deserve even more severe penalties for all that he has done.
38:47For with the same rod with which we measure,
38:50we will also be measured.
38:53And what we do, they will do to us also.
38:57The sinners will receive the punishment for their sins from the hand of God.
39:03And they will not be punished in the measure of their sins,
39:07but in an even greater proportion compared to the faults committed.
39:16Whoever gives in, has no choice but penance,
39:19or the request of intercession to the Virgin Mary or the saints,
39:23always with the fear of having put at stake the salvation of his own soul.
39:28He who receives from the hand of the Lord double punishment for his sins,
39:33will continue to pay for his guilt in the fire of hell,
39:37and he will despair not to find any salvation.
40:03The struggle against sin does not give peace.
40:06The temptations with which Satan bothers human beings
40:09are multiple and often hidden.
40:13Existence is continually exposed to the whims of this cunning enemy.
40:18Perpetuated with a simple luggage,
40:21made up of the Ten Commandments and the Twelve Articles of Faith,
40:25and guarded by the sermons of the religious,
40:28the medieval man strives not to commit mortal sins,
40:31formalized by the Church in the twelfth century as the seven capital sins.
40:35Arrogance, envy, anger, laziness, greed, lust and gluttony.
40:44It is a system of seven sins, called the septenary of sins,
40:48of which our seven capital sins derive.
40:52And the sins of the flesh are the lightest of the septenary of medieval sins.
40:57The sin of the flesh can only be committed
41:00to fulfill the legitimacy of procreation.
41:03Onanism is condemned in the Old Testament.
41:06The seed given by God cannot be wasted.
41:10Therefore, if it cannot be wasted,
41:13not only is masturbation condemned,
41:15but all sterile use of semen.
41:20Consciousness crises are frequent,
41:22which drive armed men, nobles and rich merchants
41:26to abandon their previous life to embrace the monastic and contemplative life.
41:33From the thirteenth century,
41:35with the development of practices related to the examination of conscience,
41:39and with the consolidation of a more pending moral of intentions than of acts,
41:43public penance leaves the way open to private confession and the ear,
41:48to which the faithful must submit at least once a year.
41:53The confession as we understand it today,
41:57the penitent before the confessor,
41:59was not like that in ancient times.
42:02At that time, confession was done publicly.
42:05The sins themselves were declared in the presence of an assembly.
42:12In the Middle Ages, death is a daily event
42:15that everyone can contemplate closely.
42:18But after death, the beyond opens,
42:20and for those who have not repented of their sins,
42:23hell is a safe destination.
42:27Let us sing for his departure from this life and his separation.
42:32Let us pray to God our Lord,
42:34so that he may have mercy,
42:36but also so that there may be a communion and a meeting.
42:43It is a time in which the world of the dead and the world of the living
42:46are always in contact,
42:48where the supernatural is frequently present in the day to day.
42:53In fact, once dead, we are not separated from each other,
42:58because we all go through the same path
43:01and we will meet again in the same place.
43:06Because we do not lose them, but only precede us.
43:11We will never be separated, because we will live for Christ,
43:15and now we are united to Christ.
43:18Walking to meet him, we will all be one in Christ.
43:36Another fundamental feature of the medieval mentality
43:39is its strong symbolism.
43:42Starting with the numbers that St. Augustine considers
43:45thoughts of God.
43:47The 3 is related especially to the Trinity,
43:50the 4 to the evangelists, the rivers of paradise,
43:53the cardinal points, the seasons of the year, the virtues.
43:58The 7 is related to the septuagints of religion,
44:01such as the gifts of God, the capital sins and the sacraments.
44:06The 10 is associated with the commandments,
44:08the 12 to the number of apostles, to the signs of the Zodiac,
44:11to the months of the year.
44:14We could say that the Middle Ages is the kingdom of the symbolic.
44:18By symbolic we do not mean a vague abstraction,
44:21as we could think, erroneously,
44:23with our late rationalist mentality.
44:27The symbol is something real,
44:29it has a meaning and a real weight.
44:32For example, the color of the knight in the tournament,
44:35the color of his wardrobe, has a real meaning.
44:40What the knight writes on his shield
44:42also has an important real meaning,
44:44because it indicates his mood at that precise moment.
44:48But they also have a real meaning
44:50the symbols that we can find
44:52on the flag of a town hall or a city.
44:56The symbolic has a very strong meaning,
44:59because through it messages are sent and contents are communicated.
45:06The gesture itself is a symbol of fundamental importance.
45:16There are also geometric figures.
45:19The circle expresses perfection,
45:21has no beginning or end,
45:23represents the sky and symbolizes time,
45:26and is the perfect image of unity and the Creator principle.
45:31Colors are also very important
45:33from the point of view of symbolic interpretation.
45:37Black evokes sadness and will.
45:40Red, charity and victory.
45:42White, purity and rectitude.
45:44Yellow, intelligence and common sense.
45:47Green, hope.
45:49Blue is the color of the sky.
45:51Numerous shapes and colors
45:53that form concrete and significant combinations
45:56in handcrafted objects,
45:58in heraldic shields and in iconographic representations.
46:03When the king of France dies,
46:05in front of his corpse,
46:07the French gentlemen break the flags
46:10and throw them on the ground in front of the deceased.
46:17But the king's flag tilts slightly,
46:20waves and rises again immediately,
46:23because the king's flag symbolizes
46:26the mystical body of the king of France.
46:29And the mystical body is not the real body.
46:32The real body dies,
46:34but the mystical body,
46:36what we would commonly call the state,
46:39that never dies.
46:41And the king's flag,
46:43which tilts and rises again immediately,
46:45means the state,
46:47which also admits the physical death of its representative.
46:50But the state, the crown, never dies.
46:53In this case, the symbol has a content
46:55and a formidable political message.
46:59The Middle Ages
47:04The Middle Ages, with respect to the Late Antiquity,
47:07defines a moment of fundamental transition
47:10in its way of conceiving and practicing sexuality.
47:13From the great sexual freedom of the Latin world,
47:16the Middle Ages passes to a rigid regulation
47:19that approves a severe condemnation of the pleasures of the body.
47:22The flesh and the spirit become antagonistic,
47:25especially through the ideas of St. Paul.
47:28The pleasures of the body become the main source of sin.
47:35It is also true that our body is our prison,
47:38that is, it is in this world.
47:42Let us not forget that certain earthly desires
47:45are an impediment for us.
47:48Against them we have to fight and be at war.
47:52The flesh experiences a true demonization.
47:55It becomes a place of depravity.
47:58The body is stripped of all dignity
48:01and is increasingly considered a prison for the soul.
48:06I see in my limbs another law
48:09that opposes the law of my mind.
48:16For this reason, perhaps,
48:19we ask the Lord to take our soul from this world
48:22and with it from the works
48:25and the inconveniences of this world.
48:28The interpretation of original sin
48:31associated with the sexual sphere
48:34and the sins of the senses is reaffirmed.
48:37In short, concupiscence is what transgresses
48:40the law of the mind.
48:43This is the meaning of the word sin.
48:46It is the sin of the mind,
48:49which is the basis of the law of the senses.
48:52On the other hand,
48:55In short, the concupiscence is what transmits the original sin.
48:59Each carnal union carries the guilt implicitly,
49:02and the female body is especially guilty.
49:09Virginity is a flower that germinates in the Church.
49:13Dignity and adornment of spiritual grace,
49:16joy of nature,
49:18masterpiece of glory and glory,
49:21the image of God that exalts the holiness of the Lord,
49:25the most blessed part of the flock of Christ.
49:29The Church is rejoiced,
49:31whose glorious fertility flourishes abundantly in it.
49:36And the more the legion of virgins grows,
49:39the greater the joy of the Mother.
49:52LONG LIVE THE CHURCH
50:06Leaving aside the prejudices that in the past have relegated the Middle Ages
50:10to an obscurantist and regressive period,
50:13this time seems really surprising to us,
50:16both in its lights and in its shadows.
50:19Along with the great political events,
50:22the institutional transformations,
50:24the dates that mark the fundamental historical passages,
50:27it also highlights the value of what moves under the surface,
50:31of the collective elaborations that crystallize
50:34in a slow advance of new models of thought.
50:44Over the centuries,
50:47the slow evolution of mentalities and the ways
50:50in which the human being organizes his own existence
50:53and his knowledge of the world,
50:55in close relationship, sometimes revealing,
50:58with the great events that define the decisive stages of his history.