| Paper 537-a | Violence as an Instrument of De-Legitimization in Frankish-Muslim Inter-State Relations
(Language: English)
Bogdan C. Smarandache, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, Downtown
Index terms: Anthropology, Crusades, Islamic and Arabic Studies, Politics and Diplomacy |
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| Abstract | Paper -a:
Frankish and Muslim rulers committed several acts of symbolic violence against each other in the 6th-7th centuries AH/12th-13th centuries AD. In my presentation, I argue that these acts of violence were rational, calculated acts, and served specific purposes. The episodes in my analysis include intentional breaches of safe-conducts (Ar: amān; Ln: conductus securus, exitus salvus, and other variants), armistices (Ar: hudna; Ln: indutia), and treaties (Ar:ittifāq; Ln: foedus, pactum) that served to humiliate and dishonour one's adversary. I draw on anthropological perspectives to examine the semiotics and social effects of such acts of violence. The acts in my analysis contrast with more 'normative' acts of violence because they did not accrue the perpetrator any significant economic advantage. Rather, these acts of violence were symbolic acts intended to enhance the perpetrator's prestige and to dishonour the opposing party and were equally important for maintaining an empire.
Paper -b:
In this presentation, I have two goals. First, I study some Slavic proverbs attributed to Menander as evidence for medieval Slavic translational praxis and textual transmission processes. Second, I investigate the selected key-word 'woman' in the proverbs as documentation of the medieval Orthodox Slavic - in particular, monastic - worldview on violence and human rights, as normative texts that were copied in order to instruct the readers how to live. I will conduct the analysis using well-established philological methods - collation of manuscript witnesses (both Greek and Slavic), linguistic analysis of orthographic phonological, morphological, syntactic, and lexical variation, and close reading of case-studies.
Paper -c:
The Cracow School of Law was developed during the trial between Poland and Order of Teutonic Knights at the Constance Council in 1415. Paulus Vladimiri, the greatest lawyer and philosopher of the Cracow school, based his argumentation on the concept of the human natural rights. He identified law with faculty, and with the field of free choice, and claimed that human rights are based on human ability to act in the world. Following Vladimiri, later Cracow scholars put forward the problem of the origin and a mechanism of human action. They found the metaphysical principles of their law theory in natural philosophy in general, and in John Buridan's theory of impetus in particular.
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