Competent to Rule?: Galeazzo Gualdo Priorato and a Secular View of Politics in Habsburg Dynastic History

2010 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
pp. 71-87
Author(s):  
Maria Golubeva

This article deals with an early modern court historian's judgments concerning the political competence and incompetence of his contemporaries. Although the phrase “political competence” may seem anachronistic when referring to the second half of the seventeenth century, hardly any historian today would deny that, at least since the late medieval period, European intellectuals belonging to political elites had developed their own understanding of what constitutes effective statesmanship. That understanding was not always normative, or based on exempla of the classical past—it could be practical and expressed through evaluations of current events. In the middle of the seventeenth century, the future Habsburg court historian Galeazzo Gualdo Priorato wrote about Oliver Cromwell: “And let it be noted from his extraordinary example, that not the nobility of birth, nor riches . . . qualify one for high office, as it usually solely happens, but that it is the opportunity that . . . wakes up the spirits, and sharpens the minds.” This article will deal with Priorato's judgments of political competence (and incompetence) in the works that he wrote while in the service of the Austrian Habsburgs.

2022 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Franco Motta ◽  
Eleonora Rai

Abstract The introduction to this special issue provides some considerations on early modern sanctity as a historical object. It firstly presents the major shifts in the developing idea of sanctity between the late medieval period and the nineteenth century, passing through the early modern construction of sanctity and its cultural, social, and political implications. Secondly, it provides an overview of the main sources that allow historians to retrace early modern sanctity, especially canonization records and hagiographies. Thirdly, it offers an overview of the ingenious role of the Society of Jesus in the construction of early modern sanctity, by highlighting its ability to employ, create, and play with hagiographical models. The main Jesuit models of sanctity are then presented (i.e., the theologian, the missionary, the martyr, the living saint), and an important reflection is reserved for the specific martyrial character of Jesuit sanctity. The introduction assesses the continuity of the Jesuit hagiographical discourse throughout the long history of the order, from the origins to the suppression and restoration.


Author(s):  
Warren Boutcher

The ‘Introduction’ describes how in Volume 2 we switch focus from the patron-author to the reader-writers of the Essais, as they circulated around Europe. These are seventeenth-century descendants of the free literate of the late medieval period, as described by Armando Petrucci. The Essais become a context for their works, instead of vice versa. The primary objects of study are less, now, contexts involving Montaigne and his collaborators than those involving various commentators, imitators, promoters, translators, and their networks of friends and family. We are concerned less with Montaigne’s book than with their books—whether printed, manuscript, or a hybrid of both, whether literary works, or personal records. There follow summaries of the individual chapters.


Author(s):  
Agnès Graceffa

The Merovingian period has long been contested ground on which a variety of ideologies and approaches have been marshaled to debate the significance of the “end” of antiquity and the start of the Middle Ages. Particularly important to these discussions has been the role of this period in shaping national identity across western Europe; interpretations of the Merovingians have varied as political realities have changed in Europe, going back, in some cases, as far as the late medieval period. This chapter focuses mainly on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but offers examples as early as the seventeenth century as to how the Merovingian period has been harnessed for a large number of purposes and how these sometimes polemical interpretations have encouraged or stymied our understanding of this period.


Author(s):  
Claire Preston

The rich and expanding rhetorical universe of the English Renaissance annexed the expressive possibilities of painting and the plastic arts using a variety of figures and tropes. These—ekphrasis (intense description), blason (anatomizing description), paragone (the contest between the arts), and emblems and imprese (formal verbal-visual symbols)—allowed English writers to press the visual into the service of the verbal, creating powerful rhetorical tools and distinctive literary expression. This article describes the development of these verbal-visual tools from the late medieval period through the early seventeenth century by Italian art theorists and in the exemplary works of Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare.


Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 369 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tillo Detige

As recent research on the former bhaṭṭāraka lineages of Western and Central India has shown, the early modern Digambara tradition, rather than constituting a distinct, and defective, ‘bhaṭṭāraka era’, shows much similarity to contemporary Digambara Jainism. Bhaṭṭārakas were regarded and venerated as ideal renouncers. Many of their practices accorded to those of today’s Digambara munis, and the bhaṭṭāraka saṅghas also featured renouncers of the muni and ācārya ranks, long thought to have abruptly become obsolete in the late medieval period. This new understanding of early modern Digambara Jainism is corroborated by the present article, which deals with early modern bhaṭṭāraka consecration rituals (paṭṭābhiṣeka, dīkṣā). The study is mainly based on two genres of sources. Sanskrit bhaṭṭāraka consecration manuals (dīkṣā-vidhi, pada-sthāpanā-vidhi), firstly, outline the preparations, the ritual proceedings, and the festivities to be held. Some vernacular songs of praise (gīta, etc.) of individual bhaṭṭārakas, secondly, focus specifically on their consecrations. These song compositions confirm many of the manuals’ prescriptions, while also adding elements not attested in the latter. Read in conjunction, both sources allow a relatively detailed understanding of early modern bhaṭṭāraka consecrations, show they closely resembled contemporary Digambara initiations, and confirm the former venerability of early modern bhaṭṭārakas in their own times.


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
José Miguel Alcolado Carnicero

AbstractFrench and Latin used to be the two main languages of record in the Merchant Taylors, as well as other London livery companies, as late as the fifteenth century, at least. From the fourteenth century onwards, English was becoming more and more present in this guild’s business accounts, until it replaced both Romance languages as their new official medium of written communication. Seen the inconsistent dates of adoption of English in the Merchant Taylors’ Master and Wardens’ Accounts suggested in the literature, this article applies two different approaches to language shift in the late medieval period in order to analyse and illustrate when exactly the whole Company is supposed to have substituted French and Latin for English forever. As the search of that permanent and communal shift leads to the necessary consultation of financial manuscripts kept as late as the seventeenth century, it is concluded that the construction of a unitary framework for the study of the different language shifts in the London livery companies at different periods would yield more comprehensive results.


Moments of royal succession, which punctuated the Stuart era (1603–1714), occasioned outpourings of literature. Writers, including most of the major figures of the seventeenth century from Jonson, Daniel, and Donne to Marvell, Dryden, and Behn, seized upon these occasions to mark the transition of power; to reflect upon the political structures and values of their nation; and to present themselves as authors worthy of patronage and recognition. This volume of essays explores this important category of early modern writing. It contends that succession literature warrants attention as a distinct category: appreciated by contemporaries, acknowledged by a number of scholars, but never investigated in a coherent and methodical manner, it helped to shape political reputations and values across the period. Benefiting from the unique database of such writing generated by the AHRC-funded Stuart Successions Project, the volume brings together a distinguished group of authors to address a subject which is of wide and growing interest to students both of history and of literature. It illuminates the relation between literature and politics in this pivotal century of English political and cultural history. Interdisciplinary in scope, the volume will be indispensable to scholars of early modern British literature and history as well as undergraduates and postgraduates in both fields.


Urban History ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 568-588
Author(s):  
Frederik Buylaert ◽  
Jelten Baguet ◽  
Janna Everaert

AbstractThis article provides a comparative analysis of four large towns in the Southern Low Countries between c. 1350 and c. 1550. Combining the data on Ghent, Bruges and Antwerp – each of which is discussed in greater detail in the articles in this special section – with recent research on Bruges, the authors argue against the historiographical trend in which the political history of late medieval towns is supposedly dominated by a trend towards oligarchy. Rather than a closure of the ruling class, the four towns show a high turnover in the social composition of the political elite, and a consistent trend towards aristocracy, in which an increasingly large number of aldermen enjoyed noble status. The intensity of these trends differed from town to town, and was tied to different institutional configurations as well as different economic and political developments in each of the four towns.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carmen Ting ◽  
Thilo Rehren ◽  
Athanasios Vionis ◽  
Vasiliki Kassianidou

AbstractThis paper challenges the conventional characterisation of glazed ware productions in the eastern Mediterranean, especially the ones which did not feature the use of opaque or tin-glazed technology, as technologically stagnant and unsusceptible to broader socio-economic developments from the late medieval period onwards. Focusing on the Cypriot example, we devise a new approach that combines scientific analyses (thin-section petrography and SEM-EDS) and a full consideration of the chaîne opératoire in context to highlight the changes in technology and craft organisation of glazed ware productions concentrating in the Paphos, Famagusta and Lapithos region during the thirteenth to seventeenth centuries CE. Our results indicate that the Paphos production was short-lived, lasting from the establishment of Frankish rule in Cyprus in the thirteenth century to the aftermath of the fall of the Crusader campaigns in the fourteenth century. However, glazed ware production continued in Famagusta and Lapithos from the late thirteenth/fourteenth centuries through to the seventeenth century, using technical practices that were evidently different from the Paphos production. It is possible that these productions were set up to serve the new, local demands deriving from an intensification of commercial activities on the island. Further changes occurred to the technical practices of the Famagusta and Lapithos productions around the 16th/17th centuries, coinciding with the displacement of populations and socio-political organisation brought by the Ottoman rule.


2021 ◽  
pp. 343-357
Author(s):  
Astghik Babajanyan

THE NEWFOUND CHAPEL OF THE LATE MEDIEVAL PERIOD IN TEGHUT (The Results of the Excavations in 2010) In 2010 in the results of the excavations carried out at the site of "Lands of Gharakotuk" in Teghut a cemetery chapel with almost a square floorplan (8.7x7.7 m2) was uncovered. The chapel has a rectangular apse highlighted from both inside and outside which is not common in Armenian architecture. The architectural plan of the chapel was distorted in the result of multiple and often incorrect reconstructions. The excavations revealed a variety of tombstones of the 14th17th centuries, including two grave markers with Georgian inscriptions (deciphering and commentaries by Temo Jojua), two complete and two dozen fragmentary khachkars (two of them dated 1513 and 1604), ceramic and metal artifacts. Based on the analysis of the found materials and the architectural structure, the chapel dates to the 16th-17th centuries. According to the environment ‒ sacred trees (Celtis caucasica) growing around the chapel and the cemetery, as well as a collection of specially hidden metal objects (human figurines, animal shoes, lock etc.) which had protective significance from the evil eye or various diseases, the chapel served also as a place for pilgrimage.


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