Supplica la mia parvidade…

2010 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 194-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gudrun Held
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Early Period ◽  
The Public ◽  
Classical Study ◽  
Culturally Congruent ◽  
The Social ◽  
Textual Practices ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
Speech Events

This paper studies the public communication act of petitions made in the Middle Ages by subjects to their governors in situations of high personal need. Analysing an edited corpus of correspondence in Anglo-Norman and Italian chancelleries of the early thirteenth to the late fifteenth century, I attempt to identify verbal means that are related to what is today defined as “face” and “facework”, and to discuss this evidence in the tension modern pragmatics establishes between common “politic” and marked “polite” behaviour. Parting from the three-fold conception where all speech events have to be considered in their whole as social, discursive and textual practices, I briefly retrace the social and legal conditions of petitions and describe their particular discursive character on the threshold of two transitions: from orality to literacy and from Latin to vernacular. The data analysis is concerned with the textual cues bound to structural, syntactic and semantic constraints. Pointing out the most striking features of these three aspects and listing the most frequent forms that are cross-culturally congruent, I identify medieval facework as a ritual, but consciously iconic shaping of a power ideal at the intersection of political, juristic and religious implications. As formality is a shared value based on social position and role, no sign of reflexive politeness behaviour can be verified in this early period. Variations are simply attributed to the habits of the different chancelleries and their scribes. Though identified as unmarked politic behaviour, the common procedures in the medieval petition letters can nevertheless be seen as general face-saving strategies in response to the threatening character of requests. Thus the historical data shed light on the conception of linguistic politeness in the first-order and the second-order senses of the term and are useful to advance new hypotheses in the pragmatic discussion since Brown and Levinson’s classical study.

Why This Time and Place?

Born to Write ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 10-19
Author(s):  
Neil Kenny
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Social Position ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Social ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
The Revolution

From about the late fifteenth century onwards, literature and learning acquired increased importance for the social position of noble and elite-commoner families in France. One reason is the expansion and rise to prominence of the royal office-holder milieu, which had no exact equivalent in, say, England, where the aristocracy was much smaller than the French nobility and where there was no equivalent of the French system of venality of office. In France, family literature often helped extend across the generations a relationship between two families—that of the literary producer and that of the monarch. From the late Middle Ages, the conditions for family literature were made more favourable by broad social shifts. Although this study focuses mainly on the period from the late fifteenth to the mid-seventeenth century, it is likely that the production of works from within families of literary producers thrived especially up to the Revolution.

Early Tudor Poetry: Courtliness and Print

2019 ◽  
pp. 257-284
Author(s):  
Derek Attridge
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Henry Viii ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
Public Performance ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
The Impact

After noting the evidence for the public performance of poetry in Continental Europe, this chapter turns to the impact of print on English poetry: from the late fifteenth century, the printers Caxton and de Worde gave readers a new way to experience poems. At the court of Henry VIII, Skelton exploited both manuscript and print. The Devonshire manuscript, which circulated around Henry’s courtiers, is discussed, as is Tottel’s 1557 Songes and Sonettes, whose cachet lay partly in its making the private poetry of the elite available to a large public. Another popular collection was A Mirror for Magistrates, in which a gathering of poets impersonating famous tragic victims of the past was staged. Although there were signs of a suppler use of metre, the 1560s and 1570s were characterized by highly regular verse. The most skilled poet of this period, Gascoigne, was also responsible for a pathbreaking treatise on poetry.

scholarly journals THE PRESERVATION OF CROSBY HALL, c. 1830–1850

2016 ◽  
Vol 60 (3) ◽  
pp. 687-719 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROSEMARY SWEET
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Domestic Architecture ◽  
Thomas More ◽  
Richard Iii ◽  
Commercial Development ◽  
National Heritage ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Fifteenth

ABSTRACTThis article offers a case-study of an early preservation campaign to save the remains of the fifteenth-century Crosby Hall in Bishopsgate, London, threatened with demolition in 1830, in a period before the emergence of national bodies dedicated to the preservation of historic monuments. It is an unusual and early example of a successful campaign to save a secular building. The reasons why the Hall's fate attracted the interest of antiquaries, architects, and campaigners are analysed in the context of the emergence of historical awareness of the domestic architecture of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as well as wider recognition of the importance of this period for Britain's urban and commercial development. The Hall's associations with Richard III and other historic figures, including Thomas More and Thomas Gresham, are shown to have been particularly important in generating wider public interest, thereby allowing the campaigners to articulate the importance of the Hall in national terms. The history of Crosby Hall illuminates how a discourse of national heritage emerged from the inherited tradition of eighteenth-century antiquarianism and highlights the importance of the social, professional, and familial networks that sustained proactive attempts to preserve the nation's monuments and antiquities.

The Savior, the Woman, and the Head of the Dragon in the Caput Masses and Motet

2006 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 537-630 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANNE WALTERS ROBERTSON
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Immaculate Conception ◽  
Genesis 3 ◽  
Johannes Ockeghem ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
The Masses ◽  
The Devil ◽  
Lasting Influence

Abstract God's dramatic curse of Adam, Eve, and the serpent, as recorded in Genesis 3:14–15, contains a theological ambiguity that played out in the visual arts, literature, and, as this article contends, music of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Translations of this passage leave in doubt whether a male, a female, or both, will defeat sin by crushing Satan's head (“caput”). This issue lies at the heart of the three Caput masses by an anonymous Englishman, Johannes Ockeghem, and Jacob Obrecht, and the Caput Motet for the Virgin by Richard Hygons from the Eton Choirbook. Fifteenth-century discussions of the roles of Christ and Mary in confronting sin, often called the “head of the dragon,” help unravel the meaning of these works. The Caput masses are Christ-focused and emphasize the Savior or one of his surrogates suppressing the beast's head, as seen in illumination, rubric, and canon found in the masses. Folklorically based rituals and concepts of liturgical time are similarly built around the idea of the temporary reign of the Devil, who is ultimately trodden down by Christ. Hygons's motet appears after celebration of the Immaculate Conception was authorized in the late fifteenth century. This feast proclaimed Mary's conquest of sin through her own trampling on the dragon; the motet stresses Marian elements of the Caput theology, especially the contrast between the Virgin's spotlessness and Eve's corruption. Features of the Caput tradition mirror topics discussed in astrological and astronomical treatises and suggest that the composer of the original Caput Mass may also have been an astronomer. The disappearance of the Caput tradition signals its lasting influence through its progeny, which rise up in yet another renowned family of polyphonic masses. Together, the Caput masses and motet encompass the multifaceted doctrine of Redemption from the late middle ages under one highly symbolic Caput rubric.

scholarly journals El cabildo de curas y beneficiados de Toledo en la segunda mitad del siglo XV. Composición y aspectos institucionales (1455-1488) = The Chapter of Priests and Incumbents of Toledo in the Second Half of the Fifteenth Century. Composition and Institutional Aspects (1455-1488)

2018 ◽  
pp. 521546
Author(s):  
Jesús Olivet García-Dorado
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Institutional Development ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Social ◽  
Institutional Aspects

Este trabajo tiene como objeto fundamental el estudio de las cofradías clericales en la Baja Edad Media, en concreto el Cabildo de Curas y Beneficiados de Toledo en la segunda mitad del siglo XV. Mediante el estudio de cuatro obituarios de esta institución, se puede conocer la composición y el desarrollo institucional de estas corporaciones y su importancia en el medio social, donde desarrollaron sus actividades.The main purpose of this article is to study clerical brotherhoods in the late Middle Ages, specifically the Chapter of Priests and Incumbents of Toledo in the second half of the fifteenth century. The composition and the institutional development of these corporations and its meaning in the social environment, where they carried out its activities, can be determined through the study of four of this institution’s obituaries.

The Indexical Self

Last Words ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Sebastian Sobecki
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Medieval England ◽  
Social Character ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Medieval Text ◽  
Late Medieval England

No medieval text was designed to be read hundreds of years later by an audience unfamiliar with its language, situation, and author. By ascribing to these texts intentional anonymity, we romanticize them and misjudge the social character of their authors. Instead, most medieval poems and manuscripts presuppose familiarity with their authorial or scribal maker. Last Words: The Public Self and the Social Author in Late Medieval England attempts to recover this familiarity and understand the literary motivation behind some of the most important fifteenth-century texts and authors. Last Words captures the public selves of such social authors when they attempt to extract themselves from the context of a lived life.

Preaching to the Laity in Fifteenth-Century Germany: Johannes Nider's ‘Harps’

1983 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Dahmus
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Religious Literature ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
The Middle Ages

Bernd Moeller concludes in his often-quoted study of late medieval German piety that ‘one could dare to call the late fifteenth century in Germany one of the most churchly-minded and devout periods of the Middle Ages’. In his review of Moeller's work, W. D.J. Cargill Thompson points out that the ‘profound conservatism’ of this religiosity, which included devotion to the mass, veneration of saints and their relics, and the reading of vast amounts of religious literature, poses a problem for our understanding of the causes of the Reformation. How does one reconcile this traditional churchliness with the ‘remarkable suddenness’ of its collapse after 1520? One would have expected greater resistance to Lutheran ideas than actually occurred.

Mega-structures of the Middle Ages: the construction of religious buildings in Europe and Asia,c.1000–1500

2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 381-406 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maarten Prak
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Modular Design ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Construction Work ◽  
Religious Buildings ◽  
Modern Engineering ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
The Middle Ages

AbstractHow did medieval builders manage to construct some of the tallest structures in the world without access to modern engineering theories? Construction drawings were limited to details and, with only a handful exceptions, manuals for builders only appeared in the late fifteenth century. By implication, the relevant knowledge had to be transferred on a personal basis. Its underlying principles must therefore have been reasonably simple. This article shows how a modular design, combined with on-site experimentation, guided much of the construction work on large projects such as European cathedrals, Middle Eastern mosques, Indian temples, and Chinese pagoda towers.

Forgotten and ephemeral? The Palace of the Kings of Majorca, Perpignan

Antiquity ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 89 (347) ◽  
pp. 1246-1248
Author(s):  
Tom Beaumont James
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Local Authorities ◽  
Philip Ii ◽  
The Public ◽  
Charles V ◽  
Benign Neglect ◽  
French Military ◽  
Significant Extension ◽  
Military Control ◽  
Late Fifteenth

The titles of these weighty tomes invite questions: the palace of whom? The kings of where? A palace when? Olivier Poisson, concluding the first volume, writes of the restoration programme of 1943–1960 that “le palais est resté, malgré le pari des restaurateurs de la décennie 1950, le souvenir un peu vide et abstrait d’une ‘monarchie oubliée et éphemère’” (p. 539). This ‘forgotten and ephemeral monarchy’ of Majorca, a scion of the kings of Aragon, ruled from 1270–1344. In 1276, the monarchy had made Perpignan the capital of the Kingdom of Majorca and began work on the ‘Palais des Rois de Majorque’. To posterity's good fortune, the final Majorcan monarch, James III (‘the Unfortunate’), left the ‘Lois palatines’ (Palatine Laws) of 1337 that provide key insights into the etiquette and even the significance of colour in the early fourteenth-century palace. Following the dispossession of James III in 1344, Perpignan came into the hands of the Aragonese monarchy until 1462. The Palace then passed into French ownership and was used as a barracks for three decades in the late fifteenth century. Following return to Spanish ownership in 1493, Emperor Charles V, Philip II and their successors made further modifications. The Palace finally came back into French hands in 1659 and was henceforth a barracks, graced by significant extension of the fortifications by Vauban. Under French military control, benign neglect preserved early architectural phases, a signal advantage for those subsequently involved in the restoration of the Palace. Following the fall of France in 1942 (and with Spain in fascist hands), the buildings were largely released from military use and handed to the local authorities of the Pyrénées Orientales. A programme of repair and restoration was established, and brought to fruition by the local socialist mayor, a former member of the Resistance, towards the end of the 1940s. The restored buildings were opened to the public in 1958.

Quintilian and the Rhetorical Revolution of the Middle Ages

1995 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 231-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
John O. Ward
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Original Length ◽  
Rhetorical Practice ◽  
Good Advice ◽  
Training Courses ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
Full Utilization ◽  
The Middle Ages

Abstract: It is often asserted nowadays that the medieval period “fragmented” the classical rhetorical inheritance, while the Renaissance restored it to its former coherence. The story of the assimilation in the Middle Ages and Renaissance of Quintilian's Institutes of Oratory is examined here in order to demonstrate the problems inherent in such a position. It is argued that the full utilization of the text of Quintilian's Institutes of Oratory in the Renaissance, along with the discrediting of the Ad Herennium (as a work of Cicero) that is associated with the name of Raffaello Regio in the last decade of the fifteenth century, are not the instances of the “recovery” of antiquity and supersession of “medieval philology” that they are often thought to be. Instead the opposite seems to be the case. The philological “recovery” of Quintilian led away from the incorporation of the Institutes into contemporary rhetorical practice and towards philology for its own sake. This, together with the bitter professional jealousies among the Italian schoolmen of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, led, almost “accidentally” as it were, to a “sundering” of the “whole” that the Middle Ages had put together out of rhetorical fragments from antiquity. The medieval period, less concerned with philological niceties than with the practical utility of good advice from the past, constructed a new kind of rhetorical text from an amalgam of old texts: the Ad Herennium commentary, made up of the text of the Ad Herennium, explanations, summaries, and discussions from the medieval schoolroom, and portions of Boethius' De differentiis topicis, Quintilian's Institutes, and other classical sources. This serviceable “unity” the Renaissance “sundered” by (a) discrediting the Ad Herennium as an authoritative Ciceronian text, and (b) placing the Institutes far beyond the practical capabilities of contemporary rhetorical training courses by restoring it to its original length (vis-à-vis the abridgements and assimilations of the medieval period). In this process of turning the classical texts into icons, the Renaissance scholars were predictably unable to re-create the kaleidoscopic, one-thousand-year reality of rhetorical attitudes and texts in antiquity, from the fragments that the Middle Ages had used to build up their new form of integrated text. Much had been lost, but what had been gained?

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