scholarly journals Nobility

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Violet Soen
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Methodological Problem ◽  
State Building ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
The Past ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Social Composition ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face ◽  
Anthropological Approach

“The” nobility is a slippery fish to catch, especially for the Renaissance and Reformation era, here understood as the two centuries between 1450 and 1650. Historians inevitably face the methodological problem of whether to define “nobility” according to juridical, social or cultural criteria. Over the past decades, they have abandoned a legal and essentialist interpretation in favor of a sociological and anthropological approach. Even if legal, fiscal, and social privileges persisted in “the making of” the nobility during the ancien régime, it is now widely acknowledged that the social composition of the group constantly changed, leading to an immense diversity among its members across Europe and the colonies. Likewise, it is accepted today that both the Renaissance and Reformation profoundly changed the cultural and ideological concept of “nobility” itself. These novel insights replace the older 19th-century paradigm claiming that from the late Middle Ages onward the nobility was in long-lasting crisis, losing its power and status to a rising bourgeoisie. Instead of this linear interpretation, a new consensus emerged around a persistent rise and decline among nobilities (not of the group as such), and their remarkable resilience in the face of state-building, religious change, and economic upheaval between 1450 and 1650.

La Storia dell’Età Moderna nelle „Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Biblioteken“: lo specchio di un secolo di ricerche

2020 ◽  
Vol 100 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-46
Author(s):  
Irene Fosi
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Social Composition ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Papal Court

AbstractThe article examines the topics relating to the early modern period covered by the journal „Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken“ in the hundred volumes since its first publication. Thanks to the index (1898–1995), published in 1997 and the availability online on the website perpectivia.net (since 1958), it is possible to identify constants and changes in historiographical interests. Initially, the focus was on the publication of sources in the Vatican Secret Archive (now the Vatican Apostolic Archive) relating to the history of Germany. The topics covered later gradually broadened to include the history of the Papacy, the social composition of the Curia and the Papal court and Papal diplomacy with a specific focus on nunciatures, among others. Within a lively historiographical context, connected to historical events in Germany in the 20th century, attention to themes and sources relating to the Middle Ages continues to predominate with respect to topics connected to the early modern period.

MARCEL PAGNOL'S THE BAKER'S WIFE, A CINEMATIC CHARIVARI IN POPULAR FRONT FRANCE

2005 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 437-469 ◽  
Author(s):  
BRETT BOWLES
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Popular Front ◽  
Partisan Politics ◽  
National Union ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Social ◽  
Definition Of

Taking an anthropological approach, this article interprets Pagnol's critically acknowledged classic as a reinvention of a carnivalesque ritual practised in France from the late middle ages through the late 1930s, when ethnographers observed its last vestiges. By linking La Femme du boulanger (The baker's wife, 1938) to contemporaneous debates over gender, national decadence, and the definition of French cultural identity, I argue that the film recycles the charivari's long-standing function as a tool of popular protest against social and political practices regarded as detrimental to the welfare of the nation. In the context of the Popular Front, Pagnol's charivari ridiculed divisive partisan politics pitting Left against Right, symbolically purged class conflict from the social body, and created a new form of folklore that served as a focal point for the communitarian ritual of movie-going among the urban working and middle classes. In so doing, the film promoted the ongoing shift in public support away from the Popular Front in favour of a conservative ‘National Union’ government under Prime Minister Edouard Daladier, who in 1938–9 assumed the role of France's newest political patriarch.

Time and the Testator, 1370–1540

2002 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 133-144
Author(s):  
Judith Middleton-Stewart
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The Past ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Perception Of Time ◽  
Limited Duration ◽  
At Will

There were many ways in which the late medieval testator could acknowledge time. Behind each testator lay a lifetime of memories and experiences on which he or she drew, recalling the names of those ‘they had fared the better for’, those they wished to remember and by whom they wished to be remembered. Their present time was of limited duration, for at will making they had to assemble their thoughts and their intentions, make decisions and appoint stewards, as they prepared for their time ahead; but as they spent present time arranging the past, so they spent present time laying plans for the future. Some testators had more to bequeath, more time to spare: others had less to leave, less time to plan. Were they aware of time? How did they control the future? In an intriguing essay, A. G. Rigg asserts that ‘one of the greatest revolutions in man’s perception of the world around him was caused by the invention, sometime in the late thirteenth century, of the mechanical weight-driven clock.’ It is the intention of this paper to see how men’s (and women’s) perception of time in the late Middle Ages was reflected in their wills, the most personal papers left by ordinary men and women of the period.

scholarly journals “Making the face beautiful”(feature on medieval beauty products)

2020 ◽  
pp. 73-79
Author(s):  
Radivoj Radic
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Medical Texts ◽  
Medieval Medicine ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Face ◽  
Bad Breath ◽  
Ambivalent Relationship ◽  
The Church ◽  
Beauty Products

In the Middle Ages, people had an ambivalent relationship to the beauty products: some were fully supportive of the attempts to beautify oneself, while the others, first and foremost the representatives of the church, frowned upon this notion. This feature represents a show?case of the advice and recipes for beautification from two medical collections created in the late Middle Ages. These are the Byzantine medical treatise (dating from 11th to 14th century) and the collection of Serbian medieval medicine, the so-called Hodoch Code (dating from the end of the 14th or beginning of the 15th century). The treatise is focusing more on the practical advice than theoretical knowledge, and its greatest part is dedicated to pharmacology. Hodoch Code (Hodoski zbornik) is in fact a therapeutic collection, and it consists of diverse medical texts. These collections contain the advice how to make one?s face white, hair black or blond, but most certainly rich in volume, as well as recipes for treating facial lines, warts, freckles, cracked lips or bad breath.

Center and Peripheries

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Regina Grafe
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Analysis ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Path Dependence ◽  
State Building ◽  
Local Autonomy ◽  
European State ◽  
Complex Combination ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Empirical Analysis

This chapter illustrates how the empirical analysis of market and state has gone a long way to explain where the stumbling blocks in Spanish economic and political development were and why they stifled growth so significantly. There was path dependence in fragmented authority in Spain as elsewhere in Europe, but this was only part of the problem. Between roughly the late Middle Ages and the nineteenth century, overcoming divided authority was the essence of the process of European state-building. However, in Spain, the complex combination of institutional heritage and ideological underpinnings of rule made the process of eliminating at least some degree of divided authority especially slow and cumbersome, and a strong tradition of local autonomy remained part of what the compact between rulers and ruled was understood to be.

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.

Legal Rights in Scotland

2020 ◽  
pp. 417-449
Author(s):  
Kenneth G C Reid
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Weak Form ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
Property A ◽  
Dependent Children ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Face ◽  
Avoidance Measures ◽  
The Law ◽  
Scottish Government

The rules of mandatory family protection in Scotland date from the late Middle Ages and were a close copy of the rules then (but no longer) in force in England. Originally they comprised two distinct ‘legal rights’ (as they came much later to be known). In the first place, the surviving spouse had a usufruct in the immovable property of the deceased, known as ‘terce’ (for widows) and ‘courtesy’ (for widowers). Courtesy extended to the whole immovable property, terce only to one-third. In the second place, the movable property of the deceased was divided into three equal parts. The surviving spouse had a claim (the ‘relict’s right’ or jus relictae) to one part, and the surviving children to another (‘legitim’). The final one-third (‘dead’s part’) was the testator’s to dispose of in his will. Terce and courtesy were abolished, rather unthinkingly, in 1964. Today, therefore, the surviving spouse and children are protected against disinheritance only in respect of movable property – a weak form of protection made weaker still by the absence of anti-avoidance measures that would prevent testators giving property away during their lifetimes. The law is widely acknowledged to be unsatisfactory, but there is less agreement as to how it should be changed. One view is that legal rights should be extended to immovable property. Another view is that legitim should be replaced by a maintenance claim for dependent children (only). In the face of these competing views, the Scottish Government has recently decided to leave the law unchanged.

Art and Identity in the Parish Communities of Late Medieval Kent

1992 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 225-237
Author(s):  
Judy Ann Ford
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Art Criticism ◽  
Religious Community ◽  
Social Meaning ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Political Messages ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Social ◽  
Religious Associations

Historians have long been aware that patronage is a crucial factor in interpreting the social meaning of art. The late Middle Ages knew a variety of patrons, each employing art to communicate different sorts of concern: royal and aristocratic courts emphasized political messages, urban communes created governmental myths, cathedrals and monasteries gave expression to spiritual ideas—and all used art to convey notions of social identity. Recent investigations into the process of choosing and procuring works of art in these contexts have not only added perspective to formal art criticism, they have also deepened our understanding of the groups interested in the creation of art. One area in which questions of patronage could perhaps be better illuminated is the community of the parish. The parish served as the primary religious community for the majority of men and women for most of the Middle Ages. It was complex in composition, involving both laity and clergy, encompassing other religious associations, such as gilds, and including the devout and the indifferent, the orthodox and the dissenters.

Kinship and Friendship: The Perception of Family by Clergy and Laity in Late Medieval London

1988 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 369-385 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacqueline Murray
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Epidemic Disease ◽  
Popular Piety ◽  
The Past ◽  
Private Lives ◽  
The Social ◽  
Personal Nature ◽  
History Of ◽  
Rural England

One of the most persistent and frustrating problems which the social historian faces is that of gaining access to private lives in the past. This is true for all periods, but it is especially so for the Middle Ages. There are some letters available, but they tend to be scarce and limited in nature. Another type of document which proves a useful means of entry into medieval life is the testament. The information it contains is often of an intensely personal nature and allows the reader to understand the testator's relationships with others.The wealth of information contained in testaments is only beginning to be fully exploited. In his article “Fifteenth and Sixteenth-Century Wills as Historical Sources,” Michael L. Zell has demonstrated the breadth of information which these documents contain and points the way to many areas of further investigation. The usefulness of testamentary evidence to trace inheritance patterns and the disposition of property is well established. Eleanor S. Riemer has used testaments from Siena to examine the economic position of women. W. K. Jordan used wills extensively in his three volume study of charity in urban and rural England. More recently, Joel T. Rosenthal employed them to study gift-giving patterns among the English aristocracy. Wills have been used as sources for the study of religious values and popular piety, as a means of investigating the patterns of epidemic disease, and of tracing the spread of literacy. Historians have also begun to use testamentary evidence in the investigation of family life. For the history of the English family, the use of testamentary evidence is just beginning.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document