A Crooked Mirror for Princes

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pavlína Rychterová
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Bourgeois Culture ◽  
Mirrors For Princes

This chapter examines the growing importance of the vernacular languages during the later Middle Ages in shaping the form, content, and audiences of political discourse. It presents a famously wicked king of the late Middle Ages, Wenceslas IV (1361–1419), as a case study and traces the origins of his bad reputation to a group of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century writings. These have often been dismissed as fictions or studied solely as literature, but in fact they represent new modes of articulating good and bad kingship. The chapter shows that, in the context of an increasingly literate bourgeois culture, especially in university cities, these vernacular works transformed Latin theological approaches to monarchy, while rendering mirrors for princes and related literatures accessible to an unprecedented audience.

A Fifteenth-Century Lawsuit: The Case of St Anthony's Hospital

1993 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-223
Author(s):  
David K. Maxfield
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Time Lags ◽  
Henry V ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Great Schism ◽  
Judicial Procedures ◽  
Financial Transactions

It is well known that the Council of Constance (1414–18) was concerned with reform, heresy and – above all – the ending of the Great Schism of the papacy. However, comparatively few realise how many personal and institutional suits were heard at tribunals there. Christopher Crowder has asserted with justifiable exaggeration that more ‘ecclesiastical carpetbaggers’ were in attendance than ‘ecclesiastical statesman’. This article, based on hitherto unused material, is a case study which presents the activities of certain ‘carpetbaggers’ and their agents in some detail. It is offered partly because it further documents Crowder's assertion, partly because it supports his conclusion that judicial procedures at the papal curia in the late Middle Ages operated with great continuity, and partly because it suggests how closely King Henry v could concern himself with the details of ecclesiastical business. It also throws unusual light on medieval English hospitals, especially on alien priory establishments. Furthermore, it exemplifies the inordinate amounts of time, documentation, money and gifts required in order to pursue cases at the papal curia; difficulties stemming from reliance on proctors there; the time lags and other problems related to international correspondence and financial transactions in the early fifteenth century; and connections between ‘carpetbaggers’ and ‘ecclesiastical statesmen’ that sometimes affected curia cases.

Venedig und der „wilde Osten“

2020 ◽  
Vol 100 (1) ◽  
pp. 208-260
Author(s):  
Christof Paulus ◽  
Albert Weber
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Information Acquisition ◽  
Research Field ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Ranking Criteria ◽  
Areas Of Interest ◽  
And Control

AbstractVenice is considered the best-informed community of the late Middle Ages. The study examines the availability of information for the second half of the 15th century, particularly with regard to the key year 1462/1463, and as a case study concentrates on areas of the supposed Venetian periphery of interest, above all Hungary and the two principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia. The result is a thoroughly differentiated system of information acquisition, verification and control. Means of communication, as well as different areas of interest of the Serenissima, can be identified. A distinction is made between information maps and communication maps. The latter also include the distribution of news from the lagoon city exchanged with foreign envoys. During the period concerned, news was exchanged in an astonishingly liberal way, in turn integrating the Serenissima into the information networks of the other Italian states. The study thus places the „information commodity“ within the research field of late medieval gift exchange and patronage structures. In short, a thoroughly pragmatic Venetian approach to news acquisition and evaluation can be observed. Verification of the quality of the information obtained was subject not least to quantitative and ranking criteria. Ultimately, the informational power of Venice was based above all on its outstanding reputation among its contemporaries.

A new attribution to Brassart?

1994 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-43
Author(s):  
Peter Wright
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Middle Ages

A badly trimmed ascription can be more a matter for relish than regret: if enough of the composer's name survives to permit informed speculation, the musicologist's sense of pleasure is likely to outweigh his sense of loss. Most musical manuscripts from the late Middle Ages have visibly suffered at the hands of the binder's knife, but perhaps none more so than the famous ‘Aosta Manuscript’ (I-AO15), one of the central sources of early fifteenth-century sacred polyphony. In his inventory of the manuscript Guillaume de Van reported no fewer than twenty names as surviving in varying states of incompleteness. In fifteen instances he was able to decipher the composer's name or supply it from the manuscript's index or a concordant source, while the other five apparently defeated him. Two of the names have since been deciphered, and a third has been identified from another source, but the remaining two have attracted no further comment.

The New Entities of Abbacus and Renaissance Algebra

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roi Wagner
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Mathematics ◽  
Mathematical Practice ◽  
Northern Italy ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Negative Numbers ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Mathematical Signs

This chapter offers a historical narrative of some elements of the new algebra that was developed in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries in northern Italy in order to show how competing philosophical approaches find an intertwining expression in mathematical practice. It examines some of the important mathematical developments of the period in terms of a “Yes, please!” philosophy of mathematics. It describes economical-mathematical practice with algebraic signs and subtracted numbers in the abbaco tradition of the Italian late Middle Ages and Renaissance. The chapter first considers where the practice of using letters and ligatures to represent unknown quantities come from by analyzing Benedetto's fifteenth-century manuscript before discussing mathematics as abstraction from natural science observations that emerges from the realm of economy. It also explores the arithmetic of debited values, the formation of negative numbers, and the principle of fluidity of mathematical signs.

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.

Londoners and London Mendicants in the Late Middle Ages

1996 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 446-477 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Röhrkasten
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Rapid Expansion ◽  
Spiritual Needs ◽  
Social Significance ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The People ◽  
General Answer

Much attention has been paid to the role and functions of the mendicant orders in their urban environment. Among the topics discussed have been the friars' importance for urban development, their coexistence with other religious institutions, their economic practices and their relations with the secular authorities. As far as their spiritual and social significance is concerned their spectacular success and rapid development in the thirteenth century are generally accepted. There were some setbacks, particularly in towns where the Dominicans or Franciscans became involved in the suppression of heresy, but these had little impact on the rapid expansion of the orders. Members from all social groups, academics as well as aristocrats, merchants and artisans as well as the poor, felt the attraction of their sermons and way of life, some to such an extent that they decided to join one of the orders. But while the attraction of the mendicant ideal in the decades following the friars' arrival is undisputed, the problem of their importance for the religious life of the late medieval urban population is far more difficult to discuss. While there are assertions that the friars remained particularly popular, the orders' decline and their need of reform were already obvious in the fourteenth century and the various efforts to bring about a reinvigoration confirm this impression. In the fifteenth century famous mendicant preachers from Vincent Ferrer and Bernardino of Siena to Girolamo Savonarola attracted large crowds in many parts of Europe, but was this indicative of the population's general attitude towards the orders? Were the mendicants still perceived by the people as responding to their spiritual needs? How did the public react to signs of decadence, to disputes among the brothers? A general answer to such questions needs to be based on a large number of local studies and this is still a task for the future.

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.

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