Piracy and law in medieval Genoa: the consilia of Bartolomeo Bosco

2003 ◽  
Vol 9 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 256-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Tai
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Legal Opinions ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Mediterranean

AbstractThis essay contextualizes a series of learned legal opinions, or consilia, authored primarily by the Genoese jurist Bartolomeo Bosco (d. 1437) on the subject of maritime theft, or piracy, by referring to contemporaneous records for the practice of maritime theft in the Mediterranean, archival records in the Archivio di Stato for Bosco's career, and related consilia authored by Bosco. It argues that Bosco's opinions on matters related to the practice of piracy, overlooked despite revived scholarly interest in his work, illustrate the applications and limitations of consilia as practical documents in medieval civic governance, and suggest a divide between commercial and administrative perspectives in the maritime republics of late medieval Europe. Finally, it proposes that Bartolomeo Bosco be numbered among the "economic humanists" of the fifteenth century.

A Neglected Eucharistic Controversy: The Afterlife of John Wyclif's Eucharistic Thought in Bohemia in the Early Fifteenth Century

2015 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcela K. Perett
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Real Presence ◽  
The Subject ◽  
John Wyclif ◽  
Full Century

The renewed interest in John Wyclif (d. 1384) has brought this late medieval figure back into the spotlight of historians, giving rise to numerous studies evaluating his thought and its implications in the context of late fourteenth century England. However, it is not possible fully to appreciate Wyclif's importance in late medieval European culture without understanding the legacy of his ideas on the continent. According to the accepted narrative, John Wyclif's thought was mediated to the continent through the scholarly contacts between the universities in Oxford and in Prague, and re-emerged in the Latin writings of Jan Hus. This article argues that John Wyclif's thought, especially his critique of the church's doctrine of transubstantiation, found a larger audience among the rural clerics and laity in Bohemia, whom it reached through Peter Payne, who simplified and disseminated the works of the Oxford master. Wyclif's critique of transubstantiation sparked a nationwide debate about the nature of the Eucharist, generating numerous treatises, both in Latin and in the vernacular, on the subject of Christ's presence in the sacrament of the mass. This debate anticipated, a full century earlier, the famous debate between Luther and Zwingli and the Eucharistic debates of the sixteenth century Reformation more generally. The proliferation of vernacular Eucharistic tractates in Bohemia shows that Wyclif's critique of transubstantiation could be answered in a number of different ways that included both real presence (however defined) and figurative theologies—a fact, which, in turn, explains the doctrinal diversity among the Lollards in England.

Space, time, and the world

2021 ◽  
pp. 137-169
Author(s):  
Matthew Kempshall
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Scientific Discovery ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Renaissance Humanism ◽  
Historical Progress ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
The World ◽  
Age Of Discovery ◽  
New Vision

Conceptions of space and time have conventionally lent themselves to characterizations of late medieval Europe as an ‘Age of Discovery’. These characterizations underpin an account of historical ‘progress’ which is technological, intellectual, and social. Coupled with other retrospective ‘modern’ projections—Renaissance humanism and the rise of ‘the state’—they present a teleological narrative of empirical, rational, and scientific discovery at the waning, even the end, of ‘the Middle Ages’. By qualifying and revising such a narrative, this chapter invites appreciation of a more complex historical reality, a necessarily plural and fragmented picture of socially and culturally conditioned ways of seeing space, measuring time, and understanding the connections between them. The discoveries of the fifteenth century emerge, as a result, not as the reflection of a brave new vision of the world, a shift from ‘religion’ to ‘science’ or from ‘medieval’ to ‘modern’, but rather as a reconfiguration of representations of what was already known. This was certainly an age of conceptual change and development but one which was characterized as much by refining, re-ordering, and reconnection as it was by innovation and discovery.

The Merging of Religious Elements with National Consciousness in the Historical Works of Jan Długosz

1990 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 69-80
Author(s):  
Urszula Borkowska
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Rural Populations ◽  
National Consciousness ◽  
Political Union ◽  
Cultural Experience ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
History Of ◽  
Grand Duchy Of Lithuania ◽  
Religious Elements

The fifteenth century was a very important period in the history of the Polish State and nation. It had a particular significance for the development of national consciousness. The union of the Polish kingdom with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (1385) changed not only the boundaries of this new and unified state called the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but also created new and specific conditions for the development of the nation. The different nationalities of the jagiellonian state, Poles, Ruthenians, Lithuanians, Germans, Jews, and Armenians played an important role in the lively exchange of cultural experience on the basis of a sometimes uneasy partnership. Poland guaranteed privileges to the lords, both spiritual and temporal, to the gentry, and to the patricians, estates that had emerged in the course of the fourteenth century. These were united by common sentiment and desire for a strong political foundation. The urban and rural populations of both Polish and non-Polish speakers were bound together by loyalty to the Crown and its territory. Like other groups in late-medieval Europe they saw such a political union as advantageous.

scholarly journals Hagiography as Source: Gender and Conversion Narratives in The Book of the Saints of the Ethiopian Church

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 307
Author(s):  
Anna Redhair Wells
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Historical Experience ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Conversion Narratives ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Prior Relationship ◽  
Ethiopian Church

Drawing on the work of Jeanne-Nicole Mellon Saint-Laurent, this essay proposes utilizing hagiographies from the The Book of the Saints of the Ethiopian Church, a fifteenth-century Ethiopian collection of saints’ lives, to explore various aspects of conversion. Other scholars employ a similar approach when analyzing hagiographical literature found in medieval Europe. While acknowledging that these texts do not provide details about the historical experience of conversion, they can assist scholars in understanding the conception of conversion in the imagination of the culture that created them. This essay specifically focuses on the role of women in conversion throughout the text and argues that, although men and women were almost equally represented as agents of conversion, a closer examination reveals that their participation remained gendered. Women more frequently converted someone with whom they had a prior relationship, especially a member of their familial network. Significantly, these observations mirror the patterns uncovered by contemporary scholars such as Dana Robert, who notes how women contributed to the spread of Christianity primarily through human relationships. By integrating these representations of conversion from late medieval Ethiopia, scholarship will gain a more robust picture of conversion in Africa more broadly and widen its understanding of world Christianity.

The Mediterranean in the Spanish Imaginary During the Age of Exploration

2020 ◽  
pp. 21-42
Author(s):  
Andrew W. Devereux
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Western Mediterranean ◽  
Early Church ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Western Asia ◽  
Age Of Exploration ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Mediterranean

This chapter explores the ways that late medieval Spaniards thought about the Mediterranean and the lands surrounding its shores. The chapter mentions the geographers' belief that the three constituent parts of the earth, namely Asia, Africa, and Europe, met in the Mediterranean and that the lordship of the world could only be attained through control of the inner sea. It also points out that the early expansion of primitive Christianity suggest that the Mediterranean possessed a latent religious unity. Aware of the history of the early Church in North Africa and western Asia, jurists devised arguments to the effect that Christian conquests in those regions were in fact acts of recuperation or defense. It then describes the nuances of fifteenth-century Spaniards' perspectives on Mediterranean space by demonstrating that the proximate western Mediterranean was familiar and known, while the more distant eastern Mediterranean was more exotic and often depicted as the site of fabulous wonders.

scholarly journals “AB LES MANS JUNCTES E GENOLLS EN TERRA”: INTERCESSION AND THE NOTION OF QUEENSHIP IN LATE MEDIEVAL CATALONIA

2006 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 211-228
Author(s):  
Dawn Bratsch-Prince
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Judicial Reform ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Medieval Women ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Mediterranean Europe ◽  
Common Notion ◽  
Shed Light

Did medieval women who wore the crown share a common notion of queenship or recognize their own membership in a privileged group? Throughout medieval Europe the most salient images of queenship were those of wife, mother, and intercessor, familiar to the general population through Biblical and literary sources. This essay suggests that medieval Mediterranean queens were, in fact, aware of the power and influence that their role as intercessor afforded them. Two texts composed by the Aragonese queen Violant de Bar are used to shed light on a notion of queenship seemingly understood by her contemporaries, both male and female. The proemi or prologue of the queen’s address on judicial reform to the Catalano-Aragonese corts generals of 1388-1389 and a lengthy letter (1421) to queen María of Castile reference the responsibilities of the queen in mediating tensions and hostilities between the king and his rivals. From these documents, one gleans that queenship in early fifteenth-century Mediterranean Europe appears to have been viewed by its practitioners as a divinely-appointed office that entailed grave responsibility, as well as influence, by means of its emphasis on intercession.

scholarly journals ‘A Port of Two Seas.’ Lisbon and European Maritime Networks in the Fifteenth Century

2019 ◽  
pp. 339-353
Author(s):  
Joana Sequeira ◽  
Flávio Miranda
Keyword(s):  
European Integration ◽  
Mediterranean Sea ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Holistic Approach ◽  
Port Cities ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Maritime Networks ◽  
The City

With the development of research in economic history, historians are now testing the hypothesis that maritime networks and port cities contributed to the phenomenon of European integration. This essay applies a holistic approach to discuss how the city of Lisbon, located outside the privileged setting of multi-cultural interactions that was the Mediterranean Sea, became appealing to merchants from far and wide in late-medieval Europe. To do so, it examines a whole array of commercial, normative, fiscal, royal and judicial sources from European archives to discuss if it is possible to observe this phenomenon of European integration in fifteenth-century Lisbon.

Contesting the City

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian D. Liddy
Keyword(s):  
Urban Politics ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Urban Citizenship ◽  
Town Government ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Political Narrative ◽  
Classical Models ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The City

The political narrative of late medieval English towns is often reduced to the story of the gradual intensification of oligarchy, in which power was exercised and projected by an ever smaller ruling group over an increasingly subservient urban population. This book takes its inspiration not from English historiography, but from a more dynamic continental scholarship on towns in the southern Low Countries, Germany, and France. Its premise is that scholarly debate about urban oligarchy has obscured contemporary debate about urban citizenship. It identifies from the records of English towns a tradition of urban citizenship, which did not draw upon the intellectual legacy of classical models of the ‘citizen’. This was a vernacular citizenship, which was not peculiar to England, but which was present elsewhere in late medieval Europe. It was a citizenship that was defined and created through action. There were multiple, and divergent, ideas about citizenship, which encouraged townspeople to make demands, to assert rights, and to resist authority. This book exploits the rich archival sources of the five major towns in England—Bristol, Coventry, London, Norwich, and York—in order to present a new picture of town government and urban politics over three centuries. The power of urban governors was much more precarious than historians have imagined. Urban oligarchy could never prevail—whether ideologically or in practice—when there was never a single, fixed meaning of the citizen.

A Mathematical Turn

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Oosterhoff
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
University Reform ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Nicholas Of Cusa ◽  
Devotio Moderna ◽  
Court Politics ◽  
Spiritual Reform ◽  
The University

Lefèvre described his own mathematical turn as a kind of conversion. This chapter explains what motivated his turn to mathematics, considering the place of mathematics in fifteenth-century Paris in relation to court politics and Lefèvre’s own connections to Italian humanists. But more importantly, Lefèvre’s attitude to learning and the propaedeutic value of mathematics drew on the context of late medieval spiritual reform, with its emphasis on conversion and care of the soul. In particular, Lefèvre’s turn to university reform seems to have responded to the works of Ramon Lull, alongside the devotio moderna and Nicholas of Cusa, which he printed in important collections. With such influences, Lefèvre chose the university as the site for intellectual reform.

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