scholarly journals Archives of the Mediterranean: Governance and Record-Keeping in the Crown of Aragon in the Long Fifteenth Century

2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 435-457
Author(s):  
Alessandro Silvestri
2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Rose

This book provides an accessible study of how peoples bordering the Mediterranean, North Sea, English Channel and eastern Atlantic related to the sea in all its aspects. This book surveys how the peoples bordering the Mediterranean, North Sea, English Channel and eastern Atlantic related to the sea in all its aspects between approximately 1000-1500 A.D.How was the sea represented in poems and other writings? What kinds of boats were used and how were they built? How easy was it to navigate on short or long passages? Was seaborne trade crucial to the economy of this area? Did naval warfare loom large in the minds of medieval rulers? What can be said more generally about the lives of those who went to sea or who lived by its shores? These are the major questions which are addressed in this book, which is based on extensive research in both maritime archives and also in secondary literature. It concludes by pointing out how the relatively enclosed maritime world of Western Europe was radically changed by the voyages of the late fifteenth century across the Atlantic to the Caribbean and round Africa to India.


Author(s):  
Rubén Galera Hernàndez

Resum: La política expansionista de la Corona d’Aragó vers el Mezzogiorno italià, encapçalada per Alfons el Magnànim durant la primera meitat del segle XV, va suposar que el monarca formara al seu voltant una cort d’humanistes italians perquè deixaren constància escrita de la seua empresa i transmeteren a la seua cort els coneixements dels grans autors clàssics llatins i grecs. Aquesta nòmina de lletraferits en estudis grecollatins, en què trobem Lorenzo Valla, Guiniforte Barzizza, Bartolomeo Facio i Antonio Beccadelli (el Panormita), entre d’altres, mantingueren assíduament contacte amb membres de la cancelleria reial i de la noblesa. Un d’aquests nobles va ser el cavaller valencià, camarlenc, conseller i mariscal, Francesc-Gilabert de Centelles i Queralt, altrament dit Ramon de Riu-sec, senyor de Nules i comte d’Oliva (1449), qui va mantenir correspondència epistolar amb Barzizza i Beccadelli, per demanar-los consell sobre la naturalesa de l’amor. En aquest article, doncs, hem estudiat les fonts de consulta a què va recórrer el Panormita quan va redactar l’epístola i el contextualitzem amb la realitat amorosa del cavaller valencià. Paraules clau: segle XV, Itàlia, Corona d’Aragó, Antonio Beccadelli, Francesc-Gilabert de Centelles.   Abstract: The expansionist policy of the Crown of Aragon towards the Italian Mezzogiorno, headed by Alfons el Magnànim during the first half of the fifteenth century, supposed that the monarch would form around him a court of Italian humanists for the written testimony of his enterprise and the transmition to the court of the knowledge of the great Latin and Greek classical authors. This list of letters written in Greco-Latin studies, in which we find Lorenzo Valla, Guiniforte Barzizza, Bartolomeo Facio and Antonio Beccadelli (Panormita), among others, were always in contact with members of the Royal Chancery and the nobility. One of these nobles was the Valencian knight, chamberlain, counselor and marshal, Francesc-Gilabert de Centelles i Queralt, otherwise known as Ramon de Riu-sec, lord of Nules and Count of Oliva (1449), who corresponded with Barzizza and Beccadelli, to ask for advice about the nature of love. In this article, we have studied the sources of reference that Panormita consulted when writing the epistle and we contextualize it with the loving reality of the Valencian knight. Keywords: 15th century, Italy, Crown of Aragon, Antonio Beccadelli, Francesc-Gilabert de Centelles.    


2012 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Lisy-Wagner

In 1493, a Czech nobleman named Jan Hasištejnský z Lobkovic embarked on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. As nearly all Central European pilgrims did, he traveled south through the Tyrol to Venice and joined a large, multinational group there before setting out across the Mediterranean. He remained nearly a month in Venice, meeting prominent political figures, visiting churches and cloisters, and admiring the realism of the painting and sculpture of the Venetian quattrocento. Among all the other marvels of Venice that he describes in his 1505 travelogue is the memory of his day trip to the island of Murano. “In this little town,” he writes, “there are, I think, close to seventy artisans or more, and all are glass makers.” He describes some of the fine works that he saw there, and eagerly adds, “and there is always a great quantity of these various things completed, so that whoever arrives wants to buy something of it.” In this moment, the fifteenth-century tourist is not that far removed from his counterpart in the twenty-first century.


2003 ◽  
Vol 9 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 256-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Tai

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.


Author(s):  
Salvador Cuenca Almenar

Resum: La coherència de l’aristotelisme marquià no ha estat encara ponderada en profunditat. Volem contribuir a la seua ponderació amb l’anàlisi d’un aspecte particular: l’ús marquià del terme «virtut» en contrast amb la definició aristotèlica. Donada la polisèmia del terme grec, la seua recepció pel cristianisme medieval i la seua utilització pel poeta valencià plantegen determinades dificultats que seran analitzades a partir de les fonts que podien circular per la Corona d’Aragó al segle XV. Paraules clau: Ausias March, Aristòtil, Ètica medieval, Virtut Abstract: The coherence of March’s Aristotelianism has not yet been weighted up. We want to contribute to its weighting with the analysis of a particular aspect: the use of the term «virtue» in contrast to the Aristotelian definition. Given the polysemy of the Greek term, its medieval reception and its use by the Valencian poet pose certain difficulties that will be analyzed according to the sources that could circulate in the Crown of Aragon in the fifteenth century. Keywords: Ansias March, Aristotle, Medieval Ethics, Virtue


Author(s):  
Anna Isabel Peirats Navarro

  Ressenya a Antonio Cortijo Ocaña (ed.), Chivalry, the Mediterranean, and the Crown of Aragon, Califòrnia, University of California-Santa Barbara-Juan de la Cuesta Hispanic Monographs- Institució Alfons el Magnànim, 2018, 196 pp., ISBN: 978-1-58871-316-2   Review to Antonio Cortijo Ocaña (ed.), Chivalry, the Mediterranean, and the Crown of Aragon, California, University of California-Santa Barbara-Juan de la Cuesta Hispanic Monographs;-Institució Alfons el Magnànim, 2018, 196 pp., ISBN: 978-1-58871-316-2


Author(s):  
David Abulafia

The reshaping of the Mediterranean in the wake of the Black Death was a slow process. In addition to political changes within the Mediterranean, notably the expansion of Ottoman power, events taking place beyond the Straits of Gibraltar would, in the long term, greatly transform the life of those who lived on its shores and in its islands. The opening of the Atlantic had already begun in the decade before plague arrived, with voyages down the coast of Africa to the Canary Islands, and it continued with the discovery and settlement of Madeira and the Azores by the Portuguese in the early fifteenth century. As sugar plantations developed on Madeira, it became possible to supply Flanders and other parts of northern Europe directly from the Atlantic with one of the costly products that had previously been obtained within the Mediterranean. By 1482, with the establishment of a Portuguese fortress at São Jorge da Mina (‘the Mine’) in West Africa, not far north of the Equator, gold was beginning to reach Europe without being channelled across the Sahara and through the Muslim ports of the Maghrib; the opening of this Guinea trade compensated for disappointment at the failure of Ceuta to pay for its upkeep. The Atlantic also became a source of slaves for Mediterranean masters: Canary Islanders, Berbers from the opposite shores of Africa and, increasingly, black slaves carried north from the Mine. Many of these eventually reached Valencia, Majorca and other Mediterranean ports, after passing through Lisbon. Then, with Columbus’s entry into the Caribbean islands in October 1492, Castile also acquired a source of precious metal that was ruthlessly exploited by imposing heavy taxes in gold on the Indians, even though they were supposedly free subjects of the Crown. The Genoese, despite their unpopularity in Spain, installed themselves in Seville and, with royal approval, ran the trans-Atlantic trading operations. At the same time, they turned their hands to finance. Turkish pressure on the Genoese possessions in the eastern Mediterranean increased, and so the Genoese allied themselves more insistently with Spain, the power that seemed best able to stand up to the Turks.


1987 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 263-276
Author(s):  
Michael E. Williams

NOT FAR from Cadiz there is an English property that has remained Catholic for close on five hundred years. Its history goes back to pre-reformation days, indeed to the thirteenth century when the port of Sanlucar de Barrameda was recaptured from the Moors by the Guzman family who later became the Dukes of Medina Sidonia. Strategically Sanlucar was an important port because it was at the mouth of the Guadalquivir and as well as capturing the Seville trade it also commanded the traffic from the Mediterranean to Northern Europe and eventually it was the point of departure for ships leaving for the New World. Among the various nations using the port the English were conspicuous and their merchants were granted various privileges by the Dukes of Medina Sidonia during the fifteenth century. By the early sixteenth century there is evidence of a sizeable colony in the town; in fact the English were the largest single group of foreigners and many English names appear in the baptismal registers as both parents and godparents. At least one of them held high public office in the town. On the accession of Henry VIII to the throne of England, the situation further improved as he abandoned the neutrality of his father and allied himself with Spain against France. So it was that in 1517 a new charter of privileges for the English merchants in Sanlucar was drafted. A grant of land by the river was made so as to provide a chapel and a burial place for Englishmen. The chapel was dedicated to St. George and it was to be looked after by a confraternity. The chaplain was to be appointed by the Bishops of London, Winchester and Exeter, since it was from these dioceses that most of the merchants came. Although there have been rebuildings, this site has remained English ever since.


1975 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 250-275 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Ashtor

To show how great were the profits in the medieval Levant trade may seem like bringing coals to Newcastle. The accounts of the strenuous efforts made to discover the sea route to India bear witness to the Europeans’ desire to get a greater share of these riches. Anybody passing by the old palaces along the Grand Canal of Venice becomes aware of the riches accumulated in the trade of the Indian spices. However, it goes without saying that the margin of profit changed in the course of time. Certainly they were very great in the period of the Crusades, both on the Red Sea and in the Mediterranean. In a Judaeo-Arabic letter written in 1134 in Aden by Abū; Zikrī Kōhēn, one reads: ‘If you would have come this year (to Aden), there would have been no need to journey to India. Youngsters came who had never travelled before, who have no knowledge of selling and buying, and those (of them) who had a hundred earned another hundred…and if he were a Muslim—a hundred and fifty’. The riches of the Kārim merchants, who specialized in the spice trade on the Red Sea, were fabulous, if one can believe the Arabic chroniclers. Judging from the Geniza documents, one would be bound to conclude that the profits in the spice trade were much greater than in other branches of trade. But in the later Middle Ages, when it had become a wholesale trade conducted on regular lines, did it still yield returns much greater than other branches of trade and industry? And if this was indeed so, how can one explain the fact that the Levant traders succeeded in maintaining high prices for the Indian commodities destined for mass consumption?


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