Time and accounting in the Middle Ages: An Italian-based analysis

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefano Adamo ◽  
David Alexander ◽  
Roberta Fasiello
Keyword(s):  
International Trade ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Economic Activity ◽  
Accounting Information ◽  
Accounting Practice ◽  
Economic Context ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Middle Ages

This work is focused on an issue scarcely examined in the literature, concerning the analysis of the relationship existing between time and accounting practice. The aim is to highlight how changes in the interpretation of the concept of time influenced the development of accounting practices and contributed to the rise of periodical accounting reporting from the beginning of the thirteenth century to the end of the fifteenth century. The socio-economic context existing in Italy in the Middle Ages, the development of commercial partnerships among merchants ( compagnie) and the international trade created the conditions for the development of periodical reporting. The relevance assigned to time in economic activity is one of the crucial factors of the rise of accounting information related to recurring accounting periods. Furthermore, the article shows how the concept of time is important and its significance widely underestimated, in a variety of further applications.

Art, Prophecy, and Drama in the Choir of Salisbury Cathedral

2006 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-190
Author(s):  
Matthew Reeve
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Liturgical Drama ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
Christian History

AbstractThe former painted cycle over the vaults of Salisbury Cathedral represents one of the great losses of thirteenth-century English art. This paper focuses on the imagery over the three-bay choir, which features twentyfour Old Testament kings and prophets each holding scrolls with texts prefiguring the Coming of Christ. The content of the cycle derives from a sermon, well known in the Middle Ages, by Pseudo-Augustine: Contra Judaeos, Paganos et Arianos. Yet the most immediate sources lie in twelfth and thirteenth-century extrapolations of the Pseudo-Augustinian sermon in liturgical drama, the so-called Ordo Prophetarum, or prophet plays. This observation leads to a discussion of the relationship of imagery to its liturgical setting. It is argued that the images on the choir vaults were also to be understood allegorically as types of the cathedral canons, who originally sat in the choir stalls below. A reading of the choir as a place of prophecy is located within traditions of liturgical commentary, which allegorize processions through churches as processions through Christian history. This leads to a discussion of the allegorization of the church interior in the Gothic period.

The Mediæval Legend of Judas Iscariot

PMLA ◽  
1916 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 481-632
Author(s):  
Paull Franklin Baum
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Early Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
The West ◽  
Greek Myth ◽  
Judas Iscariot ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Middle Ages

The legendary Life of Judas the Betrayer, based, it is usually said, on the Greek myth of Œdipus, is found in almost every language and country of mediæval Europe. It was written down in Latin as early as the twelfth century. By the end of the thirteenth century it was turned into the vernacular in lands as far apart as Wales, Catalonia, and Bohemia. At the close of the Middle Ages it had become the possession of the folk, and since that period—to some extent even during the fifteenth century—it has spread northward and eastward into Scandinavia, Finland, Russia, and Bulgaria. It was related in Greek, probably in the Middle Ages, although the manuscripts are of a much later date. It was still told orally in Galicia at the end of the last century. As a regular part of the ecclesiastical literature of the West it received canonization, so to say, late in the thirteenth century, in the great legendary of Jacopo da Voragine; but, on the other hand, it is a remarkable fact that in the Middle Ages, so far as I have been able to learn, none of the reputable church writers (with the exception of Jacopo) recognized or even mentioned it. And furthermore, mediaeval sculptors and carvers of wood and ivory, who gave themselves with so much zeal to the plastic representation of legendary matter, completely eschewed or overlooked the ‘early life’ of Judas. Not indeed that either the church writers or artists sought to avoid contact with such a wicked character; on the contrary, they devoted considerable space to him, rejecting only his apocryphal career. However this omission may be explained, the fact must be recognized as of some interest.

Elite and Popular Superstitions in the Exempla of Stephen of Bourbon

2006 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 78-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Rider
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Popular Religion ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
Modern Reader ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
The Way

‘When I was preaching against sorcery and hearing confessions…’.With these words, the thirteenth-century Dominican friar Stephen of Bourbon recalled how in a village in the Auvergne he had found a group of women venerating a dog as a saint. He then went on to describe how he had preached against the cult and persuaded the local lord to demolish the dog’s woodland shrine. Thanks to a detailed study by Jean-Claude Schmitt, this encounter between educated friar and unorthodox peasants has become a famous example of interaction between elite and popular religion in the Middle Ages. But it is only one of many such encounters that Stephen describes under the heading of ‘Superstitio’, or Superstition. Part of the interest of these tales for the modern reader is that they provide a window on to some of the unorthodox religious practices of the Middle Ages. Even more interesting, however, is the way in which Stephen links these practices to a clear but flexible idea of the relationship between elite and popular religion.

Proleptic Steps: Rethinking Historical Period in the Fifteenth-Century Dance Manual

2012 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 29-47
Author(s):  
Seeta Chaganti
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Early Period ◽  
Historical Period ◽  
Theater History ◽  
Medieval Studies ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Middle Ages

For some time now, scholarly medieval studies have been preoccupied with questions about the relationship between the modern and the premodern, and even about the very meanings of these terms. Medievalists in different fields have thoughtfully re-examined the critical paradigms that rely on a break between the medieval as premodernity, on the one hand, and the early modern as an initiation of modernity, on the other. Such new perspectives on periodization and the Middle Ages have tended to originate in studies of literature, theater, history, and art. The discipline of medieval studies has not, for the most part, considered what dance might contribute to our understanding of the constitution of historical periods such as “medieval” and “early modern.” And yet, basse danse and bassadanza, due to their placement in a fifteenth-century moment variously claimed by both the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, potentially offer much to such discussions of periodization. As a performance, this fifteenth-century dance situates itself in a dynamic transition between the medieval and the early modern, raising questions about the nature, location, and even existence of this periodization boundary. At the same time, however, the instructional and codifying techniques associated with basse danse and bassadanza reinforce a more traditional periodization dynamic, whereby a culture looks back mainly in order to look forward, organizing its ideas about time and history around the mechanism of anticipation. I shall argue in this essay that basse danse and bassadanza reveal a suggestively conflicted perspective on time through the distinction they establish between the temporality of execution and that of instruction. Furthermore, in their espousal of anticipatory strategies, the instruction manuals in particular show how representations of early dance can construct perspectives on historical periodization. Casting into relief thus an occluded narrative about how period borders form and solidify, basse danse and bassadanza additionally offer early period scholarship some new ways to reconsider and dissolve such borders.

Bastard Feudalism and the Framing of Thirteenth-Century England

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Coss
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
Great Work ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

In the introduction to his great work of 2005, Framing the Early Middle Ages, Chris Wickham urged not only the necessity of carefully framing our studies at the outset but also the importance of closely defining the words and concepts that we employ, the avoidance ‘cultural sollipsism’ wherever possible and the need to pay particular attention to continuities and discontinuities. Chris has, of course, followed these precepts on a vast scale. My aim in this chapter is a modest one. I aim to review the framing of thirteenth-century England in terms of two only of Chris’s themes: the aristocracy and the state—and even then primarily in terms of the relationship between the two. By the thirteenth century I mean a long thirteenth century stretching from the period of the Angevin reforms of the later twelfth century on the one hand to the early to mid-fourteenth on the other; the reasons for taking this span will, I hope, become clearer during the course of the chapter, but few would doubt that it has a validity.

Papal Legates against the Albigensians: The Debts of the Church of Valence (1215–1250)

Traditio ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 68 ◽  
pp. 259-276
Author(s):  
D. Dudley Stutz
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Detailed Treatment ◽  
Northern Portion ◽  
Rhone Valley ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Middle Ages

In 1232 Pope Gregory IX (r. 1227–41) imposed a tenth of episcopal revenues on prelates of Occitania to subsidize the church of Valence, which owed 10,000 poundstournoisto various bankers of Vienne, Rome, Lyons, and Siena. In 1865 B. Hauréau first noted the event when he edited one of the main documents in theGallia christianavolume concerning the ecclesiastical province of Vienne. With the publication of Gregory IX's register from 1890–1908 most of the facts of the tax were more widely available. In 1910 Ulysse Chevalier briefly mentioned the tax in his monograph on the long tenure of John of Bernin, archbishop of Vienne (r. 1218–66). In 1913, Heinrich Zimmermann cited Hauréau's text in a note in his detailed treatment of early thirteenth-century papal legations. Recently Alain Marchandisse reviewed eight of the eleven papal letters pertaining to the tax in his study of William of Savoy (d. 1239) as bishop-elect of Liège. These scholars provided no reason for the debt or why the papacy would take such measures to ensure payment. Perhaps they did not study this tax further because a church indebted to moneylenders is not in itself surprising. It appears that the church of Valence acquired the debt, very large compared to the church's income, when bishop-elect William of Savoy (r. 1225–39) waged war against Adhémar II of Poitiers-Valentinois, count of the Valentinois (r. 1189–1239). Struggles between bishops and the local nobility occurred on a regular basis throughout the Middle Ages, so what in this unimportant Rhone-valley diocese interested the pope enough to impose taxes on prelates of Occitania over twenty years to ensure payment of this debt? Adhémar II faithfully supported Raymond VI (r. 1194–1222) and Raymond VII (r. 1222–49) of Saint-Gilles, counts of Toulouse, throughout their struggle with the papacy during and following the Albigensian crusades. Adhémar II was also their vassal for the Diois, which borders the Valentinois on the southeast and comprised the northern portion of the marquisate of Provence. These lands had been reserved for the church in the Treaty of Meaux-Paris (1229), which ended the Albigensian crusades. Thus William of Savoy as bishop-elect of Valence defended the papacy's claims on the marquisate of Provence, which the papacy deemed part of the larger struggle between the Roman church and the counts of Toulouse. The facts on the nature of the debts and the steps the papacy took to aid the diocese show that the local struggle between the bishop of Valence and the count of the Valentinois embodied a part of the larger struggle between the papacy and the counts of Toulouse over the marquisate of Provence, which began as early as 1215.

Florence, 1492: The Reappearance of Plotinus*

1996 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 488-508 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henri D. Saffrey
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Saint Augustine ◽  
Latin Translation ◽  
Western World ◽  
Marsilio Ficino ◽  
The Middle Ages

In the western world, Plotinus was only a name until 1492. None of his treatises had been translated during the Middle Ages, and the translations dating back to antiquity had been lost. He was not totally unknown, however, thanks to scholars like Firmicus Maternus, Saint Augustine, Macrobius, and to those parts of the works of Proclus translated in the thirteenth century by William of Moerbeke. But Plotinus's own writings remained completely unknown,and as Vespasiano da Bisticci observed in his Vite, “senza i libri non si poteva fare nulla” (“without the books, nothing can be done”). This fact was to change completely only with the publication by Marsilio Ficino of his Latin translation of the Enneads.

scholarly journals An unusual encounter between Man and Death in the Middle Ages as portrayed in Der Ackermann aus Boehmen

Literator ◽  
1987 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 39-50
Author(s):  
G. Thiel
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Similar Kind ◽  
The Middle Ages

This article tries to establish the uniqueness of the relationship between man and Death in Der Ackermann aus Boehmen. This is achieved by comparing Der Ackermann to disputes between man and Death of a similar kind and by resorting to possible sources for the depiction of the figure of Death. While Death’s right to kill is in the end confirmed by God, man nevertheless has made inroads into Death’s universal and indiscriminatory powers by emotional and intellectual accusations as well as physical threats. This was facilitated by personifying Death to such an extent that Death was brought close to the level of man rather than remaining a pseudo-transcendental power.

scholarly journals Lingue in contatto: un caso di prestigio linguistico

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 11-21
Author(s):  
Mila Samardžić
Keyword(s):  
Key Words ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Literary Language ◽  
Italian Language ◽  
Contact Linguistics ◽  
Languages In Contact ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Middle Ages

Languages in contact: a case of linguistic prestige The article aims to offer a review of the influences exerted by the Italian language (and the Venetian dialect) on the Serbian literary language as well as on the local dialects. These impacts date back to the Middle Ages and, in practice uninterruptedly, persist to the present day. The aim of the paper is to demonstrate how, due to socio-economic and cultural circumstances, Italian has been able to establish itself as a prestigious language compared to Serbian and how the relationship between the two languages over the centuries has always been essentially monodirectional. Key words: Language loans, Contact Linguistics, Italian, Serbian, Linguistic Prestige

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