scholarly journals From a Noble Substance to an Imitative Body. The Image and Meaning of Wax Figures in a Votive Offering

2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (4 SELECTED PAPERS IN ENGLISH) ◽  
pp. 59-79
Author(s):  
Jowita Jagla
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Natural Hair ◽  
Living Body ◽  
The North ◽  
First Communion ◽  
Unusual Phenomenon ◽  
Lower Franconia ◽  
The Many ◽  
Wax Figures

The Polish version of the article was published in Roczniki Humanistyczne vol. 62, issue 4 (2014). In a wealth of votive gifts, the wax ones undoubtedly deserve special attention. They were common as early as in the Middle Ages, and they were used until the 20th century. There was a variety of such votive offerings, starting with candles, through lumps of wax, and ending with full-scale wax figures that started being used as a votive gesture at the break of the 13th and 14th centuries in the north of Europe. In the 15th and 16th centuries this custom became popular among the wealthy German, Austrian and Italian noblemen. Making wax votive figures took a lot of skill so they were made by specially qualified artists (in Italy wax figures called Boti were produced by sculptors called Cerajuoli or Fallimagini). Religious orders collaborated with the artists-artisans, undertaking to supply wax, whereas the artisans prepared wooden frames, natural hair, glass eyes, paints, textiles and brocade. In the following centuries, the production of wax figures developed ever more dynamically, especially in the north of Europe, with less skilled wax modellers, artisans and gingerbread makers often being their producers. The latter ones mainly made smaller wax figures, cast or squeezed from two-part concave models (this type of items in their form and type reminded of figures made of gingerbread). Wax votive figures (especially of children aged three to 12) funded in the area of Upper and Lower Franconia (the Bamberg and Würzburg dioceses) from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century are a separate and rather unusual phenomenon. Popularity of this votive offering became stable about 1880, in the years 1900–1910 it reached its climax; and in the 1950s it came to an end. Franconian offerings were always constructed in a similar way: they had wax faces and hands (more rarely feet), and the other members were made of wood, metal and some other padding materials. Dolls were a dominating model for the production of these votes, and that is why, like dolls, they had wigs made of natural hair on their heads, glass eyes and open mouths. A very important role was played by clothing, in which figures were willingly dressed; they were children’s natural, real clothes (girls were often dressed in the First Communion dresses); moreover, the effigies had complete clothing, which means they had genuine underwear, tights, leather shoes. The figures were supplied with rosaries and bouquets held in their hands, and on the heads of girls there were garlands. The figures were put in cabinets and glass cases, sometimes with wallpaper on the back wall, and they had a longer text on the front glass with the name of the child, or possibly of its parents, and the time when the figure was offered. Despite the many features making the Franconian offering deposits different from votive figures from other regions, all these items are joined by a timeless and universal idea, in which—to quote H. Belting—“an artificial body has assumed the religious representation of a living body…”

The Homer Of The North or: who was Sigurður the Blind?

2014 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ármann Jakobsson
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The North ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Previous Scholarship

AbstractSigurður the Blind is a relatively obscure Icelandic poet, and there has been very little study of his work since the early 20th century, perhaps due to the fact that any such study is prone to get lost in the confusion concerning the identity of this late medieval “Homer of the North”. While this may be distracting from the study of his work, this fog may in fact be paradoxically illuminating as to the problems facing scholarship of the late Middle Ages, often revolving around sparse but nevertheless seemingly contradictory sources. Furthermore, one of the most interesting aspects of previous scholarship concerning the poet is how his blindness has figured in the attribution of various poems to Sigurður, and how this blindness has linked him to other blind poets of the 14th to the 17th centuries.

“From Boots on ‘til Boots Off”: Collecting Greenland with Explorer Louise Arner Boyd (1887-1972)

Collections ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 477-496
Author(s):  
Joanna Kafarowski
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Environmental Change ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Scientific Information ◽  
World War ◽  
American Government ◽  
The North ◽  
The World ◽  
The Many

A notable 20th-century female explorer, California-born Louise Arner Boyd (1887-1972) was also a world expert on Greenland. As it was in Boyd's time, Greenland remains a remote and little-known area of the world. She was showered with honors and respected by her polar colleagues. As a result of organizing and participating in seven hazardous Arctic expeditions between 1926 and 1955, she amassed a significant collection of maps, photographs, films, and books about this area. The majority of photographs and films were taken by Boyd, while many of the maps were based on information gathered during her Arctic adventures. Meticulous and detail oriented, Louise Arner Boyd was driven by her passion for the north. Boyd traveled to Greenland, photographing geographic landforms and gathering scientific information. Her expertise on Greenland was recognized by the American government during World War II and her collection put at the government's disposal. Contemporary Norwegian glaciologists still use her existing 1930s photographs to track environmental change. Today, the many accomplishments of Louise Arner Boyd have been forgotten, and her magnificent collection, which was an invaluable asset to the Allied effort during World War II, has been dispersed.

Medieval Combat in Colour: Hans Talhoffer’s Illustrated Manual of Swordfighting and Close-Quarter Combat from 1467, ed. and introduced by Dierk Hagedorn. Barnsley, S. Yorkshire: Greenhill Books, 2018, 319 pp., ill.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 548-549
Author(s):  
Albrecht Classen
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Close Quarter ◽  
The Many

The late Middle Ages witnessed the creation of numerous fencing books, mostly in Germany, illustrating the many different techniques, weapons, styles, strategies, and the movements, as Patrick Leiske discussed only recently in his Höfisches Spiel und tödlicher Ernst (2018; see my review here in vol. 32). Some of the true masters and teachers of this sport and fighting technique were Johannes Liechtenauer, Peter von Danzig, Sigmund Ringeck, and Hans Talhoffer, whom Leiske also discusses in a separate chapter.

The Fate of Small Towns, Hilltop Settlements, and Elite Residences in Merovingian-Period Gaul

2020 ◽  
pp. 610-640
Author(s):  
Luc Bourgeois
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Power Networks ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
The Many

The study of places of power in the Merovingian realm has long been focused on cities, monasteries, and royal palaces. Recent archaeological research has led to the emergence of other categories. Four of them are addressed in this chapter. These include the capitals of fallen cities, which continue to mark the landscape in one way or another. Similarly, the fate of small Roman towns during the early Middle Ages shows that most of them continued to host a variety of secular and ecclesiastical powers. In addition, from the fourth century onward, large hilltop fortified settlements multiplied anew. They complemented earlier networks of authority, whether elite residences, artisan communities, or real towns. Finally, from the seventh century onward, the great aristocratic villas of late antiquity were transformed into settlements organized around one or more courtyards and supplemented by funerary and religious structures. The evolution of political spaces and lifestyles explains both the ruptures in power networks that occurred during the Merovingian epoch and the many continuities that can be seen in the four kinds of places studied in this chapter that were marked by these developments.

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.

scholarly journals I.—Antiquarian Researches in Illyricum, III, and IV

Archaeologia ◽  
1885 ◽  
Vol 49 (01) ◽  
pp. 1-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arthur John Evans
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Administrative District ◽  
North East ◽  
The North ◽  
East Region ◽  
Parallel Lines ◽  
North And South ◽  
Uncertain Boundary ◽  
The Middle Ages

Hitherto we have been concerned with the Dalmatian coast-cities and the great parallel lines of road that traversed the length of the Province from the borders of Pannonia and Italy to those of Epirus. From Salonæ there were, in addition to these highways to the North and South, at least two main-lines of Roman Way that traversed the interior ranges of the Dinaric Alps and led to the Mœsian and Dardanian borders that lay to the East and South-East. Milliary columns have been found at Salonæ, one recording the completion by Tiberius' Legate Dolabella of a line of road leading from the Colony of Salonæ to a mountain stronghold of the Ditiones—an Illyrian clan probably inhabiting what is now the North-East region of Bosnia; another, also of Tiberius' time, referring to the construction of a line, 156 miles in extent, from Salonæ to aCastellumof the Dæsitiates, an Illyrian clan belonging to theConventusor administrative district of Narona, and whose stronghold, according to the mileage given, must be sought somewhere on the Upper Drina, towards the Moesian and Dalmatian confines. This latter line may very well be that represented in theTabula Peutingerianaas leading from Salonæ to Argentaria, a name which seems to connect itself with the silver-bearing ranges lying on the uncertain boundary of the ancient Dalmatia and Dardania, and which, from its mineral riches, was still known in the Middle Ages asMonte Argentaro.

Review article: Reclaiming the rebellion: 1798 in 1998

1999 ◽  
Vol 31 (123) ◽  
pp. 395-410
Author(s):  
Ian McBride
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Rural Communities ◽  
Review Article ◽  
Physical Force ◽  
Celtic Tiger ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
International Dimension ◽  
Good Friday ◽  
The North ◽  
The Many

Few Irish men and women can have escaped the mighty wave of anniversary fever which broke over the island in the spring of 1998. As if atoning for the failed rebellion itself, the bicentenary of 1798 was neither ill-coordinated nor localised, but a genuinely national phenomenon produced by years of planning and organisation. Emissaries were dispatched from Dublin and Belfast to remote rural communities, and the resonant names of Bartlett, Whelan, Keogh and Graham were heard throughout the land; indeed, the commemoration possessed an international dimension which stretched to Boston, New York, Toronto, Liverpool, London and Glasgow. In bicentenary Wexford — complete with ’98 Heritage Trail and ’98 Village — the values of democracy and pluralism were triumphantly proclaimed. When the time came, the north did not hesitate, but participated enthusiastically. Even the French arrived on cue, this time on bicycle. Just as the 1898 centenary, which contributed to the revitalisation of physical-force nationalism, has now become an established subject in its own right, future historians will surely scrutinise this mother of all anniversaries for evidence concerning the national pulse in the era of the Celtic Tiger and the Good Friday Agreement. In the meantime a survey of some of the many essay collections and monographs published during the bicentenary will permit us to hazard a few generalisations about the current direction of what might now be termed ‘Ninety-Eight Studies’.

scholarly journals Diocesan Licensing and Medical Practitioners in South-West England, 1660–1780

2004 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Mortimer
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
Medical Practitioners ◽  
Medical Expertise ◽  
North West ◽  
The North ◽  
Decentralized Trade ◽  
South West ◽  
The Many ◽  
South West England

The licensing of provincial surgeons and physicians in the post-Restoration period has proved an awkward subject for medical historians. It has divided writers between those who regard the possession of a local licence as a mark of professionalism or proficiency, those who see the existence of diocesan licences as a mark of an essentially unregulated and decentralized trade, and those who discount the distinction of licensing in assessing medical expertise availability in a given region. Such a diversity of interpretations has meant that the very descriptors by which practitioners were known to their contemporaries (and are referred to by historians) have become fragmented and difficult to use without a specific context. As David Harley has pointed out in his study of licensed physicians in the north-west of England, “historians often define eighteenth-century physicians as men with medical degrees, thus ignoring … the many licensed physicians throughout the country”. One could similarly draw attention to the inadequacy of the word “surgeon” to cover licensed and unlicensed practitioners, barber-surgeons, Company members in towns, self-taught practitioners using surgical manuals, and procedural specialists whose work came under the umbrella of surgery, such as bonesetters, midwives and phlebotomists. Although such fragmentation of meaning reflects a diversity of practices carried on under the same occupational descriptors in early modern England, the result is an imprecise historical literature in which the importance of licensing, and especially local licensing, is either ignored as a delimiter or viewed as an inaccurate gauge of medical proficiency.

Overburden geochemical signature of the Lac des Iles platinum group element deposit, northwestern Ontario, Canada

2007 ◽  
Vol 44 (8) ◽  
pp. 1151-1168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter J Barnett
Keyword(s):  
Mineral Exploration ◽  
Shallow Groundwater ◽  
Soil System ◽  
Near Surface ◽  
Rock Fragments ◽  
The North ◽  
Northwestern Ontario ◽  
Airborne Contamination ◽  
The Many ◽  
Lac Des Iles

Many previously published studies of the behaviour of Pt and Pd in till and soils have been done in areas of complex stratigraphy or very thin overburden cover, making the interpretation of soil results difficult because of the many variables associated with these settings. At the Lac des Iles mine site in northwestern Ontario, there are excellent exposures of the overburden in a series of exploration trenches. Glacial dispersal trains can be observed in till (C horizon) geochemistry (e.g., Ni, Cr, Cu, and Co). Regional geochemical dispersal trains of elements, such as Ni, Cr, Mg, and Co associated with the North Lac des Iles intrusion, can be detected for about 4 km beyond the western margin of the Mine Block intrusion. Entire dispersal trains range from 5 to 7 km in length and about 1 to 2 km in width. The dispersal of North Lac des Iles intrusion rock fragments tends to mask the response of the Mine Block intrusion. Dispersal trains of Pt and Pd are not well defined and tend to be very short, <1 km in length, due to the initial low concentrations of these elements in C-horizon till samples from the Lac Des Iles area. An exception to this is the Pd dispersal train originating from the high-grade zone that is up to 3 km long. Pd, Pt, Ni, and Cu appear to be moving both within and out of the soil system downslope into surface and shallow groundwater. It is suggested that these elements, to varying degrees, are moving in solution. Airborne contamination from mine operations of the humus has adversely affected the ability to determine the effectiveness of humus sampling for mineral exploration at Lac des Iles. The airborne contamination likely influences the geochemical results from surface water, shallow groundwater, and near-surface organic bog samples, particularly for the elements Pd and Pt.

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