scholarly journals OUTLAW KING: SACRIFICING HISTORICAL ACCURACY FOR GREATER DRAMA

Author(s):  
Cal McClelland

Outlaw King directed by David Mackenzie, follows the story of Robert Bruce as he defies Edward I’s dominance over Scotland. Bruce with the help of a group of allies amasses a small army to fight back and assert Scotland’s independence. The history of Scottish independence in the fourteenth century is one that is defined by a constant push and pull between English forces and the forces of Robert Bruce. Its history is complicated with many conflicts, alliances, and interwoven narratives that make this story one that is incredibly complicated. For the purposes of this paper, I examine Mackenzie’s cinematic depiction of the key historical figures of the time and argue that Mackenzie’s cinematic depiction of this period of history falls short of the mark when it comes to an accurate depiction of Robert Bruce's life as an outlaw king. What one will come to realize is that the filmmakers make a number of decisions which compromise historical accuracy for the sake of creating better drama.

Author(s):  
Peter Linehan

This book springs from its author’s continuing interest in the history of Spain and Portugal—on this occasion in the first half of the fourteenth century between the recovery of each kingdom from widespread anarchy and civil war and the onset of the Black Death. Focussing on ecclesiastical aspects of the period in that region (Galicia in particular) and secular attitudes to the privatization of the Church, it raises inter alios the question why developments there did not lead to a permanent sundering of the relationship with Rome (or Avignon) two centuries ahead of that outcome elsewhere in the West. In addressing such issues, as well as of neglected material in Spanish and Portuguese archives, use is made of the also unpublished so-called ‘secret’ registers of the popes of the period. The issues it raises concern not only Spanish and Portuguese society in general but also the developing relationship further afield of the components of the eternal quadrilateral (pope, king, episcopate, and secular nobility) in late medieval Europe, as well as of the activity in that period of those caterpillars of the commonwealth, the secular-minded sapientes. In this context, attention is given to the hitherto neglected attempt of Afonso IV of Portugal to appropriate the privileges of the primatial church of his kingdom and to advance the glorification of his Castilian son-in-law, Alfonso XI, as God’s vicegerent in his.


Author(s):  
Samuel Asad Abijuwa Agbamu

AbstractIn his 1877 Storia della letteratura (History of Literature), Luigi Settembrini wrote that Petrarch’s fourteenth-century poem, the Africa, ‘is forgotten …; very few have read it, and it was judged—I don’t know when and by whom—a paltry thing’. Yet, just four decades later, the early Renaissance poet’s epic of the Second Punic War, written in Latin hexameters, was being promoted as the national poem of Italy by eminent classical scholar, Nicola Festa, who published the only critical edition of the epic in 1926. This article uncovers the hitherto untold story of the revival of Petrarch’s poetic retelling of Scipio’s defeat of Hannibal in Fascist Italy, and its role in promoting ideas of nation and empire during the Fascist period in Italy. After briefly outlining the Africa’s increasing popularity in the nineteenth century, I consider some key publications that contributed to the revival of the poem under Fascism. I proceed chronologically to show how the Africa was shaped into a poem of the Italian nation, and later, after Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia, of Italy’s new Roman Empire. I suggest that the contestations over the significance of the Africa during the Fascist period, over whether it was a national poem of Roman revival or a poem of the universal ideal of empire, demonstrate more profound tensions in how Italian Fascism saw itself.


1953 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-68
Author(s):  
Peter D. Partner

Boniface VIII probably spent some half a million gold florins on the acquisition of lands for the Caetani. But of that money not a word is said in the Introitus and Exitus volumes, the main account books of the Apostolic Chamber. Where was it accounted for and from whence did it come? The pope had certain special sources of income which would not ordinarily be reckoned in the main account books, and of these, some could properly be termed his fortune as a private person, while others attached to his office as pope. There was the private fortune which he had before he assumed the tiara. There were the incomes of benefices personally reserved to him, gifts made him by prelates and laymen, legacies, sometimes the goods of deceased prelates, and the so-called ‘private visitations’ and ‘secret services’. Later in the fourteenth century many other sources were tapped for the benefit of a secret fund, and all in all the sums which it disposed of were formidable and sometimes enormous. The ends to which the money was directed were as various as the characters and policies of the pontiffs: it was used for nepotistic ends on a princely scale, as a mere convenient subsidiary to the main financial machine, as a war account, as a means of making enormous loans to lay rulers, or simply as a petty cash account. The earliest records of the secret accounts to survive are from the midfifteenth century, but the large sums involved, and its covert but great importance in papal policy in general make the earlier history of this institution as interesting as it is obscure.


Istoriya ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (9 (107)) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Irina Variash

The article discusses the issue of the so-called segregation norms against Muslims that emerged in the fourteenth century in Christian Law. The author analyzes source material relating to the history of the Crown of Aragon and raises the following question: is it possible to trace any connection between the urban environment and those social strategies that were applied to the infidels in the Middle Ages? Such research optics makes it possible to distinguish several types of segregation laws, some of which were a product of the urban environment and urban culture, which is substantiated by the author on the basis of the royal ordonnances, capitulae of the Valencian Cortes, Fuero of Valencia. The author discusses new legal norms that contradicted the early privileges for Muslims (12th — 13th centuries) and regulated Muslims’ appearance (a distinctive sign on clothes, a special hairstyle), their right to live together or next to Christians, their work on Sundays and Christian holidays, and also prohibited the public call to prayer. Paradoxically, these norms, being aimed at restricting the rights of the infidels (i.e. the Others), were formulated under the influence of the urban environment, in a settlement that was heterogeneous in its genesis and diverse in its nature. The Iberian-Latin civilization, which accumulated the human capital of the Muslim civilization in the course of the Reconquista, began to change its own social strategies in the management of Muslims in the fourteenth century. The experience of the cities was crucial in this process.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter John Worsley

Robson in 1983 and 1988 in his reconsideration of the poetics of kakawin epics and Javanese philology drew readers’ attention to the importance of genre for the history of ancient Javanese literature. Aoyama in his study of the kakawin Sutasoma in 1992, making judicious use of Hans Jauss’s concept of “horizon of expectation”, offered the first systematic discussion of the genre of Old Javanese literary works. The present essay offers a commentary on the terms which mpu Monaguna and mpu Prapañca, authors of the thirteenth century epic kakawin Sumanasāntaka and the fourteenth century Deśawarṇana, themselves, employ to refer to the generic characteristics of their poems. Mpu Monaguna referred to his epic poem as a narrative work (kathā), written in a prakṛt, Old Javanese, and rendered in the poetic form of a kakawin and finally as a ritual act intended to enable the poet to achieve apotheosis with his tutelary deity and his poem to be the means of transforming the world, in particular to ensure the wellbeing of the readers, listeners, copyists and those who possessed copies of his poetic work. Mpu Prapañca described his Deśawarṇana differently. Also written in Old Javanese and in the poetic form of a kakawin—he refers to his work variously as a narrative work (kathā), a chronicle (śakakāla or śakābda), a praise poem (kastawan) and also as a ritual act designed to enable the author in an ecstatic state of rapture (alangö), and filled with the power and omniscience of his tutelary deity, to ensure the continued prosperity of the realm of Majapahit and to secure the rule of his king Rājasanagara. The essay considers each of these literary categories.


Author(s):  
James A. Palmer

The humanist perception of fourteenth-century Rome as a slumbering ruin awaiting the Renaissance and the return of papal power has cast a long shadow on the historiography of the city. Challenging the view, this book argues that Roman political culture underwent dramatic changes in the late Middle Ages, with profound and lasting implications for the city's subsequent development. The book examines the transformation of Rome's governing elites as a result of changes in the city's economic, political, and spiritual landscape. It explores this shift through the history of Roman political society, its identity as an urban commune, and its once-and-future role as the spiritual capital of Latin Christendom. Tracing the contours of everyday Roman politics, the book reframes the reestablishment of papal sovereignty in Rome as the product of synergy between papal ambitions and local political culture. More broadly, it emphasizes Rome's distinct role in evolution of medieval Italy's city-communes.


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