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.

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.

Rhetoric and Politics

2014 ◽  
pp. 328-340
Author(s):  
Virginia Cox
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Political Rhetoric ◽  
Northern Italy ◽  
Religious Language ◽  
Practical Application ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
New Methodologies ◽  
Political Intent ◽  
The City

It has often been asserted that medieval culture was little concerned with politics as a practical application for rhetoric, at least outside the city republics of central and northern Italy. This chapter argues that robust and self-conscious traditions of political eloquence were more widespread in late medieval Europe than is generally thought, especially following the development of parliaments from the thirteenth century onward. The point is illustrated through a discussion of the speech cultures of the parliaments of Catalonia-Aragon and England. More broadly, the chapter argues that new methodologies are needed to make medieval political rhetoric more historically visible. Nonverbal eloquence must be studied alongside verbal, and it must be recognized that medieval political eloquence is often profoundly nonclassical in form and frequently deploys religious language that may disguise its political intent to the modern eye.

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 Gaulish past of Milan and the French invasion of Italy1

2018 ◽  
pp. 102-120
Author(s):  
Oren Margolis
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Foundation Myth ◽  
Italian City ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Italian Wars ◽  
The City ◽  
Source Materials

The foundation myths of late medieval cities and states were never simply about origins: they were above all about destiny. In the fifteenth century, the combination of humanist methods and models, newly available source materials, and changing domestic and international political circumstances provided the impetus for the continued development of these myths as well as the creation of new ones. Yet even in Italy, not all eyes looked to Rome. The Carolingian foundation myth of Florence, in which Charlemagne’s supposed rebuilding of the city was used to explain the pro-French orientation of the commune and its Guelph elite, is perhaps the most well-known of these myths, but also an example of an Italian city defining itself in relation to a foreign power. This essay focuses on another element of Quattrocento myth-making culture: the treatment of northern Italy’s Gaulish past in the writings of some of the region’s humanists (e.g. (Antonio Cornazzano and Alberto Cattaneo), and the role of these writings in Franco-Milanese relations before and during the outbreak of the Italian Wars and the French domination of Milan.

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.

Arbitration and the Growth of Urban Liberties in Late Medieval England

1992 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 205-235 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorraine Attreed
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Financial Investments ◽  
The Common ◽  
Late Medieval England ◽  
The City ◽  
Shed Light

In December 1448, the city of Exeter agreed with the bishop and dean and chapter of the cathedral church to abide by the arbitration of two local magnates who settled a complex dispute over urban jurisdiction. That the arbitrators decided against the city, which suffered a slight constitutional setback as a result, is only one of several important conclusions to be drawn from a study of the dispute and its resolution. The nature of the argument and the procedures by which both parties sought to resolve it shed light on the character of urban constitutional growth in the later Middle Ages, on legal procedures and what medieval people thought about the law, and on the lengths they were willing to go to assure a decision that was as favorable as possible without poisoning relations between two institutions that coexisted within city walls. The case also illustrates the important role arbitration played in dispute settlement and reveals this method to be as viable an alternative as recourse to the common-law and equity courts of the royal government.Exeter's case is unique in that so much written evidence survives to testify to the financial investments and political aims of both parties involved. Comparisons will be drawn to other boroughs that endured similar jurisdictional disputes in the fifteenth century, but their evidence is far less revealing of decision and motivation than that remaining for Exeter. Although many of the major documents associated with the case have been in print for over a century, and examined in some detail in a brief monograph published over fifty years ago, the nature of the records has focused more attention on the city's participation than on that of the cathedral.

Musicians at Laon cathedral in the early fifteenth century

Urban History ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-34
Author(s):  
Yolanda Plumley
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Northern France ◽  
Rural Context ◽  
The City

The city of Laon was a significant commercial and administrative centre in late medieval northern France. Laon's rich and powerful cathedral attracted many to its chapter, which was the largest in the country. In the years circa 1400 its ranks included a number of leading musicians. An investigation into their musical and non-musical duties sheds fascinating light on to the daily life of the cathedral musician and his position in the local urban and rural context.

scholarly journals Cities in late medieval Europe: the promise and the curse of modernity

Urban History ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 329-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARC BOONE
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
World War ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Positive View ◽  
Negative View ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
The Great War ◽  
The City

ABSTRACT:This article examines how modern historiography has developed quite differentiated views on the way medieval cities have given expression to renewal and to creativity. ‘National’ traditions have played a highly influential role in modifying the general views articulated in the major syntheses produced by scholars such as Max Weber and Henri Pirenne at the beginning of the twentieth century. An almost jubilant way of looking at the city as the hotbed of modernity gave room, in the decades after the Great War, to pessimism and a negative view on urbanity, before a more nuanced and positive view has been re-established after World War II and in the course of recent paradigmatic changes.

On the Political Foundations of the Late Medieval Commercial Revolution: Genoa During the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries

1994 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
Avner Greif
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Economic Systems ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Foundations ◽  
History Of Europe ◽  
The City

Although the late medieval Commercial Revolution is considered to be a watershed in the economic history of Europe, the analysis of the interrelationship between political and economic systems in bringing about this period of economic growth has been neglected. This article conducts such an analysis with respect to the city of Genoa during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Viewing political institutions as self-enforcing agreements rather than as exogenous rules, I present and analyze the nature and evolution of Genoa's political systems and the relations between these systems and economic growth.

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