Chivalry and the Jews in Late Medieval Spain

2021 ◽  
Vol 98 (4) ◽  
pp. 315-337
Author(s):  
ELEAZAR GUTWIRTH
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Oral Literature ◽  
Medieval Spain ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Medieval Hebrew

A long standing tradition posits an opposition between the Jews and the ideals and reality of medieval chivalry (i.e., before 1492). The article argues against such generalizations. It begins by noting the research on chivalric imaginaire amongst Jews in Franco-German areas. In the case of Hispanic Jews, oral literature, particularly ballads, includes points of contact with Libros de caballería. Even (neo-) Aramaic mystical texts from thirteenth-century Castile use images and metaphors from chivalric literature. Culturally hybrid representations are also relevant, in specific visual cases such as the iconography of the Arragel Bible - and also its texts - or the texts of the (probably converso) poet Pero Ferruz. Late medieval Hebrew MS illuminations show the Hispano-Jewish patrons’ taste for the representation of knights and scenes of knightly life. Fragments from Inquisition and other archival evidence confirm the taste for chivalric literature amongst Iberian Jews. Material culture from late medieval Spain also supports the article’s claim in various ways - Jewish artisans are involved in crafting memorable items of knightly accoutrement; and towards the later decades of the fifteenth century there are attempts to incorporate Jews into urban caballería.

“Vivre Noblement”: Material Culture and Elite Identity in Late Medieval Flanders

2007 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wim De Clercq ◽  
Jan Dumolyn ◽  
Jelle Haemers
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Physical Environment ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
High Ranking ◽  
Elite Identity ◽  
Radical Transformation

The example of two fifteenth-century, high-ranking officers of the Burgundian court shows how a radical transformation of the physical environment and an imitative interaction with material culture could create a powerful elite identity for those not born to nobility. A combination of evidence from archaeological, written, architectural, and art-historical sources reveals the ways in which Peter Bladelin and William Hugonet were able to parlay their newly gained social positions to achieve their ultimate goal of vivre noblement by adopting the trappings of Duke Philip the Good and other members of the Burgundian court.

Peasant Houses

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Suggett
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Social Identity ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
High Status ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Central Aspect ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Late Medieval England

Archaeology (excavation, building survey, scientific dating) has established that peasant houses in much of Britain had a durability that was probably exceptional in late medieval Europe. Peasant houses in late medieval England and Wales (Scotland and Ireland were more complex) were not self-built homes but professionally made by craftsmen, and a central aspect of material culture. Building the late medieval peasant house was an aspect of consumption that entailed important choices relating to expenditure, construction, and, above all, the plan that structured household life. The widespread adoption by peasants of the hierarchical hall-house plan was in part an appropriation of high-status housing culture and inseparable from the construction and maintenance of free peasant social identity. The eventual rejection of the hall-house in the sixteenth century ended a peasant building tradition that had begun in the thirteenth century and matured during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Between Reform and Reformation: The English Church in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries

1990 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 647-678 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Heath
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Medieval England ◽  
Current Version ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Late Medieval England ◽  
The Church

Forty years ago the story of the Church in late medieval England was a simple one and not very different from the version which had prevailed half a century before that. The interpretation presented by W. Capes in 1900 had been slightly modified but largely underlined by 1950, and the Church and its development which was commonly depicted in that year would not have been strikingly unfamiliar to him. The current version was that, after the reforming efforts of the thirteenth century, which failed to achieve their end, and the advent of the friars, who even by the middle of that century were departing from their earlier zeal and purity, the Church in the following hundred years was exploited by the pope when it was not saved or oppressed by the Crown. The resulting corruption of the clergy contributed to its negligence and provoked an eruption of heresy which in due course was savagely suppressed and virtually expunged; rid of this threat, the fifteenth-century clergy were so notorious for their laxity, greed and mediocrity that a few devout members of the laity, perhaps inspired by the mystical writings, took refuge in private devotions which anticipated the individualism of the Protestant. The Reformation was viewed as the inescapable result of these circumstances.

Embodying Devotion: Multisensory Encounters with Donatello's Crucifix in S. Croce

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-56
Author(s):  
Geraldine A. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Good Friday ◽  
Five Senses ◽  
Modern Europe

The reception of art is often described in ocularcentric terms, but all five senses could engage devotional objects in late medieval and early modern Europe. This article explores this phenomenon by considering a wooden crucifix with movable arms made by Donatello for the Franciscan church of S. Croce in Florence in the early fifteenth century. It makes new suggestions about the work's original location, its possible patrons, and its functions and reception, especially during the rituals associated with Good Friday. It also reflects on the challenges scholars face when taking a multisensory approach to premodern visual and material culture.

scholarly journals The Ottoman fortress above Skradin in Dalmatia

X ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Josip Pavić
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Natural Resources ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The One ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Town

Skradin is a town on the right bank of the Krka river, about 15 km upstream from Šibenik. Located deep in the hinterland, with good road connections, and a luxury of natural resources nearby, it’s no wonder that urban life flourished here since the Iron Age. But being below surrounding hills, this trading centre could never be successfully defended from a prolonged siege. This is why, throughout medieval times, Skradin was usually regarded as a less important neighbour of flourishing Šibenik. Various Croatian noble families, and occasionally the Venetians, ruled the town in fifteenth century. Conquered by the Ottomans in winter of 1521-22, Skradin soon again became an important trading point, the southernmost town in Krka sancak. It was reclaimed by Venetians temporarily from 1647 to 1670, and permanently from 1683. Today, due to the thorough destruction by the Venetian army, the earliest buildings in Skradin date to eighteenth century. The one exception is Turina, a small late medieval fort above the town. Recently branded as a fortress of Šubić family –the powerful magnates from late thirteenth century–, Turina was long considered to be Skradin’s main defensive point even in the Ottoman era. However, several archival sources suggested the existence of another fort, located on a much more favourable position. This theory was finally confirmed by surveying the nearby Gradina hill in the autumn of 2018.

Islamic Monuments as Christian Trophies

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Urquízar-Herrera
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Medieval Chronicles ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
Rodrigo Jimenez De Rada ◽  
The Way

Chapter 3 approaches the notion of trophy through historical accounts of the Christianization of the Córdoba and Seville Islamic temples in the thirteenth-century and the late-fifteenth-century conquest of Granada. The first two examples on Córdoba and Seville are relevant to explore the way in which medieval chronicles (mainly Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada and his entourage) turned the narrative of the Christianization of mosques into one of the central topics of the restoration myth. The sixteenth-century narratives about the taking of the Alhambra in Granada explain the continuity of this triumphal reading within the humanist model of chorography and urban eulogy (Lucius Marineus Siculus, Luis de Mármol Carvajal, and Francisco Bermúdez de Pedraza).

A Mathematical Turn

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Oosterhoff
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
University Reform ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Nicholas Of Cusa ◽  
Devotio Moderna ◽  
Court Politics ◽  
Spiritual Reform ◽  
The University

Lefèvre described his own mathematical turn as a kind of conversion. This chapter explains what motivated his turn to mathematics, considering the place of mathematics in fifteenth-century Paris in relation to court politics and Lefèvre’s own connections to Italian humanists. But more importantly, Lefèvre’s attitude to learning and the propaedeutic value of mathematics drew on the context of late medieval spiritual reform, with its emphasis on conversion and care of the soul. In particular, Lefèvre’s turn to university reform seems to have responded to the works of Ramon Lull, alongside the devotio moderna and Nicholas of Cusa, which he printed in important collections. With such influences, Lefèvre chose the university as the site for intellectual reform.

Anthology of texts

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven N. Dworkin
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Don Juan ◽  
Alfonso X ◽  
Conde Lucanor ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
General Estoria

This short anthology contains extracts from three Castilian prose texts, one from the second half of the thirteenth century (General estoria IV of Alfonso X the Wise), one from the first half of the fourteenth century (El conde Lucanor of don Juan Manuel), and one from near the mid-point of the fifteenth century (Atalaya de las corónicas of Alfonso Martínez de Toledo, Arcipreste de Talavera). These passages illustrate in context many of the phonological, orthographic, morphological, syntactic, and lexical features of medieval Hispano-Romance described in the body of this book. A linguistic commentary discussing relevant forms and constructions, as well as the meaning of lexical items no longer used or employed with different meanings in modern Spanish, with cross references to the appropriate sections in the five main chapters, accompanies each selection.

scholarly journals Plague and the Fall of Baghdad (1258)

2021 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-177
Author(s):  
Nahyan Fancy ◽  
Monica H. Green
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Disease Outbreaks ◽  
Epidemic Disease ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Western Asia ◽  
Abbasid Caliphate ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
A Minor

AbstractThe recent suggestion that the late medieval Eurasian plague pandemic, the Black Death, had its origins in the thirteenth century rather than the fourteenth century has brought new scrutiny to texts reporting ‘epidemics’ in the earlier period. Evidence both from Song China and Iran suggests that plague was involved in major sieges laid by the Mongols between the 1210s and the 1250s, including the siege of Baghdad in 1258 which resulted in the fall of the Abbasid caliphate. In fact, re-examination of multiple historical accounts in the two centuries after the siege of Baghdad shows that the role of epidemic disease in the Mongol attacks was commonly known among chroniclers in Syria and Egypt, raising the question why these outbreaks have been overlooked in modern historiography of plague. The present study looks in detail at the evidence in Arabic sources for disease outbreaks after the siege of Baghdad in Iraq and its surrounding regions. We find subtle factors in the documentary record to explain why, even though plague received new scrutiny from physicians in the period, it remained a minor feature in stories about the Mongol invasion of western Asia. In contemporary understandings of the genesis of epidemics, the Mongols were not seen to have brought plague to Baghdad; they caused plague to arise by their rampant destruction. When an even bigger wave of plague struck the Islamic world in the fourteenth century, no association was made with the thirteenth-century episode. Rather, plague was now associated with the Mongol world as a whole.

scholarly journals Trinitarian Hagiography in Late Medieval England: Rewriting St Robert of Knaresborough in Latin Verse

2021 ◽  
Vol 57 ◽  
pp. 74-95
Author(s):  
Hazel J. Hunter Blair
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Medieval England ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Holy Trinity ◽  
Latin Verse ◽  
Weberian Theory ◽  
Late Medieval England

The Order of the Holy Trinity for the Redemption of Captives (or Trinitarian Order) is one of the least studied continental religious groups to have expanded into thirteenth-century England. This article examines shifting notions of Trinitarian redemption in late medieval England through the prism of the order's writing about Yorkshire hermit St Robert of Knaresborough (d. 1218). Against the Weberian theory of the routinization of charisma, it demonstrates that Robert's inspirational sanctity was never bound too rigidly by his Trinitarian hagiographers, who rather co-opted his unstable charisma in distinct yet complementary ways to facilitate institutional reinvention and spiritual flourishing in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

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