Introduction

1996 ◽  
pp. 1-4
Author(s):  
Ariel Toaff
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Community ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
World View ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Medieval Italy ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Archival Documentation ◽  
The Many

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the emergence of Jewish communities in the regions of central and northern Italy. The growth of these new communities, which archival documentation shows to have been surprisingly rapid and widespread, had its origin in the northward migration from Rome of Jewish merchants engaged in the money trade. This book explores the everyday life of the Jews of Umbria, which can act as a template for the reconstruction of the world-view of much of Italian Jewry in the late Middle Ages. Though many aspects of Christian society encroached on the Jewish way of life at this period, they rarely amounted to a brutal intrusion and were more usually felt as a constant and insidious influence, born of the unequal power-struggle between the opposing societies. The attempt to fit in brought with it not only a dawning awareness of the gulf that separated the Jews from their Christian counterparts but also a heightened sense of the divisions within the Jewish community itself. A true picture of Jewish community life in medieval Italy must therefore take account of the many pressures and contradictions acting from within and without.

Converts and Apostates

1996 ◽  
pp. 143-165
Author(s):  
Ariel Toaff
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Medieval Italy ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
Isolated Communities ◽  
The Right ◽  
Christian Society

This chapter studies the phenomenon of conversion and baptism in the Italian cities of the late Middle Ages, assessing its impact on the Jewish community. The Jews of late medieval Italy were dispersed throughout hundreds of small and isolated communities, immersed in a Christian society whose power of attraction could make itself felt well in excess of an already crushing numerical superiority; this inevitably left their numbers exposed to depletion by conversion and baptism. Scholars are virtually unanimous in agreeing that the number of baptisms within Italian Jewry rose sharply during the Counter-Reformation, as a result of the Church's increasingly intense policy of conversion and the antisemitic measures taken by the popes from the middle of the sixteenth century onwards. One constant policy among the Umbrian communes towards converted Jews was to water the new plants with more or less abundant alms and other benefits, such as exemption from taxes and the right of citizenship. However, whatever the reasons for their conversion, neophytes often became objects of hostility in Jewish circles, while at the same time finding themselves exposed to the distrust and suspicion of Christian society.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Janine Larmon Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Relative Weight ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Medieval Italy ◽  
Italian Peninsula ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The People

This introductory chapter begins by describing the cult of a layman in Cremona, Italy, named Albert of Villa d'Ogna (d. 1279). Albert was a humble wine carrier and a local saint who could have lapsed into obscurity if not for Franciscan chronicler Salimbene de Adam's famous description of him and the dogged efforts of his community to canonize him, which resulted in a seventeenth-century canonization process. According to his contemporary Salimbene, Albert was a wine porter but also a drunk sinner. The bishops of Cremona, Parma, and Reggio promoted his devotion although his supposed miracles were false and “deceptive.” Salimbene's ire at the fact that bishops allowed his veneration without papal authorization reveals two points of contention about the construction of sanctity in late medieval Italy. The first was what criteria should assess holiness and the relative weight of each factor when assessing “true” or “false” sanctity. The second was about the process of sanctification and how it should occur. This book is about those citizens of the Italian peninsula in the late Middle Ages who created and promoted Albert's cult and who continued venerating him regardless of papal authorization or the disparagement of institutional insiders like Salimbene. It is about the people who did the same for roughly thirty other saints, some of whom individually faced excommunication or collectively faced interdict for their choice of holy patrons.

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.

A Biographical Sketch

Rashi ◽  
2012 ◽  
pp. 12-51
Author(s):  
Avraham Grossman
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
World View ◽  
Community Leader ◽  
Biographical Sketch ◽  
Writing Style ◽  
Unique Character ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Great Confidence ◽  
Literary Output ◽  
Cultural World

This chapter offers a biographical sketch of Rashi. There are numerous folk legends about Rashi's birth, especially the miracles wrought for his mother during her pregnancy, and about his father and his father's journeys outside France and meetings with various sages, including Maimonides. None of these legends is reliably documented, however, and nothing can be gleaned from them about the events of Rashi's life. Ultimately, they reflect the cultural world of Jewish society in the late Middle Ages—a time that saw the composition, in Jewish circles as in Christian, of numerous hagiographical works recounting the miracles performed for holy men. Rashi is renowned throughout the Jewish world not only for his wide-ranging literary productivity but also for his unique character. Five qualities stand out in his warm and radiant personality: humility and natural simplicity, pursuit of truth, concern for human dignity, great confidence in his own abilities, and a sense of mission as a community leader. These qualities are evident in his actions, his relations with other people, his ties to his students, his world-view, his scorn for arrogance, his love of peace, his literary output, and even in his writing style. The chapter then considers Rashi's status and fame.

Londoners and London Mendicants in the Late Middle Ages

1996 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 446-477 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Röhrkasten
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Rapid Expansion ◽  
Spiritual Needs ◽  
Social Significance ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The People ◽  
General Answer

Much attention has been paid to the role and functions of the mendicant orders in their urban environment. Among the topics discussed have been the friars' importance for urban development, their coexistence with other religious institutions, their economic practices and their relations with the secular authorities. As far as their spiritual and social significance is concerned their spectacular success and rapid development in the thirteenth century are generally accepted. There were some setbacks, particularly in towns where the Dominicans or Franciscans became involved in the suppression of heresy, but these had little impact on the rapid expansion of the orders. Members from all social groups, academics as well as aristocrats, merchants and artisans as well as the poor, felt the attraction of their sermons and way of life, some to such an extent that they decided to join one of the orders. But while the attraction of the mendicant ideal in the decades following the friars' arrival is undisputed, the problem of their importance for the religious life of the late medieval urban population is far more difficult to discuss. While there are assertions that the friars remained particularly popular, the orders' decline and their need of reform were already obvious in the fourteenth century and the various efforts to bring about a reinvigoration confirm this impression. In the fifteenth century famous mendicant preachers from Vincent Ferrer and Bernardino of Siena to Girolamo Savonarola attracted large crowds in many parts of Europe, but was this indicative of the population's general attitude towards the orders? Were the mendicants still perceived by the people as responding to their spiritual needs? How did the public react to signs of decadence, to disputes among the brothers? A general answer to such questions needs to be based on a large number of local studies and this is still a task for the future.

Towards a fire history of European cities (late Middle Ages to late nineteenth century)

Urban History ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-224
Author(s):  
DAVID GARRIOCH
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Building Materials ◽  
Fire History ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Shifts ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
The Way

ABSTRACT:Fires are often seen as a constant in early modern European towns, changing only in the modern era when inflammable building materials replaced wood. This article argues that the incidence, nature and risk of fire shifted repeatedly over time. Fire danger was determined not only by building materials but also by forms of construction, by the everyday uses people made of flame and by wider factors such as climatic variation and shifts in world trade and consumer demand. It was influenced by urban social and political change, including the way governments and populations responded to the risk. Responses to new fire dangers in turn helped change the way urban government functioned.

scholarly journals Magische Alltagsvorstellungen und spätmittelalterliche Zaubereiprozesse in Tirol

2015 ◽  
pp. 409
Author(s):  
Hester Margreiter
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
World View ◽  
Legal Interpretation ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The People ◽  
Historical Function

Common Magical Concepts and Late-Medieval Sorcery Trials in TyrolThe beliefs of the people in the late Middle Ages went beyond the canonical doctrine of the Catholic Church, magic performances complemented the religion and its application has played a central role in coping with everyday life. The aim of the following paper is to discuss the historical function of magical ideas in social context, their importance for everyday life and world-view, and furthermore the criminalization, legal interpretation and prosecution of „magical crimes“. The conclusion tries to offer guidelines to distinguish between socially accepted magic and criminalized sorcery on the eve of the European witch hunting era.

scholarly journals Late Pleistocene and Holocene distribution history of the Eurasian beaver in Italy

Mammalia ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 84 (3) ◽  
pp. 259-277
Author(s):  
Leonardo Salari ◽  
Marco Masseti ◽  
Letizia Silvestri
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Pleistocene ◽  
Population Pressure ◽  
Early Pleistocene ◽  
Medieval Italy ◽  
Po Valley ◽  
Eurasian Beaver ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
History Of ◽  
Western Palaearctic

AbstractThe genus Castor first appeared in the Palaearctic region during the Late Miocene, while the current species, Castor fiber, is widely accepted to have emerged in the Early Pleistocene. In the Last Glacial Maximum (Late Pleistocene), the beaver disappeared from most of the Western Palaearctic, only surviving in a few relic areas including the south-eastern Alpine Chain as shown by new data. After the subsequent extended repopulation in the warmer phases of the Lateglacial and in the early Holocene, the species once again disappeared locally from several countries, including Italy, between the 17th and the 20th centuries. Direct or indirect persecution by humans seems to be the main cause of beaver extinction in Europe. In Low Medieval Italy, it is more likely that the disappearance of the beaver between the 16th and 17th centuries was due to habitat alteration and human population pressure. Numerous reclamations have been carried out since the late Middle Ages, mostly in the easternmost area of the Po Valley, the last beaver refuge in Italy. Eurasian beaver was common in the northern and widespread in the central part of Italy, but always absent in southern Italy, probably due to unfavourable hydrological conditions of watercourses in the latter.

The Rule of Saint Paul, the First Hermit, in late medieval England

1985 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 203-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Virginia Davis
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Saint Paul ◽  
Reform Movements ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Common Life ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
English Society ◽  
Late Medieval England

Throughout Europe in the late middle ages there was a perceptible interest in the way of life and ideals believed to have been followed in the early centuries of Christianity. There was little that was new in this interest; reform movements within the Church from the eleventh century onwards had frequently followed such a path. Accompanying this interest however was a desire by laymen to live in a pious and holy fashion; not to enter the coenobitic life rejecting the world as they might have done in earlier centuries but to live a religious life while remaining attached to the outside world. Perhaps the best known manifestation of this spirit was in the emergence of the Brethren of the Common Life in Northern Europe in the fifteenth century; another manifestation of the same kind can be found in the lower echelons of English society in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries with the widespread appearance of men who vowed to adopt the lifestyle of the desert fathers while performing labouring functions useful to society – as hermits, following the rule of Saint Paul the first hermit.

The Pattern of Discrimination

1996 ◽  
pp. 166-194
Author(s):  
Ariel Toaff
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Medieval Italy ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The One ◽  
General Relations ◽  
Two Sides ◽  
Legislative Measures ◽  
Christian Society

This chapter discusses Jewish–Christian relations in late medieval Italy. The daily business and general relations between Jews and the non-itinerant clergy in Umbrian communes in the late Middle Ages were close and constant. However, from the fifteenth century onwards, in the communes of Umbria as elsewhere in Italy, there was a proliferation of legislative measures obliging Jews to wear something that would distinguish them from Christians. The imposition of the so-called ‘badge for Jews’ was justified by the hope that it would discourage sexual relations between infidels and Christians. The chapter then looks at the discrimination against the Jews during the triduum of the Christian Holy Week, particularly the holy sassaiola, the fight with stones. Towards the middle of the sixteenth century, the fate of the Jews became one with that of the gypsies. Ghettoization and segregation on the one hand, and expulsion on the other, were simply two sides of the same coin with which Christian society, now closed and homogeneous, hoped to deal with minority groups.

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