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.

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.

A Crooked Mirror for Princes

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pavlína Rychterová
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Bourgeois Culture ◽  
Mirrors For Princes

This chapter examines the growing importance of the vernacular languages during the later Middle Ages in shaping the form, content, and audiences of political discourse. It presents a famously wicked king of the late Middle Ages, Wenceslas IV (1361–1419), as a case study and traces the origins of his bad reputation to a group of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century writings. These have often been dismissed as fictions or studied solely as literature, but in fact they represent new modes of articulating good and bad kingship. The chapter shows that, in the context of an increasingly literate bourgeois culture, especially in university cities, these vernacular works transformed Latin theological approaches to monarchy, while rendering mirrors for princes and related literatures accessible to an unprecedented audience.

A new attribution to Brassart?

1994 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-43
Author(s):  
Peter Wright
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Middle Ages

A badly trimmed ascription can be more a matter for relish than regret: if enough of the composer's name survives to permit informed speculation, the musicologist's sense of pleasure is likely to outweigh his sense of loss. Most musical manuscripts from the late Middle Ages have visibly suffered at the hands of the binder's knife, but perhaps none more so than the famous ‘Aosta Manuscript’ (I-AO15), one of the central sources of early fifteenth-century sacred polyphony. In his inventory of the manuscript Guillaume de Van reported no fewer than twenty names as surviving in varying states of incompleteness. In fifteen instances he was able to decipher the composer's name or supply it from the manuscript's index or a concordant source, while the other five apparently defeated him. Two of the names have since been deciphered, and a third has been identified from another source, but the remaining two have attracted no further comment.

The New Entities of Abbacus and Renaissance Algebra

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roi Wagner
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Mathematics ◽  
Mathematical Practice ◽  
Northern Italy ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Negative Numbers ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Mathematical Signs

This chapter offers a historical narrative of some elements of the new algebra that was developed in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries in northern Italy in order to show how competing philosophical approaches find an intertwining expression in mathematical practice. It examines some of the important mathematical developments of the period in terms of a “Yes, please!” philosophy of mathematics. It describes economical-mathematical practice with algebraic signs and subtracted numbers in the abbaco tradition of the Italian late Middle Ages and Renaissance. The chapter first considers where the practice of using letters and ligatures to represent unknown quantities come from by analyzing Benedetto's fifteenth-century manuscript before discussing mathematics as abstraction from natural science observations that emerges from the realm of economy. It also explores the arithmetic of debited values, the formation of negative numbers, and the principle of fluidity of mathematical signs.

Why This Time and Place?

Born to Write ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 10-19
Author(s):  
Neil Kenny
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Social Position ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Social ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
The Revolution

From about the late fifteenth century onwards, literature and learning acquired increased importance for the social position of noble and elite-commoner families in France. One reason is the expansion and rise to prominence of the royal office-holder milieu, which had no exact equivalent in, say, England, where the aristocracy was much smaller than the French nobility and where there was no equivalent of the French system of venality of office. In France, family literature often helped extend across the generations a relationship between two families—that of the literary producer and that of the monarch. From the late Middle Ages, the conditions for family literature were made more favourable by broad social shifts. Although this study focuses mainly on the period from the late fifteenth to the mid-seventeenth century, it is likely that the production of works from within families of literary producers thrived especially up to the Revolution.

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.

The Devil Wears White: Teutonic Knights and the Problem of Evil in Polish Historiography

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-155
Author(s):  
Adam Kożuchowski
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Other ◽  
Historical Imagination ◽  
Historical Discourse ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
The One ◽  
The Devil ◽  
Teutonic Knights

This paper addresses the intersection of moral condemnation, national antagonism, and civilizational critique in the images of the Teutonic Order as presented in Polish historical discourse since the early nineteenth century, with references to their medieval and early modern origins. For more than 150 years, the Order played the role of the archenemy in the historical imagination of Poles. This image is typically considered an element of the anti-German sentiment, fueled by modern nationalism. In this paper I argue that the scale and nature of the demonization of the Teutonic Knights in Polish historiography is more complex, and should be interpreted in the contexts of pre-modern religious rhetoric on the one hand, and the critique of Western civilization from a peripheral or semi-colonial point of view on the other. The durability and flexibility of the black legend of the Order, born in the late Middle Ages, and adapted by Romantic, modern nationalist, and communist historians, makes it a unique phenomenon, surpassing the framework of modern nationalism. It is the modern anti-German stereotype that owes much to this legend, rather than the other way around.

Hermeneutik der Minne: Liebesdichtung und religiöser Diskurs bei Dante und Petrarca

2015 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerhard Regn
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
Courtly Love ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Dark Ages ◽  
The Will ◽  
The One ◽  
The Way

AbstractAn important characteristic of Italian minne-poetry in the late Middle Ages is the negotiation of the Sacred and the Profane. Nonetheless, Dante and Petrarch, the most important representatives of Italian minne-poetry, enter this negotiation in very different ways. Dante proposes to align mundane minne-poetry - as a form of minne-theology - with sacralization; with that, Dante seems to be in perfect harmony with his epoch, commonly referred to as Christian or theocentric Middle Ages. But looking more closely, Dante’s sacralization of courtly love reveals itself to be an outrageous provocation of Christian orthodoxy: Dante’s minne-poetry presents itself as a supplement to the Gospel’s promise of Salvation, and thus obviously competes with the institutionalized religion. Petrarch, very much concerned to be perceived as the one to overcome the ‘Dark Ages’ represented by Dante and from there as the founding authority of what we call Renaissance, quotes Dante’s sacralization of the courtly love in order to cancel demonstratively its claim to ontological substance. Different to Dante, Petrarch avoids all heretic appearance by presenting the divinization of the minne-lady as a mere phantasm which is finally recognized as the result of a morally erroneous conception of love. Therefore with Petrarch, Christian orthodoxy is not overtly contested. This paradoxically clears the way for a genuine worldly poetry in which art itself gains the aura of the sacred: thus with Petrarch, the will to balance religion and love becomes a driving force of secularization.

The Savior, the Woman, and the Head of the Dragon in the Caput Masses and Motet

2006 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 537-630 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANNE WALTERS ROBERTSON
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Immaculate Conception ◽  
Genesis 3 ◽  
Johannes Ockeghem ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
The Masses ◽  
The Devil ◽  
Lasting Influence

Abstract God's dramatic curse of Adam, Eve, and the serpent, as recorded in Genesis 3:14–15, contains a theological ambiguity that played out in the visual arts, literature, and, as this article contends, music of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Translations of this passage leave in doubt whether a male, a female, or both, will defeat sin by crushing Satan's head (“caput”). This issue lies at the heart of the three Caput masses by an anonymous Englishman, Johannes Ockeghem, and Jacob Obrecht, and the Caput Motet for the Virgin by Richard Hygons from the Eton Choirbook. Fifteenth-century discussions of the roles of Christ and Mary in confronting sin, often called the “head of the dragon,” help unravel the meaning of these works. The Caput masses are Christ-focused and emphasize the Savior or one of his surrogates suppressing the beast's head, as seen in illumination, rubric, and canon found in the masses. Folklorically based rituals and concepts of liturgical time are similarly built around the idea of the temporary reign of the Devil, who is ultimately trodden down by Christ. Hygons's motet appears after celebration of the Immaculate Conception was authorized in the late fifteenth century. This feast proclaimed Mary's conquest of sin through her own trampling on the dragon; the motet stresses Marian elements of the Caput theology, especially the contrast between the Virgin's spotlessness and Eve's corruption. Features of the Caput tradition mirror topics discussed in astrological and astronomical treatises and suggest that the composer of the original Caput Mass may also have been an astronomer. The disappearance of the Caput tradition signals its lasting influence through its progeny, which rise up in yet another renowned family of polyphonic masses. Together, the Caput masses and motet encompass the multifaceted doctrine of Redemption from the late middle ages under one highly symbolic Caput rubric.

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