scholarly journals The Aquila tower: a part of the Renaissance coastal defence system of Pučišća

X ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Snježana Perojević ◽  
Branislav Trifunović
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Coastal Defence ◽  
Ground Floor ◽  
Defence System ◽  
Eastern Side ◽  
The Past ◽  
Internal Part ◽  
The Town

At the end of the fifteenth century the Ottoman Empire won the land at the middle of the eastern side of the Adriatic, between the town of Omiš and the Neretva River. Thus exposing the northern settlements of the island of Brač, which were under the Venetian Administration at the time, to immediate danger from the Turkish invasion. The settlement of Pučišća was particularly vulnerable. Therefore, the settlement was intensively fortified, and a series of thirteen individual small coastal towers was built, after which the entire settlement was named Castello Pucischia in 1600. One of these towers –the Aquila tower– had a key role in defending Pučišća during the Ottoman-Venetian War, also known as the War of Cyprus (1570-1573). The Aquila tower was built at the beginning of the sixteenth century and today it is a well-preserved detached building situated on the Pučišća coast. Despite all the damage and transformations endured in the past, all the tower elements have been sufficiently preserved to reconstruct its original appearance, including the residential character of the overall interior: a stone wardrobe and a built-in stone basin (Cro. pilo), a fireplace, stairs, as well as those of a defensive character: mechanisms for lifting the drawbridge, loopholes, cannon openings, channels for extracting gunpowder smoke. The wooden beams’ supports in the walls above the first floor have also been preserved, as well as the barrel vault over the ground floor and the groin vault over the second floor which are still intact even today. On the external of the tower, the original corbels of machicolations as well as the semi-circular cornice above the escarp are partially preserved. By analysing the remains of the tower and by studying historical and bibliographic sources, a reconstruction of the original appearance of the Aquila tower has been made, both for the external and internal part, including transformations that took place over the time, since its construction to the present day. This has contributed to the knowledge of the typology of Renaissance coastal fortifications as well as to providing basis for potential renovation and reconstruction of the Aquila tower.

scholarly journals “Turkish” Textiles in South-Eastern and East-Central Europe in the Early Modern Period: The Evidence of Transylvanian Customs Accounts

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 363-382
Author(s):  
Mária Pakucs-Willcocks
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Serial Data

Abstract This paper analyzes data from customs accounts in Transylvania from the middle of the sixteenth century to the end of the seventeenth on traffic in textiles and textile products from the Ottoman Empire. Cotton was known and commercialized in Transylvania from the fifteenth century; serial data will show that traffic in Ottoman cotton and silk textiles as well as in textile objects such as carpets grew considerably during the second half of the seventeenth century. Customs registers from that period also indicate that Poland and Hungary were destinations for Ottoman imports, but Transylvania was a consumer’s market for cotton textiles.

scholarly journals History as Science: The Fifteenth-Century Debate in Arabic and Persian

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 216-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Markiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Historical Inquiry ◽  
Geographic Space ◽  
The Status

In the fifteenth century, scholars writing in Arabic and Persian debated the nature of historical inquiry and its place among the sciences. While the motivations and perspectives of the various scholars differed, the terms and parameters of the debate remained remarkably fixed and focused, even as it unfolded across a vast geographic space between Herat, Cairo, and Constantinople. This article examines the contours of this debate and the relationships between five historians working on these issues. Although the scholars who considered these questions frequently arrived at different conclusions, they all firmly agreed, in contrast to previous doubt regarding the status of history, that historical inquiry did indeed constitute a distinct science requiring its own particular method. Accordingly, the debate and its conclusions helped cement the place of history within the broader pantheon of the sciences as conceived by scholars in the Ottoman Empire from the sixteenth century onwards.

The Orchard of Syon: An Introduction

Traditio ◽  
1958 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 269-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sister Mary Denise
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Medieval Literature ◽  
Devotional Literature ◽  
Critical Research ◽  
The Past ◽  
Spiritual Climate ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church

By some inexplicable accident of literary history, The Orchard of Syon, in the nearly five hundred years of its existence, has not found its critical editor, nor is there any study of it available to readers. The first to rescue it from oblivion was Sir Richard Sutton, steward of Syon Monastery in the early sixteenth century, who, as Wynkyn de Worde informs us, found it ‘in a corner by it selfe’ and deemed it worthy of costly publication. Although it belongs to a body of medieval literature which has been in recent years the object of much critical research by medievalists, the work has, so far as modern readers are concerned, continued for over four centuries to lie ‘in a corner by it selfe.’ The energetic surge of vernacular devotional prose in the fourteenth century, not only in England, but in Italy, Germany, and Flanders — countries whose spiritual climate must have been especially favorable to mysticism — did not recede in the fifteenth century. Following upon the age of Chaucer, this century may seem to some present-day scholars literarily poor and unproductive, but it was a great age of English prose; an age, that is, when translations and experiments with original prose in the vernacular were building on the past, borrowing from other languages to meet the needs of the present, and shaping the prose of the future. The Orchard of Syon is an important specimen of this emerging prose, as well as of current devotional literature. Its connection with Syon Monastery, renowned in the history of England and of the Church, gives it added prestige.

scholarly journals The Beginnings of the Cooperation of Free Royal Towns in the Kingdom of Hungary in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 49-73
Author(s):  
István H. Németh
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Habsburg Monarchy ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
Internal Politics ◽  
Common Interests ◽  
State Taxes ◽  
The Town

The study presents the possibilities and framework for cooperation between towns in Hungary through the operation of the Town League of Upper Hungary. The cooperation of towns in the Kingdom of Hungary happened primarily through regional relations. At first, the basis for cooperation was provided by common economic interests, but this area broadened considerably in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. After the battle of Mohács (1526), the towns of Hungary became full members of the Hungarian Estates. The Kingdom of Hungary, which was part of the Habsburg Monarchy, gained considerable autonomy in internal politics. This was based on a compromise with the Habsburg rulers to ensure protection against the Ottoman Empire. The free royal towns were the least influential members of this country that had strong Estates. Nevertheless, cooperation between the towns became nationwide. The diets provided the forum for all free royal towns in the country to represent their common interests in a coordinated way. There are traces of this nationwide cooperation as early as the mid-sixteenth century, but it was from the early seventeenth century that it was the strongest. The reason was that in those decades state taxes were becoming heavier and more burdensome for towns. This nationwide cooperation was not only manifested in the field of taxation, but from the first quarter of the seventeenth century onwards, it increasingly extended to religious matters. In the background, there was the increasing recatholization of the Habsburg Monarchy. In this special matter, close links were forged also with the otherwise strongly anti-urban lower nobility.

Prologue

2020 ◽  
pp. 15-23
Author(s):  
Ian Coller
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Military Training ◽  
Ancien Regime ◽  
Distorted Version ◽  
Ancien Régime ◽  
Religious Understanding

This prologue offers a snapshot of what Islam and Muslims meant for the France of the late ancien régime and observes the shifts that were already emerging as 1789 approached. From the end of the fifteenth century until the last quarter of the eighteenth, Islam remained on the fringe of a French consciousness. Islam was principally understood by the ancien régime as a heresy, a distorted version of Christianity. With the global geopolitical shifts of the later eighteenth century, however, these matrices of religious understanding were fundamentally changed. From the mid-sixteenth century onward, France joined a loose alliance with the Ottoman Empire, fostering ongoing contacts in diplomacy, military training, and trade with a Muslim power. Beginning in the 1720s, philosophers began to investigate the life and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad in new ways that undermined older theological understandings. Trade and diplomacy produced travelers' accounts that shaped the ideas of Enlightenment thinkers. Radical philosophical ideas about Islam came together with diplomatic and commercial knowledge of Muslim societies to produce a sea change in conceptions about Muslims and Islam that would become entangled with the revolutionary transformation.

The English Hospice Of St. George at Sanlucar De Barrameda

1987 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 263-276
Author(s):  
Michael E. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
New World ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
Single Group ◽  
Public Office ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
The Town ◽  
Point Of Departure

NOT FAR from Cadiz there is an English property that has remained Catholic for close on five hundred years. Its history goes back to pre-reformation days, indeed to the thirteenth century when the port of Sanlucar de Barrameda was recaptured from the Moors by the Guzman family who later became the Dukes of Medina Sidonia. Strategically Sanlucar was an important port because it was at the mouth of the Guadalquivir and as well as capturing the Seville trade it also commanded the traffic from the Mediterranean to Northern Europe and eventually it was the point of departure for ships leaving for the New World. Among the various nations using the port the English were conspicuous and their merchants were granted various privileges by the Dukes of Medina Sidonia during the fifteenth century. By the early sixteenth century there is evidence of a sizeable colony in the town; in fact the English were the largest single group of foreigners and many English names appear in the baptismal registers as both parents and godparents. At least one of them held high public office in the town. On the accession of Henry VIII to the throne of England, the situation further improved as he abandoned the neutrality of his father and allied himself with Spain against France. So it was that in 1517 a new charter of privileges for the English merchants in Sanlucar was drafted. A grant of land by the river was made so as to provide a chapel and a burial place for Englishmen. The chapel was dedicated to St. George and it was to be looked after by a confraternity. The chaplain was to be appointed by the Bishops of London, Winchester and Exeter, since it was from these dioceses that most of the merchants came. Although there have been rebuildings, this site has remained English ever since.

The One Who Comes After Me

2013 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 639-708 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Alan Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
John 1 ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Temporal Parameters ◽  
The Past ◽  
John The Baptist ◽  
Vatican City ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract Studies of the past two decades have shown that late medieval and Renaissance composers participated in a culture of symbolic representation by inscribing Christian figures and concepts into musical design. One figure who has been overlooked in this line of scholarship is John the Baptist, the precursor of Christ. This essay outlines the Baptist's historical impact on the conception of Christian temporality and proceeds to demonstrate some distinct experiments in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century music for John that express his predecessory character through emblematic manipulations of temporal parameters. By the sixteenth century, several inscriptions found in Vatican manuscripts reveal that the Baptist was associated with a particular musical craft that controls masterfully the unfolding of time: the art of canon. Drawing heavily on Scripture (especially John 1:15, 27, 30) to articulate the compositional conceits, the rubrics likened the leader (dux) and follower (comes) of a canon to the relationship between John (the forerunner saint) and Jesus. The analogy intensified around the papal chapel choirbook Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Cappella Sistina 38.

Eunuchs in the Ottoman Empire

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Hathaway
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Prisoners Of War ◽  
East African ◽  
Young Turks

Abstract This article surveys the employment of eunuchs in the Ottoman Empire. After placing the use of court eunuchs in a global historical context, the study turns to the earliest eunuchs in Ottoman employ, who were probably Byzantine prisoners of war. By the early fifteenth century, East African harem eunuchs had become an important element of the palace eunuch population, and the article discusses their procurement and castration. The construction of Topkap Palace in newly-conquered Constantinople during the 1450s laid the ground for the dichotomy between African harem eunuchs and white Third Court eunuchs. An equally important watershed occurred in the late sixteenth century, when the Chief Harem Eunuch assumed the supervision of the imperial pious endowments for Mecca and Medina, making him one of the most powerful figures in the empire. By the late seventeenth century, deposed Chief Harem Eunuchs often commanded the eunuchs who guarded the Prophet Muhammads tomb in Medina. The influence of all palace eunuchs decreased during the eighteenth century, as the grand vizier acquired ever more control over the empires administration. Nineteenth-century reforms dealt a permanent blow to the harem eunuchs authority, which ended entirely when the Young Turks disbanded the harem in 1909.Аннотация Статья рассматривает вопрос о привлечении на службу евнухов в Османскои империи. После общего обзора роли придворных евнухов в глобальном историческом контексте, исследование обращается к первым евнухам на османскои службе, которые вероятно были византиискими военнопленными. К началу XV в. восточно-африканские евнухи гарема стали важнои фракциеи среди дворцовых евнухов в статье рассматривается методика их отбора и кастрации. Строительство дворца Топкапы в недавно завоеванном Константинополе в 50-х гг. XV в. положило начало дихотомии между африканскими евнухами Гарема и белыми евнухами Третьего Двора. Не менее важным рубежом становится и конец XVI в., когда старшии евнух Гарема принял на себя обязанности по управлению имперскими благотворительными пожертвованиями в Мекку и Медину, что сделало этого сановника одной из самых могущественных фигур империи. К концу XVII в. низложенные главные евнухи Гарема часто принимали командование над евнухами, охранявшими гробницу Пророка Мухаммеда в Медине. Влияние дворцовых евнухов оказывается ослабленным в XVIII столетии, по мере того как великии визирь получал все большую власть над управлением империи. Реформы XIX столетия нанесли решающии удар по власти евнухов Гарема, которая полностью сошла на нет при расформировании его младотурками в 1909 г.

Medieval Heresies in the Reformation

1963 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 392-414
Author(s):  
Claus-Peter Clasen
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
New Age ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Reformation

The problem of a possible continuity of late medieval heresies and sixteenth century sects in Switzerland and Germany has not been thoroughly investigated yet. Of course some historians have touched upon the problem. Thus in 1886 Ludwig Keller advanced the thesis that Anabaptism was closely connected with the Waldensian tradition. Recently a Marxist historian, Gerhard Zschäbitz, pointed out that certain ideas of the Hussite tradition had infiltrated Anabaptism in Thuringia. On the whole, however, it is assumed that medieval heresies did not survive the fifteenth century. The sixteenth century German sects are considered a product of the Reformation. This is implying that the Reformation constituted a complete break with the past and opened an altogether new age. It hardly needs pointing out that this is a hazardous assumption. It is rather hard to believe that heresies, which had secretly lived on in certain towns and villages for one or two hundred years should suddenly have died out by 1500.

WESTERN TRAVELERS, EASTERN ANTIQUITIES, AND THE IMAGE OF THE TURK IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE

2003 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda Wunder
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Common Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
The City

AbstractEducated elite Europeans who visited Constantinople on diplomatic, scholarly, and commercial enterprises in the sixteenth century shared a common culture of antiquarianism, and their passion for the antiquities of the East shaped their accounts of the Turk and Ottoman Constantinople. The traveling antiquarians Augier Ghislain de Busbecq, Pierre Gilles, Melchior Lorck, Pieter Coecke van Aelst, and Nicholas de Nicolay produced a diverse range of printed works based on their firsthand experiences in the Ottoman Empire, in which they used traditional Renaissance genres (such as the urban encomium, the city view, the historia painting, and the costume book) to depict the Turk either as the enemy of antiquities or, alternatively, as an eternal, exotic object like the relics of the past. While some antiquarian travelers, most notably Lorck, Coecke, and Nicolay, demonstrated the variety that existed amongst the Turks, the ultimate impact of sixteenth-century antiquarian accounts of the Ottoman Empire was to deepen the Western perception of Oriental difference.

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