Terra Has Standing

Exterranean ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 24-40
Author(s):  
Phillip John Usher
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Human Activity ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Latin Text ◽  
Vital Force ◽  
Legal Standing ◽  
Ecological Thought ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter offers a reading of a late fifteenth-century Latin text, Paulus Niavis’s Judicium Jovis(Judgment of Jupiter), which grants Terra legal standing, a right it uses to enter Jupiter’s court and accuse a miner of matricide. Situating Niavis’s Terra in a tradition going from Greek Gaia to Roman Terra up through the twelfth-century Terra of Alain de Lille in his De planctu naturae and finally reaching forward to Anthropocene-era debates over the relationship between humans and the Gaia of Lovelock and Latour, the chapter teases out how the Judicium Jovis fashions a sense of the exterranean in which Terra is neither just a body (or globe) nor a vital force (i.e., Earth’s systems), but both at the same time, such that the text’s final locking together of Terra and human activity serves as an argument against forms of ecological thought that depend upon seeing totalities from afar.

Archbishop John Morton and the Province of Canterbury, 1486–1500

1978 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Harper-Bill
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Personal Nature ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
Foster Father ◽  
The Church

The episcopate of John Morton has received little attention from historians, possibly because it falls in time between the traditional interests of medievalists and of reformation specialists. Previous treatments, notably that of dean Hook in his Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury and the biography by Woodhouse, published in 1895 and heavily reliant on Hook, have concentrated on Morton's political role as ‘foster father of the Tudors’, and while Professor Claude Jenkins provided an excellent survey of the Canterbury register, he was more concerned with the evidence which it provides for die condition of the Church in die late fifteenth century than widi the archbishop himself. The purpose of this paper is to outline the salient characteristics of the episcopate and to examine the ecclesiastical policies pursued by Morton. Two qualifications must immediately be added. First, despite the wealth of material in the archiepiscopal register, supplemented by the records of the cathedral priory, there is almost nothing of a personal nature, and as always it is more difficult to estimate the character or sentiments of a fifteenth-century bishop than of his twelfth-century counterpart Secondly, it has been remarked how a hard and fresh look has upgraded the reputation of Hubert Walter, ‘that old model of secular prelacy’.

Art, Allegory and the Rise of Shi'ism in Iran, 1487-1565

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chad Kia
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Narrative Poetry ◽  
Illustrated Text ◽  
Significant Events ◽  
History Of ◽  
Narrative Subject ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
Interdisciplinary Study

Some of the world’s most exquisite medieval paintings, from late fifteenth-century Herat and the early Safavid workshops, illustrate well-known episodes of popular romances––like Leyla & Majnun––that give prominence to depictions of unrelated figures such as a milkmaid or a spinner at the scene of the hero Majnun’s death. This interdisciplinary study aims to uncover the significance of this enigmatic, century-long trend from its genesis at the Timurid court to its continued development into the Safavid era. The analysis of iconography in several luxury manuscript paintings within the context of contemporary cultural trends, especially the ubiquitous mystical and messianic movements in the post-Mongol Turco-Persian world, reveals the meaning of many of these obscure figures and scenes and links this extraordinary innovation in the iconography of Persian painting to one of the most significant events in the history of Islam: the takeover of Iran by the Safavids in 1501. The apparently inscrutable figures, which initially appeared in illustrations of didactic Sufi narrative poetry, allude to metaphors and verbal expressions of Sufi discourse going back to the twelfth century. These “emblematic” figure-types served to emphasize the moral lessons of the narrative subject of the illustrated text by deploying familiar tropes from an intertextual Sufi literary discourse conveyed through verses by poets like Rumi, Attar and Jami, and ended up complementing and expressing Safavid political power at its greatest extent: the conversion of Iran to Shiism.

scholarly journals Mac Giolla Phádraig Clerics 1394-1534 AD: Part I

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 42-65
Author(s):  
Mike Fitzpatrick
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
Historical Records ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Century Science

Mac Giolla Phádraig Clerics 1394-1534 AD is a three-part series, which provides an account of all known individual Mac Giolla Phádraig clerics in the late medieval era and details their temporalities, occupations, familial associations, and broader networks. The ultimate goal of the series is the full contextualisation of all available historical records relating to Mac Giolla Phádraig clerics alongside the genealogical record that can be extracted by twenty-first century science – that being the science of Y-DNA. The Papal Registers, in particular, record numerous occurrences of Mac Giolla Phádraig clerics, predominantly in the dioceses of Cill Dalua (Killaloe) and Osraí (Ossory), from the late fourteenth to the early sixteenth century. Yet, no small intrigue surrounds their emergence. Part I of Mac Giolla Phádraig Clerics 1394-1534 AD examines the context surrounding the earliest appointments of Mac Giolla Phádraig clerics, which is in neither Cill Dalua nor Osraí but the diocese of Luimneach (Limerick). Once that context is understood, a pattern of associations emerges. A ‘coincidental’ twenty-first century surname match from the Fitzpatrick Y-DNA project leads to a review of the relationship between the FitzMaurice of Ciarraí (Kerry) clerics and Jordan Purcell, Bishop of Cork and Cloyne (1429-1472). The ‘coincidence’ then leads to an examination of a close Y-DNA match between men of the surnames Purcell and Hennessey. That match, coupled with the understanding that Nicholas Ó hAonghusa (O’Hennessey), elected Bishop of Lismore and Waterford (1480-1483) but with opposition, is considered a member of Purcell’s household, transforms the ‘coincidence’ into a curiosity. Part I morphs into a conversation, likely uncomfortable for some, relating to clerical concubinage, illegitimacy, and the ‘lubricity’ of the prioress and her nuns at the Augustinian nunnery of St Catherine's O’Conyll. The nunnery was located at Mainistir na gCailleach Dubh (Monasternagalliaghduff), which lay just a stone’s throw from where Bishop Jordan Purcell and Matthew Mac Giolla Phádraig, the first Mac Giolla Phádraig cleric recorded in the Papal Registers, emerged. Part I makes no judgments and draws no firm conclusions but prepares the reader for Part II by ending with some questions. Do the Mac Giolla Phádraig clerics of Osraí, who rose to prominence in the late-fifteenth century, have their origins in Deasmhumhain (Desmond)? Could the paternal lineages of Mac Giolla Phádraig clerics be, at least from the mid-fourteenth century, with the house of the Geraldine FitzMaurice clerics of Ciarraí? And, could some of the modern-day descendants of the Mac Giolla Phádraig clerics be those Costigans, FitzGeralds, and Fitzpatricks who are found under haplotype R-A1488?

In and Out, Then and Now

2015 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 378-403
Author(s):  
Franz-Josef Arlinghaus
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
The Self ◽  
Single Person ◽  
Autobiographical Texts ◽  
The One ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Ways Of Being

This article explores how the relationship of a single person and society is depicted in the twelfth century and the fifteenth/sixteenth centuries in French and German autobiographical writings. Shifting away from looking at the ‘group–single person’ relationship, which is so prominent in the debate on medieval individuality, and turning to ‘society’, the article suggests that this wider scope can offer new ways of identifying parallels and differences between modern and pre-modern concepts of the self. Drawing on sociological theory (Simmel, Luhmann) on conceptualising the self, the article argues that, with respect to self-esteem, self-consciousness and (if at all) ‘autonomy’ there are more similarities than differences between medieval and modern ways of being ‘individual’. Besides the similarities, the fundamental differences can be found in the overall perspectives and the general frameworks against which concepts of the self are developed. On the one hand, people conceptualise themselves as being part of, or rather, exponents of society. On the other hand, they describe themselves as being counterparts of, or rather, external to society. Whether this approach helps to yield a different view of how pre-modern autobiographical texts can be read, with side glances to the merchant Lucas Rem and the professor Johan vam Hirtze (both fifteenth century), the study concentrates on Guibert of Nogent, a twelfth-century abbot, and Katharina Schütz-Zell, a sixteenth-century widow of a Protestant priest.

Gersonides and the Jacob’s Staff in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries: Unnoticed Enigmas, New Perspectives

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-53
Author(s):  
Gad Freudenthal
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Latin Text ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Late Fifteenth

The cross-staff is an instrument for measuring angles, invented by Gersonides (1288–1344) in the 1330s. The Latin text describing it, written in 1342, refers to it as baculus Jacob. Between the fifteenth and the eighteenth century, this instrument was widely used in astronomy, surveying, and navigation. Scholars have assumed that the early modern cross-staves have all descended from that of Gersonides. Here I will question this assumption: (i) late-fifteenth-century astronomers do not refer the cross-staff with the term baculus Jacob, but their staff may indeed have its origin in Gersonides’ text of 1342; this hypothesis needs to be checked. (ii) In the surveying literature, German artisans and craftsmen describe the cross-staff and refer to it as “Jakobsstab,” but it is likely an independent invention. I also suggest that the “Jacob” after whom the Jacob’s staff is named is not the Patriarch Jacob (as has been assumed), but St. James (= Jacob) the Great, who in the eleventh century became the object of great veneration.


“In the Church and in the Chapel”

2014 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 379-428 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanni Zanovello
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Special Role ◽  
Spatial Features ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church ◽  
Musical Activities

Detailed payment records and notes preserved in the Archivio di Stato di Firenze allow us to reconstruct the relationship of music and space in the Florentine church of Santissima Annunziata. In the late fifteenth century different musical styles and repertories came to define ritually the composite space of the church, one of the main houses belonging to the mendicant order of the Servants of Mary. This special role of music came into focus in the early 1470s and even more in the 1480s, when subsequent priors increased the musical activities, possibly to negotiate the new spatial features of the church after a consequential remodeling. Music thus helped organize key areas that had undergone architectural transformations, linking each part of the building to the specific rituals performed there through special sounds directed at the likely participants. The remodeling also involved a shift in the balance of power, with private patrons coming to control the virtual totality of the church. Music helped address this problem as well, by acoustically marking and reclaiming certain spaces as the friars' dedicated ritual sites, but also creating in its variety a nuanced representation of the community—both ordained and lay—that frequented the building.

scholarly journals La torre nella torre. Recupero e rilievo 3D per la fruizione della Torre Matta ad Otranto

X ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giovanna Muscatello
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Three Dimensional Model ◽  
Architectural Features ◽  
Virtual Visits ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
The Individual ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City

The tower in the tower. Recovery and 3D survey for virtual visits to the Torre Matta in OtrantoOtranto is one of the biggest ancient settlements in the Salento (Puglia), in the easternmost part of the Italian peninsula. This location has always affected the city’s history, which has a stratified system of defence. As a result of the Turkish invasion of 1480, the city was completely destroyed. During the counter-offensive of 1481 the city was reconquered by the Aragonese, who are credited with the reconstruction of the city and its defences, building high walls with circular towers (still visible and well conserved), which housed artillery pieces on the various floors of the casemates. Around the mid sixteenth century the existing defensive structures were enriched with bastions including the imposing pentagonal structure that incorporates the circular tower of the late fifteenth century, the so-called Torre Matta, facing the harbour. As part of recent recovery measures, the enormous room inside the bastion was completely emptied. This entailed removing all the accumulated material which, over the years, had come to fill the entire space. This material obscured the external wall of the fifteenth century tower enclosed within the bastion, of which, at the beginning of the work, only the stone corbels and the blind arches at the top were visible. The material had also prevented access via the only original entrance, on the south-east side, which was on the level of the moat. The stratified deposits to be removed were about 18 m deep, and the operation served to bring to light the entire room and the tower, making it possible for the first time to appreciate the relationship between the walls. To record the geometry of the individual architectural features, a 3D laser scan was performed, integrated with direct surveys. A three-dimensional model was created in order to enable virtual visits and disseminate knowledge of the monument.

The Astrolabe Finger Ring of Bonetus de Latis: Study, Latin text, and English Translation with Commentary

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (1-5) ◽  
pp. 45-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Josefina Rodríguez-Arribas
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
English Translation ◽  
The Other ◽  
Southern Europe ◽  
Latin Text ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One

Abstract The subject of this article is the treatise on the astrolabe ring (1492/1493) by Bonetus de Latis (Jacob ben Emanuel Provenzale). The treatise belongs to a four-centuries-old tradition of Jewish treatises on the astrolabe, written mainly in Hebrew and more rarely in Judaeo-Arabic, Judaeo-Spanish, Spanish, and Latin, and produced mostly in southern Europe and Turkey. Bonetus’s text is the second treatise written in Latin by a Jew, following Abraham ibn Ezra’s treatise on the planispheric astrolabe (Rouen 1154). My purpose is to compare it with other contemporary treatises on similar instruments and with a little earlier treatise on the astrolabe in Hebrew (by Eliyahu Cohen of Montalto, fifteenth century) in order to understand the contribution of this instrument and why the treatise was so highly regarded among Bonetus’s contemporaries. The instrument depicted in Bonetus’s booklet can be considered one of the last contributions of Jewish culture to the history of the astrolabe; these contributions stretch back to the first Hebrew writings on the instrument in the twelfth century. The Latin text and the English translation are included at the end of the article together with the Latin text and translation of the longest version of the introduction to the treatise. The contents of the treatises are exactly the same in all editions of Bonetus’s text, but there are two versions of the introduction and one is longer and more complete than the other. I have used both versions in my study, the one in the version printed in 1557 (shorter) and the one in the version printed in 1507 (longer).

‘POWDERED WITH ARMES YMAGES AND ANGELS’: AN EARLY TUDOR CONTRACT FOR EMBROIDERED VESTMENTS

2016 ◽  
Vol 96 ◽  
pp. 143-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia Jackson
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Production Methods ◽  
The People ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

There are many extant examples of late medieval vestments in private and public collections in Europe and North America. Little is known, however, about the people who created them and the production methods used. A copy of a formal agreement between Sir Robert Clere and William Morton, included in the Townshend family papers, offers a rare insight into the making of a set of late fifteenth-century vestments. The document specifies the materials and the motifs to be used in making the vestments and the delivery deadline. This paper investigates the individuals mentioned in the agreement, the significance of the symbols and images chosen, and the possible motives behind the contract phraseology. Although these particular vestments no longer exist, parallels for the designs and techniques among extant examples have been used to re-create their possible appearance. Also considered is the relationship between embroiderer and mercer and the ways in which they collaborated to produce garments for royalty, the nobility and an increasing number of wealthy citizens.

For Reasons of State: Political Executions, Republicanism, and the Medici in Florence, 1480–1560

2009 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 444-478 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Scott Baker
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Political Conflicts ◽  
Death Sentences ◽  
Renaissance Florence ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City

AbstractPrior to the late fifteenth century in Florence, the losers of political conflicts routinely faced exile as punishment for their perceived crimes. Following the Pazzi conspiracy of 1478, however, such political criminals increasingly received death sentences rather than banishment. This article explores how the changing nature of punishment for political crimes in Renaissance Florence from the fifteenth to the sixteenth centuries can be read as a barometer of political change in the city. It examines the relationship between the growing number of political executions and the long transformation of Florence from a republic to a principality, with reference to the broader context of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy.

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