Inventing England: English identity and the Scottish ‘other’, 1586–1625

Through dynastic accident, England and Scotland were united under King James VI and I in 1603. To smooth the transition, officials attempted to create a single state: Great Britain. Yet the project had a narrow appeal; the majority of the English populace rejected a closer relationship with Scotland. Such a strong reaction against Scotland resulted in a revived sense of Englishness. This essay analyzes English tactics to distance themselves from the Scots through historical treatises. For centuries, the English had created vivid histories to illuminate their ancient past. It is evident from the historical works written between 1586 and 1625 that authors sought to maintain a position of dominance over Scotland through veiled political commentaries. As such, their accounts propagated an English national identity based on a sense of historical supremacy over the Scottish. This was further supported through the use of language studies and archaeological evidence. After the 1603 Union of the Crowns, these stories did not change. Yet, questions arose regarding the king's genealogy, as he claimed descent from the great kings of both kingdoms. Consequently, historians re-invented the past to merge their historical accounts with the king's ancestral claims while continuing to validate English assertions of suzerainty.

The role of ancient remains in the Sarmatian culture of early modern Poland

Visible material remnants of ancient cultures were, for a variety of historical reasons, not particularly abundant in the territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569-1795). The past monuments of these lands were not hewn in stone and marble but in timber, leaving behind no impressive structures to provoke the interest of subsequent generations. The dearth of material evidence did not, however, prevent generations of Polish historians and antiquarians from assigning Greco-Roman identities to local monuments. They were keen to offer tangible proof of the past glory of the land inhabited by the alleged descendants of the Sarmatians. In this paper, some of these monuments are explored, especially the Mounds of Krakus and Wanda near Cracow as well as an alleged tomb of Ovid in Vohlyna. The narratives fabricated around them as a part of the ideology of Sarmatism, a class discourse, which constructed an identity for the Polish nobility as the descendants of the ancient tribe of Sarmatians, are also examined.

The Gaulish past of Milan and the French invasion of Italy1

The foundation myths of late medieval cities and states were never simply about origins: they were above all about destiny. In the fifteenth century, the combination of humanist methods and models, newly available source materials, and changing domestic and international political circumstances provided the impetus for the continued development of these myths as well as the creation of new ones. Yet even in Italy, not all eyes looked to Rome. The Carolingian foundation myth of Florence, in which Charlemagne’s supposed rebuilding of the city was used to explain the pro-French orientation of the commune and its Guelph elite, is perhaps the most well-known of these myths, but also an example of an Italian city defining itself in relation to a foreign power. This essay focuses on another element of Quattrocento myth-making culture: the treatment of northern Italy’s Gaulish past in the writings of some of the region’s humanists (e.g. (Antonio Cornazzano and Alberto Cattaneo), and the role of these writings in Franco-Milanese relations before and during the outbreak of the Italian Wars and the French domination of Milan.

A local sense of the past: spolia, reuse and all’antica building in southern Italy, 1400–16001

Between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries some of the most conspicuous remains of antiquity in the Italian peninsula were found in the Kingdom of Naples. These included not only Roman ruins, but also pre-Roman ones, such as Greek and, Italic relics, which testified to the diverse and very ancient origins of many of its centres. Magnificent ruins, such as temples or tombs, marked the landscape of cities and countryside and were regarded as traces of a glorious local past. Ancient remains were, furthermore, constantly unearthed across southern Italy either through chance findings or as a result of purposeful excavation and antiquarian research. Examining literary and artistic evidence, this essay considers local antiquity as a central theme of Southern Italian antiquarianism, for example in Capua and Venosa. It will also question the nature and perception of a diverse body of Southern Italian ‘antiquities’, which could include medieval monuments, imported classical works, or forgeries.

The Arch of Trajan in Ancona and civic identity in the Italian Quattrocento from Ciriaco d’Ancona to the death of Matthias Corvinus1

This essay offers new insights into the civic value and the reception of the Arch of Trajan for Renaissance architecture in Ancona, a city almost completely overlooked by Renaissance historiography because of the destruction of most of its buildings. Built in 115 AD the Arch was meant to celebrate the Emperor’s victory in the Dacian wars, whose fleet departed from Ancona. Looking to sources to be found outside of the city it is possible to examine the legacy of the arch – a monument praised by Sebastiano Serlio and Andrea Palladio, among others -‐ in public and religious architecture, as well as its role in creating the identity of the city. Some motifs from the arch appear already in Giorgio da Sebenico’s late Gothic church portals of S. Agostino and S. Francesco alle Scale, as well as in the Loggia dei Mercanti (late 1450’s, early 1460’s), but its first important depiction is by Pinturicchio in the Piccolomini library in Siena. Here the arch is placed adjacent to Pius II’s, celebrating the (failed) departure of the fifth crusade from Ancona’s harbour in 1464 as a neo-Trajanic enterprise.

Luís de Camões’s The Lusiads and the paradoxes of expansion

Following a well-known trend in early-modern Europe, the Portuguese poet Luís de Camões widely refashioned the myth of Lusus, an obscure son of Bacchus mentioned by Pliny, with two main purposes: to explain the etymology of the words "Lusitania" (the former Roman province used as a synonym for Portugal) and "Lusíadas" (the descendants of Lusus and the title of epic poem, published in 1572); and to set in motion the narrative framework of Vasco da Gama's voyage to India, insofar Bacchus, the mythical ancestor of the Portuguese and former conqueror of India, fiercely opposes the king of Portugal's expansionist plans. To address such questions, Camões vies with Ovid and Pliny, two basic tenets of the classical revival in early-modern Europe, in creating a bigger-than-life metamorphosis: the Giant Adamastor, turned into stone at the nethermost tip of Africa, whose autobiography is the etiology of the Cape of Good Hope.

Local antiquaries and the expansive sense of the past: a case study from Counter-Reformation Spain

In the seventeenth century, Spanish antiquarians collected inscriptions, coins, and other evidence of their community’s illustrious Christian origins, conflictive medieval past, and glorious present. Efforts to compile a suitable local history were particularly determined and prolific in the Andalusian diocese of Jaén, where two local enthusiasts of the past – Francisco de Rus Puerta and Martín Ximena Jurado – generated a voluminous body of manuscripts and printed books under the sponsorship of Jaén’s bishop. Like their counterparts elsewhere in Europe, Jaén’s antiquaries documented the past in both text and image, as the authors sketched coins, ruins in situ, and ongoing excavations for antiquities and saints’ relics. In these efforts, Greco-Roman antiquity played the handmaiden to the early Christian era, for it was of intense concern for Andalusian Catholics to prove that the Islamic invasion had not disrupted the region’s deep and essential Christian identity. In this way, ‘antiquity’ was a rather motley-coloured creature, encompassing not only the remains of Roman Hispania, but also including pre-Roman antiquities from Spain’s early Greek, Phoenician, and Celtiberian peoples, as well as Visigothic and some Islamic artefacts.

On Romans, Batavians and giants: the quest for the true origin of architecture in the Dutch Republic

In 1631 the Dutch painter and architect Salomon de Bray wrote that it was a common mistake to regard the move towards a more classical architecture as fashionably modern. Instead, he argued, it was actually the revival the true and eldest manner of building in the Low Countries. The notion that the Low Countries had once been part of the Roman Empire helped inspire scholarly architects to introduce classical models into contemporary architecture. This essay investigates this tendency by asking how and why the Roman past became such an important topic during this period, despite a lack of remaining Roman buildings, and which alternative heroic pasts were available to account for the origins of architecture. Various historical descriptions of Netherlandish towns include references to local ancient history and Roman remains. Some of these antiquities were authentically Roman, even to modern archaeological scholarship (like Brittenburg), while others were certainly not. Antiquarian and archaeological interest focused on the era of the Batavians, a Germanic tribe living in what later became Holland who were politically independent from Rome, as well as on an even older local past, traced in were thought to be the material remains of an ancient tribe of giants.

Semini and his progeny: the construction of Antwerp’s antique past1

Semini is one of several names for a small Gallo-Roman sculpture that was installed above the gate of Antwerp’s Vieux-Bourg sometime in the fourteenth century. Little is known of the early history of Semini, although it was rumoured to be the object of a fertility cult. Yet, in 1549, at a crucial moment in the political identity of the city and its relationship to the Hapsburg empire, the statue came to be identified as Priapus, the Greco-Roman god of the fields and of procreation. This essay examines the reappropriation of Semini in the context of counter-reformation Antwerp. It considers the importance of this small antiquity to emerging practices of local antiquarianism, historiography and philology, while also examining some of the everyday street activities which both reinforced and challenged concepts of antiquity in the early modern city.

Reusing and redisplaying antiquities in early modern France

This essay examines attitudes towards the display, study and protection of Roman antiquities, including inscriptions, bas-reliefs, and statues, in southern France, looking particularly at the towns of Arles, Nîmes and Vienne. There are plenty of examples of the destruction of ancient remains in this period, especially ancient structures that obstructed modern building projects, but various people and institutions also laid claim to Roman material. Kings and their lieutenants removed objects, but also told towns to maintain what they had. Civic governments began to display pieces that affirmed their cities’ ancient past and tried to preserve ancient buildings, sometimes by collaborating with religious orders. Collectively, the efforts of these different individuals and institutions contributed to a shared sense of local heritage.