From 1565-1572, the Oprichnina was a land within Muscovy of Ivanís choosing where he alone held sole power. The Zemschina was the remaining portion of Muscovy that was governed by the state administration.
The Rise of Muscovy
December 26, 2013 By
Kievan Rus which was founded in 880 was made up of a loose knit alliance between small city states in what is today western Russia. The most powerful of these city states was Kiev. During the early thirteenth century the Mongol continued their march west until they conquered Kievan Rus in 1240.
A Postmodem Look at a Medieval Poet: The Case of William Dunbar
December 26, 2013 By
Recently, Umberto Eco, that well-known postmodemist critic/writer, has lamented that “‘postmodem’ is a term bon atout jaire. I have the impres- sion that it is applied today to anything the user happens to like.
‘Grandissima Gratia’: The Power of Italian Renaissance Shoes as Intimate Wear
December 22, 2013 By
In the Renaissance fashion system gender identification and expressions of power through shoes were instead primarily based on varying degrees of their invisibility.
Art on the edge: hair and hands in Renaissance Italy
December 12, 2013 By
This paper argues that items designed for the bodily extremities such as hair-coverings, hats, fans and other accessories were valued for the ease with which they could be changed and adapted to express a range of different meanings: political, social and individual.
Depicting the Medieval Alchemical Cosmos: George Ripley’s Wheel of Inferior Astronomy
December 10, 2013 By
Alchemical writing often develops the idea of a physical or analogical correspondence between heaven and earth: a relationship most fre- quently and conveniently expressed by the use of the seven planetary symbols (Sol, Luna, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) to denote the seven metals (usually gold, silver, quicksilver, copper, iron, tin and lead respectively).
Scottish Monastic Life
December 9, 2013 By
The first thing one has to remember is that most of these visible symbols are the symbols of the very last period of monasticism in Scotland. Monasteries in Scotland were peculiarly likely to suffer the ravages of siege and fire. If they lay on the borders or along the main routes from England into Scotland, they fell victim to the periodic invasion of the English.
Christmas Books: Great Medieval Fiction Reads for the Christmas Holidays!
December 8, 2013 By
Some medieval stocking stuffers for the historians on your Christmas list!
Christ in Motion: Portable Objects and Scenographic Environments in the Liturgy of Medieval Bohemia
December 5, 2013 By
It accordingly seems clear, from many preserved accounts, that by the end of the fifteenth century the rubric of the Church of Prague was no longer the same and that progressive versions contained different layers of alteration to the performance practice of Palm Sunday ritual.
Renaissance attachment to things: material culture in last wills and testaments
December 4, 2013 By
Renaissance attachment to things: material culture in last wills and testaments Samuel Cohn, Jr. Economic History Review: University of Glasgow, 19 October (2012) Abstract Over the past decade ‘material culture’ has become a sub-discipline of Italian Renaissance studies. This literature, however, has focused on the rich and their objects preserved in museums or reflected in […]
Twilight Tours at the Tower of London!
December 1, 2013 By
A review of the Twilight Tour at the Tower of London!
Renaissance Table Manners
November 28, 2013 By
How should one behave at parties or dinners, in the company of friends and relatives? Every society has its list of do’s and don’ts, including in Renaissance Italy.
Women In The Medieval And Renaissance Period: Spectators Only
November 24, 2013 By
The particular concern in this paper is the involvement of women in sport during the Middle Ages and Renaissance period and, indeed, the analysis will examine this involvement as to woman’s role as spectator or participant.
Medieval Byzantine Magical Amulets and Their Tradition
November 24, 2013 By
A diverse yet distinctive group of magical amulets has periodically attracted the attention of scholars from Renaissance times to the present. The amulets take many forms, including engraved gems and cameos, enamel pendants, die-struck bronze tokens, cast or engraved pendants of gold, silver, bronze, and lead, and rings of silver and bronze.
“The Taint of a Fault”: Purgatory, Relativism and Humanism in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
November 21, 2013 By
“The Taint of a Fault”: Purgatory, Relativism and Humanism in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Bill Phillips Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses, No. 17 (2004) Abstract Far from being a poem about the chivalric code, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is essentially concerned with religion. The Romance genre is used to reveal the shortcomings […]
The Crusades and the Lost Literature of the Italian Renaissance
November 15, 2013 By
Dr. Brian Jeffrey Maxson describes Biondo Flavio’s account of the Fourth Crusade
Occlusion issues in early Renaissance art
November 14, 2013 By
Early Renaissance painters innovatively attempted to depict realistic three-dimensional scenes. A major problem was to produce the impression of overlap for surfaces that occlude one another in the scene but are adjoined in the picture plane.
Two dozen and more Silkwomen of Fifteenth-Century London
October 24, 2013 By
This article attempts to record systematically all the silkwomen of London who were daughters or wives of London mercers between 1400 and 1499.
Danse Macabre’ Around the Tomb and Bones of Margaret of York
October 24, 2013 By
Over 500 years ago on 23 November 1503, at Malines, in present day Belgium, died Margaret of York, sister to Edward IV and Richard III of England and third and last wife of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, whom she survived by a quarter of a century.
When Latin gets sick: mocking medical language in macaronic poetry
August 27, 2013 By
Since, at the time of the rise of macaronic poetry, Latin was the language of learn- ing, including medicine, it is expected that an analysis of the Latin in macaronic poetry and its interaction with other linguistic varieties in the same, can reveal changes in the relative social position of various groups.
Taking (and Giving) Blows: Patterns of Violence and Spectacle in Le Mystère de Saint Martin (1496)
August 18, 2013 By
What I would like to do here is examine the passages of violence and other bits of scenography, moving from the macro to the micro level and back again, over the three- day play. With 260 rubrics (stage directions) embodied in the text, a manuscript nearly contemporaneous with the performance itself, we have a unique opportunity to visualize much of the action on stage.
The Portraiture of Women During the Italian Renaissance
August 13, 2013 By
Further study of female portraiture of the Italian Renaissance is needed because most existing portraits from the Italian Renaissance depict men. Due to the small pool of female portraits from the time period to study, the specific topic of women in Italian Renaissance portraiture has been overlooked or quickly dismissed by many scholars.
Women on Trial: Piecing Together Women’s Intellectual Worlds from Courtroom Testimony
August 12, 2013 By
To tease out these issues, I would like to offer an analysis of a specific set of criminal records from the city of Toulouse in the later Middle Ages. In recent years, many scholars have attempted to gain access to the lives of women in medieval Languedoc.
Machiavelli: Theories on Liberty, Religion, and The Original Constitution
August 8, 2013 By
Machiavelli: Theories on Liberty, Religion, and The Original Constitution Erin Bos Oklahoma Christian University Journal of Historical Studies, Tau Sigma Journal of Historical Studies: Vol.21 (2013) Abstract Machiavellian qualities are often described as conniving or corrupt. Niccolò Machiavelli coined the idea of power-hungry, unremorseful princes in his book, The Prince. However, Machiavelli’s true political theory can […]
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