Exhibit: Shakespeare In Ten Acts at the British Library
This year marks the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare (1564-1616). The British Library has honoured his contribution to English literature and the stage in a celebratory exhibition that runs until September 6th. British Library curators, Julian Harrison and Zoë Wilcox, have crafted an impressive exhibit that covers Shakespeare’s importance in ten acts.
The Strange Mystery Of The King’s Head: Henry IV of France (1553-1610)
This paper reexamines the claims which were made in both the documentary and a subsequent book on the subject and, with respect, challenges the conclusions made by the investigators.
Fashion Old and New: Weaving and Tailoring in the Early Medieval and Early Modern Period
Fashion fan? Interested in medieval and early modern textiles? Then this was your session. 2 papers from opposite ends of the spectrum: Early Medieval weaving and Early Modern Tailoring.
The Ultimate Military Entrepreneur
With profit his only aim, Count Albrecht von Wallenstein successfully combined the profession of business and the art of war during the early seventeenth century.
Love and Marriage on the Medieval English Stage: Using the English Cycle Plays as Sources for Social History
Much scholarship concerning the concept of “companionate” marriage traces its origins to the early modern period as clergymen, especially Protestant ones, began to publish “guides” to the relationships and respective duties of husbands and wives in the 1500s and 1600s.
Flandria Illustrata: Flemish Identities in the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period
This chapter discusses identity formation in early modern Flanders. It argues that policy makers and their intellectual agents transformed the perception of a province that had been divided by urban rivalries, civil war and conflicts with the Burgundian and Habsburg overlords, into a bastion of the Catholic Counter Reformation with strong ties to the Spanish King and his representatives.
The Lit de Justice: Semantics, Ceremonial, and the Parlement of Paris, 1300–1600
The curious phrase lit de justice originated in the fourteenth century and by the first decade of the fifteenth century designated particularly important royal sessions of the Parlement of Paris.
10 Things to See at Southwark Cathedral
My 10 favourite things about Southwark Cathedral.
A monastic landscape: The Cistercians in medieval Leinster
This study endeavours to discuss the Cistercian monasteries of Leinster with regard to their physical location in the landscape, the agricultural contribution of the monks to the broader social and economic world and the interaction between the cloistered monks and the secular world.
Irish Hagiographical Lives in the Twelfth Century: Church Reform before the Anglo-Norman Invasion
In order to further disentangle the reality and fiction of this view of culture versus barbarity and of reform versus wickedness, I shall analyse twelfth-century Irish vitae.
Slaves, Money Lenders, and Prisoner Guards: The Jews and the Trade in Slaves and Captives in the Crimean Khanate
Trade in slaves and captives was one of the most important (if not the most important) sources of income of the Crimean Khanate in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries.
CONFERENCES: Renaissance Drinking Culture and Renaissance Drinking Vessels
This paper took a closer look at Renaissance drinking vessels and drinking culture and examined the types of vessels commonly used in Italy and the Netherlands during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
The Atlas Blaeu-Van der Hem
This documentary takes a look at the Atlas Blaeu-Van der Hem – one of the largest and greatest atlases ever assembled.
Plague and Persecution: The Black Death and Early Modern Witch Hunts
The century or so from approximately 1550 to 1650 is a period during which witch-hunts reached unprecedented frequency and intensity. The circumstances that fomented the witch- hunts—persistent warfare, religious conflict, and harvest failures—had occurred before, but witch-hunts had never been so ubiquitous or severe.
Renaissance attachment to things: material culture in last wills and testaments
Renaissance attachment to things: material culture in last wills and testaments Samuel Cohn, Jr. Economic History Review: University of Glasgow, 19 October (2012)…
The Progression of the Fork: From Diabolical to Divine
This paper is about ‘Design and the Tools of the Table, 1500–2005’ curated as part of the Cooper Hewitt exhibit on utensils.
CRISIS OF CONTRACTS FOR MERCHANTS IN CRISIS: INSTITUTIONS, CORPORATE FINANCE AND GROWTH IN GENOA (11TH -17TH C.)
My paper focuses these “merchant princes” from Genoa before the “industrial revolution”. The rise and fall of Genoa provides indeed a striking case about the success and failure of what, in the same vein than Bagehot, Joseph Schumpeter called the “creative destruction”, and the role financial markets in that process.
Excavating All Saints: a medieval church rediscovered
When excavations started at the site of the ‘lost’ church of All Saint’s in York, archaeologists knew they would find burials. What they found was much more than expected: an Anchoress and the remains of soldiers who helped Oliver Cromwell take the city at the Siege of York in 1644. Lauren McIntyre and Graham Bruce explain the evidence.
Prescribing Love: Italian Jewish Physicians Writing on Lovesickness in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
This paper begins with a general survey of early modern European medical literature concerning lovesickness. This is followed by a short introduction to the Jewish physicians who lived and worked in the geographic area currently constituting Italy during the beginning of the early modern period, focusing on three physicians who wrote about lovesickness…
Francis Bacon’s use of ancient myths in Novum Organum
In this paper, I will show how the ancient myths of Pan, Perseus, Dionysius, and Prometheus have an impact on Book I of Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum.
Economy of Ragusa, 1300 – 1800: The Tiger of Mediaeval Mediterranean
An economist is indeed tempted to think of Ragusa as the “Adriatic Tiger “ of yesteryear, an early example of a small open economy with strong fundamentals, and to hypothesize further that, in analogy to the current consensus about what it takes to minimize the impact of external crises, these strengths also allowed Ragusa to mitigate the effects of the many external shocks and financial crises in Medieval Europe.
The Medieval Origins of Capitalism in the Netherlands
One of the fiercest and most productive historical debates – and one of the most ideology-laden – has been that on the transition from feudalism to capitalism.1 Although interest in this specific debate and its ideological implications seems to be waning now, the importance of reconstructing and explaining long-term changes in economy and society is still clear.
The Danube Floods and Their Human Response and Perception (14th to 17th C)
This study will examine in particular the reactions of the people living close to the Danube River and its catchment area in “Austria” between the 14th and 17th centuries.
Where and how was Gaelic written in late medieval and early modern Scotland? Orthographic practices and cultural identities
Classical ‘Common’ Gaelic, also known as Early Modern Irish or Classical Irish (the names favoured in Ireland), are the terms used to describe written Gaelic between c.1200 and c.1650 in Ireland, and also in Scotland.
From destrier to danseur: the role of the horse in early modern French noble identity
This study argues that horses and horsemanship played a crucial role in refashioning noble identity in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century France.