Sixteenth Century Archive
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The Great Siege of Malta
Posted on May 18, 2012 | No CommentsTony Rothman recalls one of the turning points of early modern history, when a heroic defence prevented the rampant Ottoman forces from gaining a strategic foothold in the central Mediterranean. -
The Science of Fortification in Malta in the Context of European Architectural Treatises and Military Academies
Posted on May 18, 2012 | No CommentsIn order to understand why the fortifications of Malta evolved as they did, we need to study them in the context of the technical publications and military academies of the period. -
The Treasure of the Knight Hospitallers in 1530: Reflections and Art Historical Considerations
Posted on May 18, 2012 | No CommentsIn 1530 the crusading brotherhood of the Hospitaller Knights of St. John of Jerusalem accepted the offer of the Emperor Charles V to occupy the Maltese Islands and hold them against the Ottomans who were seeking to control the Central Mediterranean -
Visual-Kinetic Communication in Europe Before 1600: A Survey of Sign Lexicons and Finger Alphabets Prior to the Rise of Deaf Education
Posted on May 6, 2012 | No CommentsVisual-kinetic communication systems are mentioned in a wide variety of texts up through the early Renaissance, but not often described in any detail. What seems to us such a strange and frustrating omission results from the very different nature and purpose of scholarly writing in premodern times. -
The Originality of Machiavelli
Posted on May 3, 2012 | No CommentsThere is evidently something peculiarly disturbing about what Machiavelli said or implied, something that has caused profound and lasting uneasiness. -
‘He contents the people wherever he goes’ Richard III: His Parliament and Government
Posted on April 29, 2012 | No CommentsIn recent years new biographies of great figures such as Margaret of York, Duchess of Burgundy have shed great light on key issues of English-European relations, while studies of Margaret Beaufort have redefined the political role of the women of this era. -
‘The inordinate excess in apparel’: Sumptuary Legislation in Tudor England
Posted on April 29, 2012 | No CommentsSumptuary legislation can be defined as a set of regulations, passed down by legislators through statutory law and parliamentary proclamations, that sought to regulate society by dictating what contemporaries could own or wear based on their position within society. -
The Libro de la Regla Vieja of the Cathedral of Seville as a Musicological Source
Posted on April 22, 2012 | No CommentsThe significance of this regla de coro to Seville’s pre-Tridentine use prompted me to seek here a deeper understanding of the book, and especially the textual transmission of its contents, confusion over which has led, hitherto, to most of the difficulties and errors concerning its dating. -
An Inconvenient Princess
Posted on April 21, 2012 | No CommentsOn November 11th, 1480, a child was baptized in the Palace of Eltham with all solemnity and grandeur, as was fitting for a royal princess of the House of York. The child was named Bridget, after the 14th century Swedish saint who wrote of personal visions of Christ and founded a religious order. -
The Comunero uprising in Castile, 1520-1521: a case study for early modern revolution
Posted on April 5, 2012 | No CommentsThis thesis argues that scholars have ignored the Comunero rebellion’s importance as an instance of early modern revolution and that this uprising anticipates the revolutionary movements of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. -
The Harsh Life on the 15th Century Croatia-Ottoman Empire Military Border: Analyzing and Identifying the Reasons for the Massacre in Cepin
Posted on April 4, 2012 | No CommentsTurkish intrusions into what is today the continental part of Croatia began in 1391 and continued throughout the 15th, and the beginning of the 16th century when a large part of continental Croatia was incorporated into the Turkish Empire. -
The Poisoned Arrows of Amor: cases of syphilis from 16th-century Iceland
Posted on March 26, 2012 | No CommentsThe number of syphilis cases at the Skriðuklaustur monastery is unexpectedly high, as nine individuals with the disease have been identified in a skeletal assemblage totalling only 198 skeletons. At least two of the cases bear the signs of congenital syphilis. The youngest individual was just an adolescent at death but still showed severe symptoms of congenital syphilis that had developed to the tertiary stage. -
The Danube Floods and Their Human Response and Perception (14th to 17th C)
Posted on March 19, 2012 | No CommentsThis 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. -
Jewish Communal Organisation in Sixteenth-Century Polish Towns
Posted on March 18, 2012 | No CommentsTherefore, this essay will deal not only with the structures of Jewish communal organisation proper, but also with the question of its emergence and development in the context of its non-Jewish environment. -
The Health of the North in a Renaissance Encyclopaedia
Posted on March 15, 2012 | No CommentsIn 1555 a private press in Rome issued a volume in Latin with some 400 woodcut illustrations, most of the specifically commissioned by the author, these being in the form of vignettes at head of a majority of about 600 short chapters of the work.
