Sixteenth Century Archive
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Abandoned to Love: The Proceso of María de Cazalla and the Mirror of Simple Souls
Posted on December 4, 2012 | No CommentsIn comparing the trial of María de Cazalla with Marguerite Porete’s Mirror of Simple Souls, one of the most notable works of medieval mysticism, the present study aims to demonstrate how the main components of alumbradismo may be discerned in a single normative example of medieval mystical theology. -
Funding given to commemorate the 500th Anniversary of the Battle of Flodden
Posted on December 3, 2012 | No CommentsThe Flodden 500 Project will receive £887,300 from the Heritage Lottery Fund to commemorate the 500th anniversary of one of the largest battles ever fought between Scottish and English forces. -
Adventures far from home: Hanseatic trade with the Faroe Islands
Posted on December 3, 2012 | No Commentshe voyage to Iceland, now a major destina- tion, took about four weeks (gardiner & mehler 2007, 403; Krause 2010, 150). The Faroe Islands are situated more or less in the middle of that distance and provided a fine stop-over. The islands were an additional market for their trade business and in case of storms offered a safe and most welcome shelter. -
An Unexpected Audience: Manner Manuals in Renaissance Europe
Posted on November 28, 2012 | No CommentsTranslated into twenty-two languages within the first decade of publication, On Civility in Children was the cultural phenomenon of the day -
The Geese Book – medieval manuscript now available online
Posted on November 28, 2012 | No CommentsOne of the most interesting manuscripts of the late Middle Ages is now available online - The Geese Book, a lavishly and whimsically illuminated, two-volume liturgical book, can now be accessed through a project from the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. -
A Marginal Occupation? The Medieval Laundress and her Work
Posted on November 22, 2012 | No CommentsThe wider study of an ostensibly menial activity that, with certain notable exceptions, offered insecure and poorly paid employment to illiterate women of low status is certainly beset with problems. -
Tycho Brahe was not killed by mercury poisoning, tests reveal
Posted on November 20, 2012 | No CommentsOne of the most persistent theories has been that he died of mercury poisoning, either because he voluntarily ingested large quantities of mercury for medicinal purposes, or because mercury was used to poison him. -
The Doctrine of Active Resistance in the Sixteenth Century
Posted on November 18, 2012 | No CommentsThis article will explore the late medieval sources and the sixteenth century context of Continental Reformation theologians’ response to that agony of conscience. -
‘The Flood’ of 1524: The First Mass-media Event in European History
Posted on November 1, 2012 | No CommentsThe next very important 'Grand Conjunction' after 1484 took place in 1524 in the sign of Pisces. All seven planets joined together in February of that year to a kind of super conjunction – and that did not augur well! -
Ruthless Oppressors? Unraveling the Myth About the Spanish Inquisition
Posted on October 29, 2012 | No CommentsFrom its inception to the present, critics of the Spanish Inquisition has characterized the institution as omnipotent and oppressive and highlighted its role in the expulsion, forced conversion, and execution of supposed heretics. -
Prescribing Love: Italian Jewish Physicians Writing on Lovesickness in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
Posted on October 29, 2012 | No CommentsThis 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... -
For reasons of state: political executions, republicanism, and the Medici in Florence, 1480-1560
Posted on October 26, 2012 | No CommentsThis 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. -
Religion, Warfare and Business in Fifteenth Century Rhodes
Posted on October 25, 2012 | No CommentsHow did a military-monastic order manage the resources of an island commercially asimportant as that of Rhodes while overcoming the limitations due to its patrimonial struc-tureto cover their defensive needs? In this essay weattempt to answer this question interms of practice and in the light of relationsthatthe Knights maintained with two distinctgroups of merchants: the Catalan-Aragonese and the Florentines. -
10 Female Philosophers Who Should Be Studied More
Posted on October 18, 2012 | No CommentsAn article provided by OnlinePhdPrograms.com showcasing overlooked women philosophers! -
The Holy Roman Empire, the Schmalkald League, and the Idea of Confessional Nation-Building
Posted on October 12, 2012 | No CommentsRecent research on nationalism draws a fundamental heuristic distinc- tion between political and cultural nationalism. Scholars define the his- torian’s task as the analysis of political and cultural nationalism in each historic context. -
Chaucer’s costume rhetoric in his portrait of the Prioress
Posted on October 10, 2012 | No CommentsNo critic has ever discussed costume signs in order to reveal to what extent the Prioress does or does not conform in her costume to the fourteenth century norm, with consideration given, simultaneously, to the historical records, literature and visual arts of the period that form and inform the signs from the many traditions Chaucer in corporates in his portrait of the Prioress. -
The Librarius and Libraire as Witnesses to the Evolving Book Trade in Ducal Brittany
Posted on October 7, 2012 | No CommentsIn monasteries and cathedrals of the medieval West, the « custos librariae » functioned primarily as a custodian or keeper of bound codices, and we see a similar role emerge from extant medieval registers from Breton cathedral chapters. -
A monk from Melrose? St Cuthbert and the Scots in the later middle ages, c. 1371–1560
Posted on October 5, 2012 | No CommentsWhilst in theory the cult of the saints was a universal phenomenon, in practice saints and their shrines were often appropriated to regnal, local or institutional causes. -
Interview with James Forrester, author of Sacred Treason
Posted on October 1, 2012 | No Comments'The whole plot becomes so much more sensational when set in the Elizabethan period, and the struggle the conscientious individual to ‘do the right thing’ becomes a battle in itself.' -
La Vie en Breton: Anne of Brittany’s Enduring Legacy and Appeal
Posted on October 1, 2012 | No CommentsAnne of Brittany (1477-1514) has inspired painters, poets, Breton nationalists, and even a wildly popular French rock opera. -
Waldensians at the turn of the fifteenth century in the Duchy of Austria: Perception of Heresy and Action against Heretics
Posted on October 1, 2012 | No CommentsThe other major field of research that pertains to my current investigation is the inquisition; or the repression of heresy, as Richard Kieckhefer asserts. He notes that there was no such a thing as the Inquisition, because it existed only as mere offices, or functions of carrying out the inquisitorial justice, and did not as an institution as such, not even institutions, as was later the case in the sixteenth century. -
The Magnificence of Borso and Ercole d’Este: Princes of Ferrara (1450-1505)
Posted on September 28, 2012 | No CommentsDuring the second half of the fifteenth century, Ferrara became the seat of one of the more prominent Italian courts and it achieved a reputation as a leading cultural centre. -
A Cold Case of Historical Bias
Posted on September 26, 2012 | No CommentsCardano’s 'Encomium Neronis'—rendered in my translation as 'Nero, an Exemplary Life'—is structured like a pleading in Nero’s defense delivered in front of a modern court of law by a very clever, if not entirely genial, lawyer. -
In the Lion’s Den: Orthodox Christians under Ottoman Rule, 1400-1550
Posted on September 9, 2012 | No CommentsA glance at the Orthodox Christian church under the Ottoman Empire from the early fifteenth to mid sixteenth century gives a revealing glimpse at some of the changing relationships of conquered Christians to the state. -
“Partners in the same”: Monastic Devotional Culture in Late Medieval English Literature
Posted on September 9, 2012 | No CommentsTo understand this apparent incongruity, it is, I argue, necessary to interrogate more carefully the continuation of monastic literary culture and its gradual diffusion beyond the walls of the cloister.
