Margaret’s Motto: Fortune, Infortune, Fortune pretty much sums up her extraordinary life.
The medieval social topography of Szeged
February 8, 2014 By
As the name historical social topography implies it comprehends the ancient location and distribution of particular groups and layers of inhabitants in a settlement.
Legal Centralization and the Birth of the Secular State
February 6, 2014 By
This paper investigates the relationship between the historical process of legal centralization and increased religious toleration by the state. We develop a model in which legal centralization leads to the criminalization of the religious beliefs of a large proportion of the population.
The Most Significant Manuscript Sources of Medieval Croatian Vernacular Verse
February 4, 2014 By
The first part of the article gives a brief overview of the history of Croatian literacy up to the first written record of poetry in the Old Croatian language.
Comforting sentences from the warming room at Inchcolm abbey
February 3, 2014 By
Inchcolm abbey has the best-preserved medieval conventual buildings
in Scotland.
Plague and Persecution: The Black Death and Early Modern Witch Hunts
January 27, 2014 By
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.
Women Healers and the Medical Marketplace of 16th-Century Lyon
January 26, 2014 By
Women Healers and the Medical Marketplace of 16th-Century Lyon Alison Klairmont-Lingo Dynamis: Vol.19 (1999) Abstract Although women’s legal and marital status make them almost invisible in archival documents, what traces remain suggest that women participated in Lyon’s medical marketplace in various ways and under various guises. At Lyon’s municipally-funded poor hospital, the Hotel-Dieu, widows and […]
Vespucci’s Triangle and the Shape of the World
January 17, 2014 By
Interdisciplinary interactions between sixteenth-century travellers and cosmographers produced visual models that challenged normative modes of visual thinking, even as they tried to clarify ideas about the earth’s surface.
Transformations of Print into Painting: A Case Study of the Context of Prints in an Illustrated Brigittine Psalter
January 11, 2014 By
This liturgical psalter raises issues of the production and consumption of religious texts in convents in the northern Netherlands.
Children and Literature in Medieval England
January 10, 2014 By
Deals with childrens’ literature in medieval England. Kinds of literature heard by children in England; Examples of rhymes used by medieval children; Ways of linking rhymes with children.
Leonardo’s Literary Writings: History, Genre, Philosophy
January 1, 2014 By
This dissertation, conceiving Leonardo as a moral philosopher, provides interpretations that lead to the conclusion that his thought pervades both his major and minor works and that these literary writings must be viewed as an extension (and result) of Leonardo’s greater notions of the world and of how all parts relate to one another.
Ivan the Terrible: Centralization in Sixteenth Century Muscovy
December 29, 2013 By
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.
And The Angel Spake unto Harunobu: A Japanese Christian miracle story of 1591
December 21, 2013 By
The early-modern, Portuguese-sponsored Jesuit mission to Japan left behind a body of Christian literature in Japanese whose alphabetic texts have been a treasure trove for linguists, its existence a point of pride for Christian sectarians, and its content rich material for historians.
King James V of Scotland
December 12, 2013 By
James’ rule was to be dominated in foreign policy by shifting alliances between Scotland and France, England, the Holy Roman Empire and the Papacy. At home, his kingdom was fractured.
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.
Book Review: In the Footsteps of Anne Boleyn
December 6, 2013 By
It is particularly useful in that it brings together much (usually) scattered information into one place and links places, events and context together. It is a useful reference book with extensive links to further information.
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.
The Council of Trent (1545–63) and Michelangelo’s Last Judgment (1541)
November 20, 2013 By
Michelangelo’s Last Judgment is one of the world’s most famous paintings, located in one of the world’s most famous rooms, the Sistine Chapel.
St. Augustine’s Tower – Hackney, London
November 19, 2013 By
My trip to St. Augustine’s Tower in Hackney, London.
Crossing boundaries: women’s gossip, insults and violence in sixteenth-century France
November 5, 2013 By
Using evidence from cases recorded in the registers of the consistories of southern France, the author investigates the way in which Languedocian women policed each other’s behaviour, enforcing a collective morality through gossip, sexual insult and physical confrontation.
Biblical nationalism and the sixteenth-century states
November 4, 2013 By
Biblical nationalism was new because pre-Reformation Europeans encountered the Hebrew Bible through paraphrases and abridgments. Full-text Bibles revealed a programmatic nationalism backed by unmatched authority as the word of God to readers primed by Reformation theology to seek models in the Bible for the reform of their own societies.
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