The technology of fifteenth century Turkish tiles: An interim statement on the origins of the Iznik industry

Bernard Bailyn's Barbarous Modernity

After two centuries of intense creativity of the terministic logic and of the calculatores in Oxford, which had a great success and impact all over Europe, and most of all in Italy, the philosophical culture in the British Isles underwent a period of severe crisis and decline, which lasted throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Schmitt has stated that ‘the picture that emerges from a consideration of the philosophical and scientific culture of England during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is one of a steady decline from the position held during the fourteenth century’, while Ashworth has concluded that ‘the intellectual life at Oxford and Cambridge in the fifteenth century was somewhat sluggish … there seems to be no record of any original writing on logical subjects until the mid-sixteenth century’.

Chaucer and Religious Controversies in the Medieval and Early Modern Eras

The object of the analysis of this article is Sŏnsan County, the most advanced agricultural region of the Chosŏn Dynasty during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This advanced region, however, started to go downhill from the sixteenth century and declined further in the seventeenth century. The rise and fall of Sŏnsan was closely tied with its geographical and irrigation conditions. The region, located around the Naktong River, the greatest river in Kyŏngsang Province, had favorable conditions for development in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries with the spread of the farming method of broadcast seeding to wet rice fields (水耕直播法) and the active development of both plains and hilly areas. But, this area faced adverse conditions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when the new farming method of transplanting rice seedlings (移秧法) was widely introduced, shifting development to more mountainous regions.

Ontwerpen en bouwen in de Hollandse stad

The discussion on the legal power of documents generated by the researchers exploring the written culture of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries invites for a more detailed analysis of the usage of a written document in the legal process, the chronology of its legal regulation, the document’s place in the system of evidence as well as its meaning in the legal consciousness of the nobles. The legal proceedings and rulings recorded in the judicial affairs books incorporated into the Lithuanian Metrica reveal the process when, with the development of the written culture and the increase of the demand for documents in the state’s internal affairs, the written document evolved into an independent and sound legal evidence in the judicial process. In the civil cases, primarily concerning the land ownership, the legal power of a written document was recognized already in the middle of the fifteenth century (although there was no peremptory requirement to present written documents in the judicial process), and approved by the extended edition of the First Statute of Lithuania. In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the long-lived “colorful robes of justice” (the oath, the gesture, the placing of one’s cap) were replaced in the system of legal evidence by written documents which, from then on, were considered as more reliable evidence than a personal oath, and, in some cases, even a testimony. Eventually, this view found its place in the consciousness of the nobles who documented their transactions and used documents to solve legal conflicts. Moreover, in Lithuania, unlike in the Kingdom of Poland, the judges considered not only the public, but also the legitimate private documents as legal evidence of equal importance. Although, the hierarchy of legal evidence, that prioritized the documents was embedded only in the Second Statute of Lithuania (chapter IV article 52, entitled “On evidence and defense” (O dovodech i otvodech), the analysis of sources allows to decisively affirm that the main source of the aforementioned article was the practice of the courts in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.

Preface List of contributors 1. Writing the history of crime in the Italian Renaissance Trevor Dean and Kate Lowe 2. Criminal justice in mid fifteenth-century Bologna Trevor Dean 3. The judicial system in Florence in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries Andrea Zorzi 4. The incidence of crime in Sicily in the mid fifteenth century: the evidence from composition records Alan Ryder 5. Theology, nature and the law: sexual sin and sexual crime in Italy from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century Nicholas Davidson 6. Practical problems in the enforcement of Italian sumptuary law, 1200-1500 Catherine Kovesi Killerby 7. The prince, the judges and the law: Cosimo I and sexual violence, 1558 Elena Fasano Guarini 8. Intervention by church and state in marriage disputes in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Florence Daniela Lombardi 9. The writer and the man: real crimes and mitigating circumstances: Il caso Cellini Paolo Rossi 10. The political crime of conspiracy in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Rome Kate Lowe 11. Fighting or flyting?: verbal duelling in mid sixteenth-century Italy Donald Weinstein 12. Banditry and lawlessness on the Venetian terraferma in the later cinquecento Peter Laven 13. Mihi vindictam: aristocratic clans and rural communities in a feud in Friuli in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries Furio Bianco.

Research objectives: To conduct a detailed comparative analysis of the toponymic source known as “Hand Drawn Portolan of the Caspian Sea (1519)” by Vesconte Maggiolo, and ascertain the range and chronology of its sources. Research materials: At the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, there were a few navigational maps – portolan charts – created in Italy which contained rather precise outlines of the coastline of the Caspian Sea. The present Portolan excels all earlier items in terms of precision of the depicted topographical realities of the region. The quality of the map we are examining was surpassed only in the seventeenth century after Peter I’s hydrographic expeditions. The high level of shoreline’s precision also strongly suggests that the map was based on authentic topographic input. Maggiolo’s map contains 136 geographical names. Results and novelty of the research: For the first time ever in domestic scholarship, we conducted a comparative historical analysis of the hand drawn portolan chart of the Caspian Sea. We also proved the correlation of some toponyms of the West Caspian region with the Timurid and local sources that covered the military campaigns of Amir Timur in the region. In our view, the “Hand Drawn Portolan Chart of the Caspian Sea (1519)” created by Vesconte Maggiolo is one of the most notable among similar works. It finds many common features with the portolan from the island of Lesina, but also contains some common elements with the Mallorca cartographic school and Fra Mauro, Egerton MS 73, and Egerton MS 2083. This research allows us to extend and systematize our understanding of Italian cartography in relation to the Caspian region. It also details or adds some facts about the presence of Europeans in this region during the Golden Horde era. Based on this topographic and toponymic analysis, we furthermore come to a conclusion that the portolan in question is derived from a protograph created in the first half of fifteenth century, reflecting the realities of the turn of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Reviewed by: The Image in Print: Book Illustration in Late Medieval England and its Sources Judith Collard Driver, Martha W. , The Image in Print: Book Illustration in Late Medieval England and its Sources, London, The British Library, 2004; cloth; pp. xii, 302; 178 b/w illustrations; RRP US$80; ISBN 0712348336. Martha Driver has published a substantial range of articles on printing, literature and the use of imagery in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, much of which has focused on books for an English market. She has also worked on the role of nuns and lay women as patrons of both illuminated and printed books. She is one of the founders of the Early Books Society and the editor of its journal, [End Page 155] and is ideally situated to tackle the subject of this book. In her introduction she sets out a bold and ambitious programme. Woodcuts are an important and overlooked resource in the history of book illustration. She writes: 'they have much to tell us about how books were produced and for what purposes, about reading habits and developments in literacy, and about the part that books played in social, political and religious change'. Driver suggests that the study of woodcuts and their texts can be used to argue for 'a radically new understanding of book illustration'. This seems an overstatement. One reason is that Driver does herself a disservice by not providing us with a sense of how these woodcuts have been discussed by other scholars, thus disguising her important contribution. Much of the previous discussion of this material has been in relation to iconographical issues, or as illustrations to particular themes. The work of Charles Zika and Keith Moxey has demonstrated the value of woodcuts for such approaches. Scholars of printmaking have looked at woodcuts as independent artefacts, as many were, while historians of the book, as Driver indicates, have tended to overlook their role. In bringing together these elements into one study Driver is, indeed, embarking on an ambitious project. Exploring the emergence of a new medium highlights both the speed of the spread of innovation as well as the lingering influence of what preceded it. In her first chapter Driver writes about the early printed illustration. She emphasizes that not only was the printed book quickly accepted but that this acceptance did not mean that manuscripts ceased to be equally valued or produced. Print took up texts that were already popular in manuscript and distributed them to a wider market. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it was this very affordability and ubiquity that led to print being devalued. Sonnets were circulated amongst an aristocratic audience in manuscript form, possibly never originally intended to appear in a printed format. She also reminds the reader that block prints with their xylographic texts and other single-leaf woodcuts were produced concurrently with typeset books and were sometimes pasted into books. The Ars moriendi, a particularly popular work, was first produced typographically and then abridged in block-book form. Both were ultimately derived from the Tractatus artis bene moriendi written in the early fifteenth century. To illustrate these points reference is also made to European examples such as the documentation of the use of woodcuts in paintings of figures like Petrus Christus or devotional prints made in Germany. One impression that is quickly gained is that English printing was dependent in its early phases upon the major [End Page 156] printing centres in Germany, the Netherlands and France. Caxton, for example, initially began experimenting with printing on the continent and imported type, wood-blocks and even his foreman, Wynkyn de Worde. English printed books were regarded as inferior to those produced by continental printers. Many books, including Henry VIII's Great Bible, were produced, at least initially, in places like France. What Driver does not point out is that this practice of manufacturing English books abroad was not unique to the printing trade. In the fifteenth century the Netherlands and France were already supplying mass-produced manuscripts for the English market. Printed books were reflecting the general cultural dominance of the Low Countries. This is not to say that English books were completely without innovation...

International relations (IR) research has increasingly explored non-Eurocentric histories by analyzing, for example, different historical international systems, societies, and orders beyond Europe, as well as the agency of non-Western polities in constituting world politics (see Phillips and Sharman 2015; Hobson 2020; Spruyt 2020). Before the West contributes to this burgeoning literature. Zarakol offers a longue durée “account of the history of Eastern ‘international relations’” (p. 6), focusing on the interactions between Eurasian polities and the rise and fall of Eurasian world orders between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries. The analysis starts with the rise of the Mongols and their conquests across Eurasia, resulting in the establishment of the Mongol Empire in the thirteenth century. This historical event constituted the foundation for three successive Eurasian world orders to emerge: the Chinggisid world order of the Mongol Empire in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; the post-Chinggisid world order, consisting of the Timurid Empire (Iran and Central Asia) and the Ming Dynasty (China) in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; and the “global” post-Timurid world order of the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Empires in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which incorporated Eurasian and European polities.

The British musicologist Henry Davey (1853–1929) was a noted scholar of the manuscript sources of Tudor music. He published the first edition of History of English Music in 1895 with the aim of providing his fellow-musicians with the first clear scholarly account of the full range of English musical achievements. His main focus is the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which he considered the heyday of English music, and he claims that the earliest known free instrumental compositions, as well as the polyphonic style, originated in England during the fifteenth century. In Davey's view, these controversial findings were his most important contribution to general musical knowledge. His work was widely discussed in his own time, attracting both praise and aggressive criticism, and continues to be read with great critical interest today, not least because of its parallels with the socialist utopianism of Ruskin and Morris.

Twentieth-century literary critics have lingered over what Molière’s theatre did or did not owe to farce. This chapter will demonstrate that it was above all as company leader that Molière inherited from a tradition governing actors’ training and the organisation of theatrical work that had been in place since the fifteenth century. The legal structure that framed the commercial activity of his troupe as well as its professional practices was that of the medieval societas, used by farce players to organise their activity from the end of the Middle Ages onwards. In the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the companies thus constituted were also places where actors were trained. Numerous contracts have survived relating to the apprenticeship of a young person to an actor or a troupe established as a societas. From the fifteenth century to the seventeenth, the other place where training in performance was given was in the Basoche: a professional community of legal clerks who learned techniques of eloquence, rhetoric and verbal expression. And Molière inherited too from this cultural heritage that was shared by the legal and theatrical worlds.

The history of women in Arabia is a relatively new and unexplored area of research and the place of women in Mecca (Makkah), Islam’s holiest city, is particularly shrouded in darkness. From the fifteenth century, however, there has been a stream of biographical works (tabaqat) that shed much light on the women of the city. This note turns scholarly attention on such fifteenth and sixteenth century works as Taqi al-Din al-Fassi’s (d. 1429) eight volumeAl-‘Iqd al-Thamin fi Tarikh al-Balad al-Amin, which dedicates a volume to women, in an effort to continue the scholarly appraisal of women’s lives in Muslim societies. Reading such important sources shows how women actively participated in the public life of the city, including its intellectual circles, contrary to Orientalist stereotypes. By exploring the multiple roles of Meccan women in the fifteenth century, the hope is to prompt further study of their significance and its historical implications.

Marbling and monochrome paint layers on the reverse of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century panel paintings have received little attention and are often poorly preserved. A link is suggested between painted marbling and oriental marbled paper. Marbled paper was first manufactured in China in the tenth century; it is reasonable to suppose that marbled papers were introduced into Europe long before the fifteenth century and that painters were aware of their use in the Persian and Arab worlds for writing, fine arts and administrative purposes. Similarities in use as well as in techniques support this hypothesis. Marbling on panel painting was intended for decorative effect rather than charged with symbolism. Reverses were also often painted in a monochrome paint layer. The favourite colour in the fourteenth century was red; in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries it was black, probably in accordance with fashion at the Burgundian court. In the sixteenth century, the reverses of wings were sometimes painted in other colours. These monochrome paint layers often have texts with gilded letters. They are also often overpainted, for example with portraits of donors, sometimes added at a later date and after the painting had been moved to another location. Even marbling was occasionally overpainted with a coat-of-arms or the figure of a donor. Art historians should be aware of this possibility when assigning dates and attributions.

The so-called Dao Guan Hu (bottom-filled ewer), also referred to as Dao Liu Hu (reverse-flow ewer), and Dao Zhu Hu (reverse-filled ewer), is a type of pouring vessel designed with Stevin’s Law, a formula in physics which employs a communicating tube to balance out the equilibrium of the liquid levels via a vacuum lock. The structure has a small hole at the bottom of a ewer, a jar, or a trompe-l'œil figure connected to a hollow tube inside the vessel. The liquid will not leak out when turning the vessel upright after it is filled. The current evidence attests that China started producing such wares in the ninth century during the late Tang dynasty. The production continued throughout the Song, Liao, Jin, Ming, and Qing dynasties, and the products were traded to Europe as export ceramics in the seventeenth century. They were also found on the Korean peninsula as Goryeo celadon in the twelfth century and in addition as Buncheong ware during the Joseon dynasty in the fifteenth century. The blue and white teapots with overglaze decoration retrieved from a shipwreck assemblage near Hội An in Vietnam also testify the production of this type of vessels with the same structure in Vietnam in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. In the early eighteenth century, the Meissen porcelain manufactory in Germany copied peach-shaped white porcelain pots with overglaze polychrome enamels from imported Chinese bottom-filled prototypes. Dutch potters also decorated imported white porcelain Dao Guan Hu from China with overglaze polychrome enamels.