Duke Of Savoy Research Articles

Il diario di viaggio in Spagna del barone Pietro Leonardo Roncas, ambasciatore straordinario di Carlo Emanuele I di Savoia presso la corte spagnola (1606)

The article analyzes the bio-bibliographic profile of Pietro Leonardo Roncas, baron of Castelargento (1562-1639), and one of the most important figures of the government of Carlo Emanuele I, Duke of Savoy (1562- 1630). Furthermore, the text proposes a reappraisal of the documents related to Roncas, which have been kept so far in the Simancas archives (Valladolid), published here for the first time, as well as Roncas’ stay at the Spanish court in 1606. The travel diary of the baron, first published by Gaudenzio Claretta in 1872, also contains some essential news to understand his vision of the Hispanic world.

Punished Love: two sculptures from the collections of Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy

Punished Love: two sculptures from the collections of Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy

The primacy of patrimony: kinship strategies of the political elite of Turin in the late Middle Ages (1340–1490)

ABSTRACTCombining family history and the analysis of political elites, this article explores the development of the urban elite of Turin (Piedmont) in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, through an analysis of the transformations in the kinships forming the ruling class, with particular regard to their structures and strategies for social and economic reproduction. The deep changes that affected this group and eventually led to its extinction and replacement by a new elite are addressed. It is argued that, alongside institutional rearrangements determined by the Dukes of Savoy, the inheritance strategies pursued by the kinships in order to preserve their economic and political role played a crucial part in their demise.

Politique et dévotion autour du souvenir de la Passion en Occident (Moyen Âge - Époque moderne)

The seven texts in this folder invite the scholar to study the phenomena of producing and reproducing objects and places connected to the memory of the Passion in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times. Its focus is on illustrating the fertile convergence of two approaches, one focusing on the religious sensibility, the other scrutinizing above all the uses and political meanings of the devotional processes, as Ludovic Viallet points out in his introduction by emphasizing the concepts of both “localization” and “collective imagination”. Three articles are then dedicated to representations or reproductions supporting a devotion or a spiritual pilgrimage in the late Middle Ages: Hans-Joachim Schmidt analyzes several maps and tales which made the Holy Places of Jerusalem accessible for those who couldn’t make the trip to them; Peter Kurmann shows that the Holy Sepulcher, which has been near the Constance cathedral since the tenth century, was renovated shortly after the middle of the thirteenth century to be adapted to its new role as a Eucharistic receptacle, as it was the destination of a weekly procession in which the Holy Eucharist was venerated; finally, Elsa Karsallah examines the monumental “Entombments” which appeared in France in the 1420s. Paolo Cozzo then shows that in the Early Modern Savoy Dukedom the worship of the Shroud gave rise to a system of copies brought into contact with the original and distributed in the European courts to strengthen the identity and prestige of the dynasty, as did the promotion of important Marian shrines. Furthermore, in the fifteenth century the dukes of Savoy reproduced a more “political” paradigm, that of the Sainte-Chapelle which was forged in Paris two centuries earlier: Laura Gaffuri fully revises the folder of that Savoy foundation. What does the notion of replication ultimately means? asks Catherine Vincent in the conclusion, highlighting in particular the paradox inherent to the spatial dimension of replication processes, which breaks with the uniqueness of the sacred place considering that it can be accessed almost anywhere that faithful is ready to establish it and to live it as such in his path.

Jonathan Swift and the Duke of Savoy

JONATHAN SWIFT'S desire for preferment in the years he spent in London is familiar to scholars of eighteenth-century literature. One of the positions with which he has been associated is the Mastership of the Savoy Hospital, the grand and architecturally distinguished institution founded by Henry VII in 1509 as a charity for the poor but which by the time of Swift's birth had become a sinecure for its officers and whose precinct had decayed into a legal sanctuary for debtors. Is there any truth in the suggestion that the minister was to become the head of this society? The proposition arises from an entry in the Journal to Stella: There ⌈y say⌉ you hear I was going to the Bath, no such thing. I am pretty well, I thank God; the Town is now sending me to Savoy. fourty People have given me joy of it; yet there is not the least Truth that I know in it.

The Royal Church of San Lorenzo in Turin: Guarino Guarini and the Baroque architectural acoustics

In 1666 the architect Guarino Guarini received from Carlo Emanuele II, Duke of Savoy, the appointment to build in Turin a new church dedicated to S. Lorenzo. The architect conceived a design in Baroque style with a very particular ribbed dome and this peculiarity is a very hard to find feature throughout Europe. Acoustics measurements were performed in S. Lorenzo in order to investigate how this unique architecture affects the response parameters used in architectural acoustics. Results are discussed in the paper, comparing to the methodology suggested by Cirillo and Martellotta in order to characterize the acoustics of churches.

<i>The Case for the Enlightenment. Scotland and Naples 1680–1760</i> (review)

Reviewed by: The Case for the Enlightenment. Scotland and Naples 1680–1760 David Allan The Case for the Enlightenment. Scotland and Naples 1680–1760. By John Robertson. Pp. xii, 453. ISBN: 0 521 84787 7. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2005. £55.00. This important and thought-provoking book is strongly recommended, not only to the Enlightenment specialists who might be expected to read it but also to those scholars who are interested in the kinds of perspectives opened up by the techniques of comparative history. For John Robertson’s major new study makes an intriguing, and, in the end, persuasive case for the existence of illuminating parallels between the Scottish and the Neapolitan Enlightenments – phenomena which occurred in two ‘historically subordinate or “provincial” kingdoms on the margins of Europe, which between them produced some of the most original thinking about man and society of the entire period from 1680 to 1790’ (p. 9). Crucially, however, it is emphatically not Robertson’s contention that the two situations were particularly similar. Indeed, that would clearly be a [End Page 165] difficult point to establish, as well as unhelpful to the precise argument whose merits Robertson wishes us to consider. By the end of the period covered in this book, after all, one was patently becoming a commercial and industrial society. It also had a strongly Protestant culture and an (absentee) parliamentary monarchy, and was characterised by unusual levels of freedom of thought and expression that facilitated the emergence of a large body of challenging work by a mixed community of tenured academics, virtuosi landowners, learned lawyers and liberal clergymen. The other, by contrast, was a backward and overwhelmingly agrarian society presided over by an entrenched Catholic church, a feudal nobility and an (absentee) Spanish monarchy. Here early Enlightenment thinkers like Paolo Mattia Doria, constrained by official restrictions, were obliged to work ‘in manuscript, for the eyes of sympathetic ministers only’ (p. 379). Meanwhile, Pietro Giannone, the historian, suffered exile, imprisonment by the Duke of Savoy and the confiscation of his writings on account of their heterodoxy. Nor is it suggested that the Scottish and Neapolitan intelligentsias enjoyed an unusually close relationship with one another. In fact, they plainly did not. Rather, Robertson’s point is that it is the existence of two markedly different and in some ways contrasting national contexts, with relatively limited direct contact between them, that makes it possible, when comparing the resulting intellectual cultures, to probe the much broader and far more important question of the coherence of the European Enlightenment. Indeed, the study raises the question of whether there might exist here what Robertson’s title describes as a ‘Case for the Enlightenment’. In other words, despite everything that has lately been written about the sheer diffuseness of eighteenth-century thought and culture, and thus about the advantages of thinking of a diverse and differentiated ‘family’ of Enlightenments in the plural, was there nevertheless something fundamental that bound together practitioners situated even in peripheral societies at opposite ends of Europe and in basically very different circumstances? It will be obvious that such a detailed comparative study is necessarily a large and complicated undertaking for any historian. It is therefore very much to Robertson’s credit that he has spent many years, both in Italy and at home, gradually piecing together a masterly study of complex intellectual activity and its peculiar social and cultural contexts. At the book’s heart lies a thesis that, whilst not entirely unprecedented, as he admits, is at least somewhat unusual among the most recent attempts to characterise the Enlightenment. This is that political economy – a set of inquiries ‘whose goals were the wealth of nations . . . and the improvement of the condition of all of society’s members’ (p. 29) – formed the main project of both the Scottish literati and the Neapolitan illuministi. Readers of the present review will probably be able to guess the outlines of the argument as it relates to Scotland, even if the detailed exposition offered here is highly original. David Hume occupies centre-stage; Fletcher, Kames, Smith and a few others play significant supporting roles; the nation’s merchants and improving lairds supply a closely-engaged chorus. The...

"Man Hungry": Reconsidering Threats to Colonial and Patriarchal Order in Dryden and Davenant's The Tempest

“Man Hungry”:Reconsidering Threats to Colonial and Patriarchal Order in Dryden and Davenant’s The Tempest Candy B. K. Schille Why, in 1667, did John Dryden and William Davenant choose to revise Shakespeare's The Tempest, and what do their revisions signify for literary and cultural history?1 Their play is usually described as an attempt to neutralize various threats to contemporary patriarchal orders—anattempt often seen as unsuccessful by modern readers. I will argue instead that Dryden and Davenant aim to problematize the too easy attribution of qualities of savagery and ungovernability to the play's gallery of "others" who are the nominal threats to Prospero's control and to direct audiences to reconsider where the real threats lie and what orders are worth preserving. This argument requires an overview of the play's cultural context, a summary of the ways in which the play has been seen to assuage various contemporary anxieties, and, finally, a demonstration of how Dryden and Davenant prompt reevaluation of political, domestic, and religious assumptions underlying these anxieties. Shakespeare's play is too well known to require a summary here, but any analysis of Dryden and Davenant's must begin with a summary of their extraordinarily convoluted and innovative tragicomic plot. I. The Plot in its Ideological Context The changes to Shakespeare's play begin immediately with the cast of characters: Prospero is, in Dryden-Davenant, the Duke of Mantua, whose kingdom was usurped by his brother Antonio with the help of Alonzo, Duke of Savoy, and who was set adrift to arrive on a supposedly deserted island. On the island, Prospero has raised two daughters, Miranda and her younger sister Dorinda, neither of whom has seen any man but their father. Also on the island are the monstrous orphaned offspring of the witch Sycorax, who was, like Prospero, marooned on the island. These are Caliban and his sister, also called Sycorax, both now enslaved by Prospero. [End Page 273] Prospero has also raised Hippolito, proper Duke of Mantua, who was set adrift with him, and whose kingdom was usurped by Alonzo. Prospero's astrological forecasts had indicated that the sight of a woman would for "some time" (2.4.7) be fatal to Hippolito, so he has been raised in a cave, ignorant of the female sex. With the shipwreck on the island of Alonzo and Antonio (both of whom are already penitent and have been on a crusade in expiation), along with Alonzo's son Ferdinand, his counselor Gonzalo, and his sailors, Prospero plans to avenge himself. When Ferdinand meets Miranda and Hippolito meets Dorinda, both couples fall in love. But once Hippolito learns from Ferdinand that there are other women besides Dorinda, he plans to possess all women—including Miranda. Ferdinand, reluctantly, "kills" Hippolito in a duel, and is summarily condemned to death by Prospero. But Ariel, acting without Prospero's knowledge or orders, revives Hippolito, who decides that monogamy is, in fact, desirable. Antonio and Alonzo renounce their usurped titles and all sail home happily. So much for the "high" plot. In the "low" plot, Stephano, the ship's master, believing the dukes drowned, declares himself master of the island and his sailors Mustacho and Ventoso viceroys. Boatswain Trincalo, meanwhile, gains the allegiance of Caliban and proposes to declare himself master of the island by marrying the younger Sycorax, thus aligning himself with the island's hereditary monarchy. After their alcohol, the main instigator of the power struggles, runs out, all the comic characters renounce their "claims" to sovereignty and join in the general reconciliation. The changes Dryden and Davenant made in adapting The Tempest for the Restoration stage amount to some striking additions and subtractions from Shakespeare's original. Among the subtractions are, first, the reduction of Prospero's powers and of the threats to it (in the ready repentance of the usurpers and the omission of the low characters' plot against his life); second, Gonzalo's speech on the virtues of a "natural" or "anarchic" state; and finally, Prospero's renunciation of his magic and his resolution to "think on death." Among the additions are the island's population explosion—a peculiarly female one, in that it includes...

:Architecture for the Shroud: Relic and Ritual in Turin

The famed linen cloth preserved in Turin Cathedral has provoked pious devotion, scientific scrutiny and morbid curiosity. Imprinted with an image many faithful have traditionally believed to be that of the crucified Christ painted in his own blood, the remains an object of intense debate and notoriety yet today. In this illustrated volume, John Beldon Scott traces the history of the unique relic, focusing especially on the black-marble and gilt-bronze structure Guarino Guarini designed to house and exhibit it. A key Baroque monument, the chapel comprises many unusual architectural features, which Scott identifies and explains, particularly how the chapel's unprecedented geometry and bizarre imagery convey to the viewer the supernatural powers of the object enshrined there. Drawing on early plans and documents, he demonstrates how the architect's design mirrors the Shroud's strange history as well as political aspirations of its owners, the Dukes of Savoy. Exhibiting it ritually, the Savoy prized their relic with its godly vestige as a means to link their dynasty with divine purposes. Guarini, too, promoted this end by fashioning an illusory world and sacred space that positioned the duke visually so that he appeared close to the during its ceremonial display. Finally, Scott describes how the additional need for an outdoor stage for the public showing of the relic to the thousands who came to Turin to see it also helped shape the urban plan of the city and its transformation into the Exploring the mystique of this enigmatic relic and investigating its architectural and urban history for the first time, Architecture for the Shroud should appeal to anyone curious about the textile, its display and the architectural settings designed to enhance its veneration and boost the political agenda of the ruling family.

The Utility of Fortifications in Early Modern Europe: Italian Princes and Their Citadels, 1540-1640

Considerable attention has been given to the development of new and more sophisticated styles of fortification which spread across early modern Europe, and to the assumed impact of such developments on the character of war and international relations. However, by taking at face value the rhetoric of impregnability attached to massive fortification projects, historians have missed the essential point that fortresses could succeed in their defensive purpose only in conjunction with field armies able to relieve the garrison placed under siege. This essential lesson was ignored by rulers of second- and third-rank states, who constructed fortifications to project both military effectiveness and dynastic status but without incurring the huge and unsustainable additional costs of maintaining an effective field army. The result of such fortification projects - seen in case studies of the Farnese citadel at Piacenza, the Gonzaga at Casale-Monferrato and the dukes of Savoy at Pinerolo - was to undermine an earlier diplomacy based on a careful balancing of the major powers and their interests in Italy. Strategically placed citadels held by rulers without effective field armies presented both an enticement and a danger to the governments of France and Habsburg Spain. The result was a series of pre-emptive strikes which established garrisons of French or Spanish troops within these citadels, often to prevent the other major power doing the same thing, and a drastic curtailment of the freedom of the respective Italian princes.

Snatching Victory from the Jaws of Defeat: History and Imagination in Baroque Italy

That modern historiographical methods emerged from the depths of late seventeenth- century Pyrrhonism has long been well known. In his 1950 article on 'Ancient History and the Antiquarian', Arnaldo Momigliano showed how an avalanche of diatribes against the historians, culminating in those of La Mothe Le Vayer and Pierre Bayle, inspired Jean Mabillon and Bernard de Montfaucon to formulate more rigorous paleographical techniques and, following the Bollandists, to initiate some of the most ambitious projects in modern times for the editing and publishing of historical documents.1 Meanwhile, the likes of Ezechiel Spanheim and Jacob Spon turned away entirely from fallacious documentary sources and toward what they regarded as the much more certain traces of the past in non-literary evidence, joining the discipline of erudite antiquities to that of historiography for the first time. So far, this trend of scepticism has been treated as the byproduct of an intellectual tradition dating to the humanist recovery of the texts of Sextus Empiricus and Diogenes Laertius, reinforced by three half-centuries of religious disputation. In order to destroy the very foundations of the Protestant position, it is argued, Roman Catholic apologists put in doubt the accomplishments of all the arts and sciences, urging believers to repose their trust unquestioningly in the truths of faith. Learned writers of every persuasion, seeking a firmer footing in the shifting sands of religious doubt, agreed.2 And when Bayle complained that 'there is no mischief so great as what can be exercised upon the monuments of history', he was chiefly referring to bias and distortion due to religious enthusiasm.3What has not yet been examined in sufficient detail is the role played by sheer historical charlatanry in creating the climate of scepticism against which the critics railed. What is more, the charlatanry that exercised the most profound impact during the course of the century did not circulate in the realm of pure erudition, where it might more properly be incorporated into the history of forgery.4 It circulated in the realm of political commentary and contemporary history. And among the places in Europe where this charlatanry was to be found perhaps in the greatest abundance was Italy. This article is a preliminary attempt to restore the lost connection between hired political historiography and Pyrrhonism.Indeed, from the preliminary episodes of the Thirty Years' War to the conclusion of the War of Castro, from the revolt of Palermo to the revolt of Fermo, from the negotiations between the dukes of Savoy and the Spanish monarchy in 1617 to the negotiations between the Venetians and the Turks in 1699, seventeenth-century Italy afforded to the aspiring historian an extraordinary spectacle. However, what brought the attention of a new group of writers to the momentous events of the time was more than mere curiosity. The parties in the conflicts demanded interpretations calculated to shore up damaged loyalties, repair breaches of trust and impress foreign powers. Upon any writer who could provide the necessary material they were disposed to lavish money and favours, including preferment to the most exclusive court circles. Writers who were attracted to this high-stakes game included professional historians as well as charlatans; former diplomats as well as blackmailers. They based their work on eyewitness reports and diplomatic correspondence as well as on newsletters, news books, newspapers, and simple hearsay. By freely mixing historiography with adulation, deceit, sensationalism and pure fantasy, these writers turned hired historiography from an occasional strategy into a cultural industry and set the formation of public myths on an entirely new footing. In doing so, they provoked a reaction that was eventually to shake the emerging discipline to its foundations.Careful cultivation of a particularly edifying view of the recent or remote past, capable of inspiring patriotism and loyalty among the forty percent or so of urban dwellers who could read, and flattering the vanity of the exalted was, of course, nothing new in the mid-seventeenth century. …

'La voie quelle menace tenir': Annabella Stewart, Scotland, and the European Marriage Market, 1444–56

Annabella Stewart, youngest daughter of James I of Scotland and Joan Beaufort, was betrothed to Louis, Count of Geneva and second son of the duke of Savoy, on 14 December 1444. Unlike the other European marital alliances contracted by the Stewarts between 1428 and 1449, the Savoy betrothal did not result in marriage and was formally dissolved in 1456. Later in the same year, the duke of Savoy wrote of the difficulties he faced in persuading Annabella to return to Scotland, referring obliquely and ominously to the limitations imposed upon him by Ta voie quelle menace tenir' the course Annabella threatened to take. Annabella's protest at the decline in her marital value was ineffectual in the face of the changes that had taken place within Scotland and on the Continent in the decade since 1444. Her story illustrates both the vulnerable nature of Scotland's attractions on the European marriage market and the paradox at the heart of diplomatic marital policy in fifteenth-century Europe. The understanding that a foreign marriage symbolised the conclusion of a necessary political alliance meant that marital policy was too important to be derailed by the wishes of the proposed brides. But while girls were vir tual pawns in the political games of their families, the very importance of diplomatic marriage endowed young brides with considerable potential power. Annabella's threat did not so much question the rights of her brother and continental princes to choose her husband as protest at the change in their plans and her future. The currently accepted details of Annabella's continental marital career are contained in Dunlop's biography of Bishop Kennedy.1 Dunlop's source for the date of Annabella's betrothal Guichenon's Histoire Genealogique de la Royale Maison de Savoye, first published in 1660 does not cite its source, and although the work gives correct details of the date and place of issue of the marriage contract, it also contains two

Neither Politique nor Patriot? Henri, duc de Montmorency and Philip II, 1582–1589

In 1581 Antoinette de La Marck, the devout duchesse de Montmorency made a pilgrimage to the shrine of the Virgin at Montserrat in Catalonia. The next year her husband Henri de Montmorency, the governor of Languedoc, corresponded with the viceroy of Catalonia about the problem of banditry which was rife on both sides of the frontier. In 1583, Montmorency's servant carried letters to Charles Emmanuel, duke of Savoy, hidden in the soles of his shoes. During the festivities for the wedding of Charles Emmanuel to the infanta Catalina in 1585, Giuseppe Lercaro, Montmorency's Genoese-born intendant desfinances, spent some ten days in Barcelona concealed in the lodgings of Savoy's ambassador and had several clandestine interviews with both the duke and his new father-in-law Philip II. In 1588 Philip offered 100,000 francs towards the dowry of Montmorency's daughter Charlotte, provided that she married the son of the due de Guise and thus reconciled the two families whose rivalry had dominated the French political scene since the 1540s. These incidents, unremarkable as they may individually appear, formed part of the negotiations between Henri due de Montmorency and Philip II which, in notable contrast to those of the Spanish king with the Guise family, have been little studied by historians. Consequently, Montmorency's reputation now is generally that of a politique and patriot. This paper offers a rather different appraisal of him.

Autographs of Alfonso Ferrabosco I-III

No fewer than five members of the Ferrabosco family, covering three generations, served in the royal musical establishment of the English court during the reigns of Elizabeth I, James I and Charles I. The association of this Italian family with the English court began in 1562, when Alfonso Ferrabosco (1543-1588), son of Palestrina's then well-known colleague Domenico Maria Ferrabosco, arrived in England and became a retained musician at the court of Elizabeth I. Apart from several journeys abroad, Alfonso Ferrabosco (hereafter designated as I) remained in England until 1578, when he returned to Italy, later to join the court of the Duke of Savoy. At the time of his departure, Alfonso I had established himself among the English as one of the most outstanding composers of his day, so much so that Elizabeth I went to some trouble to regain his services, even holding his children as hostage for his return. One of these children, also named Alfonso Ferrabosco (born before 1578, d1628; hereafter designated as II), played a prominent role as a musician and composer during the reign of James I. Alfonso II was survived by several children, three of whom became musicians at the court of Charles I:

The Condition of the European Peasantry on the Eve of Emancipation

In 1770 about two-thirds of the population of Europe, or about 100 million people, lived in lands in which custom and law had organized society into a hierarchical structure of orders. Custom and law had also established a hierarchy of rights and obligations for each order. Vertical mobility was possible but was an exceptional and unimportant perturbation of the rigid social structure. These 100 or so million people lived in France, Savoy, certain cantons of Switzerland, the many states that made up Germany, Denmark, Austria, Bohemia, Hungary, the Danubian principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, Poland, Lithuania, Livonia, Estonia, and Russia. Between 70 and 95 percent of them, depending upon the country, lived on the land. They belonged to the lowest order of society, the peasantry. Through the accident of their birth into this order, the society in which they lived denied them certain freedoms and privileges enjoyed by those who belonged to higher orders, and compelled them to be dependent upon and subservient to persons of the higher estates. The degree of their subservience and the extent of their dependence formed a spectrum that ranged from light but often bitterly resented restrictions and impositions in western European lands to a serfdom that was scarcely distinguishable from slavery in some of the lands of eastern Europe. But whether light or heavy, servility-submissiveness of the great majority of the population to a few-characterized the societies of these lands, and so I will call them collectively the servile lands. -The first break in the old order came in 1771 when the duke of Savoy ordered the emancipation of the peasants of that small duchy. Baden was next in 1783, then Denmark in 1787, France in 1789, Switzerland in 1798, and then back and forth across central and eastern Europe until in 1864 the peasants of Romania, the last unfree people in Europe, were given their freedom. In less than 100

Elective Kingship and Consensus Populi in Sixteenth-Century France

Previous articleNext article No AccessElective Kingship and Consensus Populi in Sixteenth-Century FranceRichard A. JacksonRichard A. Jackson Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 44, Number 2Jun., 1972 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/240747 Views: 4Total views on this site Citations: 3Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1972 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Peter Haldén Family Power, I (Mar 2020).https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108863612Anna Becker Gendering the Renaissance Commonwealth, 12 (Dec 2019).https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108765404J. Bel, C. Marinoni, B. R. Granett, L. Guzzo, J. A. Peacock, E. Branchini, O. Cucciati, S. de la Torre, A. Iovino, W. J. Percival, H. Steigerwald, U. Abbas, C. Adami, S. Arnouts, M. Bolzonella, D. Bottini, A. Cappi, J. Coupon, I. Davidzon, G. De Lucia, A. Fritz, P. Franzetti, M. Fumana, B. Garilli, O. Ilbert, J. Krywult, V. Le Brun, O. Le Fèvre, D. Maccagni, K. Małek, F. Marulli, H. J. McCracken, L. Paioro, M. Polletta, A. Pollo, H. Schlagenhaufer, M. Scodeggio, L. A. M. Tasca, R. Tojeiro, D. Vergani, A. Zanichelli, A. Burden, C. Di Porto, A. Marchetti, Y. Mellier, L. Moscardini, R. C. Nichol, S. Phleps, M. Wolk, G. Zamorani The VIMOS Public Extragalactic Redshift Survey (VIPERS), Astronomy & Astrophysics 563 (Feb 2014): A37.https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201321942

Francesco Vimercato of Milan: a Bio-Bibliography

Among Renaissance commentators on Aristotle, an honorable place must be given to Francesco Vimercato of Milan, whose translations and commentaries cover almost the entire corpus of Aristotelian writings. During his lifetime, this hard-working sixteenth-century scholar achieved a solid reputation for his erudition and unrivaled grasp of Aristotelian philosophy. He was honored by the King of France and by the Duke of Savoy, and his works found their way into the libraries of many lands. But he belongs to that tribe of pedants whose indispensable merits tend to be appreciated today only by editors of Aristotle who must struggle with textual details. The casual reader or sweeping philosophical critic has no patience for the sort of word-by-word examination of the text that editors still find useful.

The Crown of Jerusalem

For anyone with a taste for resounding names and titles there is no better reading than an old number of the Almanach de Gotha. In the days when kings were really kings and emperors were emperors every self-respecting monarch had a string of titles after his name. The list of kingdoms, duchies and counties claimed, for instance, by the Emperor of Austria reads like an epic poem. But there are confusing elements about that great work. Many of the titles overlap. There was a particular tendency amongst European potentates to call themselves Kings of Jerusalem. To the last the Emperors of Austria and the I(ings of Spain were Kings ofJerusalem. If we go further back we find many other claimants. At various times the Kings of France, of Naples and even of England have put in a claim for it. The Duke of Savoy had a rather good claim, though he usually contented himself with the more modest title of King of Cyprus, which his heir, the ex-King of Italy, bears to this day. There are other claimants among various houses of the European nobility. Indeed, the throne of Jerusalem has so many candidates queuing up to sit on it that it is as well that it does not exist. I want this afternoon to trace briefly the history of this curious kingship. I must ask you to bear with me through a certain tangle of legal, constitutional and genealogical details, in an attempt to illustrate not only the changing mediaeval conceptions of monarchy but also the peculiar position that the Holy City held in the mediaeval mind. I trust that no one has come here in the hope of hearing about the actual regalia of Jerusalem. We know practically nothing about that. There was certainly an orb with a cross on it and a sceptre tipped with a cross. The crown itself: as worn by the first two mediaeval kings, seems, from pictures on their seals, to have been an open circlet with four points rising from it; but we do not even know whether it was of gold or some other metal. Later a cap of state seems to have been added, held in place by two cross-bands. This crown was kept in the Treasury of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, in a casket with three locks. One key was kept by the Patriarch ofJerusalem, one by the Grand Master of the Order of the Hospital and one by the Grand Master of the Order of the Temple. This crown was presumably lost when

Sigismondo d'India

Of the early life of Don Sigismondo d'India, Nobleman of Palermo and Knight of the Order of St. Mark, we know next to nothing: we know neither the date of his birth nor where and with whom he studied music. An eighteenth-century document tells us that he was born in 1562 and died in 1630, and one or two present-day scholars have accepted these dates. I think, however, that they ought to be regarded with suspicion, for they happen to be the dates of birth and death of Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy, in whose service d'India spent twelve years of his life. Certain later events in d'India's life suggest that he was probably born about 1580. We do know for certain, however, that he was born at Palermo. Now, towards the end of the sixteenth century Palermo was already a fair-sized city: its population in 1593 has been estimated at 90,000. Yet neither there nor anywhere else in Sicily did the arts really flourish. Like most of the southern half of Italy, Sicily at this time was under Spanish domination: she was, as has been said, ‘a tiny ship towed by the great Spanish galleon’.

ANTON DU SAI X 1505-1579

A rare pediatric item, but one to be found in both the British Museum and the Bibliotheque Nationale, is L'esperon de discipline pour inciter les humains aux bonnes lettres by Anton du Saix, or Dussaix as it is sometimes given. The author was born at Bourg-en-Bresse in 1505, and died there in 1579. Little is known of him except that he was chaplain to the Duke of Savoy. One may surmise that he strayed from the straight and narrow path, for he left a little poem as follows: Aux Mondaines Qui va a' son plaisir, Il va a' sa douleur: S'en repent a loysir, Et change de couleur Le monde et sa valeur N'est pour bien repute Toujours un grand malheur Vient apres volupte. This may be freely rendered as follows: Who goes after pleasure, Arrives at sorrow: He repents at leisure, And on the morrow For world and its