Early Fifteenth Century Research Articles

Zhèng Hé's Indirect Impact on Europe: On Revolutionary Focal Groups of Production Revolutions

According to the model on production revolutions, elaborated by Leonid and Anton Grinin, the Covid-19 pandemic and the fourteenth century's Black Death have similar impacts on economic trajectories in terms of production principles. Andrea Komlosy added the spatial dimension to the model, which allows the identification of the ‘focal groups’ of revolutionists and their seedling nurseries of a new production principle in late fourteenth and early fifteenth century Europe. Ming Admiral Zhèng Hé's voyages across the Indian Ocean (1405–1433) had an indirect impact on the European economy: Trading on the re-established ‘Maritime Silk Road’ required silver for payment, whose eventual shortage caused a credit crunch in Europe, jeopardizing the phase transition to the mercantile-industrial production principle. Renaissance Humanists promoted a revolutionary epistemology in the fifteenth century. Christopher Columbus's discovery of America, a by-product of efforts to reconnect Europe to the Maritime Silk Road in response to the credit crunch was portrayed as a revolutionary achievement. The author's participation at a focal group of the Cybernetic Revolution before Covid-19 motivated his tracing the Renaissance Revolution.

Cesarean Section and Religious Hierarchies in Fifteenth- Century Europe

In the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, Cesarean section, the medical procedure whereby a child is delivered by cutting through the wall of the mother’s abdomen, was an extremely taut subject. More often that not Cesarean sections were performed as acts of desperation to save the child following the mother’s death, and as such, the procedure was embedded in the popular imagination and imbued with symbolic power. While it was promoted by the Catholic Church to save the souls of the infants through baptism, Jewish communities viewed the procedure with wariness due to its perceived unnaturalness. The coupling of divergent religious views on the procedure, a strained religious environment, and changes in the occupational landscape of obstetrics resulted in the utilization of Cesarean section by Christians as a means to demonstrate the corporeal and occupational inferiority of Jews. Mouat uses the Cesarean section as a springboard into the history of the religious tensions and hierarchies that came to define early modern obstretics.

Narrative to icon: the inscriptive origins of Christ Ecce Homo

This article examines the shifting iconographical meaning and purpose of the Latin phrase ecce homo in visual art in the later Middle Ages. As told in John 19: 4–5, ecce homo was the terse two-line sentence exclaimed by Pontius Pilate as he presented Christ to the people of Jerusalem: “Behold, [the] man!” Beginning in the early fifteenth century, it became common for artists in Northern and Central Europe to integrate the phrase ecce homo directly into depictions of this presentation scene, first in narrative-images and eventually in stand-alone devotional icons. Initially, these brief inscriptions served to visualize Pilate’s climactic two-word speech. In the latter half of the century, however, ecce homo became unmoored from its original scheme. What once had a precise narrative function had, by 1500, expanded to become a message directed at the viewer, an epithet for the specific aspect of Christ represented in the narrative, and a title for the narrative itself. This unmooring happened in conjunction with a shift in the function of the figure of Christ within these images and the adaptation of this type of figure into an en buste portrait. Research presented in this article, the first to address these inscriptions in any way, affords new insight into long-standing questions about the typological relationship linking narrative-images and icons. The article challenges the “genetic” model of typological development established by Erwin Panofsky and Sixten Ringbom, both of whom used the iconography of the Ecce Homo as a case study for how to explain the pictorial forms of devotional images in late medieval and early modern art.

A baselard by any other name? A Swiss short sword in the Royal Armouries’ collection

The aim of this article is to examine in detail a Swiss baselard in the Royal Armouries collection, IX.3482. The original catalogue entry for the object described it as a 14th or early fifteenth century English baselard. However, by comparing IX.3482 with similar examples held in Swiss institutions, monumental effigies and contemporaneous artistic depictions, this article will seek to establish a more accurate identification, reinforced by careful analysis of previous scholarship. In addition, the article will also seek to further explore the broader typology of baselards, focussing specifically on the Swiss sub-types and how we might clarify both the typology, and the terminology currently applied to them.

The rise and fall of the Clann Éinrí Aimhréidh Uí Néill: dynastic feuding and geopolitics in the late medieval Irish Sea world

AbstractDuring the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, the Ulster lordship of Tír Eoghain was bitterly contested between two rival branches of the Uí Néill dynasty: the Clann Éinrí Aimhréidh and the Clann Briain Catha an Dúin. Traditionally, historians have focused mainly on the local origins and ramifications of this feud and have paid only cursory attention to how events ranging from the Shannon Estuary through to the Outer Hebrides shaped the course of this struggle. For instance, throughout the later fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries a range of different regional players from across this wider ‘Irish Sea world’ became drawn into pulled into this conflict, each possessing a vested interest in the outcome of the Uí Néill successional war. By drawing upon a rich corpus of primary sources, including Irish, Scottish and English material, this article locates the Uí Néill feud within a wider dynastic and geopolitical context. Ultimately, the article argues for the necessity of exploring this feud from within a wider geographic and dynastic framework of interpretation, and paying closer attention to how events within the Irish Sea world could impact and impinge upon the politics of the wider archipelago.

The Voynich Manuscript, Dr Johannes Hartlieb and the Encipherment of Women’s Secrets

Summary The Voynich manuscript is a famous European enciphered manuscript of the early fifteenth century featuring herbal, pharmaceutical, astrological and anatomical illustrations, including hundreds of naked women. Some hold objects adjacent to or unambiguously pointed towards their genitalia. This paper therefore investigates the culture of self-censorship, erasure and encipherment of women’s secrets, with a focus on Dr Johannes Hartlieb (c. 1410–68). Hartlieb had enduring apprehensions about the propagation of women’s secrets in vernacular Bavarian, which culminated in a call for ‘secret letters’ to hide recipes for abortifacients and contraceptives. Other cases of encipherment relating to sexual intercourse and genitalia will be described. On the basis of this evidence, we propose that the Rosettes, the largest and most complex illustration in the Voynich manuscript, represents coitus and conception. This hypothesis explains many of the illustration’s features and establishes a variety of future research possibilities.

The Impact of the Anglo-Scottish Wars (1286–1347) upon Institutional Memories in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Century Monastic Chronicles and Cartularies of Furness and Byland

The Anglo-Scottish Wars (1286–1347) had a significant impact on lay and monastic communities across the North of England physically and psychologically, as the pressures of war between England and Scotland divided people along increasingly hostile and “national” lines. Monastic chronicles, such as that of Lanercost, have often been used to make sense of the material effect of Scottish raids, and how identities came to possess an increasingly “national” sense. However, less attention has been paid to how the cartularies of Northern English monasteries contributed to how monastic communities affected by the Anglo-Scottish Wars came to make sense of them. This article will analyse and compare the Furness Chronicle and Anonimalle Chronicle, produced in the fourteenth century, with the early-fifteenth century cartularies produced by Furness Abbey and Byland Abbey. It will contribute towards recent scholarly assessments of how these sources, and the events they recounted, were selectively edited to inform how the monastic communities who engaged with them remembered the impact of the Anglo-Scottish Wars upon them. Chronicles and cartularies were used together to reinforce an institutional memory, or a collective sense of connection with the history of an institution that Furness and Byland were creating in the early fourteenth century.

Reviving the forma vitae: identity, authority and material culture in the first Portuguese convents of Colettine Clarisses

ABSTRACT Initiated in Burgundy in the early fifteenth century by Colette of Corbie (1381–1447), the Colettine reforms soon expanded to eastern Iberia, reaching Portugal by the end of the century. In this paper I show how the context in which the first Colettine convents were founded in Portugal – a time when Clarissan reform was struggling to take the first steps in this territory and Colette’s endeavours were still a novelty – was reflected in the efforts developed by these communities and their patrons to promote a Colettine identity through the translation and use of a set of normative and para-normative texts, which would become the Colettines’ textual support in Portugal. I also demonstrate that these efforts were accompanied by the promotion of Colette of Corbie’s figure and sanctity through art.

The Prosecution of Heresy in the Henrician Reformation

ABSTRACT At the beginning of Henry VIII’s reign, the prosecution of heresy was based on three statutes of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Under this system, the Church tried the crime with the assistance of secular authority. Juries presented suspects, whose cases were then transferred to the church courts for determination. In 1532, the Supplication against the Ordinaries challenged the conduct of heresy trials. It invoked common-law principles about due process and standards of proof. Two years later, a new statute modified the system, although less drastically than had been proposed. The royal supremacy and new religious policies changed the context in which heresy was prosecuted. Up until 1539, however, the church courts still determined accusations. Thereafter, in the case of specified heresies, the Act of Six Articles made lay juries responsible for determining guilt or innocence. Commissions under this act combined elements of canon law and common law. These reforms were, however, not seen to have improved the conduct of heresy trials. It proved easier to criticize the traditional method of prosecution than to devise a better one.

Byzantine Epic of the French Knight Chateaumorand

This article discusses French-Byzantine relations in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries and France's participation in the struggle against Ottoman expansion. The author shows the role of the French knight Jean de Chateaumorand (1352–1429) in the defence of Constantinople. When the Ottomans besieged the Byzantine capital, Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos asked the French King Charles VI for military assistance. In 1399, the king sent a troop of knights to Constantinople under the command of Marshal Boucicaut. Among them was the king’s adviser Jean de Chateaumorand. The knights, in conjunction with the Byzantine warriors, successfully defended the city for a period of six months; however, their endeavours to lift the siege ultimately proved unsuccessful. Following the departure of Manuel II and Marshal Boucicaut for the West, a contingent of the French forces, under the command of Chateaumorand, remained in Constantinople and continued to defend the city for a period of two and a half years. It is evident that the substantial support provided by the French troops was not ultimately decisive. The Byzantine Emperor John VII Palaiologos, who ruled during Manuel II’s stay in Western Europe, provided Chateaumorand with relics and jewels from the imperial treasury as a form of remuneration for his military service. Despite the French sources designating Chateaumorand as the primary saviour of the Byzantine capital, the Byzantine writers do not even mention the involvement of the French knights in the defence, attributing the city’s salvation solely to the intercession of the Mother of God. The history of Chateaumorand’s participation in the struggle against the Ottomans and in the defence of Constantinople demonstrates the distinctive characteristics of French-Byzantine relations during this period and sheds light on crucial aspects of the organisation of the protection of the Byzantine capital, which was besieged by Sultan Bayezid I.

Следы животных на строительной керамике золотоордынского Солхата

The archaeological researches of the Crimean ulus of the Golden Horde discovered a multitude of finds in the cultural layers from the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, particularly building ceramic ware with footprints of animals. Such finds not only reflect the level of development of building technique, but also allow the one to determine the species composition of the fauna in the mediaeval Crimea, to amend the information on the economic and industrial activities of the population of Solkhat in the Golden Horde period. Among the footprints on bricks there are traces of canines (domestic dog and wolf), felines (cat), and artiodactyls (goat). Most of the footprints, 14 specimens, belong to canine animals, cat footprints are documented on four bricks, and only one artefact shows a footprint of goat’s hoof. This statistic is indirectly confirmed by the analysis of osteological materials, with a significant percentage of dogs’ remains and a little less of cats’. Goat’s bones are also rare; small cattle is mostly represented by sheep’s bones, the breeding area of which probably does not coincide with the place where Solkhat building ceramics were produced. The building ceramics with footprints of animals’ paws and hoofs originating from the excavations of the mediaeval settlement of Solkhat is published for the first time.

Collectivism and new identities after the Black Death Pandemic: Merchant diasporas and incorporative local communities in West Africa

Merchant diasporas have significantly influenced local and interregional processes in world history, but archaeology is only starting to understand the diversity of political, economic, social and religious contexts within which they developed. Recent research has suggested that the second plague pandemic (Black Death) likely affected West Africa. However, little is known regarding the diversity of local and regional impacts and responses. We argue that documented population losses likely caused by plague resulted in disruptions to commercial networks and stimulated merchant diasporas from neighboring Mali into Burkina Faso and further south. Drawing on an expanded corpus of data and new stratigraphic and Bayesian analyses of AMS dates from the site of Kirikongo (western Burkina Faso), this paper identifies two waves of likely plague-related depopulation in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries AD and explores the resulting social, economic, religious and environmental transformations. Notably, local communities worked cooperatively with recently arrived Mande merchant diasporas from the Empire of Mali to reconstruct regional economies.

Unknown Prayers from the Old Russian Parchment Psalter of the Studite Era

This article examines the specifics of the set of prayers in the Old Russian psalters of the Studite era (before the early fifteenth century). The psalters of this period were distinguished by a wide variety of prayers after cathismata (in contrast to the modern psalters with a fixed set of prayers). Pre-revolutionary researchers, such as archimandrite Amphilochius (Sergievsky-Kazantsev) and V. Pogorelov and modern scholars G. R. Parpulov and priest Ilia Shugaev, examined the issue. However, most of these researchers considered not all but only part of the Old Russian psalters. Since many Old Russian prayers remain unexplored and unpublished, this issue is still relevant for scholarship. This article is devoted to the parchment manuscript of the Typographic Collection No. 28 (mid-fourteenth century) kept in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts. The set of prayers of this psalter is considered against the background of a wide range of Old Russian psalters, horologia, and liturgical collections. The manuscript contains 17 prayers. Only three prayers are now in liturgical use; three prayers are typical of Old Russian psalters and horologia; four prayers are less common and can only be found in some cases. The rest are either rare or (partially or completely) unique. Five of these 17 prayers make part of the early printed editions of the Psalter (1632 and 1636). The Greek original of some prayers is known (in particular, two prayers originate from Pandektos by monk Antiochus), while some of the rest may be the creation of a Slavic author. The published text of four prayers from this manuscript (after cathismata 9, 11, 18, and 20) has never been examined previously. In terms of their message, the prayers are diverse as their tone varies from repentance to praise, with a pronounced didactic note. The author skillfully and professionally quotes the Bible and the Triodion (prayer after cathisma 11) and conveys the “sobbing” intonations of lamentation (prayer after cathisma 18).

Surviving Hebrew Accounts From the European Genizah. The Earliest Ledger of a Jewish Pawnshop in Italy

This study presents an original manuscript of the European Genizah containing the earliest account book of a Jewish moneylender in Italy. This document, which dates back to the early fifteenth century, sheds new light on the economic history of the Jews, credit issues in north Italy, Jewish–Christian economic relations and material culture through references to pawned objects, as well as the history of accounting practices. Its paper leaves were dismembered and reused to bind a different book of Italian origin. As with thousands of other fragments found in bindings across Europe, the recycling of codices paradoxically assured their survival. The sheets of the ledger were discovered, detached and conserved when the manuscript was restored at the end of the nineteenth century.

Institutional memory and legal conflict in the Old Borough of Durham, 1300–1450

AbstractHistorians have long used the archives of major institutions to shed light on medieval society, but in more recent decades the focus has turned towards the proliferation of legal documentation possessed by those lower down the social order and the increasing penetration of legal processes into their everyday lives. Yet, in recapturing this world, there is a danger that we take for granted the immense documentary power of a large institutional repository. This article follows several legal conflicts across the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries involving the monks of Durham Priory to demonstrate the extent of this archival culture, showing how they turned to their vast array of documentary evidence for information about those who had incurred their wrath. Using their archives, they traced the descent of holdings, the offices held by key individuals, and previous payments in account rolls, all in a bid to demonstrate their rights, the ‘abuses’ of officials, and to counter legal opposition. Not content, the monks then compiled this evidence into an alternative narrative of events that questioned previous legal proceedings and ceremonies, constructing an institutional memory that saw contradictory documentation as ‘entirely most falsely forged’.

Out of the Blue

The Old Hall Manuscript (OH, c. 1413–1419) is the largest and most complete surviving witness to English music of the early fifteenth century. The extraordinary notational complexity encountered in OH has led to doubt being cast on the performability of some of the repertory copied within this manuscript (Bent 1969, 172). Adopting an approach that places historical theory (Dygon 2006)

Banking Law in Italian Legal Consulting between the Fourteenth and the Fifteenth Centuries

Abstract Banking operations in northern and central Italy between late fourteenth and early fifteenth century were very sophisticated and often gave rise to disputes involving the expertise only law professors could provide. To provide solutions which were at the same time viable and grounded in legal culture, lawyers went beyond merely practical considerations to work out legal institutions as a framework to banking activities. In doing so, they developed a proper banking law, a peculiar legal system.

On the Orientation of Historic Christian Churches of Fuerteventura

We present the results of an analysis of the precise spatial orientation of colonial Christian churches located in the Canary Island of Fuerteventura (Spain). Our sample consists of 48 churches, most built during the period between the Castilian conquest led by the Norman Jean de Béthencourt in the early fifteenth century and the end of the nineteenth century. While most of the religious constructions in the sample have their main axes oriented within the solar range, in accordance with tradition, the statistical analysis also reveals the presence of two groups of churches that diverge from due east. For the first group, mainly composed of churches located in the central part of the island, an anomalous tendency of orientation towards a declination of c. ?14° was detected. We provide four possible explanations for this: (1) orientation to coincide with sunrise on the date of a traditional Canarian celebration; (2) the influence of topography; (3) sunset orientations; and (4), more controversially, a “bright star” orientation close to the declination of Sirius during the seventeenth century, drawing on ethnographic data. For the second group, meanwhile, we find a pattern of orientation slightly to the north of due east. We propose this might signal orientation to the rising Sun on dates close to Easter Sunday.

The Social-Legal Rights and Political Activity of Albanian Women in the Late Middle Ages (Thirteenth–Fifteenth Centuries)

Abstract This article addresses women's legal status in urban areas in Albania during the late Middle Ages, particularly Shkodra, Durrës, Ulqini, Tivari, and others. The documentary sources of the time reveal the role and importance of women, and shed light on the legal and penal protection of her person, dignity, and honor. In cases of murder, assault, insult, violence, and rape against women, no individual, neither layperson nor clergy, had immunity from prosecution before the law. This article also addresses the political influence of Albanian noblewomen during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, as well as their privileges and rights to emigrate, mainly to the Republic of Venice and southern Italy, after the final Ottoman conquest of Albanian territories.

The Decoration of Manuscript PL-GD Mar. F 406 in the Context of Illumination Art in Fifteenth-Century Gdańsk

This article analyses music manuscript Mar. F 406, originally from the collection of St Mary’s church in the Main Town (Rechtstadt) of Gdańsk, now kept at the Gdańsk Library of the Polish Academy of Sciences. The codex is a compilation of liturgical chants. This article offers the first analytical study of the source undertaken from the perspective of the history of art, with a discussion of the character and quality of the gouache and calligraphic ornaments. These decorations are presented in the wider context of illumination art in fifteenth-century Gdańsk. Stylistic and comparative analyses were supported by non-invasive XRF and IR examination. The physical characteristics of the volume, along with the results of parallel musicological studies (Piotr Ziółkowski and Kamil Watkowski), make it possible to present a new chronology of the manuscript’s compilation, distinguish the individual illuminators’ hands and obtain knowledge of the techniques and practice of the scriptorium in Gdańsk. The codex is thus shown to have received its present-day form in the mid-fifteenth century. It is partly an original work from that period (by two Gdańsk-based copyists), and partly a compilation of older fragments (from the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century). It was bound in Gdańsk by the elder Dragon Bookbinder (älterer Drachenbuchbinder). The first scribe-illuminator was a representative of the Gdańsk environment trained according to Bohemian models. The last three gatherings (VIII–X) remained blank until the early sixteenth century, when more chants were added by a team of copyists. The decoration in this section is the work of a single illuminator, who drew on old thirteenth-century models, as well as calligraphic patterns used in the decoration of incunabula. This section can be dated to the turn of the sixteenth century; the work of this illuminator has analogies in other Gdańsk books from the first quarter of the sixteenth century. The source constitutes a valuable example of a manuscript’s intense, long-term liturgical use. Its analysis demonstrates the need for a comprehensive study of the Gdańsk scriptorium in the second and third quarters of the fifteenth century (including illuminating and bookbinding techniques).