Fifteenth Sixteenth Centuries Research Articles

The Application of Remote Sensing in the Conservation of the Archaeological Site of Pachacamac (Second–Sixteenth Century, Peru)

ABSTRACT Human activity and natural events may deteriorate or destroy archaeological sites. Mitigation is therefore a priority for their preservation. Pachacamac Museum has developed programs for research and conservation since 2008. The archaeological sanctuary of Pachacamac (second–sixteenth century), which consists of buildings made from adobe, roads, enclosures, and platforms, is located along the semi-arid central coast of Peru and was damaged in about 600 due to intense rain related to a major sixth-century El Niño event. More recent damage occurred during the 1925–26 El Niño episode. The Templo del Sol (fifteenth–sixteenth centuries) is one of the main adobe constructions, located on a hill about 60 m high. Orthophotogrammetric data was obtained for the Templo del Sol, to construct a 3 cm resolution digital surface model (DSM) and an orthoimage. Morphometric analysis of the DSM using hydrological and geomorphological quantitative parameters identified areas subjected to water flow or pooling during rainfall, and exposure of the building to wind and solar radiation, the latter responsible for the deterioration of painted walls. Areas of potential collapse were identified. This provides quantitative data for the planning, design, and execution of activities to preserve the site.

Depreciation of Military Service Costs in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries in Central-Eastern Europe

The article presents the depreciation of soldiers’ equipment in the fifteenth–sixteenth centuries in Central-Eastern Europe based on the data from a dedicated financial institution existing in the Polish Kingdom until the 1560s. Soldiers received their pay, and the king additionally paid them compensation for any war damage. Owing to meticulous records, data were collected on 9,371 individuals. Based on the collected data, it has been established that the average losses in cavalry were equivalent to 40% of the pay and in infantry, the corresponding ratio was 13.7%. This formation was not only cheaper to equip, it was also less cost-intensive. The article elaborates on the background of the liquidation of this institution in the Polish Crown, combined with an increase in soldiers’ pay, who gained only seemingly. It was mainly a profitable operation for the state. It improved the budgeting process, increased the combat value of the soldiers, facilitated military bureaucratisation and prevented extorted compensation. After the reform, the depreciation in the cost of the soldier’s pay is estimated to have been about 1/3. The percentage chance of losing a horse, arms and armour was also calculated, demonstrating a huge equine mortality rate of 48.2% over three months of fighting.

COORDONATE ALE BAROCULUI SÂRBESC DIN BANAT - TRADIȚII ȘI INFLUENȚE

This study proposes a reconceptualization of the so called “Serbijan Baroque” reflected in the creation of eighteenth-century imperial province of the Banat. The corpus of this investigation consists of written sources and works of art, structurally analysed and decoded as traditional versus modern Baroque additions. Aesthetic influences of Byzantine, Russian, Ukrainian, Wallachian and Moldavian tradition were surpassed by the dynamism of the Baroque. The change of ideas led to a synthesis in the province of the Banat where the promoters of Serbijan Baroque, were sometimes mentioned as post-Brancovan style promoters (Wallachian Baroque). Nikola Neșcovici and Nedelcu Popovici are two trend settlers in whose evolution one can identify tradition and the need for modern iconography invested with didactic and moralizing values inculcated by the formation workshops.These vagrant painters settled in the imperial Banat and adopted Western iconographic formulas for the Serbijan Orthodox churches. In the Orthodox tradition there is a close connection between the shape of the monument and its related iconography. Enriched since the fifteenth-sixteenth centuries with spaces of vaulting systems, the eighteenth century Serbijan architecture promoted throughout cultural transfer ideas coming from different centers evolving into a distinctive episode within the Habsburg monarchy. The profile of the synthesis achieved by architecture and its mural and iconostasis decoration, is demonstrated by these interpretations, a perfect illustration of the concept defining the evolution od Serbijan Baroque subsumed under the term of Gesamtkunstwerk.

Juan del Encina’s Nativity Eclogues: A New English Translation

Juan del Encina has long been recognized as a crucial figure in Iberian drama, yet few of his works have been translated into English. Encina wrote plays, poetry, and music in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, and scholars have traditionally regarded Encina’s writing as a turning point in early Spanish drama, both because of the secular material included in his plays and because Encina supervised the publication of his own works. He is also credited with contributing to the professionalization of Spanish theater by depicting the court of his patrons, the Duke and Duchess of Alba, as a site of theatrical performance. Encina’s innovative dramas interweave courtly, religious, and pastoral drama with metafictional elements. Atiya presents translations of two plays included in Encina’s 1496 Cancionero, a printed compilation of poetic, dramatic, and musical works.

The Book as Object of Lay Devotion in Late Medieval Transylvania (Fifteenth-Sixteenth Centuries)

"Research on late-medieval religiosity in Central and Western Europe has shown that religious books were not only possessed, but also read, and sometimes even copied or disseminated by laymen. The need for a better definition of the relationship between the laity and the religious text leads to the formulation and intensive discussion of concepts such as devotional reading, culture of religious reading, or vernacular theology. Several examples of works that belonged to late-medieval Transylvanian laymen suggest the opportunity and, at the same time, the need to ask whether similar dynamics of pious behaviour can be discussed in their case. In order to provide a convincing answer, this study proposes an analysis of these books from at least three perspectives: theme, language, formal characteristics. The most interesting information is offered, however, by property notes, which suggest that the devotional potential of the book was not activated by reading, but rather by donation. By offering solutions to the everyday necessities of ecclesiastical institutions, these gifts were designed to ensure personal salvation as well. In order to support this hypothesis, I will also address another category of sources from which mentions regarding this kind of donations can be recovered, i.e. last wills. Keywords: religious books, devotional practices, pious donations, last wills, laity "

Gender and Protest in Late Medieval England, c.1400–c.1532

Abstract Women appear in our sources as active participants in outbreaks of revolt across the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. This should not be surprising, yet historians’ general silence on the subject makes it so. Most scholarly accounts up to the 1980s, and often beyond, portray revolt as a wholly male enterprise. If and when the subject of female participation is broached, it is concluded that women were little involved in public acts of dissent in England. Where historians do find women at the centre of civil unrest, they explain their presence away or relegate their complaints to ‘women’s issues’. By contrast, when men are involved, modern commentators decide that they speak for a ‘common good’, and devote considerable interpretative energies to deciphering what has spurred them into action, seeing—for instance—a wealth of meaning in protests about poverty, inequality or evil counsel. The operative logic is that women can speak only for themselves, men for others. Here we consider the documentary evidence for women’s participation in protest, and show that women were not necessarily driven by gendered motives. Defining their part is as challenging as defining that of male rebels.

Making Masters Moral: Household Subordinates and Upward Social Discipline in Late Medieval Basel

Abstract This article examines how late medieval non-nuclear household relationships shaped the pursuit of honorable social status. It examines in detail several witness depositions from the Basel municipal court (Schultheissengericht) in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. Historians have long noted the concern of householders to regulate the morality of their servants and apprentices. However, the study will demonstrate that subordinates could and did defend their own household honor by policing the morality of their masters and other household members, both through verbal shaming and through the distinctive strategic option of refusing to work. The importance of subordinates as arbiters of honorable status was recognized and exploited by individual masters, guilds, and courts; in the region around Basel, it could even be formalized in the written genre of a Schelmbrief (shame-document). Social discipline was not simply a question of householder-masters controlling their subordinates, but also the reverse.

The Document in the Hierarchy of Evidence of the Legal Process in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the Late Fifteenth Century and the First Half of the Sixteenth Century

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.

Plant Taxonomy: A Historical Perspective, Current Challenges, and Perspectives.

Taxonomy is the science that explores, describes, names, and classifies all organisms. In this introductory chapter, we highlight the major historical steps in the elaboration of this science, which provides baseline data for all fields of biology and plays a vital role for society but is also an independent, complex, and sound hypothesis-driven scientific discipline.In a first part, we underline that plant taxonomy is one of the earliest scientific disciplines that emerged thousands of years ago, even before the important contributions of the Greeks and Romans (e.g., Theophrastus, Pliny the Elder, and Dioscorides). In the fifteenth-sixteenth centuries, plant taxonomy benefited from the Great Navigations, the invention of the printing press, the creation of botanic gardens, and the use of the drying technique to preserve plant specimens. In parallel with the growing body of morpho-anatomical data, subsequent major steps in the history of plant taxonomy include the emergence of the concept of natural classification , the adoption of the binomial naming system (with the major role of Linnaeus) and other universal rules for the naming of plants, the formulation of the principle of subordination of characters, and the advent of the evolutionary thought. More recently, the cladistic theory (initiated by Hennig) and the rapid advances in DNA technologies allowed to infer phylogenies and to propose true natural, genealogy-based classifications.In a second part, we put the emphasis on the challenges that plant taxonomy faces nowadays. The still very incomplete taxonomic knowledge of the worldwide flora (the so-called taxonomic impediment) is seriously hampering conservation efforts that are especially crucial as biodiversity has entered its sixth extinction crisis. It appears mainly due to insufficient funding, lack of taxonomic expertise, and lack of communication and coordination. We then review recent initiatives to overcome these limitations and to anticipate how taxonomy should and could evolve. In particular, the use of molecular data has been era-splitting for taxonomy and may allow an accelerated pace of species discovery. We examine both strengths and limitations of such techniques in comparison to morphology-based investigations, we give broad recommendations on the use of molecular tools for plant taxonomy, and we highlight the need for an integrative taxonomy based on evidence from multiple sources.

Failing to observe holy days

Summary The implementation of canon law in the medieval ecclesiastical courts is an enigmatic issue. This article focuses on the types of defense arguments made by people accused of failing to observe holy days, as well as how courts judged such excuses. Even though failing to properly observe holy days – nonobservance – was a minor crime, the courts set a high standard when evaluating justifiable excuses for failing to observe holy days. The courts tended to reject most defense arguments. Despite the overall decline of the ecclesiastical courts in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, there was no decline in the high standards demanded by the courts in nonobservance cases.

Power in the metropolis: the impact of economic and demographic growth on the Antwerp City Council (1400–1550)

AbstractCurrent historiography endorses a narrative that the political elite of pre-industrial gateway cities became more ‘open’ in the wake of efflorescence and that their city councils became populated with merchants. Yet, according to the existing literature, Antwerp challenges this narrative, as the influx of merchants was very limited during late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries when Antwerp transformed from a medium-sized Brabantine city into the leading economic centre in western Europe. Moreover, scholars disagree on whether the economic expansion had any impact at all on the composition and profile of Antwerp's political elite. By analysing the social composition of the city council and how this evolved from the beginning of Antwerp's commercial expansion around 1400 until its apogee around 1550, I revisit the question whether Antwerp constitutes an exception to the established pattern of elite formation in gateway cities and, if so, why.

The Blue-and-White Tiles of the Muradiye in Edirne: Architectural Decoration between Tabriz, Damascus, and Cairo

Abstract In the second quarter of the fifteenth century, a new phenomenon appears in Ottoman architecture: tiles with blue-and-white decoration, associated with tile-makers from Tabriz. These tiles appear most prominently in the Muradiye in Edirne, completed in 839/1435-36. They mark the beginning of an aesthetic shift, away from black-line (or cuerda seca) tiles inspired by Timurid and Aqquyunlu models, toward the blue-and-white tiles and vessels of the so-called Baba Naqqaş style of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The mihrāb of the Muradiye features both kinds of tiles, thus illustrating this shift at its early stages. Within the parameters of an international Timurid style, the artistic production of this period (tile-work in particular) has been considered an offshoot of Timurid court patronage in eastern Iran and Central Asia. In the larger context of the fifteenth-century Islamic world, however, related tiles and vessels were also produced in Damascus and Cairo. This article examines the tiles of the Muradiye Mosque within the framework of artistic centers, the movements of motifs, objects, and makers, and their impact on architecture in the fifteenth-century Ottoman empire.

AFRICAN IVORIES AND EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH ANTIQUARIANS

In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, artists in West Africa made sophisticated ivory carvings specifically for the early Portuguese navigators and their patrons. In researching the history of the ivories, the records of eighteenth-century English antiquarians are a neglected yet important source of information. Such sources help to bridge the gap between the earliest references to Afro-Portuguese ivories in Portuguese customs records (as well as the inventories of royal and princely treasuries of the late Renaissance) and their re-appearance in nineteenth-century museum registers and the collections of private individuals.Especially valuable in this regard are the eighteenth-century minutes of the Society of Antiquaries of London, which enable us to trace the history of several African ivories associated with Fellows of the Society – in particular, Richard Rawlinson, Martin Folkes, Sir Hans Sloane, George Vertue and George Allan. In this article, the author reassesses two African ivories, an oliphant and a saltcellar, with specific reference to the Minutes of the Society of Antiquaries of London, shedding new light on the history of these beautiful objects.

Governance and accounting practices in the Fugger family firm at the beginning of the sixteenth century

This article discusses the governance and accounting practices of the Fugger family firm in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century under the leadership of Jakob Fugger II (1459–1525; hereafter Jakob Fugger). The Fugger family firm engaged in numerous enterprises, primarily centered on textile trading, banking, and mining of silver and copper. The management of the firm required sophisticated governance and accounting practices, knowledge of which Jakob Fugger appears to have acquired during his residence in the Venetian Republic in the years 1473 through 1487. At that time, Venice was the most important trading and financial center in Europe. When Jakob Fugger returned to Augsburg, Germany in 1487, he modeled the governance and accounting practices of his firm after those of the Italian city-states and eventually expanded the operations of his firm into one of the most important banking houses in sixteenth-century Europe, with more than a dozen branches and a multinational presence.

The Social Structure of the Real Estate Market in Old Warsaw in the Years 1427–1527

ABSTRACTThe article examines the operations of the property market in late medieval Old Warsaw during a period of economic expansion. Two major professional groups (merchants and craftsmen) are distinguished to indicate fundamental differences in their interest in the property market. While craftsmen accumulated goods, merchants sought profit in a quick resale. In addition, the consideration of separate groups such as nobility, clergy, peasants, and Jews, and the analysis of the size of the urban market revealed that the property market in Old Warsaw was dominated by burgesses. The comparison of the number of transactions with the number of newcomers granted citizenship revealed a fact overlooked in the literature, i.e. that the vast majority of migrants had a low economic status and could not afford to purchase their own property just after arriving in the town. This suggests that the rental market played an important role in providing accommodation for newcomers. The analysis also shows the steady and dynamic development of the property market in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. This evidence conflicts with suggestions of an economic crisis affecting late medieval Polish towns, at least for Old Warsaw.

Concurrence et collaboration dans le monde du livre vénitien, 1469-début duxvie siècle

RésumésLe début de l’imprimerie en Europe est l’histoire non seulement d’un grand succès économique et commercial, mais aussi de risques importants pris par les individus. Le nécessaire approvisionnement en papier est l’occasion de conflits et exige une disponibilité constante en capital ; la rentabilité de l’industrie du livre est soumise à une bonne appréciation du marché de la consommation. À Venise, n’importe qui peut se lancer dans l’industrie du livre et cette concurrence est amèrement décriée par les imprimeurs à la fin duxve et au début duxvie siècle. Cette situation les conduit à formuler les risques économiques qu’ils prennent dans les suppliques de privilèges qu’ils demandent aux autorités vénitiennes et à conceptualiser des réalités de leur milieu, en particulier la concurrence. Ce terme, toujours pris dans un sens négatif, est pourtant extrêmement rare dans les documents de la pratique comme dans les textes théoriques de cette époque. Cette formalisation de la concurrence est contrebalancée par la nécessité de collaborer au sein de cette industrie. Celle-ci peut être abordée par le biais de l’analyse des réseaux sociaux. La confiance est restaurée par les collaborations dans un groupe restreint et se nouent des réseaux de collaborations denses dans lesquels les concurrents deviennent partenaires. Cela permet aussi à certains acteurs de créer autour d’eux de largesconsortia, entraînant la constitution d’une économie oligopolistique, typique des industries sans réglementation étatique.

The Prestige and Decline of the Official (State) Language in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Fifteenth–Sixteenth Century): Problems in Belarusian Historiography

The status of the Ruthenian language and use of Lithuanian in public life in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (henceforth GDL) remains one of the most hotly debated topics in Lithuanian historiography. In this article, the use of Ruthenian (early Belarusian) is analysed as the official (‘state’) language of the GDL, as it is presented in the latest works by Belarusian and Polish researchers and Lithuanian language studies researchers. This analysis looks at the problems that arise when examining the flexible and extraordinarily dynamic use and interrelation of languages in the GDL in the 15th–16th centuries, which changed every few decades and was based more on customs and traditions than laws.

The Quaestiones libri Physicorum by Franciscus Marbres (alias Johannes Canonicus). Part II: Manuscripts, Printings and the Textual Tradition

This is Part II of a two-part study on the questions on Aristotles’ Physics by Francesc Marbres, the artist commonly known as “John the Canon.” Although written around 1330, only two fourteenth-century manuscripts preserve the work, but it became so popular around 1450 that dozens of fifteenth-century manuscripts containing the work survive and it was printed eight times from 1475 to 1520. Here the manuscripts and early prints are described, and then an attempt is made to trace the tradition of the text using structural differences, the colophons and variant readings in the question-titles and small passages. These three sets of data turn out to be insufficient for constructing a stemma; instead they provide evidence of extensive contamination, suggesting that many scribes and printers employed more than one witness. This conclusion reinforces what we learn from marginalia and from information about the Oxford curriculum: the questions on the Physics by the mysterious “John the Canon” played an active role in scientific education in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.

African perceptions of Europeans in the early period of Portuguese expeditions to West Africa

The aim to this article is to analyse the judgments and opinions of Africans about Europeans during the early Portuguese expeditions to West Africa in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. While opinions of Europeans about Africans are for that period certified by numerous and varied sources, the opinions of Africans are difficult to examine. Cultures of the West African coast in the fifteen and early sixteen century were illiterate. Local oral traditions do not go back – within the scope of this field of interest – to such distant centuries. There are two types of sources: Firstly, African statements written down in European texts, which require a particularly critical approach; secondly, some Africans expressed their opinions about Europeans in works of Art. These include the statues of Europeans from the area of present-day Sierra Leone (the Sapi people), and from the state of Benin (the Edo people). In this article the author examines: 1) the circumstances in which the Africans expressed their opinions (ad hoc meetings, political negotiations, trade, court ceremonies); 2) the authors (individuals or social and ethnic groups), which were attributed the judgments; 3) the content of speeches; and 4) the motives which guided the Africans. Then author compares individual cases, analyses the common characteristics and the distinct features of judgments and opinions known to us, and discusses the possibility of identification of general traits of Africans’ opinions about Europeans.

Preserving the Balance of Power in Muscovy

In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the successful reunification of Russia’s appanage principalities drained the pool of Orthodox princesses available to marry the grand princes (later tsars) of Muscovy. Foreign rulers often resisted Russian demands that brides convert to Orthodoxy, and the fiscal and cultural costs of finding wives abroad seemed to outweigh the benefits. But choosing a bride from one of the ruling boyar clans threatened to destabilize the balance of power at court. The Muscovite government’s solution to the problem of finding suitable wives for its rulers without undermining the existing political order was the bride-show. Martin argues that from 1505, when Grand Prince Vasilii III (1505–33) first sent messengers throughout his realm demanding that the middle service gentry produce its unmarried daughters for inspection, until Peter the Great (1682/89–1725) abandoned the practice in 1698 every Muscovite ruler and most male members of the dynasty in power chose their wives through a bride-show. In this way, the elite avoided having to deal with foreign cultural influences and largely prevented political conflict within the boyar clans, both outcomes considered potentially harmful to the state.