Holy Roman Emperor Research Articles

Girolamo Mercuriale Johann Crato von Krafftheim: Une Correspondance Entre Deux Medecins Humanistes ed. by Jean-Michel Agasse and Concetta Pennuto

Reviewed by: Girolamo Mercuriale Johann Crato von Krafftheim: Une Correspondance Entre Deux Medecins Humanistes ed. by Jean-Michel Agasse and Concetta Pennuto Andrea Carlino Jean-Michel Agasse and Concetta Pennuto, eds. Girolamo Mercuriale Johann Crato von Krafftheim: Une Correspondance Entre Deux Medecins Humanistes. Cahiers d’Humanisme et Renaissance. Geneva: Librairie DROZ, 2016. 342 pp. $78.00 (978-2-600-01875-3). Girolamo Mercuriale and Johann Crato von Krafftheim briefly met in Vienna in 1573 at the bedside of the Emperor Maximilian II. At that time, Crato was a physician employed at the imperial court; Mercuriale, a brilliant and renowned professor at the University of Padua, was summoned in Vienna to temporarily join the medical team gathered to deal with Maximilian’s poor health condition. This short encounter (Mercuriale’s visit in Vienna lasted no more than three weeks) [End Page 551] was the occasion that generated an intense correspondence between these two prominent figures of late sixteenth-century medicine. Crato, after an education in Wittenberg, Breslau, and Leipzig, moved to Padua to study medicine under the guidance of Giovan Battista da Monte, whose lectures, consultations, and commentaries on Galen he subsequently collected and edited. Crato rapidly acquired a good reputation as a practicing physician and, back in his country, gained the position of personal doctor of three subsequent Holy Roman emperors (Ferdinand I, Maximilian II, and Rudolph II). Girolamo Mercuriale also studied in Padua. He spent seven years in Rome (1562–69) as personal physician of the Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. While at the cardinal’s court, Mercuriale wrote the De arte gymnastica (1569), probably his most famous work. In 1569 he moved back to Padua, where he taught medicine until 1587, before concluding his academic career in Bologna first and finally in Pisa. The seventy letters published in the book under review are the extant portion of a denser epistolary exchange covering more than a decade: from their encounter in Vienna until Crato’s death in 1585. Only nine of the extant letters are written by Crato. Most of Mercuriale’s original ones are bound in three manuscripts of the University Library of Wroclaw, and six letters by Crato are held in the collections of the Ambrosiana Library in Milan. The book also reproduces five letters already published at the end of the sixteenth century: one by Crato in Antonio Riccobono De Gymnasio Patavino (1598); two by each author were printed in Crato’s Consilia et Epistolae Medicinales, edited by Lorenz Scholtz (1592–95). Jean-Michel Agasse, a scholar who has extensively published on Mercuriale, provides the transcription of the correspondence (the Latin text was established in collaboration with Concetta Pennuto), as well as an excellent translation of the original texts into French. The epistolary corpus is introduced by a conspicuous and useful essay of 130 pages where Agasse contextualizes and analyzes the content of the correspondence. Letter writing, in this period, constitutes a diffused cultural practice among doctors. It was primarily used for professional purposes, such as describing cases, comparing diagnoses, discussing old and new therapies, asking or proposing advices, and commenting on recent medical publications or new editions of ancient texts. These aspects are dominant in the Crato-Mercuriale correspondence, and some letters deal with characteristics particularly interesting for the specific field of early modern history of medical theory and practice: for example, the description of the autopsy of Maximilian II (pp. 144–147); some frank judgment about recent medical publications; and, above all, the discussion on contagion theory prompted by contemporary epidemics of plague (pp. 152–157) and catarrhal fever (pp. 212–231). Interestingly, the discussion on contagion reveals some divergences of the two physicians about the origin and diffusion of the epidemic diseases, as well as the rise of criticisms, doubts, and hesitations concerning the current and standard interpretation based on Hippocrates and Galen’s writings. In the introduction, Jean-Michel Agasse provides useful comments on most of these medical discussions (pp. 57–86), as well as on the recurrent concerns the two physicians express for their own health (both suffered from kidney stone disease) [End Page 552] or for that of powerful patrons (especially the emperor) or some mutual friends. However, the introduction is mostly...

The 1717 Convention of Amsterdam according to French Diplomatic Archives

The Amsterdam Convention, a treaty marking the alliance and mutual guarantees between France, Russia and Prussia and signed in Amsterdam on 15 August 1717, was, over the coming centuries, celebrated in France as the cornerstone of a permanent alliance which would withstand the vicissitudes of the revolutionary and imperial periods. While the impact of the treaty was limited in the short run, it was nevertheless the result of the tsar’s wish to integrate Russia into the new European order determined by the Treaties of Utrecht (1713) and Rastatt (1714) at the end of the War of Spanish Succession. In proposing this alliance, Peter I wished to detach Sweden from France, his ally from the time of Richelieu, or even take Sweden’s place in a diplomatic game where France needed to find a counterweight to the Holy Roman emperor’s power on the continent. He enlisted Prussia to assuage the misgivings of the regent and his minister Dubois, who were first concerned about preserving the triple alliance formed on 4 January 1717 in The Hague with their erstwhile enemies England and Holland. The analysis of the treaty documents kept in the Archives of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs provides valuable data as to the conditions of the first official negotiations between the two countries as well as what set them apart: Peter’s firm ambition to be legally recognised as a sovereign with power equal to that of the European princes. The seal of this triple alliance thus found itself confronted with a ceremonial issue: due to the refusal of the tsar and the Prussian king to give precedence to the other, the treaty did not take the form of three copies of a single text with three signatures on each, but a more complex form of six copies signed by the representatives of only two powers in order to uphold the principle of equality. The file kept in the French Diplomatic Archives thus contains two instruments with identical texts, one signed by France and Prussia, the other by France and Russia: it is this inseparable pair of documents that gave power to the triple alliance. The six articles and three secret articles of the text provided for a “close union” between the three sovereigns and brought their people together through trade advantages as the most privileged nation. However, the instrument still reflects France’s initial reservations, namely that the convention should not challenge the English alliance and France would only commit to acting as a mediator for re-establishing peace in the north (secret articles). It did, however, create favourable conditions for opening permanent embassies in the two countries.

Archduke Ferdinand’s Musical Parnassus in Graz

Archduke Ferdinand of Inner Austria was not only the dedicatee of the anthology Parnassus Musicus Ferdinandaeus – in itself a rich document of the future Holy Roman Emperor’s wide-ranging musical connections – but his court in Graz also became – on account of his personal music interests and the opportunities provided by carefully planned family connections – a major hub of the leading musical trends of the first two decades of the seventeenth century. The paper provides an overview of this intricate web forming Ferdinand’s musical “Parnassus” in Graz.

Ferdinand II.: From Inner-Austrian Archduke to Holy Roman Emperor

This paper provides a biographical and political overview of Archduke Ferdinand’s reign as a provincial prince of Inner Austria up to his election as Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in 1619. On the basis of subject literature as well as archival materials, light is shed on the political and military situation at the time the Parnassus was printed.

Calvinists and Lutherans: Contesting the European Reformation

Studies • volume 106 • number 424 431 Calvinists and Lutherans: Contesting the European Reformation Graeme Murdock A ‘Reformation’ tour of Dublin Dublin’s streets offer eloquent testimony to Ireland’s place in the history of the Reformation and to the city’s connections with developments in the mainstream of European religious life and culture. Some city centre churches have been abandoned in recent years as places of worship, but a sufficiently visible Christian presence remains to bear witness to Dublin’s long history of religious pluralism. Anglicans remain by far the most prominent among Protestant churches. However, from the middle decades of the seventeenth century Baptists also worshipped in Dublin, following the inspiration of early sixteenth century German, Czech and Dutch speaking communities. The city was also home to Presbyterians, following a reformed theology and ecclesiology developed in Zurich from the 1520s and in Geneva from the 1530s. There were also Quakers, worshipping from the 1690s in Eustace Street, with Presbyterians as near neighbours from the 1720s. If we walk from Meeting House Square to Nassau Street and then turn up one of the streets developed by Joshua Dawson, the Anglican church of St Ann’s offers a rather imposing nineteenth century neo-Romanesque façade. Arriving in St Stephen’s Green, in one corner stands a graveyard used by Dublin’s French Calvinist community from the latter decades of the seventeenth century. A Unitarian church from the 1860s stands in the opposite corner of the Green, representing a strain of thought revived by Italian, Polish and Hungarian intellectuals of the midsixteenth century. In the 1840s Methodists moved to the south side of St Stephen’s Green, worshipping in a neo-classical church built to mark the centenary of the conversion of the Wesley brothers. Turning down Earlsfort Terrace, we face an 1840s Palladian-inspired Presbyterian church. The Presbyterians have Lutherans for near neighbours onAdelaide Road in an 1860s church building. However, a Lutheran presence in Ireland had been established from the arrival of so-called Palatine Germans Calvinists and Lutherans: Contesting the European Reformation 432 Studies • volume 106 • number 424 in the early eighteenth century. Not far off, along Kevin Street, stands a 1760s church of the Moravians with their distinctive insignia of a lamb carrying a flag still visible. Moravians had endured a century of Catholic repression in their homeland, finding sanctuary from the 1720s at Herrnhut in Saxony thanks to Nikolaus von Zinzendorf. The roots of the Moravian church date back to the 1450s as a branch of the Utraquist movement known as the Unity of Brethren. The Brethren were inspired by the legacy of Jan Hus, who was burned as a heretic by the Council of Constance in 1415.1 One might argue, therefore, that, if we are considering the legacy of the Reformation after 500 years, we may (if Moravians are considered Protestants) have got our dates wrong. The Reformation’s unexpected legacy This brief tour of some of Dublin’s older Protestant churches provides a point of departure to discuss the theme of contesting the Reformation. Religious diversity was one of its clear consequences but it was an entirely unexpected legacy of Luther’s trouble-making about the sale of indulgences and papal authority from 1517. By January 1521 he had been excommunicated as a heretic in a papal bull. The Saxon electoral court argued that Luther should not be condemned without a hearing in front of the Holy Roman Emperor. Charles V instructed Luther to appear at the Diet of Worms. Pressed to revoke his opinions, according to the official transcript of the diet, Luther declared: ‘I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to act against conscience’. Perhaps, according to supporters, Luther may have added a final thought, ‘I cannot do otherwise, here I stand, may God help me. Amen’. He did not mean by these words to assert the right of individual freedom of conscience, and did not mean to suggest that conscience was some authentic inner version of self that struggles against externally-constructed norms. Rather...

Rudolf II & Bartholomeus Spranger: Rudolf II as the Patron of Spranger’s Mythologies and Allegories. Virtuosity and Maniera.

The court of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II in Prague was described by 17 th century German art historian Joachim von Sandrart as “the Parnassus of the arts”. Sandrart’s Dutch counterpart Karl van Mander went even further to praise Rudolf II as “the greatest art patron in the world at the present time”. Rudolf II’s involvement with art was two fold. He was an avid art collector with an enormous Kunstkammer, and he also was the ideal patron of art coveted by artists. Both his collection, which included works by Dürer and Titian, and his artists at court, reflected his imperial, cosmopolitan ambitions. This presentation will examine the visual language of the mythological and allegorical paintings commissioned by Rudolf II for his newly expanded palace in Prague. In particular, there will be a focus on the iconography and style of the paintings by imperial court painter Bartholomeus Spranger, with comparisons made to related paintings by fellow court painters Hans von Aachen and Joseph Heintz. Ultimately, the competitive nature of Rudolf II’s court, as well as the presence of a large art collection, encouraged Spranger as the imperial court painter to emulate, invent, and test his virtuosity in depicting subject matter. The result was seen especially in Spranger’s Metamorphoses cycle and allegories representing Rudolf II’s empire. Indeed, Rudolf II’s patronage of art became a sign of imperial power rather than a comforting hobby practiced by an out of touch ruler within the realm of Eastern Europe.

The history and tradition of the Precious Blood of Christ in Mantua

The relic of the Precious Blood of the Passion of Christ is kept in the crypt of the Basilica of Sant’Andrea in Mantua. Venerated over the centuries by popes and emperors, it was, according to tradition, transferred from Calvary to Mantua by the Roman centurion (later saint) Longinus, who had pierced the side of Jesus to verify his death (John 19.34). This devotional tradition was corroborated by historical testimonials and miraculous facts. The soil soaked with the Precious Blood was hidden underground, for fear of desecration, and then found again in two subsequent retrievals (in 804 and 1048 A.D.). Due to its donation to the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry III, a part of the relic finally arrived, through various vicissitudes, in Weingarten, a town now twinned with Mantua. Guardianship of the prestigious Christian relic rests in Mantua, with the Confraternity of the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ.

Drowning Winter, Burning Bones, Singing Songs

In 1587 the Flemish composer Carolus Luython, employed by Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, published an unusual motet collection in Prague. Titled Popularis anni jubilus, the collection describes the sounds and rituals beloved by Central European peasants, recasting them as the ecstatic songs of rustic laborers (jubilus) famously celebrated by Saint Augustine in his Psalm commentaries. Highlighting the composer’s collaboration with the Czech cleric who wrote the motet texts, this study serves as a corrective to the interpretative frameworks that have broadly shaped discourses on Central European musical and religious practices in the early modern period. To make sense of the print’s raucous parade of drunken revelers, mythological figures, honking geese, and the Christ child, this analysis sets aside the hermetic lens typically used to account for the cultural products of the Rudolfine court and turns instead to contemporary theological tracts and writings by Augustine and Ovid that were foundational to the literary worlds of Renaissance humanists. Doing so brings into focus an ordered sequence of motets that offers some of the earliest and most vivid documentation in Central Europe of lay practices associated with the major feasts of the church year, from the bonfires on the Nativity of St. John the Baptist to the drowning of winter on Laetare Sunday. At the same time, this study shows the extent to which such “folk” traditions, parsed along national lines since the nineteenth century, had in fact long occupied common ground in the diverse territories of Habsburg Central Europe.

New Fault Lines in Europe: the Political Consequences of Brexit

Studies • volume 106 • number 423 317 New Fault Lines in Europe: the Political Consequences of Brexit John Bruton The historic context of Brexit If one reviews European history over the period since the Reformation five hundred years ago, the role that England has sought to play in Europe has been that of holding the balance between contending powers. England used its naval strength, and the overseas colonies its naval strength allowed it to hold, to exercise that balancing European role. At no time in the last five hundred years did the UK seem to disengage from, or turn its back upon, continental Europe. Indeed, England felt it so much a part of continental Europe that Henry VIII actually contemplated being a candidate for Holy Roman Emperor. Rather, England sought to be sufficiently involved in Europe to exercise its balancing role effectively, but without being so intimately enmeshed in continental issues that it lost its freedom of action. England’s extension of its power to Ireland and Scotland were contributions to its goal of defence against, and influence over, continental Europe. That same motivation lay behind the decisions the UK took to go to war in August 1914 and September 1939 – maintaining a balance in Europe. The position that the UK held in the EU on 22 June 2016, the day before the Referendum, could be said to have been a perfect expression of that traditional English approach. The UK was having its European cake, and eating it too. The UK was a full voting member of the EU, but was exempted from aspects of EU policies that it might have found too entangling, like the euro, the Schengen passport free zone, Justice and Home Affairs cooperation and the Social Chapter of the EU treaties. But, as a full voting member, the UK could still influence the direction of the EU, and, if necessary, slow down developments it did not like, such as a major role for the EU in defence, where the UK preferred the job to done by NATO. The UK’s budget contribution had been modified through a rebate, and agricultural policy had been modified in a direction sought by the UK. New Fault Lines in Europe: the Political Consequences of Brexit 318 Studies • volume 106 • number 423 The UK, it could be said, had the best of both worlds the day before the referendum. It was sufficiently ‘in’ to exercise influence on the EU, but sufficiently ‘out’ to maintain the sort of freedom of action that befitted its historic role. Why Ireland sees the EU differently Ireland’s position is very different from that of the UK. It has different, but not incompatible, priorities. They explain why Ireland is determined to remain in a strengthened European Union. Ireland, like most of the smaller and medium sized powers in Europe, does not have the military or economic strength to exercise the sort of freedom of action that a bigger power, like the UK, France or Germany, could exercise. Whereas bigger countries might find European rules to be, at times, a slightly inconvenient restraint, a smaller country finds these common rules a source of protection, security and freedom. For a smaller country, the common rules guarantee it against unfair competition by an overweening bigger neighbour. They make the markets in which it competes predictable, open and free of arbitrary behaviour. The common rules that the EU makes, and enforces, enable a country like Ireland to compete on equal terms for international investment, something that would not be the case if bigger countries were unconstrained by a rule-based system. Even in fields in which it might not be directly involved, like defence, a smaller country such as Ireland benefits from the fact that bigger countries cooperate, through common organisations, like NATO and the EU, to preserve and defend a peaceful and secure space in its vicinity. Without peace in western Europe in the preceding fifty years, there would have been no Celtic Tiger in the 1990s! Now that the people of the UK have decided, in a referendum, to quit the European Union much is changed. The UK is going beyond the referendum mandate The UK government has decided...

Silver and Sanctified Bookkeeping: St. Eligius and the Smelting of Sin in the Wittenberg Heiligtum

Abstract This article examines Lucas Cranach’s renderings of two non-extant silver gilt reliquaries made in the likeness of St. Eligius from the electoral Heiligtu. in Wittenberg. The significance of Eligius’s dual roles as both a metalworker for the Merovingian kings and as the bishop of Noyon bestowed the prince-electors in Wittenberg, most notably Frederick the Wise, with the ability to cleanse their treasury of all sin associated with indulgences. To explain the prominent place given to Eligius’s image in the collection, the article investigates his connection to French royalty, Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV’s valorization of his cult, the meaning attributed to his image in vernacular legends, and the evolving administrative role of bishops across the Middle Ages.

Ambiguous Authority:Juan de Frías and the Audiencia of Santo Domingo Confront the Conquistador Antonio Sedeño (1537)

On May 19, 1537, in a region of the Pearl Coast, two armed factions of Spaniards challenged one another on the banks of the Unare River in what would become eastern Venezuela (see Figure 1). Licenciado Juan de Frías and his smaller force of about 80 men confronted a large party under the command of the conquistador Antonio Sedeño. Frías professed to represent the crown by charge of the Real Audiencia of Santo Domingo, which had bestowed on him avara del rey(staff of the king, symbolizing royal authority) and sent him off to arrest Sedeño. Sedeño likewise maintained that he had royal authority, citing hiscapitulación(contract of conquest) for the nearby island of Trinidad and letters from Empress Isabel, wife of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (King Charles I of Spain) and regent of Spain from 1529–32 and 1535–39. In their confrontation, both Frías and Sedeño claimed to represent the will of the king.

Concordia discordantium canonum Gracjana w kontekście sporu między imperium i sacerdotium średniowiecznej Europy

Primarily, Gratian is known as the author of the Concordia discordantium canonum and is regarded as the “Father of Canon Law” and the most famous canonist. In the title of the Decretum he included an idea which accompanied him during his work: it was reconciliation and coordination of inconsistent canons. As a lecturer of the School of the Law in Bologne he knew how important cohesion in law was and as a follower of the Gregorian Reform he knew, too, how important the Canon Law was in the dispute between imperium and sacerdotium. Both factions, i.e., the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope, in their right argumentation, appealed to the recognized authorities and the law. Both needed the law itself internally consistent as a source of these arguments. These issues, as mentioned in the title, are discussed by the author of the present article.

1611: Authority, Gender and the Word in Early Modern England. Helen Wilcox. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2014. Pp. xvi+253.

<i>1611: Authority, Gender and the Word in Early Modern England</i>. Helen Wilcox. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2014. Pp. xvi+253.

Autos-da-fé: The Roles of a Saint in Spanish Sicily

Autos-da-fé: The Roles of a Saint in Spanish Sicily

THE IMPERIAL CORONATION OF LEOPOLD II AND MOZART, FRANKFURT AM MAIN, 1790

ABSTRACTIn the autumn of 1790 Mozart undertook the penultimate journey of his life to participate in the coronation of Leopold II as Holy Roman Emperor in Frankfurt am Main. His attendance and performance at this significant imperial gathering were an investment designed to improve his fortunes. But Mozart's gamble failed. Though it was a key political event, and despite its significance as one of Mozart's final sojourns, not much more is known about the music of the Frankfurt coronation. This article offers a new understanding of Leopold II's imperial accession, positing the coronation as a vibrant context for music culture. Contrary to narratives that position Mozart's concert above all others, I argue that this was far from the case according to his contemporaries. During the coronation festivities the city hosted three theatre companies and many celebrated musicians, including Ludwig Fischer, Johann Hässler, Vincenzo Righini, Antonio Salieri and Georg Vogler, among others. Frankfurt was indeed filled with musicians who cooperated with and competed against one another in the hope of attracting substantial audiences comprised of the Empire's elite. Yet for Mozart, whose concert was poorly advertised and unfortunately timed, this competition proved too intense. By investigating the musical and political events of Leopold II's imperial coronation, I assert that Mozart's investment, which had the potential to alter his life forever, was unsuccessful in part because of a rumour that caused his desired audience to leave Frankfurt temporarily the very morning his performance took place.

The Apartments of Prince-Elector Charles Albert of Bavaria around 1740 and Their Ceremonial Use at Court

This article examines the layout, decoration and usages of the state chambers of the Residenz in Munich, in the period when its chief occupant, the Elector Charles Albert was elevated to the rank of Holy Roman Emperor in 1742. It situates these developments within the cultural and artistic exchanges of the eighteenth century between the houses of Bourbon, Habsburg and Wittelsbach, and the position often taken by the latter to straddle the differences between the other two families. Charles VII is shown to distance himself from the conventions of the imperial court in the usages of state chambers, aligning himself more closely with the French practice of being less guarded about his privacy. Not everything was pro-Versailles, however, and the new Bavarian emperor was careful to maintain German and imperial traditions, most notably in the use of mirrors in his decorative schemes, the key concept of the Reiche Zimmer, in part to outshine, not emulate, the Habsburgs in Vienna.

Charles IV 1978-2016: Reviewing the Ideological Background of the Exhibitions and Conferences in 1978

In the Czech Republic, the year 2016 saw nationwide celebrations of the seven-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Charles iv, King of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor (1316-1378). Dominating the event, a grand exhibition, titled “Emperor Charles iv 1316-2016, the First Czech-Bavarian Land Exhibition”, was organized by the National Gallery in Prague and the Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nurnberg and launched by both countries’ highest governemental and church representatives. From the perspective of 2016, the author looks back to similar yet completely different celebrations of the six-hundredth anniversary of the death of Charles iv in 1978 during the period of “normalization” in the Czech Republic. Based on archival documents, historical press, and exhibition catalogues, the article depicts the political backdrop of the similarly spectacular exhibitions held in Prague Castle, Nuremberg, and Cologne. In the socialist Czechoslovakia of 1978, the art of the Luxembourg Era was held hostage and exploited as a t...

Music in Vienna, 1700, 1800, 1900 by David Wyn Jones

Reviewed by: Music in Vienna, 1700, 1800, 1900 by David Wyn Jones Peter Höyng David Wyn Jones, Music in Vienna, 1700, 1800, 1900. Woodbridge, U.K.: Boydell Press, 2016. 277 pp. David Wyn Jones’s stupendous study manages to have the reader learn anew many facets of the seemingly standard musical fare of classical music in Vienna, albeit now through the lens of history, politics, and sociology. After all, when interpreting compositions by Mozart and the likes, one detaches them from their cultural and political contexts, which, more often than not, determine a great part of a composition’s aesthetic conception and confinements. While being familiar with the biographies of these composers is undoubtedly an integral part of the study of music, Jones could not have presented the convincing historical arc that is the subject of this work without his emphasis on the imperial city’s significance as a space to the musical domain. Ever since Friedrich Kittler published his Aufschreibesysteme 1800/1900 three decades ago, the vertical crystallization of time has proven to be a useful means for establishing a larger historical narrative that is not bound by the fallacies of an exhaustive, comprehensive approach but instead provides the advantage of showing significant shifts through limited time windows around the turn of a given century. Such is the case when Jones lays the groundwork in his brief but crucial introduction, explicating at its end the book’s structure in broad terms: “Baroque, Classical, Modern; Imperial, Aristocratic, Bourgeois, and Habsburg, Austria, Vienna” (6). The “1700” historical mark is the most liberally applied of the sections, as it covers the successive emperors Leopold I, Joseph I, and Karl VI, who “reigned as Holy Roman Emperor for a period of eighty-two years, from 1658 to 1740” (27). During this time period one can trace a continuous growth of the corps of musical personnel at court, and thereby document the main thesis of this first part that music “had a presence and a purpose that was inextricably linked with that of the dynasty itself” (27). As part of the aggressive Counter-Reformation, music at Leopold’s court had to serve the rituals of the Catholic Church. If there is one blind spot in Jones’s emphasis on religious politics under Leopold, it is that the anti-Judaism so intricately associated with his name is not touched on. In addition to religious music in this time period, Jones explores the importance of Italian opera, which arguably matched that of sacred music, and that of occasion-based ceremonial music, which helped to glorify the Habsburg dynasty on such events as the birthdays and name days of the emperors’ [End Page 159] family or the coronation of Karl VI in Prague in 1723. It was the composer and theorist Johann Joseph Fux who provided the coronation opera Costanza e Fortezza (59); reading the “thick description” of it that Jones provides, one begins to grasp the extent of the political utilization of this opera and opera in general for the sake of Habsburg unity. The second part, “1800,” begins where the first ended, albeit almost seventy years later at another Habsburg coronation. Mozart, “who was overworked and under-appreciated” (72), wrote his late opera La clemenza di Tito (1791) for the coronation of Leopold II, again in Prague. Having earlier provided the imperial court as the primary catalyst for Viennese musical life, Jones uses this comparison to emphasize continuity on one hand and the differences to come on the other. His brother and onetime emperor Joseph II had made, for example, an impact on the musical domain by decreasing the interest in ceremonial music, which had the effect of making such music a more public affair, and by promoting German as the main language for opera (78). Likewise does Jones stress the shift from the imperial court to the aristocracy as the leaders of both private and public tastes in music, best exemplified by the obvious influences of Baron Gottfried van Swieten, Prince Nicolaus Esterhazy, and Count Joseph Lobkowitz. Whereas these prominent families of the higher aristocracy are familiar names in music history, the uncovering of the “hidden history of women in music in this...

Dante Politico: An Introduction

Dante Politico: An Introduction Dennis Looney Writing around 1436, Leonardo Bruni pointedly took Giovanni Boccaccio to task for his romanticized biography of Dante, the first substantial study of the poet’s life,1 composed sometime after 1351. In his Life of Dante (1436), Bruni criticized Boccaccio for writing a work of fiction instead of providing an accurate historical account of Dante’s life: Mi parve che il nostro Boccaccio…così scrivesse la vita e i costumi di tanto sublime poeta, come se a scrivere avesse il Filocolo, o il Filostrato, o la Fiammetta.… Io adunque mi posi in cuore, per mio spasso, scriver di nuovo la vita di Dante con maggior notizia delle cose estimabili. Né questo faccio per derogare al Boccaccio, ma perché lo scriver mio sia quasi in supplimento allo scriver di lui. [I thought that our Boccaccio…had nonetheless written the life and customs of the sublime poet as if he had been writing the Filocolo, or the Filostrato, or the Fiammetta.…I then proposed for my recreation to write the life of Dante anew, with greater notice given to more valuable things. I do not do this to detract from Boccaccio, but in order as it were that my writings should supplement his.]2 The Florentine humanist and chancellor took it upon himself to balance Boccaccio’s version by emphasizing Dante’s political activity—he calls this emphasis a focus on “delle cose estimabili [more valuable things]”—in the period leading up to and just after his exile from Florence. To validate his approach, Bruni points to the archival record, informing his reader that he has seen one of Dante’s letters (83) and other documents to which Dante refers (88). The glimpse into the archive provides Bruni with the authority necessary [End Page 1] to present his new and improved reading of Dante’s life, a biography that includes political action and writing that was consistently attentive to the machinations of politics. Bruni’s hyperbolic correction marks the start of the long career of Dante politico, the ongoing reception of Dante as a political thinker and actor, and the reception of the vast array of politicized interpretations of Dante’s life and works over the centuries. As Bruni continues his biography, he emphasizes “la cacciata di Dante, e per che cagione e per che modo [the cause and circumstances of Dante’s banishment]” and he dwells on the poet’s life in exile, “delli affanni suoi publici [his public troubles],” before finally shifting to talk about Dante’s art.3 The focus is first and foremost on Dante as a political actor. Bruni and other humanists of the 1430s and 1440s—Filelfo, Palmieri, and Alberti, among them—began to use Dante to promote political and civic causes linked to Florence, thus overcoming the reservations about his work articulated first by Petrarch and sharpened by intervening humanists such as Niccolò Niccoli. This set the stage for the full-scale revalorization of Dante as a linguistic and civic model in Medicean Florence at the end of the fifteenth century, as seen in the contributions of Lorenzo, Poliziano, Ficino, and Cristoforo Landino. Landino’s chauvinistic commentary on the Commedia (1481) reinterprets the poem in a contemporary civic setting that emphasizes the classical underpinning of the vernacular literary culture embodied in it, and in so doing subtly recuperates Dante for Medicean political culture. Even if the Florentines could not literally bring home the bones of their poet who had died in exile in Ravenna in 1321—as they repeatedly tried to do—they could claim him through their carefully orchestrated interpretive work. Less subtle were the Protestant readings of Dante’s works between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries that cast him as a reformer on a par with none less than Martin Luther. Dante’s political career and exile, his criticism of the papacy for its extensive involvement in foreign policy, his steadfast support of the Holy Roman Emperor, and his belief that the two powers, spiritual and temporal, should be separated and distinct, made him into an unexpected symbol of liberty and gave him currency as a radical political thinker among English Protestants as early as the...

여성, 결혼, 문화 전파 : 오토 2세와 테오파노의 결혼식(972)

신성로마제국의 황제 오토 2세와 비잔티움의 테오파노의 결혼식(972)을 통해서 비잔틴 문화가 독일에 수렴되는 과정을 고찰하는 것이 본고의 목적이다. 특히, 테오파노를 중심으로 한 왕실 여성들의 역할과 이들의 상호 협력관계를 살펴보면서, 972년 이후 다양한 비잔틴적 전통이 독일 지역으로 전파되었음을 확인할 수 있었다. 이 과정에서 테오파노는 모국문화를 전파하는 문화 전도사로서의 역할을 적극적으로 수행하였다. 테오파노는 제국의 여성 통치자들과 강한 연대를 형성하였고, 왕실 수녀원은 문화 전파의 발판이 되었다. 성모 마리아와 정교회의 성인을 수호성인으로 선택한 교회와 수도원 설립, 성유물의 수입과 기증, 정교회 수도사와 학자 초빙, 정교회 전례의식 장려, 그리스어 서적 필사, 비잔틴 예술가 초청과 예술작품 제작지원 등의 방법으로 테오파노와 오토 왕실의 여성들은 비잔틴 문화를 서유럽에 이식시켰다. 외래문화에 대한 저항과 거부, 상층 엘리트 중심의 문화 전파 현상에도 불구하고, 모계 중심의 전파로 비잔틴 문화는 왕실의 보호와 지원을 받으면서 지배 계층 내부로 유입되었다. 이 과정에서 테오파노는 현지 주류사회와의 상호작용에도 소극적이지 않았으며, 상이한 문화를 수용하고 자신의 목적에 맞게 융합 내지는 활용하는 절충주의적 태도를 견지하면서, 모국문화와 서유럽 문화를 통합적으로 지향하는 모습을 보여주었다.