Late Fifteenth Century Research Articles

Tok Takia's Legacy in Ayutthaya, Thailand: Tracing Qadriyyah Circulations through the Bay of Bengal

This article fills some of the gaps in the secondary literature about the growing Muslim presence in the Siamese capital of Ayutthaya during the mid-sixteenth century. It does so by reconstructing the arrival of Tok Takia, a miracle-working Sufi missionary who arrived from somewhere in the Indian subcontinent. The study begins with a description of the Tok Takia Complex which consists of a mosque that once was a Buddhist temple and a maqam where Tok Takia was buried in 1579 before introducing references to the former in Thai primary sources. Before dealing with details about Qadriyyah presence across the Bay of Bengal, this research reconstructs the geopolitical and commercial developments from the late fifteenth century contributing to the growth of Muslim—and specifically, Kling Muslims—presence in Ayutthaya mentioned in a range of Siamese and Portuguese primary sources. This paper presents reasons for suggesting that Tok Takia’s missionary activism was connected to the Nagore-e-Sharif complex in present-day Tamil Nadu.

The Odae chinŏn (Five Great Mantras) and Dhāraṇī Collections in Premodern Korea

The Five Great Mantras (Odae chinŏn) is one of the most widely circulated collections of Buddhist dhāraṇīs in premodern Korea, having been published or existing in several variant editions during the Chosŏn period (1392–1910). The title refers to the following dhāraṇīs: (1) “The Forty-Two Mantras of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara,” (2) Nīlakaṇṭha-dhāraṇī, (3) Mahāpratisarā-dhāraṇī, (4) Buddhoṣṇīṣa-dhāraṇī, and (5) Uṣṇīṣavijaya-dhāraṇī. Another spell, “The Basic Dhāraṇī of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara,” was also added, so there are a total of six dhāraṇīs contained in the book. Although most scholarship has hitherto understood the Five Great Mantras to date from the late fifteenth century, when editions with transcriptions of the dhāraṇīs in the Korean script appeared in trilingual format along with Siddhaṃ and Sinitic transliterations, due to the patronage of Queen Insu (1437–1508) and the linguistic ability of the monk Hakcho (fl. 1464–1520), some evidence has come to light suggesting that the Five Great Mantras was initially published as early as the mid-fourteenth century in the late Koryŏ period (918–1392). This essay provides a detailed analysis of the components that appear in the Five Great Mantras by analyzing six variant editions of the text dating from the Chosŏn period, including Brief Transcriptions of Efficacious Resonance (Yŏnghŏm yakch’o) in Sinitic and Korean vernacular translation. The Five Great Mantras demonstrates the significance of non-canonical materials in the Korean Buddhist tradition and suggests a fruitful avenue for study of similar woodblock prints and manuscripts in the Sinitic Buddhist tradition.

Carnival in Africa

Carnival in Africa

The Reading Asabthani in Luther’s Translation of Matthew 27.46

This essay argues that Martin Luther’s choice of asabthani in Matt 27.46 instead of sabachthani in his source text, Erasmus’s 1519 edition of the New Testament, was based on the reading azabt(h)ani occurring in many editions of the Latin Vulgate printed in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Although Luther based his translation primarily on the Greek and Latin texts included in Erasmus’s Novum Testamentum of 1519, he repeatedly preferred readings of the Vulgate to those of Erasmus. This also applies to this reading asabthani in Matt 27.46.

Talk and Textual Production in Medieval England by Marisa Libbon

Reviewed by: Talk and Textual Production in Medieval England by Marisa Libbon Marcel Elias marisa libbon, Talk and Textual Production in Medieval England. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2021. Pp. 245. isbn: 978-0-8142-8113-0. $99.95. This engaging and elegantly written monograph explores the role of 'talk' in shaping the production and informing the reception of texts in late medieval England. It takes as its case study the figure of Richard I, whose reign in absentia and exploits on crusade catalyzed talk and textual production long after his death, and whose cultural legacy was harnessed to various ends, including to create a sense of national identity during the Hundred Years War. Two chapters are devoted to legal and visual sources, backed up by their contexts in a range of documents, while three others discuss the Middle English romance of Richard Coeur de Lion, preserved in one fragment and seven manuscripts spanning the early fourteenth to the late fifteenth centuries. Underpinning this emphasis on the Richard Coeur de Lion corpus is the belief that 'engaging with each manuscript copy of a text is essential to the praxis of close reading, historical studies, and manuscript studies' (p. 13). In the introduction, Libbon makes the case for an approach to literary history centering on talk. For her, the relationship between unwritten and written discourse is one of mutual influence: talking prompts writing, which elicits discussion and debate. Talk, Libbon argues, may be recovered by 'cross-reading different media in simultaneous circulation in a particular time and place' (p. 8) and by studying the variations among manuscript copies of a given work, for 'each manuscript copy in a textual tradition is a product of choice and relativism that preserves and responds to local talk and common knowledge or cultural memory' (p. 9). Each of the five chapters develops an aspect of her methodology. Chapter One opens the analysis counterintuitively, yet effectively, not with medieval talk but with modern scholarly talk about Richard Coeur de Lion, disseminated at conferences and preserved in articles, books, and editions. Libbon [End Page 155] argues that the scholarly tendency to focus on the more fantastical episodes of the Richard Coeur de Lion tradition (those featuring the king's demonic mother and acts of cannibalism, in particular) and to view the development of this tradition as one of consolidation (from fragmentary, historical base to 'complete' narrative, merging history and fantasy) paints a misleading picture of the extant manuscript evidence. This distortion may in part be ascribed to the shortcomings of the only published critical edition of the romance, the Austrian philologist Karl Brunner's 1913 Richard Löwenherz. This edition, Libbon shows, was influenced by talk circulating in Vienna at the time of its production, some of it by way of nineteenth-century England and Scotland. While otherwise persuasive, this chapter would have benefited from engagement with work that departs from dominant scholarly trends in either sidelining the cannibalism episodes (Lee Manion's Narrating the Crusades [2014]) or discussing their lack of popularity in late medieval England (my 'Violence, Excess, and the Composite Emotional Rhetoric of Richard Coeur de Lion' [2017]). The second chapter turns to the late thirteenth century, when Edward I's quo warranto statute required of royal subjects that they demonstrate in court continuous ancestral use of their lands and privileges since the reign of Richard. Focusing on verbatim and officially redacted legal testimonies, among other sources, Libbon argues that Edward's legislation gave rise to widespread, class-crossing public talk about the time of King Richard, which became a touchstone in the formation of individual and collective identities. Chapter Three discusses the uncaptioned battle images of Oxford, Christ Church, MS 92, an early fourteenth-century adaptation of the Secreta Secretorum made for Edward III. Libbon draws on visual, textual, and material evidence to reconstruct the talk and rumors that would have prompted contemporary readers to identify these images with Richard's siege of Acre in 1191 during the Third Crusade. The last two chapters challenge scholarship that views Richard Coeur de Lion as the product of aggregation and consolidation, from fragmentary to complete version, proposing instead that each manuscript copy reflects the active...

Clinging to a Jewish Saint in a Time of Growing Turmoil: Appropriating the Figure of Rabbi Judah the Pious in Late Fifteenth-Century Jewish Folktales from Regensburg

Abstract Among a unique collection of stories in Hebrew manuscript copied in the sixteenth century and found at the National Library of Israel (NLI) are twenty-seven hagiographic tales about the prominent Jewish pietist of Medieval Germany, Rabbi Judah the Pious (d. 1217) and his father Rabbi Shmuel ben Kalonymus. Scholars have suggested that the entire original collection dates back to ca. 1300 and echoes the lives, concerns, and ideals of thirteenth-century Ashkenazi Jews. However, some of the hagiographic tales found in the collection seem to have been written later, appropriating the figure of the mystical Rabbi Judah and using it in stories from the fifteenth century that were set in his city, Regensburg. Told by the Jews of this city, the tales of Rabbi Judah and his magical abilities seem to have fulfilled the needs and concerns of the community in the turbulent late fifteenth century. The paper analyzes three of these stories, demonstrating how they correspond with the realities of this time and suggesting the possible roles the tales of Rabbi Judah and his miracles played for Regensburg Jewry as they contended with the hardships of daily life and the shadow of expulsion that loomed large over the community in this period.

Converging on Cannibals: Terrors of Slaving in Atlantic Africa, 1509–1670

Converging on Cannibals: Terrors of Slaving in Atlantic Africa, 1509–1670

Clefs, Pitch, and Transposition in Vocal Music before 1600

Vocal music of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was notated in various combinations of clefs, including standard, high, and low arrays. While the instrumental practice of transposing music written in high clefs down a fourth or fifth in order to accommodate the natural ranges of human voices is amply and unambiguously documented from around 1600 onwards, it is more difficult to prove that a similar practice of adjusting the sounding compass to a normative pitch was applied to earlier vocal polyphony. Theorists from the late fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries, however, agree in recognizing the existence of just four basic male voice types (soprano, alto, tenor, and bass) and in limiting the ordinary compass of vocal music to 19-20 notes-the size of the gamut-a prescription that can only be understood as referring to a range of pitches, no matter on what notes that range might be written. A series of case studies of repertoire composed between 1450 and 1550 confirms that the principle of a limited compass was unfailingly respected in actual music. The only logical conclusion is that, no matter on what notes a piece is written, its sounding pitch was adjusted to a normative level.

The Unheard Voice of Law in Bartolomé de Las Casas's “Brevísima relación de la destruición de las Indias.”

Few authors of colonial Spanish American history are as well known as Bartolomé de Las Casas. Among his many works, Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias stands out as the most widely read and discussed, from its publication in the mid-sixteenth century up until our own times. David Thomas Orique joins the long list of commentators on this controversial treatise with a detailed study in which he proposes a legal reading. Indeed, Orique's central thesis is that the Brevísima relación is a text written for legal purposes and situated within an important tradition of legal literature in the Iberian world. Consequently, Orique takes a critical distance from certain interpretations of the Brevísima relación that see the work either as a historical and reliable denunciation of colonial violence or as a false and malicious criticism of the Spanish empire that would lay the groundwork for the creation of the so-called Black Legend.Orique's analytic strategy consists, to begin with, in reconstructing the context in which the text was produced. Following Las Casas's biography, the author describes the Spanish cultural and intellectual worlds of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries: the pedagogy in universities, the primary circulating texts, the most important theological and juridical traditions, and the political problems that framed the debates of the era, particularly those surrounding the colonization of the Americas. The author develops these subjects in chapters 2 through 5.After Orique describes the context, chapters 6 and 7 make an exact analysis of the Brevísima relación to explain Las Casas's treatise or, put in Quentin Skinner's terms, what the author is doing in his writing. To this end, Orique describes the work's forensic structure and rhetoric, the legal vocabulary utilized, the insertion of testimonies and probanzas in the account, and how the text was addressed to royal authorities. In this way, Orique shows that the Brevísima relación is eminently a legal text, linked to the legal genres of relaciones, denuncias, and peticiones, that aimed to transform how the colonization of the Americas was being carried out in favor of the continent's Indigenous inhabitants.Orique's central argument is not entirely original, as he himself notes. Since the middle of the last century, various studies on Bartolomé de Las Casas have recognized the importance of the legal dimension of his thought, to such an extent that he has been described as a jurist, a canonist, a public advocate, and a public prosecutor. Taking up this perspective, Orique makes a deeper and more detailed analysis of the weight that traditions of civil and canon law exerted on Las Casas's writings, especially on his Brevísima relación. Orique's meticulous review of this famous treatise provides Las Casas studies with solid arguments for understanding the Brevísima relación as a legal document.However, in my opinion, the main contribution made by The Unheard Voice of Law in Bartolomé de Las Casas's “Brevísima relación de la destruición de las Indias” is found in the chapters that reconstruct the context of the production of Las Casas's work. Through reading numerous treatises of the time as well as a broad historiographical review, Orique presents an overview of the Hispanic American thought of early modernity, of the discussions that defined the field of politics, and of the multiple political traditions and languages used within the Spanish monarchy. This is an excellent synthesis, set out in clear and entertaining prose, that works very well as an introductory text for students and nonspecialist historians who seek to study sixteenth-century Spanish American intellectual history. It will also, of course, serve those interested in Bartolomé de Las Casas, a key figure in the history of the Americas, Spain, and the world.

Conversion and Polemic in the Late-Fifteenth Century Ottoman Empire: Two Polemical Treatises Against Judaism

Two Jewish converts to Islam in the service of Bayezid II penned the earliest known anti-Jewish polemicals in the Ottoman Empire. This article aims at exploring the historical context of the two epistles and their connection with Islamic polemical literature. The simultaneous appearances of Abd al-Salam’s Risāla al-hādiya and Abd al-Allam’s Risāla al-ilzām al-Yahūd will be discussed in the context of the Sephardic influx to the Ottoman lands, an encounter that stimulated scholarly interest in the Jewish faith among Ottoman intellectuals. At first glance, the two treatises seem to be structured so as to persuade a Jewish audience to embrace the Muslim faith by abandoning their former religion. However, the choice of Arabic instead of Hebrew, and the circulation of the texts primarily among Muslim readers suggest that ad- dressing the Jews appears to have been a rhetorical tactic. Considering the negative connotations attached to converts by the Ottoman elite, the authors might also have viewed the composition of anti-Jewish treatises as an effort to distance themselves from their Jewish past.

What is a colonial treaty? Questioning the visible and the invisible in European and non-European legal negotiations

This article examines the use of the notion of ‘colonial treaties’ to describe the agreements that European states concluded with non-European polities from the late fifteenth century onwards. Given the absence of such a notion in international law treatises, the article first traces its genealogy before examining how it has influenced the scholarly understanding of legal negotiations between Europeans and non-Europeans. The article reflects, in particular, on the assumption that treaties signed with non-European polities were all ‘unequal treaties’ that revealed both the inequality of the political relations between Europeans and non-Europeans and that of their respective legal systems. Such an approach, it is argued, homogenises and simplifies the history of treaty relations between European and non-European polities. Finally, the article aims to remind us that the notions we use, often uncritically, have a history, and they are accompanied by presuppositions that influence the way we think about our subject of study and of which we need to be aware.

A multi-analytical characterization of fourteenth to eighteenth century pottery from the Kongo kingdom, Central Africa

Pottery traditions reflect the socioeconomic framework of past cultures, while the spatial distribution of pottery indicates exchange patterns and interaction processes. Material and earth sciences are employed here to determine raw material sourcing, selection and processing. The Kongo kingdom, internationally renowned since the late fifteenth century, is one of the most famous precolonial states in Central Africa. Despite the large number of historical studies relying on African and European oral and written chronicles, there are still considerable gaps in our current understanding of this political unit. Here, we provide new insights into pottery production and circulation within the Kongo kingdom. Implementing a multi-analytical approach, namely XRD, TGA, petrographic analysis, XRF, VP-SEM-EDS and ICP-MS, on selected samples, we determined their petrographic, mineralogical and geochemical signatures. Our results allowed us to correlate the archaeological objects to naturally occurring materials and to establish ceramic traditions. We identified production templates, exchange patterns, distribution of high-quality goods and interaction processes through technological knowledge transmission. Our results demonstrate that political centralisation in the Lower Congo region of Central Africa had a direct impact on pottery production and circulation. We expect our study to provide a sound basis for further comparative research to contextualise the region.

English Portions of the Marriage ordo in Manuscripts of German Provenance: An Edition of Two Middle English Texts in Hanover, Stadtbibliothek, Mag. 3, and Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 705

Abstract The two manuscripts under discussion are testimonies of two processes, both understudied: first, the codification of English portions in the marriage liturgy in late-medieval England, and secondly, the exchange of manuscripts between England and continental Europe in the later Middle Ages up to and including the sixteenth century. The English fragments in Hanover, Stadtbibliothek, Mag. 3, were reused in Germany in the late fifteenth century, while the Sarum missal in Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 705, must have travelled to its current repository in the late sixteenth century. Through the English portions contained in them, they contribute in unique ways to a corpus of marriage-related English micro-texts that can be sourced mainly from liturgical manuscripts and early prints. In what follows, I shall offer a description of the two manuscripts and provide information about their provenance and the transmission to their current German repositories. The English portions and relevant extracts from the Latin are being edited here for the first time, and I will situate them within the corpus of extant English marriage ordines.

A Socio-Historical Analysis of Machiavelli’s Political ThThought in ThThe Prince and ThThe Discourses

This theoretical socio-historical study tries to elaborate and analyze the place of power in the state in Machiavelli’s political thought. It will explore Machiavelli’s thought through his major works: The Prince, and The Discourses. In doing so, the study will try to answer the following major questions: To what extent does Machiavelli represent the realistic school of political thought? Was Machiavelli a Machiavellian? To What extent did he deserve his negative reputation? Why has Machiavelli’s use of the distinction between mean and ends in politics caused moral concern? The study illustrates the historical situation in Italy from the late fifteenth century to the mid-sixteenth century. The study will offer a detailed discussion of the concepts of Virtù and Fortuna which are central to Machiavelli’s theory of government. By bringing all these together, the study tries to demonstrate that Machiavelli was not amoral and that the maxim that the ‘end justifies the means’ attributed to him is inaccurate. Machiavelli has, indeed, become a synonym for ‘cunning, crafty, guileful, and deceitful’. Hence the term “Machiavellian” - is a concept that is likely to remain with us regardless of historical accuracy. This study also examines the place of Machiavelli’s Prince in the history of ethics and the history of leadership philosophy. The study argues that Machiavelli was not a ‘Machiavellian’, because he advances an ethical system for leadership that involves uprooting corruption and establishing rule of law. Machiavelli’s main arguments were stated in his two famous works, namely, ‘The Prince’ and ‘The Discourses’. Both can be seen as prescriptions for the maintenance of political stability in two different regimes: ‘Principalities in The Prince, and ‘Republics’ in The Discourses. However, it is not easy to understand either of the above without acute knowledge of the Italian state of affairs during Machiavelli’s time.

From Pathognomicha and Passiologia to Pathologia: concise history of a neologism (1486-1598).

SummaryThe etymology of the term pathology refers to one to the various ancient (Hippocratic, Galenic and Pseudo-Galenic) suggestions for subdividing the medical arts (medicinae artis partes), suggestions that came into print during the late fifteenth century. Multiple variants of the term initially served to denote “pathology”. Jacques Dubois’s reading list for medical students, first published circa 1535, ultimately popularized neo-Latin pathologia; it entered the English language, via the French, in 1597.

The Tsar’s Happy Occasion: Ritual and Dynasty in the Weddings of Russia’s Rulers, 1495–1745 by Russell E. Martin

Reviewed by: The Tsar’s Happy Occasion: Ritual and Dynasty in the Weddings of Russia’s Rulers, 1495–1745 by Russell E. Martin Maureen Perrie Martin, Russell E. The Tsar’s Happy Occasion: Ritual and Dynasty in the Weddings of Russia’s Rulers, 1495–1745. NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. Northern Illinois University Press, an imprint of Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY and London, 2021. xvii + 359 pp. Illustrations. Figures. Tables. Appendices. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £48.00: $59.95. In 2012 Russell Martin published a book about bride-shows in Muscovy (A Bride for the Tsar, De Kalb, IL), which the present volume complements by describing royal weddings from the late fifteenth century to the marriage of the future Peter III to the future Catherine II (‘the Great’) in 1745. The author has conducted extensive archival research for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in particular, and he provides a thorough and meticulous account of these ceremonies. Martin’s main focus is on the Muscovite period. His first three chapters deal with a sample of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century weddings in chronological order. For the sixteenth century he takes the 1526 wedding of Vasilii III and Elena Glinskaia as his main example; for the seventeenth century he focuses on the two weddings of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich (in 1624 and 1626) and those of Aleksei Mikhailovich in 1648 and 1671, demonstrating how at Mikhail’s weddings the earlier rituals were modified in order to create an aura of legitimacy for the new Romanov dynasty. The following three chapters discuss thematic aspects of Muscovite royal weddings. Chapter four considers marriages of Orthodox and non-Orthodox partners: Elena, the daughter of Ivan III, to the Catholic Alexander of Lithuania in 1495; Maria Staritskaia, a kinswoman of Ivan IV, to the Lutheran Magnus of Denmark in 1573; and the marriages of the First False Dmitrii to the Catholic Marina Mniszech in 1605 and 1606, the first of which took place by proxy in Cracow, and the second in Moscow. In the fifth chapter the author examines the three main categories of participants in the wedding celebrations: members of the dynasty; courtiers and servitors; and the relatives of the bride, noting that since brides were usually recruited from middle-ranking service families, the placing of their relatives at the weddings often required exemptions from the formal system of precedence (mestnichestvo). Chapter six is devoted to the exchange of wedding gifts, especially the distribution of gifts from the bride, as a means of securing the loyalty of courtiers and the prayers of the Church hierarchs. The final two chapters shift the chronology forward to the St Petersburg period. Here Martin argues that Peter the Great moved away from the aim of consolidating the dynasty that had driven royal weddings in Muscovy, in order to promote his own charismatic authority by personally dominating the ceremonies. Peter’s 1722 attempt to determine the succession having failed, however, subsequent [End Page 378] royal weddings reverted to dynastic preoccupations, complicated by rivalry between the Miloslavskii and Naryshkin branches of the family. Martin describes all of these wedding rituals in great detail, and his analyses of their symbolism are generally persuasive. The author is concerned not with the wedding service itself, since that was the domain of the Church hierarchy, but rather with the subsequent celebrations, which normally lasted for three days. In the Muscovite period, the main participants were courtiers, and the primary function of the occasion was apparently to promote the social integration of the court elite. It was only in the St Petersburg period that public processions enabled the monarch’s subjects to witness the marriages of their rulers. Martin, however, pays little attention to the changing audience for royal weddings, and fails to place these ceremonies in the broader context of Russian society. For example, he explains the removal of the remnants of pagan fertility rites from the rituals at the weddings of Aleksei Mikhailovich, and the elimination of the traditional rowdy entertainments, in terms of the tsar’s personal piousness. But the reformist ‘Zealots of Piety’ had been campaigning since the 1630s for the abolition of such improper behaviour, culminating in the...

연대와 협력의 네트워크: 서유럽 페스트 시대 미술의 위로

There was a long-standing tradition in Christianity to emphasize mutual support and solidarity among community members in a time of pestilence. It had great resonance in visual culture as well-particularly between the late fifteenth and early eighteenth centuries, when the bubonic plague constantly broke out in Western Europe. The images thematizing neighborly love and solidarity urged their viewers to offer a helping hand to fellow human beings. Simultaneously, they also reminded the viewers of the presence of the supporting community, often impalpable in the middle of a crisis. In so doing, the images offered relief and hope to those who suffered from the plague. While the key message remained the same, the thematic focus and visual strategies of those images changed over the course of time. In late medieval art, for example, communal penance to appease God’s anger or the charitable act to be rewarded by future salvation played a central role. Meanwhile, the concept of solidarity rooted in emotional bond between ordinary individuals in everyday life came to the foreground in sixteenth-century Lutheran visual culture. In the Roman Catholic church in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, heroic representations of the saints, who dedicated themselves to attending the sick, moved and motivated the viewers to help the plague-stricken.

Образ Тамерлана в «Повести о Темир-Аксаке»

Research objectives: The author investigates the evolution of the image of Tamerlane (Temir-Aksak) in the Russian chronicles of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to understand the specifics of his depiction in different chronicle texts. The author considers it important to analyze the dependence of the image of Tamerlane on the political situation in Russia. Research materials: Three important Russian chronicles of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: the Moscow chronicle dating from the end of fifteenth century, the Typogra­phical chronicle, and the Nikon chronicle. In addition, sources of oral origin are investiga­ted – particularly legends. Results and novelty of the research: In the original version (the Moscow collection of the late fifteenth century) of the Tale of Temir Aksak, his image had religious significance and was important for demonstrating the religious idea of God’s intercession on behalf of the Orthodox people. In this text, Tamerlane was presented as a very proud and vicious king who wanted to destroy Orthodoxy. Tamerlane was at war with the religion of the Russians, threatening the Russian Orthodox faith. In the second version of the Tale, found in the Typographic Chronicle, the formidable conqueror is presented as an insidious robber who decided to attack the sacred borders of the Moscow principality. The realization of this idea required an appeal to a Biblical theme. As a result, the plot was based on the story of the invasion of Israel by the Assyrian emperor, Sennacherib. At the same time, the editor of the second version refused to recognize Tamerlane as an authentic emperor. The third version of the Tale, found in the Nikon Chronicle, reflected a new perspective on the events of 1395. To strengthen the motive of divine intercession for Moscow, the author turned Temir Aksak into a real tsar, a formidable conqueror, and a very proud ruler. He decided to conquer the possessions of the Moscow prince though nobody, even the best commander, ought to be permitted to invade the domains of the pious sovereign. For the first time ever, this article shows the evolution of Temir Aksak’s image. The author demonstrates the relationship between its editing and the political situation in Russia. In the sixteenth century, when the Nikon Chronicle was compiled, it was important that Tamerlane was a strong king and a famous commander. But after the decision of the prince Vasily I of Moscow to bring the icon of the Mother of God there, we see God putting the conqueror to flight. Moscow’s prince is the exclusive ruler chosen by God.

Music, Ritual and Death in a Windesheim Community in the Early Modern Low Countries

Abstract The manuscript B 78741 held in the Erfgoedbibliotheek Hendrik Conscience in Antwerp contains the liturgy for the last rites, death and burial of a religious sister. Copied in the late fifteenth century, this small paper book hides its origins well. However, its Dutch rubrics and Latin texts make clear that the book is for the use of a community of sisters, led by a prioress, with the assistance of a priest. The rituals have aspects in common with those from other communities – the Dominicans, in particular – but they also have some striking differences. In the following article, I compare the music, texts and rituals held in the manuscript with those from known traditions. I argue that the manuscript was made for a community of Augustinian canonesses from the Windesheim congregation, most likely Beata Maria de Galilea in Ghent.

The Bristol Merlin: Revealing the Secrets of a Medieval Fragment by Leah Tether et al.

Reviewed by: The Bristol Merlin: Revealing the Secrets of a Medieval Fragment by Leah Tether et al. Aaron Kestle The Bristol Merlin: Revealing the Secrets of a Medieval Fragment. By Leah Tether, Laura Chuhan Campbell, Benjamin Pohl, and Michael Richardson. York, UK: Arc Humanities Press, 2021. The Bristol Merlin: Revealing the Secrets of a Medieval Fragment offers its readers multiple conclusions, tools, and innovations. Among these, a fairly long selection from a now inextant manuscript witness of the Suite vulgate du Merlin with facing translation figures prominently. On par with or perhaps more important than the textual edition, The Bristol Merlin contains a detailed and rich accounting of the fragments, their provenance, and their importance as historical artifacts. In the course of this accounting, the project team makes use of the fragments to show their readers something of the life of a manuscript and to explore the nature of the exchange of literature and culture between England and the Continent from a relatively early date in the rise of vernacular Arthurian prose romance, the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Furthermore, it is the team's explicit ambition to create in this book a model for the collaborative and interdisciplinary study of manuscript fragments. The Bristol Merlin is divided into two parts. The first contains four chapters: (1) "Codicology and Paleographical Analysis," (2) "Bindings," (3) "Provenance," and (4) "Redaction, Language, and Localization." The second contains a brief "Principles of Edition and Translation," an edition of the Old French text, and a facing modern English translation. Roughly half of the book serves as an exemplar of how to perform a holistic and detailed study of fragments; the other half constitutes a partial edition of a less common and fairly idiosyncratic version of the Suite du Merlin or Les Premiers faits du roi Arthur.1 The singularity of this witness is noteworthy. For starters, The Bristol Merlin contains a portion of the Suite vulgate du Merlin that is sometimes referred to as the Suite historique du Merlin (historical sequel) as opposed to the Post-Vulgate Suite romanesque (romance sequel).2 The Suite Vulgate is a continuation of The Merlin that transitions to the Lancelot-Grail Cycle. Moreover, the project team has determined that The Bristol Merlin is part of the α manuscript tradition as opposed to the β tradition according to the system of classification established by Alexandre Micha (1958).3 At present, the α version of the text remains unedited; however, an edition by [End Page 228] Richard Trachsler is forthcoming. The project team both acknowledges and makes frequent reference to Trachsler's project. Collaboration between Trachsler and The Bristol Merlin team appears to have been amicable and extensive as evinced by the team's use of the Trachsler edition in their "Table of Concordance." Nevertheless, The Bristol Merlin selection contains some unique elements, which the team addresses. In the first section of the book, the team uses paleography, language, marginal annotation, and every scrap of evidence available to trace the provenance of the fragments as far as possible. The team reaches several convincing conclusions regarding both the origin of the fragments and their journey to the Bristol Central Library. They propose that the manuscript from which the fragments came was written in northern France between roughly 1250 and 1275. It likely also contained the Estoire del saint Graal, the Estoire de Merlin, and possibly other texts from the Lancelot-Grail Cycle, though this cannot be confirmed. The team also concludes that, before becoming scrap, the manuscript likely made its way into England by the early fourteenth century. Though the book may have been in a private collection, the team makes an interesting case that the manuscript could also have been kept unbound as an exemplar text in the English book trade. Subsequently, by the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century, the book was scrapped and likely sold to a bookbinder in either Oxford or Cambridge for recycling. Both alternatives are pursued by the team and discussed in some detail. The fragments finally ended up as pastedowns and then flyleaves in a four-volume edition of the works of Gerson. Though the book may have taken any of a number of possible routes from...