Latin Europe Research Articles

Early Urban Communes under German Law in Halyč-Volhynian Rus’ (the Thirteenth to the Mid-Fourteenth Century)

From the late twelfth century onwards, the German law became a universal organisational pattern of urban communes spread across Central Europe. Yet, the type of urban commune developed under the German law exceeded the limes of Latin Europe and the bounds of Central Europe, and extended to the area of Rus’ – notably, the Halyc-Volhynian Principality – in as early as the thirteenth century. The new communal forms emerged as a group law for the arrivals flowing in from the West, mainly the Germans. These organisations, alien to Rus’, emerged within the former, and still functioning, vernacular urban layouts – in the large political and commercial centres of Halyc-Volhynian Rus’. Their development in multiple forms can be traced: initially, settlement of a group of comers from the West – as in Chelm after 1240; a commune of foreign guests, led by an alderman – as in Przemyśl and Lemberg (Lwow, L’viv) before 1300; a self-governed commune – as in Volodimer before 1324; a law-based city – as in Sanok in 1339. These new developments were reflected in the terms used to describe the new realities: it was then, in the thirteenth century, that the word městic (‘burgher’) appeared in Old Rus’ian, a derivative of město (initially denoting a ‘locus’ later on, ‘urbs’).

The business of human trafficking: slaves and money between Western Italy and the House of Islam before the crusades (c.900–c.1100)

ABSTRACTBefore the First Crusade, the maritime cities of Italy imported precious objects from Islamic regions. The question of what they exported in return has long occupied historians. Due to the large economic disparity between Latin Italy and the wealthier House of Islam, human trafficking offered a strong profit opportunity to merchants from Amalfi, Pisa and other ports. This was because the price of a slave in Egypt or North Africa, at around 20 gold dinars, represented a large sum in the silver currency zones of Latin Europe, especially compared to low prices in Italy. Even moderate numbers of trafficked humans may therefore have provided the capital for further maritime economic expansion. Moreover, slaves offered a commodity with low infrastructure and transportation requirements, unlike bulk agricultural products, as well as unique advantages in market access, which suggests that slave trading preceded investment in other branches of commerce.

Abraham Ibn Ezra as the Translator of Astrological and Astronomical Texts from Arabic into Hebrew: Sources and Methods

Abstract Abraham Ibn Ezra (ca. 1089–ca. 1161) was born in Muslim Spain, but his extensive scientific corpus, dealing mainly with astrology and astronomy, was composed in Latin Europe and written almost exclusively in Hebrew. Recent work on Reshit Ḥokhmah (Beginning of Wisdom), an introduction to astrology that is considered to be the zenith of Ibn Ezra’s astrological work, revealed that at least one-fourth of this text consists of translations or close paraphrases from identifiable and available Arabic astrological and astronomical texts. Relying on these findings, this paper identifies the Arabic texts Ibn Ezra drew on, shows where their Hebrew translations were incorporated into Reshit Ḥokhmah, and then scrutinizes his translation methods.

The Church of Georgia in War

In Western Europe the Church as an institution was integrated into the military system and was obliged to serve the monarchy. Apart from performing vassal duties, the Latin clergy frequently participated in military actions. Although the Church laws forbade clergymen to shed blood, there were many examples of the violation of this rule. The attitude of the Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire concerning the possible participation of the clergy in war differed significantly from that of Latin Europe. The Byzantine priesthood did not become involved in military actions. The Greek Church possessed neither military units nor vassal commitment to the Empire. Despite a very close relationship with the Byzantine Church the attitude of the Georgian Church to the issue differs from that of Byzantium and is closer to the Western practice. The feudal organization of Georgia conditioned the social structure of the Georgian Church and its obligations before the monarchy. Despite the fact that the Georgian Church enjoyed many advantages, it had to take part in military campaigns. The upper circles of Georgian Church dignitaries were accustomed to both conducting military campaigns or taking part in the combat. In regard to military activities of clergy, Georgian law was much more lenient than Byzantine, and in the case of necessity, it even modified Greek legal norms. The conflict with the Christian canons was decided in favor of military necessity, and it was reflected in the legislation.

International Comparisons of Emotionally Reactive Problems in Preschoolers: CBCL/1½–5 Findings from 21 Societies

Our goal was to conduct international comparisons of emotion regulation using the 9-item Emotionally Reactive (ER) syndrome of the Child Behavior Checklist for Ages 1½–5. We analyzed parent ratings for 17,964 preschoolers from 21 societies, which were grouped into 8 GLOBE study culture clusters (e.g., Nordic, Confucian Asian). Omnicultural broad base rates for ER items ranged from 8.0% to 38.8%. Rank ordering for mean item ratings varied widely across societies (omnicultural Q = .50) but less so across culture clusters (M Q = .66). Societal similarity in mean item rank ordering varied by culture cluster, with large within-cluster similarity for Anglo (Q = .96), Latin Europe (Q = .74), Germanic (Q = .77), and Latin American (Q = .76) clusters, but smaller within-cluster similarity for Nordic, Eastern Europe, and Confucian Asian clusters (Qs = .52, .23, and .44, respectively). Confirmatory factor analyses of the ER syndrome supported configural invariance for all 21 societies. All 9 items showed full to approximate metric invariance, but only 3 items showed approximate scalar invariance. The ER syndrome correlated . 65 with the Anxious/Depressed (A/D) syndrome and .63 with the Aggressive Behavior syndrome. ER items varied in base rates and factor loadings, and societies varied in rank ordering of items as low, medium, or high in mean ratings. Item rank order similarity among societies in the same culture cluster varied widely across culture clusters, suggesting the importance of cultural factors in the assessment of emotion regulation in preschoolers.

The use of antibiotics in the treatment of pediatric varicella patients: real-world evidence from the multi-country MARVEL study in Latin America & Europe

BackgroundVaricella is a highly contagious childhood disease. Generally benign, serious complications necessitating antibiotic use may occur. The objective of this study was to characterize the rate, appropriateness and patterns of real-world antibiotic prescribing for management of varicella-associated complications, prior to universal varicella vaccination (UVV) implementation.MethodsPooled, post-hoc analysis of 5 international, multicenter, retrospective chart reviews studies (Argentina, Hungary, Mexico, Peru, Poland). Inpatient and outpatient primary pediatric (1–14 years) varicella cases, diagnosed between 2009 and 2016, were eligible. Outcomes, assessed descriptively, included varicella-associated complications and antibiotic use. Three antibiotic prescribing scenarios were defined based on complication profile in chart: evidence of microbiologically confirmed bacterial infection (Scenario A); insufficient evidence confirming microbiological confirmation (Scenario B); no evidence of microbiological confirmation (Scenario C). Stratification was performed by patient status (inpatient vs. outpatient) and country.ResultsFour hundred one outpatients and 386 inpatients were included. Mean (SD) outpatient age was 3.6 (2.8) years; inpatient age was 3.1 (2.8) years. Male gender was predominant. Overall, 12.2% outpatients reported ≥1 infectious complication, 3.7% ≥1 bacterial infection, and 0.5% ≥1 microbiologically confirmed infection; inpatient complication rates were 78.8, 33.2 and 16.6%, respectively. Antibiotics were prescribed to 12.7% of outpatients and 68.9% of inpatients. Among users, β-lactamases (class), and clindamycin (agent), dominated prescriptions. Scenario A was assigned to 3.9% (outpatients) vs 13.2% (inpatients); Scenario B: 2.0% vs. 6.0%; Scenario C: 94.1% vs. 80.8%.ConclusionsHigh rates of infectious complications and antibiotic use are reported, with low rates of microbiological confirmation suggesting possible antibiotic misuse for management of varicella complications.

Punitive Damages: Reorienting the Debate in Civil Law Systems

Abstract Scholarly debates in a number of Latin American and European countries have recently focused on the legal institution of punitive damages. These debates have been primarily influenced by the Anglo-American experience with the institution. The dominance of an outcome-driven, interpretive approach to an inherently complex and contradictory practice in the prevailing Anglo-American scholarship on punitive damages, however, has seriously affected and likely distorted the comparative and normative scholarly debates over the introduction of the institution in countries that follow the civil law tradition. In this article, I argue that, in order to participate more meaningfully in the punitive damages debate, civil law scholars should, on one hand, refrain from attempts to improve the understanding of the Anglo-American practice while offering country-specific assessments of the authors’ own legal system’s (in)compatibilities with the institution; and, on the other hand, actively engage in thorough discussions regarding the fundamental theoretical grounding of the place of punishment in modern private law. The novelty of this scholarly approach will require private law scholars to acknowledge both the punitive elements currently hidden yet nonetheless patent in domestic private law practices of awarding damages and the constraining effect of the pervasively proclaimed yet easily disputable clear-cut line between private and public law.

Where Are the Unions? Workers and Social Movements in Latin America, Middle East, and Europe. SianLazar, ed. London: Zed Books, 2017.

Where Are the Unions? Workers and Social Movements in Latin America, Middle East, and Europe. SianLazar, ed. London: Zed Books, 2017.

Ibn al-Haytham, the Arab who brought Greek optics into focus for Latin Europe

Ibn al-Haytham remains an unknown figure in the development of optics from the ancient Greeks to Latin Europe. He put to rest the idea of visual rays being emitted from the eye, demonstrating vision occurs by intromission of light rays to the eye. Through observational experimentation he characterized the behavior of light and described many visual phenomena that are now considered visual perception. Ibn al-Haytham’s most significant work, Kitab al-Manazir was written in the eleventh century and was translated to Latin, as De aspectibus during the middle of the thirteenth century. Its introduction to Latin Europe stimulated the study of optics within the nascent universities of Europe and provided a model to conduct experiments and influenced natural philosophers for centuries.

SAT-193-Evolutionary relationship among hepatitis B virus genotype D in Latin America and Europe

SAT-193-Evolutionary relationship among hepatitis B virus genotype D in Latin America and Europe

Ustawodawstwo szkolne soborów od XII do pierwszej połowy XIV w. i początki jego recepcji w średniowiecznej Polsce - zarys problemu

The aim of the paper is an analysis of a broadly understood legislation of general councils which took place in an important period for the development of the then educational system and culture - at the height of the Middle Ages (12th-13th c.). While analysing the written records of synodal and council acts, several interesting aspects can be considered: the regulations related to the education of clergy (the diocesan ones, as the same issues concerning monastic orders were regulated by the inner legislation of general chapters), the organization of schools and teaching programmes, the records telling about the moralizing influence on the community of the faithful, and finally, the attitude of the Church toward the question of general access to education, including the functioning of universities. The presented study demonstrates a significant role of ecclesiastical school legislation for the development of the educational system in mediaeval Poland. Also, it can be noticed that all changes in this matter were the result of legislative activity of the Church but also responded to the educational needs of the contemporary society. The latter, in turn, stemmed from a general civilizational development of Latin Europe, the part of which were the lands being under the rule of the Piast dynasty.

Abstract OT3-04-03: KEYNOTE-756: A randomized, double-blind, phase III study of pembrolizumab versus placebo in combination with neoadjuvant chemotherapy and adjuvant endocrine therapy for high-risk early-stage ER+/HER2– breast cancer

Abstract Background:Although ER+/HER2– breast cancer has a better overall prognosis than other breast cancer subtypes, there is a high-risk subpopulation characterized by high-grade tumors and decreased sensitivity to endocrine therapy, higher responsiveness to chemotherapy and worse prognosis. A large meta-analysis of prospective studies focusing on neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) for treatment of stage I-III breast cancer demonstrated that increased pathologic complete response (pCR) rates at surgery were associated with improved survival. This correlation was observed across triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), HER2+ breast cancer, and high-grade HR+/HER2- breast cancer. Specifically, patients with a pCR after NAC had a 5-year event-free survival (EFS) rate of 90%, whereas patients who did not achieve a pCR had a 5-year EFS rate of 60%.Therefore, increasing pCR rates after NAC may have a substantial impact for patients with high-risk early-stage HR+/HER2– breast cancer. KEYNOTE-756 is a global, randomized, double-blind, phase III study of pembrolizumab (vs placebo) + chemotherapy as neoadjuvant treatment, followed by pembrolizumab (vs placebo) plus endocrine therapy as adjuvant treatment for patients with high-risk, early-stage ER+/HER2– breast cancer. Methods: Patients with T1c-2 cN1-2 or T3-4 cN0-2 grade 3 or grade 2 with Ki-67 ≥30%, invasive, ductal ER+/HER2– breast cancerwill be stratified by lymph node involvement (positive vs negative), tumor PD-L1 status (positive vs negative), ER positivity (≥10% vs <10%), and anthracycline dosing schedule (Q3W vs Q2W), and then randomized 1:1 to receive neoadjuvant treatment with pembrolizumab 200 mg Q3W or placebo in combination with paclitaxel (80 mg/m2 QW) for 4 cycles followed by (doxorubicin [60 mg/m2] or epirubicin [100 mg/m2]) plus cyclophosphamide (600 mg/m2) Q2/3W for another 4 cycles. After definitive surgery (± radiation therapy, as indicated), patients will receive adjuvant treatment with pembrolizumab (200 mg Q3W) or placebo for 9 additional administrations, in combination with endocrine therapy, which can be given for up to 10 years. Co-primary end points are pCR rate and EFS. Secondary end points are safety and overall survival. The global study will open in North America and Latin America, Europe, and Asia Pacific in the second half of 2018. Citation Format: Cardoso F, Bardia A, Andre F, Cescon DW, McArthur H, Telli M, Loi S, Cortés J, Schmid P, Harbeck N, Denkert C, Jackisch C, Jia L, Tryfonidis K, Karantza V. KEYNOTE-756: A randomized, double-blind, phase III study of pembrolizumab versus placebo in combination with neoadjuvant chemotherapy and adjuvant endocrine therapy for high-risk early-stage ER+/HER2– breast cancer [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2018 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; 2018 Dec 4-8; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2019;79(4 Suppl):Abstract nr OT3-04-03.

Property, Power, and Authority in Rus and Latin Europe, ca. 1000–1236. By Yulia Mikhailova. Leeds, Eng.: ARC Humanities Press, 2018. xvi, 231 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Illustrations. Figures. Maps. $115.00, hard bound.

Property, Power, and Authority in Rus and Latin Europe, ca. 1000–1236. By Yulia Mikhailova. Leeds, Eng.: ARC Humanities Press, 2018. xvi, 231 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Illustrations. Figures. Maps. $115.00, hard bound. - Volume 78 Issue 4

Before Copernicus: The Cultures and Contexts of Scientific Learning in the Fifteenth Century ed. by Rivka Feldhay and F. Jamil Ragep

Reviewed by: Before Copernicus: The Cultures and Contexts of Scientific Learning in the Fifteenth Century ed. by Rivka Feldhay and F. Jamil Ragep Matthew Stanley Before Copernicus: The Cultures and Contexts of Scientific Learning in the Fifteenth Century. Edited by rivka feldhay and f. jamil ragep. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2017. 344 pp. $120.00 (hardcover); $39.95 (paper); $39.95 (ebook). Once your name is on a revolution, you become special—uniquely worthy of attention, while your predecessors fade in importance. This has been the case for Copernicus for a long time. While historians of science have certainly tried to understand and explain his context for the last half-century or so, Before Copernicus represents a new, singular attempt to solve the "Copernicus problem" by focusing completely on the era before him—fifteenth century astronomy and how it was formed. This book is an attempt to reject efforts to find a single explanation for Copernicus, instead assembling a methodologically diverse group of [End Page 645] scholars to talk about him in a multicultural and multidisciplinary way. The introduction by Feldhay and Ragep provides an excellent review of the Copernicus historiography, against which they explicitly contrast themselves. They take as their point of departure the assumption (based on good evidence) that Copernicus was originally only interested in reforming the geocentric system of astronomy. And to do that, heliocentrism was not a necessary step. He chose to use that solution. Why did he do so? They do not accept "genius" as an answer. Rather, they contend that historians should think of knowledge in a dynamic way, as something that accumulates in communities and around problems. In particular, they say, there is increase in production of knowledge wherever there are boundaries crossed (language, discipline, or culture). In a highly unusual and refreshing move, they lay out all the historical assumptions and guideposts they are working with, and the conclusions they draw from them. The most important assumption is that they take the similarities between Copernican and Islamic hay'a astronomy seriously, and demand explanations for them. The book concludes that the Copernican system came from what the editors call multiple transformations along multiple paths—most importantly of the practices of Ptolemaic astronomy and of the social and epistemic status of astronomy. The eight chapters are divided into three categories: fifteenth century European social and political contexts, fifteenth century European intellectual and scientific contexts, and the multicultural background to the Copernican revolution. The individual authors try to establish what it was like to be a scholar of astronomy in that era, particularly in the specific locales where Copernicus would be learning and working. The core question that all the chapters touch on is: which Islamic astronomy texts likely laid the foundations for the Copernican system, and how did the ideas and practices in those texts arrive in Latin Europe? A crucial part of this puzzle is that, if Copernicus and his predecessors were indeed indebted to these Islamic astronomers, why did they never say so? None of those figures or texts were explicitly named by contemporary European astronomers. Nancy Bisaha's chapter is extremely helpful for making sense of this. She explains how contemporary European ideas about their own identity and their relationship with Ottoman civilization made it eminently reasonable that Islamic astronomy was brought to Italy by people either who did not know its origins or who deliberately obscured it out of social discomfort. As ideas traveled west they were changed or cloaked, consciously or unconsciously. [End Page 646] Chapters by Edith Dudley Sylla and Jamil Ragep make detailed cases for a technical genealogy between Islamic astronomy and the Copernican system, presenting the most concentrated and focused arguments available on this issue. Perhaps the most valuable chapter is the one written by Raz Chen-Morris and Rivka Feldhay on an essential epistemic foundation for Copernicus—the idea that astronomical observations do not necessarily speak for themselves, but should be interpreted according to the conditions of the observer. This volume's significance for world history is best exemplified by essays such as Sally Ragep's careful exploration of exactly what astronomy looked like in the fifteenth century Islamic world. These...

The new union avoidance internationalism

Since the 1950s, large management-side law firms have helped corporations in the USA resist union organising campaigns. Their sophisticated techniques and aggressive tactics have made it extraordinarily difficult for unions to organise in the private sector. Over the past decade, several large law firms that specialise in union avoidance have internationalised their operations, opening offices in Latin America, Europe and Asia, forming international alliances and using global standards to attack labour organisation and undermine labour rights. This article analyses the global union avoidance activities of the two largest management-side labour law firms in the USA: Littler Mendelson and Ogletree Deakins.

On What Were Oaths Taken in Christian Latin Europe in the High Middle Ages (12th-Early 14th Centuries)?

It is not surprising that oaths were used in all legal systems and in very broadly understood public and social relationships in Christian Latin Europe in the Middle Ages. The oath was commonly presented in various aspects of community life, that is, in political, constitutional, legal, economic, commercial, private, corporation, and religious matters.1 The oath as such and its use can be examined in a great number of contexts. But, in this paper we will solely focus on one of these. The topic discussed here are objects (paraments) on which oaths were taken. Lots of information about this issue is provided by iconography and written sources. These objects were subject to notable changes depending on the time and territory. This article focuses on such territories as England, France, the Holy Roman Empire, Italy, Sweden, Bohemia, Poland, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem in the period of more than two centuries of the High Middle Ages, from the twelfth to the early fourteenth century.

“Russian author” in 1739: Gottlieb Bayer, Ivan Taubert and the First Steps of Russian School Literary Canon

In the 1730s, the administration of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences redesigned the program of study at the Academy’s gymnasium. Their goal was to create an institution capable of preparing specialists not only for the Academy itself, but also for the civil service, which required people educated in both Russian and German. The regulation ( reglament ) developed by Georg Krafft in 1739, besides preserving the previous division of the gymnasium into Latin and German departments, redesigned the instruction offered by the German department to form a full curriculum, in which Russian-style instruction was as important as mastering the German language. This visionary project put together classes in which pupils whose native language was Russian would study in the same classroom as students whose native language was German, which led the Academy to develop a corpus of bilingual (German/Russian) textbooks. A key element of the syllabus was the study of “a Russian author” (analogous to the well-developed system of “reading authors” in European Latin schools), the first time this method had been introduced in a Russian school. Gottlieb Siegfried Bayer’s “Azov History” ( Begebenheiten von Azow , 1736–37), translated into Russian by Ivan Taubert (1737), was chosen as the set text. The whole syllabus provided by Krafft’s 1739 gymnasium regulation, as well as the book-selling practice of the Academy in the early 1740s, makes it clear that the selection of Bayer's book was not coincidental — it corresponded well to the Russian reading public's ideas about proper verbal composition. The marginal status of verse (poetry) in this structure, combined with the actors’ attention to questions of style, provide the basis for a new narrative for Russian literary history of the 1730s, centered around the collective work of the translators of the under-studied Russian Society ( Rossijskoe sobranie ), established in 1735. Such a narrative would consider the whole catalogue of books published by the Academy, whether in Russian or in other languages. DOI: 10.31168/2305-6754.2019.8.2.6

In the Camp and on the March: Military Manuals as Sources for Studying Premodern Public Health.

Historians tend to view public health as a quintessentially modern phenomenon, enabled by the emergence of representative democracies, centralised bureaucracies and advanced biomedicine. While social, urban and religious historians have begun chipping away at the entrenched dichotomy between pre/modernity that this view implies, evidence for community prophylactics in earlier eras also emerges from a group of somewhat unexpected sources, namely military manuals. Texts composed for (and often by) army leaders in medieval Latin Europe, East Rome (Byzantium) and other premodern civilisations reflect the topicality of population-level preventative healthcare well before the nineteenth century, thereby broadening the path for historicising public health from a transregional and even global perspective. Moreover, at least throughout the Mediterranean world, military manuals also attest the enduring appeal of Hippocratic and Galenic prophylactics and how that medical tradition continued for centuries to shape the routines and material culture of vulnerable communities such as armies.

The Baltic Crusades and ecological transformation: The zooarchaeology of conquest and cultural change in the Eastern Baltic in the second millennium AD

From the end of the 12th century, crusading armies unleashed a relentless holy war against the indigenous pagan societies in the Eastern Baltic region. Native territories were reorganised as new Christian states (Livonia and Prussia) largely run by a militarised theocracy, dominated by the Teutonic Order. The new regime constructed castles, encouraged colonists, developed towns and introduced Christianity, incorporating the conquered territories into Latin Europe. At the same time, the theocracy sought to maximise the exploitation of natural resources to sustain its political and military assets, as well as provision its subjects. Arguably the most important resource was represented by animals, which were exploited for a range of primary and secondary products. Excavations across the eastern Baltic have uncovered tens of thousands of faunal remains from archaeological contexts on either side of the crusading period. Traditionally studied in isolation, the zooarchaeological data is here for the first time compared across the conquered territories, supported with isotopic analyses and integrated with other paleoenvironmental and historical sources, revealing how the new regime appropriated and intensified existing livestock husbandry practices, whilst accentuating earlier trends in declining biodiversity. At the same time, agricultural changes led to improved feeding regimes, resulting in noticeable changes in the size of stock in some regions.

The end of an error: Bianchini, Regiomontanus, and the tabulation of stellar coordinates

Giovanni Bianchini’s fifteenth-century Tabulae primi mobilis is a collection of 50 pages of canons and 100 pages of tables of spherical astronomy and mathematical astrology, beginning with a treatment of the conversion of stellar coordinates from ecliptic to equatorial. His new method corrects a long-standing error made by a number of his antecedents, and with his tables the computations are much more efficient than in Ptolemy’s Almagest. The completely novel structure of Bianchini’s tables, here and in his Tabulae magistrales, was taken over by Regiomontanus in the latter’s Tabulae directionum. One of the tables Regiomontanus imported from Bianchini contains the first appearance of the tangent function in Latin Europe, which both used as an auxiliary quantity for the calculation of stellar coordinates.