Mid-fifteenth Century Research Articles

Behind Every Man(uscript) Is a Woman: Social Networks, Christine de Pizan, and Westminster Abbey Library, MS 21

London, Westminster Abbey Library, MS 21, a French lyric anthology dating to the mid-fifteenth century, bears the names of two male figures. Thomas Scales (c. 1399–1460), an English war commander, had his name and personal motto elaborately incorporated into the explicit of Christine de Pizan’s Epistre au dieu d’amours. Decades later, a Tudor reader added the name “Wyllam courtnay” to the manuscript’s margins. These two male names, physically visible on the surface of the manuscript, represent stable points of provenance data that provide important information about the use, meaning, and circulation of this medieval miscellany and the texts it contains. But how did Westminster 21 move from a fifteenth-century war commander to a Tudor courtier? A close examination of Westminster 21’s texts and marginalia reveals an invisible social network of female book owners undergirding the male-dominated historical record for this manuscript. This study traces a direct line between the two recorded male owners of Westminster 21 and finds that the compilation passes through several generations of women who married into homosocial male networks and built them up through their literary activities and social standing. By piecing together the available evidence surrounding Westminster 21’s male owners, we can produce an outline of the absent female presences in the history of this material artifact. We demonstrate that visible transnational, horizontal reading networks of men are invisibly and transhistorically structured by vertical female reading networks, rendering women’s reading practices integral to late medieval literary culture as a whole, rather than separable from men’s reading practices.

Byzantine Elements of the Material Culture of the Thirteenth-Fourteenth Century Bosporos (On the Example of 2018 Excavation Trench)

This paper is the first to address the problem of the presence of Byzantine imports in the material culture of Bosporos from the second half of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. So far the degree of “Byzantinization” of the coastal towns in the eastern Taurica, which were finally absorbed by the Golden Horde in the third quarter of the thirteenth century and remained in its structure to the mid-fifteenth century, is a topical issue in the mediaeval Crimean studies. Although the greatest part of the artefacts made in Byzantium, represented mostly by ceramic ware and discovered in the thirteenth-fourteenth century horizons and buildings of Sougdaia, has already been introduced into the scholarship, parallel finds from Bosporos never became the subject of analysis. The reason is the poor studying of the latter and almost complete absence of published materials. The materials of large-scale protective excavations conducted in Kerch in 2018 certainly deserve attention. The vast majority of these finds date from the seventh to twelfth centuries. However, the materials from the second half of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries stand out to become the subject of this paper. Unfortunately, they are highly fragmented, but allowing the one to determine Byzantine imports and to compare their composition and quantity with similar products of Sougdaia.

TATTERSHALL CASTLE AND THE NEWLY-BUILT PERSONALITY OF RALPH LORD CROMWELL

Tattershall Castle (Lincolnshire, UK) was built for the Lord Treasurer of England, Ralph Cromwell, in the mid-fifteenth century. Cromwell was a skilled politician who rose from relative obscurity via royal service; however, he never attained high social rank and made significant enemies in the royal council. He is noted to have been a prickly and self-righteous individual who wore his new-found status in society with towering pride. The architecture of Cromwell’s major building project at Tattershall offers clues towards his personality. Architectural details – grouped and repeated motifs such as ancient family armorials, the Treasurer’s purse and the truculent motto ‘Have I not right?’ – may reveal fault lines and anxieties about Ralph’s relative place in society as he struggled for political survival.

Alfonso V. i ugarsko-hrvatsko prijestolje

Strife and civil wars were the constant companions of dynastic change in late medieval Hungary. After the end of the Árpád dynasty, their Angevin and Luxemburg successors were forced to deal with rival contenders as well as factions of disgruntled barons, who were not above even imprisoning their kings in order to prove a point or force a concession. Charles Robert of Anjou, Sigismund of Luxemburg, Albert II of Habsburg and Władysław III Jagiełło all had to spend a great deal of effort, including open warfare, to obtain and retain their crowns. These repeated tensions resulted in the transformation of Hungary from a hereditary Árpád monarchy to a somewhat elective monarchy in the late Middle Ages. The process was neither complete nor absolute by the mid-fifteenth century, but the basic structure was in place. It was at this time, in 1447, that the sources reveal an offer made by the then regent-governor of Hungary, John Hunyadi to Alfonso the Magnanimous, king of Aragon and, more importantly, Naples. Hunyadi requested military assistance against the Ottomans and offered the Crown of St. Stephen in return. Negotiations mediated by a powerful Croatian count, Stephen II Frankapan, were in full swing from spring 1447 until the spring of 1448, with promises and details hammered out in the winter months and the beginning of the campaign scheduled for the summer of 1448. The death of Duke Filippo Maria Visconti of Milan in August 1447 diverted the attention and resources of King Alfonso, and he was consequently embroiled in the war of the Milanese succession. All he could offer to Hunyadi and Hungarian nobles in the spring of 1448 were empty promises, so that the negotiations broke down and their relationship withered away. The failure of negotiations does not, however, mean that the entire affair is not relevant or interesting for historiography. Quite the contrary: the very fact that the offer existed is revealing at several levels. Hunyadi was, at the time, the regentgovernor of a legally crowned and confirmed king, Ladislas V of Habsburg, which casts the offer itself in a rather treacherous light. That he was willing to make it regardless is a testament to his power and prestige in the kingdom, especially among the lesser nobility, who considered him a hero and a living legend. Furthermore, the fact that Alfonso reneged does not mean pursuit of the matter was merely a lark for him. He was, in fact, quite determined to build a network of allies and vassals on the eastern shores of the Adriatic, and he invested considerable resources toward that end, even donating large sums of money to a member of the Frankapan family at the end of 1447. Although there is disagreement among historians as to his aims on the eastern Adriatic, one can clearly see a purposeful policy behind his actions, which suggests that he may have considered Hunyadi’s offer very seriously, but it ultimately failed because he was overextended and he deemed Italy a priority. Croatian historiography should certainly consider Stephen II’s role with greater interest, as he was basically playing the role of king-maker at this time, which is, again, a clear sign of his own and his family’s preeminent status during this period of history.

The second anonymous Chronicle of Sahagún: Structure, writing and corrections of a text.

La Segunda Crónica Anónima de Sahagún narra las disputas entre el monasterio y el concejo de Sahagún por la jurisdicción de la villa entre 1229 y 1255. Se compone de sendas crónicas de cuatro abades y de dos prólogos, el primero sobre Alfonso VI y el segundo sobre los precedentes en el siglo XII de esta querella. Este artículo analiza varios aspectos de su contenido y lenguaje a partir del manuscrito más antiguo conocido –de mediados del siglo XV– para estudiar su proceso de redacción. Fue compuesta por uno o varios autores, en latín, en varias fases desde mediados del siglo XIII, luego traducida al castellano y, finalmente, corregido su estilo en el siglo XV, primero por el copista del manuscrito más antiguo y luego por otros monjes en la segunda mitad de siglo. En este largo proceso sufrió alteraciones e interpolaciones que no desvirtúan su valor como fuente histórica.

Temas y motivos de los discursos en prosa de la Academia de Nocturnos de Valencia

La aparición en España, a partir de mediados del siglo xv, de diferentes grupos eruditos reunidos bajo el nombre de «academias» supuso un creciente interés por el texto argumentativo previo al debate que generaban. Uno de los grupos más conocidos, por el nombre de alguno de los participantes y por la calidad de los textos que se presentaron, fue la Academia de Nocturnos de Valencia (1591-1594), alrededor de la cual sus miembros se reunían una vez por semana para leer poesía o discutir y polemizar a partir de ensayos, críticas, etc. En sus tres años de vida, la Academia de Nocturnos de Valencia celebró un total de 88 sesiones y se presentaron 805 composiciones en verso y 88 discursos en prosa. Este trabajo pretende clasificar esos 88 discursos en prosa y analizar qué temas predominaron en ese afán tan característico del Humanismo español del culto del hombre por el hombre.

A Florentine merchant’s visit to Canterbury Cathedral in 1444

ABSTRACT The article presents a hitherto unpublished text in Italian narrating a voyage to England and Flanders on board a galley undertaken in November 1444 by the Florentine merchant Mariano Ughi, which forms part of a quadernetto or ledger currently in an Italian private collection. The ledger is divided into two parts: the first contains accounts and information on Ughi’s business activity and network of contacts among the Florentine community of traders and bankers. The second, a diary, describes the towns and cities, monuments and pilgrimage sites he visited during the various stopovers. The core of the diary is dedicated to Ughi’s visit to the shrine of St Thomas Becket, in Christ Church Cathedral at Canterbury, with a detailed account which significantly contributes to our knowledge of the church and shrine in the mid fifteenth century, while revealing at the same time the pious practices of a contemporary merchant.

The golden age of mercenaries

Abstract Between the mid-thirteenth and mid-fifteenth centuries, Italian city-states abandoned citizen militaries for militaries composed of mercenaries: foreign soldiers for hire. So dramatic was the switch that this epoch has been called “the golden age of mercenaries,” and so treacherous did the mercenaries prove that Niccolò Machiavelli would later denounce them as “useless and dangerous.” Italian rulers knew of mercenaries’ infamous reputation when they hired them. To explain the puzzling fact that rulers hired mercenaries anyway, we develop a theory of military composition in which political circumstance constrains ruler choice. Comparative analysis of Venice and Florence provides evidence for our explanation.

Colonial Justice and the Jews of Venetian Crete. By Rena N. Lauer (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019) 292 pp. $69.95

<i>Colonial Justice and the Jews of Venetian Crete</i>. By Rena N. Lauer (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019) 292 pp. $69.95

Why Śrīdhara Svāmī? The Makings of a Successful Sanskrit Commentary

Śrīdhara Svāmī’s commentary on the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, called Bhāvārtha-dīpikā and composed sometime between the mid-fourteenth to the mid-fifteenth centuries, has exerted extraordinary influence on later Bhāgavata commentaries, and indeed, on Vaiṣṇava traditions more generally. This article raises a straightforward question: “Why Śrīdhara?” Focusing on the Caitanya Vaiṣṇava tradition, particularly Jīva Gosvāmī, for whom Śrīdhara is foundational, we ask, “What is it about Śrīdhara Svāmī’s commentary—both stylistically and theologically—that made it so useful to Caitanya Vaiṣṇavas and other Bhāgavata commentators?” This question, to the extent that it can be answered, has implications for our understanding of Śrīdhara’s theology as well as the development of the early Caitanya Vaiṣṇava tradition, but it can also lend insight into the reasons for Śridhara’s influence more generally in early modern India.

Opinions about perceived linguistic intelligibility in late-medieval Italy

Abstract This article contributes to the historical study of intercomprehension between speakers of closely related languages by focusing on Italy in the period up to the mid-fifteenth century. After an introduction to the topic, the second section will be devoted to methodological questions, including certain differences between research based on experimental testing and research based on historical evidence. The third section of the article reports opinions by medieval speakers about the intelligibility of different Italo-Romance varieties, and then compares them to opinions about genealogically and/or geographically more distant languages. While the dominant view among experts on Italy’s linguistic history is that speakers were trapped within mutually unintelligible vernaculars, this review of the extant evidence suggests a greater degree of intercomprehension than is usually supposed.

Sources and Resources John Bradmore and the Case of the Bitten Man: A Tantalising Link Between Three Medieval Surgical Manuscripts

Summary This article examines three English surgical treatises compiled between the late fourteenth and mid-fifteenth centuries. The earliest, a Middle English treatise dated 1392, appears to have been compiled by a surgeon practising in London (MS Wellcome 564). Near contemporary with this is a Latin treatise, Philomena, compiled by London surgeon John Bradmore in the first decade of the fifteenth century (BL MS Sloane 2272). The latest of the three, dated 1446, represents a translation/adaptation of Bradmore’s Philomena into Middle English (BL MS Harley 1736). All three treatises contain anecdotes of surgical cases, and just one of these anecdotes is common to all three manuscripts. Close analysis of this story is used to explore aspects of the practice and regulation of surgery in late medieval London, and also to examine the relationship of the three treatises and the implications this has for the sharing of texts and information among surgeons.

Between Rome and Byzantium: The Golden Age of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania’s Political Culture—Second Half of the Fifteenth Century to the First Half of the Seventeenth Century

Between Rome and Byzantium: The Golden Age of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania’s Political Culture—Second Half of the Fifteenth Century to the First Half of the Seventeenth Century

Characterization of the tectonic origins of historical and modern seismic events and their societal impact on the Azores Archipelago, Portugal

Abstract The Azores archipelago is located in the North Atlantic Ocean and consists of nine volcanic islands distributed along a general WNW–ESE trend, crossing the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (MAR) in the zone where three lithospheric plates (Eurasian, Nubian and North American) come across. To the west of the MAR, at the North American plate, the Corvo and Flores islands emerge from a present-day, relatively stable geological setting, while the other islands are located in an important seismically and volcanically active zone, corresponding to the boundary between the Eurasian and Nubian tectonic plates. Since the settlement of the Azores archipelago, in the mid-fifteenth century, several destructive earthquakes, such as the 1522 earthquake that severely affected São Miguel Island, and seismic crises with a significant destructive impact, have affected the region with intensities up to X (European Macroseismic Scale of 98 – EMS-98). The location of such events, either inland or offshore, is mainly related to the WNW–ESE structural system, which extends from the MAR to the Gloria Fault (GF). The instrumental seismic activity registered since 1997 has allowed improvements to the characterization of the present-day boundary between the Eurasian and Nubian plates.

The Image of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in Czech History Textbooks

Abstract The analysis of the content of Czech history textbooks regarding Poland-Lithuania focuses on the origins of the freedoms enjoyed by the aristocracy under the Commonwealth, then moves to identifying references to the Polish kings and other major figures from the mid-fifteenth century to the end of the eighteenth century, key events during this period and specifically to the sections of the textbooks describing the demise of the Commonwealth. The use and function of written, iconographic, and graphic sources in presenting these topics was also taken into account. The textbooks do not devote as much attention to the Commonwealth of Poland as they do to the early beginnings of Polish statehood (which were closely associated with the Czech nation). Nor does this period in Polish history attract as much attention as the country’s twentieth-century history. Nevertheless, the textbooks do contain some key information—and in some cases more information than might be expected—on Polish history.

Judging a Hereford hanging: Agnes Glover v. Walter Devereux, William Herbert and others, 1457

ABSTRACTThis article considers an appeal of homicide brought by the widow of a hanged Hereford man, the background to which was what R.A. Griffiths calls the ‘forcible arrangement’ by powerful men of Herefordshire and the Welsh marches of the trial and execution of those said to have been guilty of murdering Watkin Vaughan of Bredwardine. While this incident has been considered in the context of disorder perpetrated in England, Wales and the Marches by particular families and affinities, and the efficiency or otherwise of royal justice in the mid-fifteenth century, some of its legal aspects have not been explored, and, in particular, it has generally been overlooked that the case was deemed worthy of a report, so that its essentials could be preserved for the instruction of common lawyers (YB Pasch. 35 Hen. VI f. 57b). This article draws on information from this Year Book report and the records of the King’s Bench, and argues that limitations on existing legal processes should form part of historians’ consideration of criminal justice in the mid-fifteenth century.

Syllable and diphthong classification in the medieval Welsh bardic grammars

ABSTRACTThe medieval Welsh bardic grammars, known as ‘Gramadegau’r Penceirddiaid,’ include an extensive system of classification to describe syllable and diphthong types. While much of the rest of the linguistic description in the bardic grammars is heavily Latinate, this section is apparently innovative and oriented towards the demands of bardic composition. The syllables and diphthongs section is extensively revised over the course of its transmission, and either expanded or contracted depending on the aims and purposes of its editors. This article examines the two earliest revisions, found in Peniarth MS 20 (c.1330) and Bangor MS 1 (mid-fifteenth century) as evidence of the changing function of the grammars over the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. A case is made for the increasing use of the grammars as practical pedagogical documents from the mid-fifteenth century.

Building a cob house in devon in 1461

Manorial accounts for Sidbury, Devon, in 1461 provide almost the full costs for rebuilding a village house. It was thatched, with cob walls and jointed crucks, probably of three bays with one room floored over, and the accounts contain the earliest known written mention of cob. The assumption of responsibility by the manorial lords for building work in the village appears to be a response to a relatively short-lasting economic downturn in the mid fifteenth century.

Fruit of the Orchard: Reading Catherine of Siena in Late Medieval and Early Modern England by Jennifer N. Brown

Reviewed by: Fruit of the Orchard: Reading Catherine of Siena in Late Medieval and Early Modern England by Jennifer N. Brown Luke Penkett (bio) Fruit of the Orchard: Reading Catherine of Siena in Late Medieval and Early Modern England. By Jennifer N. Brown. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019. xvi, 314 pp. $75.00 Fruit of the Orchard has been a decade in the writing: it was worth waiting for. During this time Jennifer N. Brown, Professor and Chair of English and World Literatures at Marymount Manhattan College, has given papers to fellow medievalists on her subject, received invaluable feedback from a number of other scholars, and thoroughly explored Siena, tracking down Catherine’s landmarks. Brown’s meticulous work shines out on every page and it is a delight to read. In this, her first monograph, Brown builds on the scholarship of the past decade or so, developing the research of Suzanne Noffke’s publication of Catherine’s Dialogo and letters in translation, Jeffrey F. Hamburger and Gabriela Sighnori’s A Companion to Catherine of Siena, and, more specifically, Rebecca Krug’s Reading Families: Women’s Literate Practice in Late Medieval England and Nancy Bradley Warren’s The Embodied Word: Female Spiritualities, Contested Orthodoxies, and English Religious Cultures, 1350–1700. The book opens with four English depictions of Catherine: two from rood screens (at Torbryan and Horsham), and two from Wynkyn de Worde’s 1519 printing, delightful illustrations that help set the scene. Each of the five chapters are structured around an aspect of Catherine’s English textual tradition, a light one in England contrasted with a much fuller one in Continental Europe. An exceptional woman, by the mid-fifteenth century, Catherine was having a significant effect on insular vernacular devotion and Brown’s book teaches us much about English piety at this time and into the early seventeenth century. This effect was even more significant in France and the Low Countries. However, it is by examining these differences of audience, readership, and piety that English religious culture may be more clearly recognised and better understood. Part of the richness of such a study as Fruit of the Orchard lies in the fact that texts on Catherine herself are so varied – hagiographical, instructive, meditational – that the field worked on is a broad one, giving rise to explorations of provenance, production, distribution, and reception. Catherine’s letter-writing career begins around 1370 and there are 400 complete and incomplete examples of her correspondences. In 1374 the anonymous account of her and Raymond of Capua’s narrative appeared, with Le Orazioni, a collection of 26 of Catherine’s [End Page 265] prayers (mainly known in Italy) being composed around 1379. Before the end of that auspicious decade Catherine had begun writing her visionary text, Il Dialogo. This last text was translated into English three times and became known as The Orcherd of Syon. There are also Stephen Maconi’s letter (Maconi, Prior General of the Carthusian Order, along with Raymond and Gano Giudini, were among Catherine’s followers) regarding Catherine, an excerpt from The Orcherd of Syon, eight copies of a testimony of Catherine’s known by its Latin title as the Documento Spirituale and in English as The Cleannesse of Sowle, and three copies of Catherine’s Legenda maior. Wynkyn de Wolrde printed Raymond’s Legenda maior, The Lyf of Catherine, and The Orcherd of Syon between 1492 and 1519, whilst Henry Pepwell published extracts from The Lyf in 1521, and John Fenn issued a new translation of the Legenda maior in 1609. As with Richard Rolle’s English texts translated into Latin, and his Latin texts translated into English, and a number of Continental writers whose work is translated from Latin or one vernacular into another, Catherine’s texts are altered, in their translation according to audience and readership, location, time, and civic and ecclesial pressures. From ordinances and wills it is possible to discover something of the use and transmission of Catherine’s texts. Placing these discoveries alongside manuscripts, inscriptions, illuminations, rood screens, and dedications it is possible to see both the private and public “landscape of devotion to Catherine of Siena throughout England and, indeed, extending even to...

The stuffed crocodile of “Castel Nuovo” in Naples (Italy): new insights from ancient DNA and radiocarbon

In the present study, a stuffed crocodile displayed for centuries at the “Castel Nuovo” (New Castle) in Naples was radiocarbon dated and examined using ancient DNA analysis. The specimen was classified as Crocodylus niloticus based on its large body size and the mitochondrial DNA haplotype obtained, already described for a living population in Lake Nasser (Egypt). Radiocarbon analysis indicated an age of 585 ± 40 14C year BP, which coincides with the end of the Middle Ages. These results are commented in the light of Medieval religious symbolism and ancient legends which link the crocodile to the history of Naples during the mid-fifteenth century. The data obtained seem to confirm the explanation found in an old guidebook to Naples, according to which the stuffed crocodile was offered by a soldier returning from Egypt as an ex-voto to the image of the “Madonna del Parto” in the chapel of the castle. In addition, the radiocarbon dating shows that the individual analysed could be the oldest taxidermied vertebrate in Europe.