Noble Patrons Research Articles

Rethinking the Medieval Visual Culture of Eastern Europe: Two Case Studies in Dialogue (Serbia and Wallachia)

This article explores how the visual culture of Eastern Europe has been studied and often excluded from the grander narratives of art history and more specialized conversations due to political and cultural limitations, as well as bias in the field. The history and visual culture of Eastern Europe have been shaped by contacts with Byzantium, transforming, in local contexts, aspects of the rich legacy of the empire before and after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. This study expands and theorizes the eclectic visual cultures of Eastern Europe during the late medieval period by focusing on two ecclesiastical buildings of the 14th century built under princely and noble patronage in regions of North Macedonia and Wallachia, respectively: the Church of St George at Staro Nagoričane, near Skopje, modern-day North Macedonia (1315–17) and Cozia Monastery in Călimănești, Wallachia, modern-day Romania (founded 1388). The 14th century was a transformative period for the regions to the north and south of the Danube River, establishing the contacts that were to develop further during the 15th century and especially after 1453.

Nobility, kinship and memory in Santa Eufemia de Cozuelos, the first female convent of the Military Order of Santiago

This paper refers to the noble patronage around Santa Eufemia de Cozuelos, the first female house of the Military Order of Santiago since 1186, based in the north of the Kingdom of Castile, during the second half of the thirteenth century. This patronage provided the convent with funerary spaces to perpetuate the memory of some noble Castilian and Leonese families whose members effected important land donations to the monastery, thus assuring prayers for the salvation of their souls. Unlike the vast majority of the many female monastic houses founded in the kingdoms of Castile and León in the Middle Ages, the lack of aristocratic founders, patrons or benefactors in all the female Jacobean convents in Castile and León since their founding until the second half of the thirteenth century, Santa Eufemia among them, is striking. The subject of this paper aims to determine how the Military Order of Santiago managed to attract to its first female house a whole group of noble lineages. The patronage of these noble families along the second half of the thirteenth century provided the Jacobean monastery with the noble prestige that many other Castilian female convents had from their origin and of which Santa Eufemia lacked, and furthermore, also provided the Jacobean convent with the most relevant territorial expansion of its monastic domain, precisely along this same period. A detailed revision of the available source material and bibliography allowed us to put together enough information to follow and verify this process.

«Ch’ëo dica gli gradi e la vertute». Una canzone filosofica di Nicolò de’ Rossi e le sue fonti

This article proposes an analysis of the philosophical canzone, Color di perla, by Nicolò de’ Rossi of Treviso. Written in the first quarter of the 14th century together with a commentary in Latin by de’ Rossi himself, the canzone is the first work that opens the well-known manuscript, Vaticano Barberiniano Latino 3953. The first section of the manuscript contains an interesting collection of texts that all share the common theme of virtue, and it had probably been compiled as a gift and sort of ‘admonition’ for Guecello Tempesta, de’ Rossi’s noble patron. Color di perla has for some time now been recognised as being a reply to Guido Cavalcanti’s celebrated canzone, Donna me prega, which is also present in the manuscript. Through a systematic study of the Latin commentary and its sources, this article aims first of all to clarify the philosophical scope of de’ Rossi’s ‘mystical’ interpretation of ‘true love’. In so doing, not only will the analysis provide a deeper understanding of Nicolò de’ Rossi’s position in relation to Cavalcanti’s canzone, but it will also shed further light on de’ Rossi’s relations with the cultural milieu of his time, in particular in his earlier years in Bologna, where the law faculty held close ties with the Dominican order.

Katarina Elizabeta baronica Raumschüssl, rojena Sauer, in njena loretska kapela pri celjskih minoritih

On 30 June 1692, the widowed Baroness Katharina Elisabeth Raumschüssl from the family of Counts Sauer of Borl established the sung Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Celje Minorite monastery. This previously overlooked deed of gift is important not only as a testimony to the Baroness's pious intentions and the connections between the Sauers and the Celje Minorites but also because of its reference to the Loreto chapel in the monastery church, whose extension and furnishing the Baroness financed as well, according to the deed. The chapel is another in a series of copies of the Holy House of Loreto, Mary's house from Nazareth, many of which were also constructed in Styria by the end of the 17th century, especially by noble patrons. The article presents the Baroness's family background, related to the veneration of Our Lady of Loreto, and discusses the most probable location and reconstruction of the chapel. Based on the interpretation of Ignacij Orožen's record and the 1813 plan of the monastery, the present article presents a well-argued thesis that the Loreto chapel was once located on the site nowadays occupied by the chapel of Our Lady of Lourdes in the succursal (formerly Minorite) Church of the Assumption of Mary in Celje.

Commercialism and Writers’ Alienation in George Gissing’s New Grub Street

George Gissing’s New Grub Street is set in the 1880s when rapid industrialization was transforming every aspect of Victorian society. Writers, who were once under the protection of noble patrons, were now subjected to brutal market forces. Those who could appeal to the public enjoyed unprecedented wealth and popularity, whereas those who held on to their artistic ideals and refused to compromise often ended up in poverty and neglect. New Grub Street is especially concerned with these changes and the impact on writers. Gissing delves deep into the commercial trend of his age and depicts the disintegrating literary world with unrelenting realism. Utilizing the theory of alienation, this paper analyzes the dilemmas facing professional writers in the commercial society, specifically, writers’ self-estrangement, social isolation, and cultural estrangement as depicted in New Grub Street. Since writing is both an intellectual and physical form of labor, the paper uses Karl Marx’s theory of estranged labor to analyze writers’ alienation in the writing process.

Ira Aldridge: The Last Years, 1855–1867 by Bernth Lindfors

Reviewed by: Ira Aldridge: The Last Years, 1855–1867 by Bernth Lindfors Dan Venning Ira Aldridge: The Last Years, 1855–1867. By Bernth Lindfors. Rochester Studies in African History and the Diaspora. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2015. xiv + 352 pp. $55.00 cloth, $24.99 e-book. Bernth Lindfors's Ira Aldridge: The Last Years, 1855–1867 is a fitting conclusion to the author's four-volume, in-depth biography of the African American expatriate actor Ira Aldridge, who spent most of his career in the British Isles and in Europe. Kate Roark, in her review of the first three volumes, called Lindfors's books "a gloriously deep history" (THS 35 [2016], 363). That assessment is certainly accurate, and Lindfors deservedly won the Theatre Library Association's 2016 Freedley Special Jury Prize for the work, which is the culmination of decades of research spanning multiple continents and myriad languages (this volume alone required Lindfors to utilize thirty-eight translators working in eleven foreign languages). The book is essentially an archive in miniature, with scores of letters, published reviews, and personal accounts reproduced fully. These materials take up roughly a quarter of Lindfors's text, providing a wealth of primary source material for future generations of researchers, as well as thorough documentation as to the archives where materials can be found. At times, the examples significantly outweigh Lindfors's own analysis: chapter 2 consists of five pages of reproduced documents about Aldridge's trial for seducing a married young woman [End Page 346] plus two pages of Lindfors's own writing. Furthermore, the book is gorgeously illustrated, featuring reproductions of playbills, newspaper illustrations, caricatures, photographs, lithographs, and even Aldridge's certificate of marriage to his second wife. Ira Aldridge is certainly deserving of such an in-depth study. As Lindfors notes in his introduction, Aldridge was loved by audiences, a "popular performer in a wide range of tragedies, melodramas, and racial farces" (1), and on his first continental tour, the subject of Lindfors's third volume in the biography, he had earned from critics and noble patrons "more honors, awards, decorations, and medals than any actor of his day had ever received" (3). Furthermore, Aldridge was immensely well-paid for his skill as a performer and the audience that his celebrity could draw; in 1857, he earned what would be roughly $381,000 in today's currency for "eight nights' work spread over four weeks" in Stockholm (64). Aldridge's exceptional success with popular audiences and many critics were not, as Lindfors repeatedly demonstrates, "color-blind assessments," since critics often commented, on the one hand, on "the irrelevance of race or skin color when assessing the ability of an actor" or, on the other, "attributed Aldridge's success to his race" (93). Several reviews quoted in the book utilize, quite casually and occasionally even seemingly in praise of Aldridge, racial slurs that are deeply offensive today. Despite its immense value and testament to Lindfors's skill as an archival researcher, the book has significant flaws. At times, it verges on hagiography: Lindfors clearly admires Aldridge for his "perseverance and talent" (1) and can pejoratively dismiss critics who disliked Aldridge's performances. Moreover, the narrative can be quite repetitive; since Aldridge's repertoire was relatively stable, many chapters consist primarily of what he was performing, where, and the critical response. This repetitiveness can perhaps best be illustrated by the titles of chapters 7 through 17: "A Short Break," "The Third Continental Tour," "Home Again," "The Fourth Continental Tour," "The Fifth Continental Tour," "The Sixth Continental Tour," "Taking a Break," "The Seventh Continental Tour," "Another Break," "The Eight Continental Tour," and "The Ninth Continental Tour." Such flaws are outweighed by moments that can make a reader gasp at encountering in theatre history moments and documents that illuminate the life of such a noteworthy performer, moments that remain clearly relevant in today's world. Frequently, these revelations come directly from the primary sources Lindfors quotes. For example, Aldridge, sounding not unlike twentieth- and twenty-first-century civil rights activists, was himself keenly aware of the conscious battle against racism that his race and celebrity allowed him to pursue. In a letter dated...

The Revelations of St Bridget of Sweden in Fifteenth-Century England

The foundation of the Brigittine Order in England at Syon Monastery in 1415 is just one indication of fifteenth-century English aristocratic interest in St Bridget. Syon’s book holdings show a steady focus on contemplative and visionary texts and their reach extended to Westminister and London where Syon’s noble patrons resided. Bridget’s Revelations were received by fifteenth-century readers in the form of extracts as well as the full text. The anonymous Contemplations of the Dread and Love of God borrowed from Bridget’s visionary work and was widely read by the laity. St Bridget had a formative influence on Margery Kempe and is one of the female mystics of the high Middle Ages who united contemplation with active ministry in the world.

St. Anne in Renaissance Music: Devotion and Politics by Michael Alan Anderson, and: Music and Riddle Culture in the Renaissance by Katelijne Schiltz (review)

RENAISSANCESt. Anne in Renaissance Music: Devotion and Politics. By Michael Alan Anderson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. [xvii, 345 p. ISBN 9781107056244 (hardcover), $99; ISBN 9781139899604 (e-book), $79.] Music examples, illustrations, tables, appendices, endnotes, bibliography, index.Music and Riddle Culture in the Renaissance. By Katelijne Schiltz, with a catalog of enigmatic canonic inscriptions by Bonnie J. Blackburn. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015. [xxx, 513 p. ISBN 781107082298 (hardcover), $135; ISBN 9781316309933 (e-book), $108.] Music examples, illustrations, tables, appendices, footnotes, bibliography, indexes (compositions, general).Popular devotion of the Middle Ages and Renaissance has received sustained scholarly attention, but despite some noteworthy studies, the musical aspect of the subject has lagged behind. The complex multidisciplinary research required to integrate music with liturgy, iconography, political and social history, and regional practices requires special patience, intuition, and skills. Only rarely is the function and impetus for a musical composition noted or implied, and texts set to music, though often drawn from liturgy or lay devotional books, were often altered to suit their musical purposes. Understanding the reasons and results of textual choices often requires sophisticated sleuthing. Michael Anderson notes, for art's sake was completely foreign to both the artist or composer and his noble patron. Art instead had a job to per- form, one that shifted according to circumstances. This principle would be easily grasped if the texts of the music for St. Anne . . . simply announced their functional intent. But such music does not exist (p. 3). Music for St. Anne spans the sacred, Latin-texted genres of the period: polyphonic motets, Mass Ordinaries, and liturgical plainchant. This book includes close readings of selected musical passages for all of these genres.A study focused on a topic rather than on a particular time, place, composer, patron, or musical genre or style brings together all of those entities, allowing a wide berth for discovery. The topical thread gathers related artifacts, beliefs, and stories not only across a generously proportioned Renaissance, but also from the predecessors of Renaissance ideas and customs. Anderson asks, How did Mary's mother, a woman not mentioned in the New Testament, rise to this lofty status, on a par with royalty and well suited to aid in maternity? (p. 1). Musical documentation of Anne's political force forges a trail to unexpected destinations and identifies her intimate ties to noble and royal families. Chapter 1 identifies Anne's attributes that were important to her devotees and shows their relevance to ruling families: the corporeality of Christ, motherhood, marriage, widowhood, noble lineage, female education, wealth, and well-being represented their most fervent beliefs, hopes, and ambitions. Anderson follows these tenets into the personal lives of the powerful patrons who called upon Anne.Plainchant frames the investigation, beginning with a versified plainchant Office for St. Anne preserved in the early-fifteenthcentury Turin Codex used at the Cypriot court of King Janus. The search for the genealogy of the Turin Office draws together threads from earlier studies, linking the Cypriot practices to English and French traditions with a common ancestor-a 1424 Benedictine breviary now at Oxford (Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson C. 489). The texts of the Bodleian breviary, in turn, point to a tradition that predates the official sanctioning of Anne's feast day in 1378. New musicological subjects radiate from the chapter's quest to identify a tradition of St. Anne Office chants: a little-known web of related sources, some far-flung; the practice of ordering Office chants by mode; the phenomenon of versified Offices; and the unique musical repertory of Turin.Anderson digs deeper: compared with the Office for St. …

The Making of Thomas Hoccleve’s “Series” by David Watt (review)

Reviewed by: The Making of Thomas Hoccleve’s “Series” by David Watt Elon Lang The Making of Thomas Hoccleve’s “Series” By David Watt. Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press, 2013. http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/M/bo14387537.html In The Making of Thomas Hoccleve’s “Series,” David Watt takes on one of Middle English literary scholarship’s persistent interpretive challenges: to characterize the thematic and formal unity in the sequence of disparate poems and other texts by the early fifteenth-century London poet Thomas Hoccleve that modern scholars simply dub the Series. Characterizing this compilation has been complicated by Hoccleve’s bibliographic record, which includes four surviving holograph manuscripts, one of which preserves a copy of the whole Series in Hoccleve’s own hand. Scholars have long been interested in the Series because of its pseudo-autobiographical narrative frame, in which a first person narrator named Thomas discusses the process of composing and assembling the book as it is being written—transforming it into something quite different from what he originally intended. This narrator also describes the process of recovering from a mental illness and reforming his moral reputation in his community, prompting numerous critics to analyze the Series in terms of Hoccleve’s psychology and rhetorical strategies. Watt, however, encourages us to view the narrative of Thomas’s ad hoc process of composition and compilation as a crucial part of the narrative of his illness and recovery. Watt argues that Thomas’s story about how his book changes over time as he imagines the needs of his readers serves as Hoccleve’s model for spiritual reform. Part of Watt’s argument is traditionally historicist, in which he reads the narratives of personal reform and textual assembly in the Series against the backdrop of the ecumenical Council of Konstanz (1414–1418) and its goal to reform the Church in the wake of the Great Schism. Hoccleve would have had this Council on his mind while writing parts of the Series due to his clerical work in England’s Office of the Privy Seal—through which the English government communicated with its ambassadors at the Council. While the conciliar context alone is an innovation in Hoccleve criticism, Watt grounds this reading in a detailed study of manuscript evidence to illustrate how Hoccleve conceptualized [End Page 134] the purpose of his texts and their functions for his readers. As such, Watt provides the most convincing account yet published on the formal and thematic unity of the Series. Watt finds this unity in the way the text dramatizes its “making”—its piecemeal assembly as both a composition and material book over time—as a model for personal moral reform. This model shows reform to be fraught with the same challenges as textual production: an individual’s own problems, external interventions by other people, and problems with unforeseen worldly circumstances. The strength of Watt’s argument is in how it rests on the premise that “the Series’ coherence as a unit of analysis depends on both literary and bibliographic principles” (14). With this multi-modal approach, Watt organizes his book into chapters that focus on each of the four surviving manuscripts that Hoccleve made himself, with a fifth chapter on one of the most significant scribal copies of the Series. In his first chapter, Watt considers how the various dedicatees of short occasional verses in Huntington Library MS HM 111 (which does not contain any part of the Series) compare with the audiences Hoccleve seems to envision for different parts of the Series. Watt’s comparisons reveal what he calls a “stratified” audience that includes members of the reading public, Hoccleve’s bureaucratic colleagues, and his noble patrons—each of whom were invited “to judge his texts by imagining how well they would have served the needs of other readers” (40). Although Watt does not consider this a call for empathy, he does suggest that an audience’s perception of other readers might lay the foundations for personal moral reform by considering other individuals as models. In the second chapter, Watt explains how fifteenth-century English readers voraciously sought redemption from sin in vernacular religious texts. As a representative example, Watt...

'A WONDERFULL MONSTER BORNE IN GERMANY': HAIRY GIRLS IN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN GERMAN BOOK, COURT AND PERFORMANCE CULTURE.

Human hirsuteness, or pathological hair growth, can be symptomatic of various conditions, including genetic mutation or inheritance, and some cancers and hormonal disturbances. Modern investigations into hirsuteness were initiated by nineteenth-century German physicians. Most early modern European cases of hypertrichosis (genetically determined all-over body and facial hair) involve German-speaking parentage or patronage, and are documented in German print culture. Through the Wild Man tradition, modern historians routinely link early modern reception of historical hypertrichosis cases to issues of ethnicity without, however, recognising early modern awareness of links between temporary hirsuteness and the pathological nexus of starvation and anorexia. Here, four cases of hirsute females are reconsidered with reference to this medical perspective, and to texts and images uncovered by my current research at the Herzog August Library and German archives. One concerns an Italian girl taken to Prague in 1355 by the Holy Roman Empress, Anna von Schweidnitz. Another focuses on Madeleine and Antonietta Gonzalez, daughters of the ‘Wild Man’ of Tenerife, documented at German courts in the 1580s. The third and fourth cases consider the medieval bearded Sankt Kümmernis (also known as St Wilgefortis or St Uncumber), and the seventeenth-century Bavarian fairground performer Barbara Urslerin.Krankhafter menschlicher Hirsutismus kann aufgrund unterschiedlicher Ursachen auftreten, zu denen u.a. genetische Veränderungen und Vererbung, verschiedene Krebserkrankungen und hormonelle Störungen gehören. Die moderne Hirsutismus-Forschung ist im 19. Jh. von deutschen Forschern initiiert worden. Die meisten europäischen frühneuzeitlichen Erscheinungen von Hypertrichose (dem genetisch bedingten Haarwuchs am gesamten Körper und im Gesicht) gehen auf deutschsprachige Eltern oder Förderer zurück und sind in Deutschland in den Druck gelangt. Bei Untersuchungen des Motivs des Wilden Mannes zieht die aktuelle geschichtswissenschaftliche Forschung in der Regel Verbindungslinien zwischen der frühneuzeitlichen Wahrnehmung von Hypertrichose-Fällen und Fragen der Ethnizität, ohne jedoch zu beachten, dass in der Frühen Neuzeit die Verbindung zwischen temporärem Hirsutismus und der krankhaften Verknüpfung von Unterernährung und Anorexie bekannt war. Im vorliegenden Beitrag werden vier Fälle von an Hirsutismus erkrankten Frauen neu analysiert, unter Einbezug dieser medizinischen Perspektive und unter Beachtung von Texten und Abbildungen, die meine jüngsten Forschungen in der Herzog August Bibliothek und an deutschen Archiven ans Licht gefördert haben. Die hier betrachteten Fälle betreffen ein italienisches Mädchen, das 1355 von Anna von Schweidnitz, Kaiserin des Hl. Römischen Reichs, nach Prag gebracht wurde; Madeleine und Antonietta Gonzalez, die Töchter des ‘Wilden Manns’ von Teneriffa, die in den 1580er Jahren an deutschen Höfen bezeugt sind; die bärtige Sankt Kümmernis (Wilgefortis), und die bayerische Jahrmarktkünstlerin Barbara Urslerin.

The Duke and the Stars: Astrology and Politics in Renaissance Milan by Monica Azzolini (review)

Reviewed by: The Duke and the Stars: Astrology and Politics in Renaissance Milan by Monica Azzolini Michael A. Ryan Monica Azzolini. The Duke and the Stars: Astrology and Politics in Renaissance Milan. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2013. xiii + 370 pp. Ill. $49.95 (978-0-674-06663-2). The intersection of astrology with the construction of political power is the focus of Monica Azzolini’s The Duke and the Stars: Astrology and Politics in Renaissance Milan. In her excellent book, Azzolini demonstrates that astrology in late medieval Italian courts, far from being some mere pastime or plaything, was central toward the fashioning of authority among members of the Italian political elite. This was especially so during a time of significant crisis, as the Italian peninsula found itself on the brink of external invasion at the waning of the fifteenth century. In particular, Azzolini studies how astrology was crucial within the world of the Sforza dukes of Milan. These Renaissance princes held astrologers in high esteem and patronized them to such an extent that every political and medical decision they enacted was done solely after extensive consultation with their resident court astrologer. A historian of science, Azzolini breaks new ground in fifteenth-century political history with her meticulous archival research. Over the course of five chapters, Azzolini traces this deep connection between astrology and Renaissance political praxis. She primarily analyzes the private letters exchanged between the dukes and their astrologers, plus the graduation papers of those students from the University of Pavia, which provided the Sforza dukes with their astrologers, although she also investigates imagery from late medieval and early modern manuscripts and incunabula. Her first chapter goes into extensive detail about both the scientific curriculum of study for astrologers trained at the University of Pavia and the techniques and principles that astrologers learned to cast horoscopes and genitures, as well as to diagnose and treat maladies. Her second chapter delves deeply into the sensitive role that astrological prognostications played in the political world of the Renaissance. This information was a double-edged sword, used to counsel a Renaissance prince and to provide valuable secret information for his enemies. Chapter 3, an in-depth study of the sickly, intemperate, and cruel Galeazzo Maria Sforza, demonstrates the role of astrological medicine in attempts to restore his health, along with the duke’s attempt to control the production and circulation of astrological prognostications about him on the eve of his 1476 assassination. Readers of this journal will find the fourth chapter of Azzolini’s book particularly germane, as Azzolini demonstrates the centrality of physician–astrologers within the Sforza court, those individuals who operated within the two disciplines, dispensing in equal amounts astrological medicine or astrological political advice when the heavens were most auspicious. Physician–astrologers such as Ambrogio Varesi da Rosate, specifically, were invaluable advisers for the Sforza dukes and occupied positions of prestige and power within their court. These physician– astrologers’ fortunes, however, waxed and waned with those of their noble patrons. For instance, the rise and fall of the astrologer Varesi was tied directly to the shifting fortunes of Ludovico Sforza, the focus of the fifth chapter of Azzolini’s study and, for all intents and purposes, the last of the Sforza dukes. Ludovico’s increasing [End Page 380] reliance upon Varesi to chart his every move, which sometimes bordered on the irrational, reflected his growing insecurity about the future. This culminated in the 1494 descent of the French in Italian affairs and the foreign occupation of Milan in 1499. Disgraced, Ludovico eventually fled Milan to later be incarcerated, ushering in a dour period when the arts and sciences suffered in Milan and studies at the University of Pavia languished. As his patron’s fortunes collapsed, so did Varesi’s, as he fell into ignominy, losing his possessions and his property. Scholars of premodern astrology, broadly, and those who work on the juncture of astrology, medicine, and political authority, specifically, will find a treasure trove of materials in Azzolini’s splendid book. In addition to being very familiar with the extant scholarly, especially Italian, secondary literature, Azzolini distills a great quantity of detailed information via her lucid and accessible prose...

"Sparta et Martha": Pfarramt und Heirat in der Lebensplanung Hölderlins und in seinem Umfeld by Priscilla A. Hayden-Roy (review)

Reviewed by: "Sparta et Martha": Pfarramt und Heirat in der Lebensplanung Hölderlins und in seinem Umfeld by Priscilla A. Hayden-Roy Almut Spalding "Sparta et Martha": Pfarramt und Heirat in der Lebensplanung Hölderlins und in seinem Umfeld. By Priscilla A. Hayden-Roy. Tübinger Bausteine zur Landesgeschichte 17. Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke, 2011. Pp. 392. Cloth € 34.80. ISBN 978-3799555173. In this refreshingly readable and superbly researched book, Priscilla Hayden-Roy convincingly argues that the long-held understanding of "Sparta et Martha"—Latin shorthand for "with pastorate comes wife"—created potentially conflicting expectations around 1800 especially for a generation famously celebrating friendship and the ideal of marriage for love. The subgroup of German society examined here [End Page 688] consists of Tübingen university seminarians trained to become (Protestant) pastors. Whether, however, such a graduate around 1790 really became a pastor and how successful he would be in this office largely hinged on marriage: on the candidate's attitude toward marriage generally and his personal choices of whether and whom he married, specifically. Those Tübingen seminarians understood that, whatever they thought about marriage for love, the reality was, in order to secure a pastorate, they had to marry. How this prospect impacted their life and career choices—that is the subject of this study. Particularly interesting and convincing is the book's multifaceted methodology. Hayden-Roy first examines the lives, careers and marriage choices of 119 "Stiftler," beneficiaries of the seminary foundation Tübinger Stift, who graduated between 1788 and 1792. On this basis Hayden-Roy identifies typical clergy career patterns. Secondly, she presents one family as a case study of successful clergy marriage alliances that resulted in a Württemberg "clergy dynasty." Finally, Hayden-Roy presents four individual biographies of that Tübingen seminary cohort to illustrate and underscore her argument—how the double expectation of marriage and pastorate impacted life and career choices. Of these four biographies, the last one is devoted to Friedrich Hölderin (1770-1843) who, as is well known, never married and never became a pastor. Hölderlin gets more attention in this study than his friends, about a quarter of the book, but Hayden-Roy's argument would stand even if he were not included. Despite several chapters devoted to Hölderlin, he is not the book's sole focus, though his name in the subtitle offers readers a mental hook for the cultural and geographic context of the study and increases its appeal for a range of disciplines. The typical clergy career pattern begins with a university graduate's lengthy period of poorly paid work before a first call to a pastorate. Those who waited for a call through the consistory, the regional church administrative body, would spend a decade in this holding pattern before landing their first pastorate around age 35. This also meant a celibate lifestyle at the very time in life when hormones would demand otherwise. (Based on firstborns' birth records, Hayden-Roy shows that as a group, clergy practiced celibacy quite reliably.) The wait for a pastorate could be shortened when a candidate took a pastorate directly subject to the authority of a noble patron. The drawback of such a job was that it often required marrying the widow or daughter of the predecessor, and usually paid less. In any case, assuming a pastorate and marrying usually took place within two months of each other. Resisting marriage effectively rendered a permanent pastorate elusive. Candidates who wanted to pursue a different career in the first place successfully avoided parish assignments by not marrying, but also had no economic security. These clergy career patterns are not unique to Württemberg, but rarely if ever have the details been documented so thoroughly and clearly. Hayden-Roy's study of marriage patterns among the family of Nathanael Köstlin (1744-1826) corroborates findings of kinship studies, namely that in the course [End Page 689] of the nineteenth century, marriage partners increasingly came from other clergy families, even cousins. This created a tight network of clergy relatives, including in high places, which in turn could prove lifesaving. For instance, in the Köstlin clan, the rare premarital pregnancy involving a...

Capgrave's Dedications: Reassessing an English Flunkey

John Capgrave, the fifteenth-century Augustinian friar, chronicler, hagiographer, and theologian dedicated his books to kings, dukes, bishops, his fellow clerics, and an anonymous laywoman. His large number of surviving dedications makes him an invaluable case study for the methods and functions of dedicatory writing during the mid-fifteenth century in England. This was a time of great political upheaval as Yorks and Lancastrians vied for the English throne. Capgrave addressed works to both houses and his switch of allegiance from Henry VI to Edward VI has been judged as contemptible flunkeyism by some commentators. This unduly harsh assessment shows little appreciation of the difficult networks of literary and political patronage that Capgrave so astutely negotiated and reimagined. In his dedications he adopts different modes of dedicatory address to suit each genre and audience, from panegyric biblical exegesis to the newly fashionable humanist style. Rather than banal pieces of abject flattery written in tired old forms, Capgrave's carefully crafted dedications recast literary patronage in distinctly pious terms. He reimagines patronage as a dynamic system of sacred obligations owed and repaid amongst a literary community of readers, writers, noble patrons, churchmen, and sometimes even the saints themselves.

Collective memory and personal memoria. The Carthusian monastery of Scheut as a crossroads of urban and princely patronage in fifteenth-century Brabant

This article analyses the use of memoria with respect to the Carthusian monastery of Scheut, a few miles to the west of Brussels. The construction of this monastery around 1455 was first intended to preserve the memory of the battle of Scheut of 1356 and of those who had died there, many of them citizens of Brussels. The establishment of the monastery as a monument to the battle is the central theme of the first part of this article, and the importance of chroniclers in the process of commemoration will receive a special focus. Moreover, we will disentangle the trilateral relationship between the town, the court and the monastery. This relationship is further explored in the second part. We explain how a second memorial layer was created by courtiers and patricians, who wished to be remembered by the local monks and devout visitors. Especially the officers of the Burgundian and (later Habsburg) state were eager to become associated with the monastery, through a personalised memorial. Some of these officers were instrumental in establishing links between the monastery and its high-ranking, noble patrons, most of whom had feudal possessions in the duchy of Brabant. They played a crucial role during the three periods in which stained glass windows needed to be financed for the decoration of the new buildings, for the chapel, cloister and the new church respectively.

Tradition and Innovation in Later Medieval English Manuscripts (review)

Tradition and Innovation in Later Medieval English Manuscripts. By Kathleen L. Scott. (London: The British Library. 2007. Pp. xiv, 194. $75.00. ISBN 978-0-712-34936-0.) This volume examines five little-studied English manuscripts of the later medieval period that contain rare or enigmatic decoration and iconography. Scott uses these examples to argue that although fifteenth-century manuscript illumination has often been derided as derivative and dull, these specific manuscripts not only contain strikingly inventive pictorial elements but also raise intriguing questions about the broader contours of English book production and the function of illustrations in late-medieval manuscripts. The first chapter concerns Bodleian Library MS Laud Misc. 156, an English modelbook for a work known as the Postilla litteralis super totam Bibliam, a widely used literal exegesis of the Bible composed by Nicholas of Lyra (d. 1349). Although this manuscript does not include the full text of the commentary, which typically ran from three to five volumes, it contains illustrations intended to accompany the text, including images that depict practical information about the Bible such as diagrams, plans, and illustrations of the Temple of Solomon, the Table of Shewbread, the Brazen Sea, the Altar of the Holocaust, and so on. She posits that the Bodleian manuscript was a kind of archetypal exemplar or modelbook that provided copyists with a repertoire of imagery for use in the numerous other copies of the work produced during the period.The second chapter considers All Souls Library, Oxford, MS 10, the only surviving copy of an illustrated French Bible written in England. The origins of this manuscript are especially mysterious, as the text was written in French at a time when Wycliffite Bibles were readily available, but produced in an English illuminating shop by a prolific and well-known artist who seems to have moved in the highest circles of noble book-commissioning patrons. Although the manuscript contains many of the standard features of English book art, some of its iconography was clearly influenced by French models; moreover, it prominently features miniatures of readers and books. Scott unravels some of the potential implications of this evidence for ownership and, intriguingly, proposes that the book may have been commissioned by a French patron in forced residence in England such as Charles d'Orleans. Scott then focuses on British Library, Stowe MS 39, the only surviving English manuscript of the Abbey of the Holy Ghost, a Middle English treatise of spiritual guidance that employs architectural motifs to depict aspects of interiority. …

Noble Patronage and Jesuit Missions: Maria Theresia von Fugger‐Wellenburg (1690–1762) and Jesuit Missionaries in China and Vietnam – By R. Po‐Chia Hsia

Journal of Religious HistoryVolume 33, Issue 4 p. 509-510 Noble Patronage and Jesuit Missions: Maria Theresia von Fugger-Wellenburg (1690–1762) and Jesuit Missionaries in China and Vietnam – By R. Po-Chia Hsia Correction(s) for this article Corrigendum Volume 34Issue 2Journal of Religious History pages: 255-255 First Published online: May 26, 2010 Paul Shore, Paul Shore Department of HistorySt Louis UniversitySearch for more papers by this author Paul Shore, Paul Shore Department of HistorySt Louis UniversitySearch for more papers by this author First published: 16 November 2009 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9809.2009.00818.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume33, Issue4December 2009Pages 509-510 RelatedInformation

The Historical Origins of 'Open Science': An Essay on Patronage, Reputation and Common Agency Contracting in the Scientific Revolution

This essay examines the economics of patronage in the production of knowledge and its influence upon the historical formation of key elements in the ethos and organizational structure of publicly funded `open science.' The emergence during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries of the idea and practice of `open science' was a distinctive and vital organizational aspect of the Scientific Revolution. It represented a break from the previously dominant ethos of secrecy in the pursuit of Nature's Secrets, to a new set of norms, incentives, and organizational structures that reinforced scientific researchers' commitments to rapid disclosure of new knowledge. The rise of `cooperative rivalries' in the revelation of new knowledge, is seen as a functional response to heightened asymmetric information problems posed for the Renaissance system of court-patronage of the arts and sciences; pre-existing informational asymmetries had been exacerbated by the claims of mathematicians and the increasing practical reliance upon new mathematical techniques in a variety of `contexts of application.' Reputational competition among Europe's noble patrons motivated much of their efforts to attract to their courts the most prestigious natural philosophers, was no less crucial in the workings of that system than was the concern among their would-be clients to raise their peer-based reputational status. In late Renaissance Europe, the feudal legacy of fragmented political authority had resulted in relations between noble patrons and their savant-clients that resembled the situation modern economists describe as `common agency contracting in substitutes' -- competition among incompletely informed principals for the dedicated services of multiple agents. These conditions tended to result in contract terms (especially with regard to autonomy and financial support) that left agent client members of the nascent scientific communities better positioned to retain larger information rents on their specialized knowledge. This encouraged entry into their emerging disciplines, and enabled them collectively to develop a stronger degree of professional autonomy for their programs of inquiry within the increasingly specialized and formal scientific academies (such the Académie royale des Sciences and the Royal Society) that had attracted the patronage of rival absolutist States of Western Europe during the latter part of the seventeenth century. The institutionalization of `open science' that took place within those settings is shown to have continuities with the use by scientists of the earlier humanist academies, and with the logic of regal patronage, rather than being driven by the material requirements of new observational and experimental techniques.

Noble Patronage and Jesuit Missions: Maria Theresia von Fugger-Wellenburg (1690-1762) and Jesuit Missionaries in China and Vietnam (review)

Reviewed by: Noble Patronage and Jesuit Missions: Maria Theresia von Fugger-Wellenburg (1690-1762) and Jesuit Missionaries in China and Vietnam Liam Matthew Brockey Noble Patronage and Jesuit Missions: Maria Theresia von Fugger-Wellenburg (1690-1762) and Jesuit Missionaries in China and Vietnam. Edited by Ronnie Po-chia Hsia. [Monumenta Historica Societatis Iesu, Series Nova, Volume 2.] (Rome: Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu. 2006. Pp. 365.) The history of the overseas missions conducted by the Catholic religious orders in the early modern period has been fertile terrain for scholars during the past two decades. New analyses of evangelization efforts in the Americas, Africa, and Asia have enriched a field which had long been the province of chroniclers from the orders involved, or other participants in missionary efforts. As the study of the mission churches has expanded, however, the history of the European networks which supported the enterprises has largely been eclipsed. Noble Patronage and Jesuit Missions, a volume that combines an introductory essay with transcriptions of correspondence between Europe and China in German, French, and Latin, is a highly useful contribution toward helping to balance out this burgeoning field of study. In addition to examining the global flow of information in the 1700s, this book gives valuable insights into the little-studied (albeit crucially important) subject of mission finance. Moreover, R. Po-Chia Hsia has skillfully edited and annotated the correspondence between one patroness and a set of Jesuits in Asia for the benefit of other scholars to examine. The documents found in this volume come from the Fugger-Archiv in Dillingen and were primarily written by Maria Theresia von Fugger-Wellenburg, Florian Bahr, and Johann Siebert. Hsia's introductory essay places [End Page 188] these three individuals in the context of Catholic Germany in the mid-eighteenth century, showing how the Countess von Fugger-Wellenburg encountered the two Jesuits during the early stage of their voyage to Asia (Bahr eventually arrived in China and Siebert worked in Cochinchina). He examines the patterns of female devotional life of Southern German Catholics and explains why Maria Theresia sustained her correspondence with these distant friends over the course of more than two decades. Hsia also explains the mechanics of global finance in the eighteenth century, showing how it was possible—though never easy—for a patron to offer material support to clients on the other side of the globe. After tracing the history of the relationship between Maria Theresia and her correspondents, especially Bahr, he presents transcriptions of her letters and their responses (with intervals of months or years), as well as related documents such as Annual Letters and other reports from the Asian missions. The figure that emerges most clearly from this volume is Maria Theresia, whose letters reveal a great deal about her character and personal piety. We learn that she was especially moved by reports from China about the plight of abandoned infants at the imperial capital, perhaps as a result of her personal misfortune of losing a child. With the help of Bahr in Beijing and other Jesuit agents in Paris, Maria Theresia sent funds to China to help support of a corps of lay assistants organized by the missionaries who visited the city's gates in search of children to deliver to orphanages (or at least to baptize). Yet the countess also showed concern for the well-being of the missionaries and the dignity of the divine cult and Jesuit enterprise in far-off China. She inquires after boxes of European objects that she sent to Asia and seeks to defend the good name of the Society of Jesus among her peers at the courts of Munich and Paris. Maria Theresia also reveals herself as an avid reader of devotional books, as well as reports of the global missionary efforts printed in works such as the Welt-Bott and the Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses. In sum, Hsia paints a portrait of her that is far more complex and textured than one would have imagined. How many other such scenes of patronage lie hidden in the archives, waiting to be discovered? Liam Matthew Brockey Princeton University Copyright © 2008 The Catholic University of America Press

Waits, musicians, bearwards and players: the inter-urban road travel and performances of itinerant entertainers in sixteenth and seventeenth century England

By the reign of Elizabeth, a cosmopolite group of entertainers including musicians, town waits, actors, and those with ‘exotic’ animals were undertaking lengthy provincial tours to perform for audiences all over the country. Theatre historians have done much to recover details about England's Tudor and Stuart companies of travelling players. By contrast, historical geographers have paid little attention to the scope or character of the journeys undertaken by itinerant entertainers in the early modern period. Drawing partly on the work of theatre scholars, as well as on other published and unpublished evidence, this paper explores the travels of performers rewarded for playing before civic dignitaries in a sample of English towns and cities in the period between c.1525 and c.1640. The distances travelled, modes of transport employed, and frequencies of visits are discussed. In this context, the role and importance of royal and noble patrons in supporting groups of touring musicians, actors and bearwards, and the payments normally received for performances, are examined. By the later sixteenth century, a readiness by well-defined groups of entertainers to travel extensively by road throughout the realm reinforced links between communities located across the English regions. Moreover, while distinctive local entertainment traditions persisted in many places, the journeys of Elizabethan and Jacobean touring performers provided the means by which provincial audiences shared in the performance arts developed at Court and in the metropolis.

Humanistic Self-Representation in Giovan Battista Della Porta's "Della Fisonomia Dell'Uomo": Antecedents and Innovation

This article examines Giovan Battista Della Porta's Della Fisonomia Dell'uomo as a public relations exercise, carried out on behalf of the author himself, other intellectuals, and potential noble patrons. Della Porta's study of human physiognomy includes engravings of famous men and often documents their physical appearances. This article assesses the connections between Della Porta's treatise and cinquecento biography collections, in particular Paolo Giovio's Elogia, which Della Porta frequently plagiarizes for descriptions of Italian luminaries. Della Porta's glorification of famous individuals is in keeping with the nature of early modern scientific culture within the context of late Renaissance court life. By describing his own physical appearance in book 4, chapter 6,Of the clever man, Delia Porta fashions an image of himself as a courtier and a natural philosopher. This self-portrait is compared to those by fellow physiognomers Girolamo Cardano and Gabriele Symeoni.