Patrician Families Research Articles

TAMQVAM FIGMENTVM HOMINIS: AMMIANUS, CONSTANTIUS II AND THE PORTRAYAL OF IMPERIAL RITUAL

<i>TAMQVAM FIGMENTVM HOMINIS</i>: AMMIANUS, CONSTANTIUS II AND THE PORTRAYAL OF IMPERIAL RITUAL

Patrician Families and the Making of Quebec: The Taschereaus and McCords

Patrician Families and the Making of Quebec: The Taschereaus and McCords

Priestly Resistance to the Early Reformation in Germany by Jourden Travis Moger (review)

Priestly Resistance to Early Reformation in Germany. By Jourden Travis Moger. [Religious Cultures in Early Modern World, No. 15.] (Brookfield, VT: Pickering & Chatto. 2014. Pp. xii, 205. $99.00. ISBN 978-1-848-93454-2.)In this study Moger offers a new view of Reformation-from bottom up, as it were. The result is a view of history of Reformation in Frankfurt am Main less influenced by traditional thinking of Evangelical Church. Just as Martin Luther's teachings were influenced by his pervading faith in established order, so most recent histories up to Sigrid Jahns have concentrated on role of state. Moger is less interested in prominent theologians of time (Johannes Dietenberger, Johannes Cochlaeus, and Friedrich Nausea were active in Frankfurt) and more in what he calls the losers in history, here embodied in Wolfgang Konigstein, a simple priest clinging to his faith in troubled times, whose diary provides basis for this study.In first part of his book (chapters 1 and 2) author provides a remarkably thorough and precise picture of Konigstein's world, origins, and times. Chapter 1 is dedicated to political, economic, social, and religious structures in Frankfurt. Chapter 2 describes Liebfrauenstift (Foundation of Our Lady), Konigstein's institutional and religious home.The main body of study (chapters 3 to 5) chronicles development of Reformation in Frankfurt and reaction of Catholics to this development. Moger is critical of depiction of social movement of 1525, which had also reached Frankfurt, as a revolution (by Peter Blickle and Hans Rosenberg, for example); he characterizes results of this movement in Frankfurt as, in general, a positive development that was successful in three ways; there was no loss of blood and no punishment.The summary in chapter 6 views cultural impact of Reformation as viewed through Konigstein's eyes.Possibly most surprising facet of this investigation is author's view that Reformation seems to have brought about no fundamental changes in political, economic, or social structures of Reichstadt (imperial city). The old established oligarchies, consisting of patrician families and guild masters, retained their former influence and privileges. The economic structures of city, based largely on two Reichsmessen (imperial fairs), and general economic conservatism of oligarchy resulted in a slow transition to Reformation. The city retained its privileged place at side of emperor and even became official city for coronations after 1561. Change came about chiefly in sociocultural structures of city: founding of Allgemeine Almosenkasten (common alms chest); abolishing many church holidays, fasting, and many processions; new forms of Rites of Passage; and instituting changes in role of women (such as emphasizing their status as wives and mothers). …

Motherhood and the Politics of Family Decisions in Early Modern Italy

This article explores the negotiations that occurred in patrician households over the fate of children in early modern Italian society. The decision between marriage and convent life for daughters could greatly impact the financial situation, political standing, and social status of these patrician families. The correspondence of the Venetian Grimani and Florentine Ricasoli and Rucellai families suggests that women used the rhetoric and status of motherhood to shape family decisions. Daughters also used maternal authority to influence their own circumstances. The formation of these female networks enabled women to negotiate authority in early modern Italy.

Patria potestas or murder in the family

Patria potestas appears in the tradition in two aspects: as the father’s right to put his son to death and as the right to dis-pose of the family property. All examples concerning the murder of the son (or daughters) known to the Roman authors are from the time of the Roman Republic. The father’s right to dispose of the property even when the son is an adult lasted until the Later Empire. In a detailed study W. V. Harris limited his disucussion to ten examples of the son’s murder and three of the daughter. They are most-ly not qualified as the ius vitae ac necis by the Roman authors. It is important to stress: a) That these examples mainly illustrate the father’s right in charge as the high magistrate. In putting their sons to death the fathers-magistrates did not use the vitae necisque potestas of the father but the authority of supreme state officers. The crimes of which the sons were accused belonged not to family affairs but to offences against the military discipline and State interests. b) The only condition in applying the vitae necisque potestas was a moral one, the existence of the iusta causa. Even then it was not unpunished, and in many cases the father went into exile. c) The father’s power existed only over legally born children within a legal marriage. Legal marriage was the privilege of patricians until 444 BC. That means that the patria potestas was originally limited only to patrician families. Biological kinship was not a decisive factor in the restitution of the father – children connection. d) The main right of the pater in the family was not to kill its members, but to preserve his position in economic control and to dispose of the property which was once common and even-tually to control the moral behavior of the family members.

Social Advancement among Patrician Families in Gdańsk in the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period as Exemplified by the Ferber Family

The core of Gdansk patricians consisted of a limited number of families. Some of them managedto build up and maintain their power for as long as 300 years. There were different waysof establishing patrician families and of emphasising their social status. The story of the riseand accession to the nobility of the Ferber family reveals the practical side of the strategy andtactics of the implementation of such goals. Due to purposeful actions and the exploitation offavourable circumstances, the sons of Johann Ferber attained the highest posts in the region,with Maurice becoming the Bishop of Warmia, and Eberhardt the most distinguished Burgomasterof Gdansk. In 1515, the family were accepted into the nobility by the King of PolandSigismund I and the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I. This was made possible not only by thefamily belonging to the economic elite of the country, but also by the strong and supportiveenvironment. This paper seeks to highlight the environment by analysing the kinship, social,and official relationships of the Ferbers in the 15th to the 16th centuries before and after theiraccession to the nobility. Key words: Gdansk, Ferber family, patricians, noble clans, social advancement. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/ 10.15181/ ahuk.v29i0.1068

Shaping an aristocracy: nuns and nunneries in Venice (IX-XIII centuries)

This paper examines the processes that shaped the identity of the Venetian aristocracy from the 9th to the 13th centuries and the role played by the relationship between patrician families and some female monasteries. The important female monastery of San Zaccaria and some other nunneries created in the lagoon between the 12th and the 13th centuries are taken into account in the analysis of the formation of Venetian aristocracy from this innovative perspective. By analysing the behaviour of the aristocratic families towards these nunneries, the paper points out how Venetian ruling groups made use of the long-term relationship with nuns as a particularly useful instrument of political competition. The article also shows how some female monasteries were relevant social actors in the process of defi nition of Venetian identity, largely coinciding with their own ruling groups, and in particular with the aristocracy, and with the exercise of power.

“Read Your Destiny!”: Kentucky Antislavery Sentiment and the Uses of Roman History

“Read Your Destiny!”:Kentucky Antislavery Sentiment and the Uses of Roman History Edward C. McInnis (bio) Nearly two thousand years before Cassius Marcellus Clay launched his attacks against the South’s “peculiar institution,” Plutarch wrote a work on Roman history that would significantly affect how Clay and other Kentuckians debated slavery. Plutarch’s history chronicled the travels of Tiberius Gracchus across Italy and Spain. Gracchus, a descendant of the famous Roman general Scipio Africanus, observed on his travels that small farms worked by freeholders had nearly disappeared from the countryside, replaced instead by large plantations employing slave labor.1 Disturbed that this condition threatened republicanism, Gracchus ran for and was elected as a tribune of the people. Using his excellent oratorical skills, he publicly called for the enforcement of Rome’s Licinia laws. These laws distributed land to poor citizens and restricted the amount of public land any one Roman could use. Members of Rome’s patrician class vehemently opposed enforcing the Licinia laws. For generations, they held public lands as their own and viewed the Licinia laws as a threat to their continued ability to exploit public land for profit. From their viewpoint, Gracchus was a demagogue who only sought power by promising commoners land that patrician families had controlled for decades. [End Page 199] In 133 BCE, to stop Gracchus and his land reform, the patrician class in Rome incited large mobs to attack and kill him and his followers. A decade later, when his younger brother Caius Gracchus supported similar land reforms, the patricians incited large mobs to kill him too, thus ending the attempts by these two brothers (together called “the Gracchi”) to preserve a sense of economic fairness in Rome. Although their reform initiatives caused their deaths, the Gracchi became champions to many Americans in the antebellum era. For some proslavery writers, Tiberius and Caius Gracchus were patriotic sons of Rome who supported slavery and were exemplars of republican virtue. Yet, conversely, their story was used by antislavery activists in Kentucky and other border states as proof of the negative impact of slavery on a republic.2 Historians have examined the place of the Gracchi in nineteenth-century American cultural history. Studies by Margaret Malamud and Carl Richard, for example, show that nineteenth-century activists and politicians frequently invoked ancient Greece and Rome (including the Gracchi) in selective ways to justify their policies and points of view at the national level.3 However, these scholars feature only a cursory analysis of how antebellum Americans used history to explain problems and offer solutions at the regional and state level, especially in the Ohio Valley region. Slavery supporters in the Lower South frequently invoked ancient civilizations, especially Rome, to support slavery. By contrast, in Kentucky, a state in which conflicting ideas about slavery existed, people deployed narratives of the past in different ways. In fact, commentators in the commonwealth often used histories of Greece and Rome, including the historical episodes involving Tiberius and Caius Gracchus, to illustrate the harmful effects of slavery on a republic. In doing so, they contributed to a process of reshaping history to advance contemporary social causes. By deploying simplified narratives of historical events from ancient [End Page 200] Greece and Rome, especially the lives and deaths of the Gracchus brothers, antislavery Kentuckians believed they could demonstrate how slaveholding both threatened free-labor values and contradicted the ideals of republicanism. History for Americans was not a quaint story of a bygone era but a device that aided in bringing change. During the Revolutionary era, writers urged young readers not only to read the classics but also to emulate the actions of “heroes and patriots” from ancient Greece and Rome. This pattern continued into the antebellum period as political leaders and social reformers used these histories to advance their causes in a number of different forums and mediums. In addition, schools were already exposing readers to key events and actors from classical times. As early as the 1770s, some textbooks featured comprehensive histories of ancient Greece and Rome. In addition, translations of Plutarch as well as histories of Rome by Barthold Georg Niebuhr during the 1820s and George Bancroft during the 1850s provided readers...

Patricians, Knights, or Nobles? Historiography and Social Status in Late Medieval Antwerp

This article explores the significance of writing history for a late medieval Antwerp patrician family: Van Halmale. In recent historiography, families like the Van Halmales have not received the attention they deserve, in part because their social status is difficult to pin down. Although the Van Halmales had knightly titles and performed deeds of arms on the battlefield and during tournaments, their noble status was not undisputed. Both a chronicle and a tournament diary written by different members of the Van Halmale family reflect the aspirations of a dominant social category in the late medieval towns of Brabant, Flanders, and Holland. Their writings reflect how the Van Halmales perceived themselves and how they wanted their contemporaries and peers to perceive them. In that sense the writing of history was indeed a means for nobles (and would-be-nobles) to justify (or to claim) their privileged position. Their works helped them to express their identity as powerful aldermen, firmly rooted in an urban environment but with open minds for the world of princes and (inter)national politics.

Naofumi Abe. Najafqoli Khān Donboli’s Lineage in 18-19th Centuries Tabriz from the Viewpoint of the Property and the Inheritance

Although most scholars have argued for a remarkable continuity in elite families in premodern Iranian society, few have attempted to show how these families successfully transferred property to their descendants despite the equal-inheritance principle enshrined in Islamic law. Light is shed on this through the case of a patrician family in Azerbaijan, Najafqoli Khān Donboli and his descendants, who settled in Tabriz in the late 18th century where they were influential till the 20th century. A...

Political Preaching and a Design of Urban Reform: Johannes Geiler of Kaysersberg and Strasbourg

Political Preaching and a Design of Urban Reform:Johannes Geiler of Kaysersberg and Strasbourg1 Rita Voltmer (bio) I. Introduction and Issues2 In the fifteenth century, the desire of the laity for more convincing religious instruction in the vernacular was not entirely satisfied by wandering preachers like Vincent Ferrer (†1419), Bernardino of Siena (†1444) or Giovanni of Capistrano (†1456). Therefore, north of the Alps, particularly in free cities of the Empire, so-called municipal preaching offices (Stadtprädikaturen) were introduced.3 For the most part, cathedral chapters and their bishops exerted a great influence over these foundations. Subsequently, the newly installed preachers were obliged to discipline the urban population. According to the artes praedicandi, the preachers were expected to avoid any criticism of the religious hierarchy and the ruling magistrates.4 In 1478, such a municipal preaching office was established at the cathedral in the imperial city of Strasbourg.5 [End Page 71] To avoid further quarrels between mendicant preachers and the parish priest, which had taken place in the cathedral during the so called Ultimum-Vale debate (around 1451), the citizens of Strasbourg sought a secular, university-educated, learned priest and preacher to fill this office. They found him in the person of young Johannes Geiler, who was already renowned for his sermons and his scholarship. The new pulpit office was endowed with a chapter sinecure, but most of its revenue came from a generous donation, by the wealthy Patrician Schott family. It is noteworthy that the foundation charter neither mentioned restraints concerning the topics that the cathedral preacher should select for his sermons nor obliged him to refrain from criticizing the ruling authorities and the clergy. On the contrary, the charter ranked the new preacher at the very apex of urban society, above other clergymen, the magistrature and the town’s lay population, calling him the new leading star with the obligation of instructio and correctio, reformatio and purgatio. Thus, Geiler was formally and officially commissioned to initiate a true Christian conversion of the people of Strasbourg, to correct their daily life of sinfulness, vice and blasphemy. In fact, those who had drafted the charter had defined the preacher’s duties rather idealistically and rhetorically and did not realize what kind of force they had unleashed upon Strasbourg. Geiler internalized the requirements of his office quite zealously. From the very beginning, he fulfilled his office with the greatest possible fervor and diligence, and named himself the custodian of the city. Consequently, he intervened in daily urban politics by using the pulpits of the town’s nunneries and monasteries, where he ministered as a preacher, as well as the chair of the cathedral as platforms for zealously advocating his reform plans.6 Very soon, the bishop, the cathedral chapter and the non-Observant mendicant congregations began to consider ways to get rid [End Page 72] of Johannes Geiler and his witty, often infamous, but never incorrect criticism. But neither their attempts to hinder the papal confirmation of the preacher’s office until 1489, nor their endeavors to seize the chapter donations, and not even the threat of physical violence could stop him.7 Geiler had quickly become a famous authority, backed by the network of powerful patrician families, admired by the Emperor Maximilian, and beloved by his main audience, the lay people of Strasbourg.8 During the thirty-two years of his office, he preached more than 4,500 sermons, approximately 1,300 of which are recorded in a wide range of written formats. In addition, there are notes, letters, texts giving advice and gravamina in Johannes’s own hand.9 For inside information about the goings on both in the collegial chapters10 and in the meetings of the magistrate, Geiler could rely on his friends among the canons11 as well as Sebastian Brant, the notary and clerk of the city of Strasbourg since 1500, and Wimpheling, the well-known German humanist, who had settled in Strasbourg from 1501. Altogether, Geiler’s many works provide us with sophisticated insights to late medieval urban society as seen from the perspective of a well learned cleric who took a very critical view of daily city life, of urban...

Dzieje toruńskiej rodziny Watzenrode w XIV–XVI w.

It is not clearly explained where did Watzenrode family, settled in Torun, come from. They came probably from Upper Hesse or Rhineland-Palatinate. Ludwik Birkenmajer’s thesis about Polish and Silesian roots of that family should be rejected – it is impossible to connect a branch of the family from Ziębice and Wrocław with a branch from Torun. The most reliable is a thesis that Watzenrodes came to Torun from Westfalia in the first half of the 14th century, simultaneously to the great number of other immigrant families, that became patrician of Torun. In Torun there were two branches of this family – both descending from Albrecht I’s sons: Fryderyk III (about 1370–1416) and Lukasz I (about 1390–1462). Albrecht I was born about 1340 and died in 1399. Among descendants of Fryderyk III, there were Fryderyk IV (about 1410–1446) and his son, Jerzy Fryderyk V (about 1435-about 1482). Among descendants of Lukasz I, there were Lukasz II, bishop of Varmia (1447–1512), and Lukasz’s illegal son, Filip Teschner (about 1475 – after 1523). Albrecht I’ wife was a councilor Lukasz Reusse’s daughter, died 1384. Her name is unknown. Lukasz I’ wife was Katarzyna, a councilor Jan Rusop’s daughter, died 1416. Katarzyna’s mother was Rusop’s wife – her name is unknown – descending from von Putten family. Filip Teschner’s mother was identified as well, as a Elzbieta Rackendorff (about 1455 – about 1495), Pawel’s, rich merchant from Torun, eldest daughter. It is possible that Lukasz II and Elzbieta’s marriage had been planned in 1474. Nevertheless, engagement was broken, probably because of a chance for a great carrier as a clergyman for Lukasz. It is possible that because of this, pregnant Elzbieta was married to Jan Teschner, member of other patrician family from Torun, who adopted “bishop’s” offspring. Geneological table attached to this article depicts a complete genealogy of the family. Watzenrodes stood out from patricians from Torun due to the level of their education. Four members of this family became students: Cezary and Lukasz II graduated as doctors, Fryderyk III I Fryderyk IV did not graduated university and came back to the town. Konrad Gesselen, the most outstanding humanist from the half of the 15th century, was a close friend to Lukasz I and his wife, Katarzyna. Before death he even lived in Watzenrodes’ house and was Katarzyna’s confessor. It is certain that intellectual traditions of Watzenrodes influenced Nicolaus Copernicus’ education, as he descended from this family by his female ancestors.

Jacob Roman and his connection with the Delft regent Pieter Teding van Berkhout

Jacob Roman and his connection with the Delft regent Pieter Teding van Berkhout

The Private Political Archives of the Venetian Patriciate – Storing, Retrieving and Recordkeeping in the Fifteenth-Eighteenth Centuries

This article describes the birth and development of the political archives that Venetian patrician families kept in their private palaces for the use of the Republic's officeholders. It will shed light on the different uses made of public documents as well as on the different approaches to recordkeeping, from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries. These archives, shared by all family members and transmitted from generation to generation, eventually became extremely voluminous partly because copies from documents in public registries were made and kept, but also because new types of analytical documents based on data extracted from the public record were introduced. Until the eighteenth century, when rational retrieval systems began to be introduced, the documents were kept in ‘buste’ (containers) and extracted as and when needed by the officeholder.

Die Republik des Adels. Zum Begriff der Aristokratie in der politischen Sprache der Frühen Neuzeit

The article argues that before the French Revolution the word “aristocracy” did not describe a social class, but a specific political regime. From the 16th to the end of the 18th century, aristocracy stood for a polyarchic form of government in which sovereignty was possessed and exercised by limited sociopolitical elites: “a republic governed by the nobility” (<italic>Lemon</italic>, The English Etymology, 1783). Contemporary observers analyzed commonwealths without a monarchic sovereign such as Venice, Genoa, or the patrician Cantons of the Swiss Confederation through these criteria. The article takes the example of the Republic of Berne to point out some key elements of early modern aristocratic republicanism. In order to preserve the aristocratic constitution, the Sovereign Council of Berne was anxious to combine the principle of equality within the ruling class with legal and symbolic distinction from the rest of the population. In the course of the 18th century, these principles led to reforms such as the formal nobilitation of all patrician families. At the same time, however, aristocracy had already become a distinctively negative key concept in French political language. In the context of the late Ancien Régime, the term was used by the crown to delegitimize noble and parliamentarian opposition which was accused of trying to erect an aristocratic republic. In 1788 and 1789, this argument was readopted by representatives of the Third Estate to combat all “feudal” prerogatives of the privileged classes. In the course of the events, “aristocrat” became synonymous with an enemy of the revolution, and “aristocracy” could stand for the whole body of the privileged groups of the ancient regime, the nobility. The modern use of the term thus reflects these semantic changes, while, at the same time, it obscures the reference to early modern political language. The article shows that further research is needed to shed a different light on key problems of early modern republicanism and nobility by reconstructing the political discourses in and around aristocratic republics.

Wendy Yoshimura and the Politics of Hugging in the 1970s

This article examines Wendy Yoshimura, the Japanese American woman who gained notoriety when arrested alongside Patricia Hearst. The Japanese American redress movement was emerging as the American public was captivated by Hearst and her challenge to her white patrician family. By analyzing media representations of whom Hearst and Yoshimura embraced—what I call the politics of hugging—I argue that Japanese Americans publicized past grievances by deploying the discourse of the heteronormative family. In considering the queer intimacy between Yoshimura and Hearst fictionalized in Susan Choi's American Woman , I critique Yoshimura's publicity for eliding affiliations outside the straight logic of nation and race.

The effects of plague on the distribution of property: Ivrea, Northern Italy 1630

The demographic effects of the epidemics of plague in Early Modern Europe and their economic consequences illuminate the evolution of property structures and of wealth distribution during and after a mortality crisis. An analysis of the high-quality data available for the Italian city of Ivrea at the time of the 1630 plague shows the exceptional resilience of property structures. Like the social structures of the period, property structures were able to recover quickly, informed as they were by the lessons learnt by trial and error by the patrician families of the late Middle Ages, whose patrimonies had been badly damaged by the Black Death. In a period of recurrent catastrophes that struck European populations during the Old Demographic Regime, apparently ‘inegalitarian’ institutions seem to have had long-term ‘egalitarian’ effects.

Patriotic Progressives

Patriotic Progressives Paul Gottfried (bio) David S. Brown has been my colleague at Elizabethtown College for more than ten years. He has also been a frequent dinner guest and, while I could still handle such strenuous activity, a summer tennis partner. Despite our age difference (I am only one year younger than his father), David has been one of my closest friends at the college, and we’ve often exchanged the crude first drafts of the books we’re working on. Our friendship has survived even in the face of our ideological gulf. While I would describe myself as a curmudgeonly right-winger, David is a fairly conventional left-liberal, albeit one who might dispute this designation. Despite this polarity, our views are remarkably similar on professional issues. Unlike my few Republican colleagues who insist that our student body is “conservative” (a comment that is contradicted by its overwhelming support for Obama last fall), David and I hold a less favorable view of our late-adolescent charges. Many of them are disinclined to study and will say anything they think professors want to hear in order to get back to their soaps and video games in the dorms. David has dealt with this discovery more heroically than I. He would think nothing of giving low grades to entire classes “if they fail to produce,” and he contrasts the manner in which our students waste “the opportunities that their parents provide” with the tough row he himself had to hoe, working his way through graduate school at the University of Toledo by washing dishes. Also, David never allows praise to go to his head. Unlike his less-accomplished colleagues, he never places in Update (the weekly record of faculty bragging) the reviews of his works in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, or elsewhere in the national press. David does not dwell on his obvious accomplishments because he feels that boasting is vulgar. Being a temperamental as well as onetime practicing Presbyterian, he also expects much more of himself than what he’s already attained. Despite our divergent experiences with the liberal and neoconservative presses (David, unlike me, does not have his books ignored by either), my younger colleague certainly does not view his journalistic advocates with undiluted favor. When David received flattering reviews for his biography of Richard Hofstadter, he sometimes wondered aloud about the motives behind the words of praise. I, too, would have looked the same gift horse in the mouth, if the publications in question had not already ostracized me. Click for larger view View full resolution The University of Wisconsin, ca. 1899. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [reproduction number, LC-D4-4642]. Nor was David ever offended when I suggested that something other than scholarly concerns had prompted certain reviews of his work. David’s Calvinist mentality, however much unrecognized by its bearer, is one of his most important qualities. It has led him into extraordinary applications of research energy. (Since the appearance of his newest book, he has done considerable research on another monograph, this one dealing with Republican patrician families.) The same mentality has made David suspicious of even those he admires and intermittently celebrates in his work. A second reading of his Hofstadter study revealed for me that his characterization of his subject, who he clearly idolizes, is more critical than I had first realized. Notwithstanding his dim view of the human condition, David accepts critical comments from those he respects. He listened to me and Bill Mc-Clay when we proposed certain structural alterations in his study. Bill proposed expanding the work from historians at the University of Wisconsin to include other Midwesterners, while I suggested that David elaborate on a distinction—already present in the initial draft—between populist radicals and New York Jewish Marxists. I noticed he took my hint in a general way, while producing what is his own book. From the attention he devotes to these figures, it seems that William Appleman Williams, Charles Beard, Frederick Jackson Turner, and Christopher Lasch are for David the pivotal historians in defining a distinctively midwestern historiographical tradition. Contrary to what a reviewer in the Wall Street Journal intimated...

‘Furnished with gentlemen’: the ambassador's house in sixteenth-century Italy

This article responds to recent calls for a ‘new diplomatic history’ of early modern Europe with an investigation of an important subset of Renaissance diplomatic practices: those related to the house, household and hospitality. It considers the prescriptive sources, including treatises on the office of ambassador by Ermolao Barbaro and Etienne Dolet, in light of the practice of a small number of diplomats active in the 1520s and 30s, in particular Gregorio Casali, a well-connected member of a Bolognese patrician family who acted as Henry VIII's resident ambassador at the papal court from 1525 to 1533. The article draws on a range of archive evidence, including diplomatic correspondence, notarial records and trial witness statements, and begins by assessing how diplomats in sixteenth-century Italy understood the house and household, highlighting the symbolic and instrumental functions of sociability. It then turns to some characteristics of diplomatic entertainment, examining attitudes towards splendour and the interplay between the diplomat's official and familial concerns. Third, it asks why the authors of treatises on diplomacy were preoccupied by the proper conduct of members of the ambassador's household, arguing that contemporary conceptions of the household as a microcosm of the polity have a particular resonance in the case of the Renaissance ambassador, a point neglected in recent studies of the treatises on diplomacy.

De Middelnederlandse vertalingen van Bonaventura'sLignum Vitae

The Lignum Vitae is a mystical treatise written in the thirteenth century by Bonaventure. It consists of 48 meditations upon the life of Jesus Christ organised by means of an allegory of a tree. Judging by its Latin tradition and its vernacular translations, the treatise was very popular during the Middle Ages. Up till now there were two known Middle Dutch translations of the Lignum Vitae. A manuscript in the library of the University of Amsterdam, however, was discovered to contain a third, independent Middle Dutch translation. Vanden houte slevens was translated in 1386, probably by Petrus Naghel, a Carthusian monk in Horne, a village some 30 km southwest of Brussels. Two manuscripts transmit the complete translation, two others only contain excerpts, but all four of them once belonged to monasteries of canons or canonesses regular. It remains unclear whether Naghel intended his translation for this specific audience. He translated in a very accurate way, staying close to his Latin source, but making small adaptations to render the translation more comprehensible. Nevertheless, his zeal for accuracy results in a rather dense translation. Devote oeffenynghe vanden boem is extant in only one manuscript from around 1520. The translation was probably made in Holland, but we have no further evidence about the author, date or milieu of this translation. From a mutilated note, we can deduce that the manuscript once belonged to a religious person. The anonymous translator remained very close to his Latin source, even imitating the Latin constructions, which results in a rather stiff and compact translation. Een boem des ghecruusten on the other hand, produces a freer and easier translation. This translation survives in one manuscript from around 1430, and was presumably also written in Holland. From the second half of the sixteenth century onwards, the manuscript belonged to the female members of a patrician family from Utrecht. These three different translations of the same Latin text give rise to the broader discussion of the existence of multiple translations in Middle Dutch religious literature. In the case of the Lignum Vitae, unfamiliarity and dissatisfaction with each other's translations can not offer a full explanation for this phenomenon. Differences in intended audience also have to be taken into account as a possible explanation.