Sixteenth-century Developments Research Articles

Rumour, slander and propaganda in fifteenth-century Scottish politics

Abstract Early modernists have recognized the importance of propaganda and public opinion in Scotland after the development of print culture and the Reformation. Consequently, there is an impression that these sixteenth-century developments were new features of political life. Yet the role of rumour and slander in the political culture of fifteenth-century Scotland has gone unnoticed, despite numerous references in the contemporary records. Several acts of political violence throughout the century were followed by attempts by the crown, and its opponents, to present a coherent narrative of events. These competing narratives were the impetus for the development of propaganda in fifteenth-century Scotland.

The Italian Love Poetry of Ludovico Ariosto: Court Culture and Classicism by Giada Guassardo

Reviewed by: The Italian Love Poetry of Ludovico Ariosto: Court Culture and Classicism by Giada Guassardo Jane E. Everson The Italian Love Poetry of Ludovico Ariosto: Court Culture and Classicism. By Giada Guassardo. (Biblioteca dell' 'Archivium Romanicum', ser. 1: Storia, Letteratura, Paleografia, 508) Florence: Olschki. 2021. viii+244 pp. €26. ISBN 978–8822–26731–3. This volume, which principally publishes the findings of the author's Oxford D.Phil. thesis, presents an impressively wide-ranging discussion. The title is apt, since although the core of each section of the monograph is constituted by Ariosto's vernacular lyric corpus, the emphasis throughout is on the setting of individual lyrics in a series of relevant contexts: literary—Italian vernacular poetry, especially Petrarch and the subsequent fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century developments; Latin lyric poetry, in particular of the Augustan period; the social and cultural milieux experienced by Ariosto; and the immediately contemporary and biographical factors, especially those related to the Ferrarese court. Thus alongside Ariosto's lyrics the volume quotes liberally from the lyrics of Bembo, Boiardo, Tebaldeo, Serafino Aquilano among contemporary poets, and from Ovid, Propertius, and Catullus for the Latin tradition. The volume is divided into three main sections, each of which is subdivided into a number of subsections which address discrete parts of the argument. A substantial Introduction (pp. 3–30) summarizes the complex situation regarding Ariosto's lyrics and the two main groups into which these fall: the 'canzoniere' for [End Page 261] poems selected by Ariosto with a view to constituting a coherent collection; and the 'rime extravaganti', for those not selected for this collection; the general features of the lyric corpus; and the range of influences to be examined in detail in the volume. The first chapter is then dedicated to Ariosto's Elegiac Self-Fashioning' (pp. 31–83). This is centred on an analysis of four of the capitoli from the 'canzoniere' for which the influence of classical Latin elegy is considered of particular note, while the element of self-fashioning is consistently set alongside the Satire for purposes of comparison and contrast. The subsections discuss 'the tradition of the parting between two lovers', 'love and warfare', 'a poem addressed to Ippolito', 'a mission to Florence', 'the journey to the Garfagnana', and the 'portrait of the lyric speaker as a lover'—and these subheadings aptly underline the historical, political, and biographical dimensions of the lyric poems, while the discussion brings out Ariosto's use of both classical and humanist Latin verse. The second chapter, entitled 'Ariosto, the Lyric Lover' (pp. 85–162), aims to analyse the complex and often ambivalent type, or better types, of lover relationship envisaged by the poet. The discussion here is at times quite dense, partly on account of the number of different approaches and influences considered, and the complex tradition and uncertain chronology of Ariosto's lyrics. The chapter considers 'Love encounters' discussed with reference to both Petrarchan and classical Latin parallels; 'fides and constancy', which engages appropriately with similar arguments in the Orlando furioso; 'the courtly–Petrarchan celebration of women' and 'the flight of the poet: cases of metapoetry'—two sections which deal especially with the relevance of the myths of Icarus and Phaethon for the Ferrarese court and its poets; 'between realism and myth'; and lastly a study of the final poem of the 'canzoniere'. There is undoubtedly a wealth of interesting and thought-provoking information in the sections of this chapter, but at times the desire to include numerous possible parallels and influences detracts from the focus on Ariosto's lyrics, and the force of the argument is lost. Chapter 3, devoted to 'The Portrayal of Women' (pp. 163–215), illustrates what for this reviewer is the chief weakness of the approach used, namely the almost inevitable overlap of material and argument between the three chapters. Chapter 2 already treated aspects of the portrayal of women in discussing the relationship issues, while here the lover and his views arising from his relationships recur. Poems already discussed in previous chapters are treated again, from slightly different perspectives, but it becomes nonetheless difficult to see the wood for the trees—as other texts, by Ariosto and others...

Martin Luther and the Shaping of the Catholic Tradition ed. by Nelson H. Minnich and Michael Root

Reviewed by: Martin Luther and the Shaping of the Catholic Tradition ed. by Nelson H. Minnich and Michael Root Robert Kolb Martin Luther and the Shaping of the Catholic Tradition. Edited by Nelson H. Minnich and Michael Root. (Washington: Catholic University of America Press. 2021. Pp xix, 289. $75.00. ISBN: 9780813235325.) This collection of conference lectures provides valuable stimulation for further consideration of ecumenical issues from historical and systematic points of view. Particularly helpful are the historical studies of the medieval theological setting of Martin Luther’s deconstruction of certain elements of the theology he had learned at the university and in the cloister and his construction of the evangelical way of thinking that formed the center of his preaching and teaching. Several studies effectively present Luther’s own way of formulating the doctrines of justification, the Eucharist, and the Church; others offer insights into the ecumenical discussions and their implications for the life of the Church today. Two essays dedicated [End Page 198] to the relationship of Eastern Orthodoxy to sixteenth-century developments in the Western Church explore Luther’s references to Eastern churches in the Leipzig debate between Luther and John Eck in 1519. They point to possibilities for developing a trilateral discussion of ecclesiological issues. An essay on “The (Slight) Sensitivity to Eastern Christianity in Trent’s Condemnation of Luther on Marriage and Clerical Celibacy” seems out-of-place in the volume. Assessments of the state of Lutheran-Catholic dialogue in the light of sixteenth-century developments around Luther by Cardinal Kurt Koch, Eero Huovinen, Wolfgang Thönissen, and Kenneth Appold lay the foundation for further assessment of the issues discussed in other essays. Vital were questions raised by late medieval teaching on justification, sensitively sketched by Theodor Dieter. Lutheran (Timothy Wengert) and Roman Catholic (Michael Root) analysis of the Wittenberg professor’s understanding of the center of the biblical message provide perceptive insights into his teaching’s intention, structure, impact, and significance for today. Bruce Marshall’s detailed account of medieval teaching on the presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper and on the eucharistic sacrifice of the Mass sets forth the issues debated in the sixteenth century clearly. Essays by Lee Palmer Wandel and Robert Trent Pomplun present Luther’s critique of medieval doctrine and practice of the Lord’s Supper and Catholic response to this critique. Wandel correctly sees Luther’s understanding of the sacrament as verbal, that is, the promise conveying the forgiveness of sins in the body and blood “given and shed for you,” although the richness of his enhancing the earlier understanding of “promise” is missing. Nelson Minnich sets forth medieval “models” of the Church that gave rise to the actual situation in the 1510s and 1520s, as Luther’s appraisal of abuses in practice and flaws in fundamental concepts of authority, presented with skill by Dorothea Wendebourg, contested what remains the “evolving” and “responsive” formulation of the doctrine of the Church on the Roman Catholic side. Johanna Rahner incisively sets forth current Catholic discussion of ecclesiastical issues. The volume’s valuable resources for mutual exploration of how we best witness to Jesus Christ in the twenty-first century give basis for necessary further discussions. Unfortunately, the underlying differences in defining the orientation for theology, “the article of faith on which Christ’s church stands or falls”—for Luther, the justification of sinners through absolution and faith in Christ, for Roman Catholics the doctrine of the Church—are not clearly addressed. Nonetheless, the challenge of these perceptive presentations remains a task for the heirs of the Old Faith and the Reformation in our time. [End Page 199] Robert Kolb Concordia Seminary, Saint Louis Copyright © 2023 The Catholic University of America Press ...

Romance and History: Imagining Time from the Medieval to the Early Modern Period ed. by Jon Whitman

Reviewed by: Romance and History: Imagining Time from the Medieval to the Early Modern Period ed. by Jon Whitman Andrew James Johnston jon whitman, ed., Romance and History: Imagining Time from the Medieval to the Early Modern Period. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 92. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Pp. xiv, 317. isbn: 978–1–107–04278–0. $55.76. Romance and History assembles a collection of essays on the relations between romance—both medieval and early modern—and history. The chapters are arranged according to subject matter and chronological order, with the 'Matter of Rome' followed by the 'Matter of Britain,' succeeded by the 'Matter of France and Italy,' and finally by sixteenth-century developments, thereby suggesting a vibrant cross-pollination between these different fields as European romance develops forms of sophisticated self-referentiality and becomes increasingly concerned with its own status vis-à-vis literary theory. In his thoughtful introduction, Jon Whitman takes his cue from Erich Auerbach's indictment of romance as lacking historical consciousness and argues in favor of a comprehensive reappraisal of romance's involvement with history. Christopher Baswell (chapter two) begins the collection proper with a discussion of how medieval romances dealing with themes from antiquity—the Roman d'Énéas, the Roman de Thèbes, the Roman de Troie, the Roman d'Alexandre, and the Roman de Toute Chevalerie—seek to contain history within and through complex forms of material artifacts such as gates, walls, and elaborate tombs. The third chapter by Catherine Croizy-Naquet compares two thirteenth-century historical prose narratives, the Faits des Romains and the Roman de Troie en prose, with respect to their strategies of rhetorically and poetically conceptualizing history. While the Faits heavily borrows devices from romance, the Roman reduces the romance quality of its subject matter, seeking to minimize the literariness of the narrative. Next, Robert W. Hanning studies the importance of the young men in medieval romance, and in the fifth chapter, Adrian Stevens traces specifically Angevin resonances in Gottfried von Strassburg's Tristan and Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival. Friedrich Wolfzettel's contribution then offers an interesting hypothesis on the fourteenth-century romance of Perceforest. Situated in pre-Arthurian Britain, Perceforest self-consciously turns its back on the grail motif and its ideological consequences for the 'Matter of Britain,' establishing instead a notion of history that combines an almost proto-humanist enlightenment with a foreshadowing of the advent of Christianity. In the chapter that follows, Edward Donald Kennedy scrutinizes ethical and ideological ambivalence in the Prose Brut, Hardyng's Chronicle, and the Alliterative Morte Arthure. Chapter eight sees Helen Cooper tease out the sophistication of Malory's response to England's political landscape during the Wars of the Roses. By analytically exploring the legal and ethical dilemmas and contradictions of his fictional Arthurian society, Cooper [End Page 82] argues, Malory constructs something akin to a political tragedy of nation-building. In chapter nine, Jean-Pierre Martin discusses the political aims of twelfth-century France's great aristocratic families as reflected in the elaborate genealogies presented in the 'Matter of France' texts, and Riccardo Buscagli's contribution betrays a similar thrust as it shows how the figure of Ruggiero is invented to buttress the Este family's claim to power. The eleventh chapter contains Marco Praloran's investigation into the development of entrelacement techniques in early modern European romance and how this impinges not only on the intelligibility of plot structures but also on the construction of temporalities. Chapter twelve, by Daniel Javitch, is interested in the ways in which Boiardo, Ariosto, and, especially, Tasso poetically handle and simultaneously theorize the marvellous in the service of claiming historical dignity for their romances. David Quint then enters into a similar discussion as he alerts us to the Gerusalemme's paradoxical juxtaposition of romance material and historical topicality, as embodied, for instance, in the complexities surrounding the depiction of Armida's chariot. Gordon Teskey examines the Faerie Queene's tensions between allegory and history, and, finally, in the single article that shows an interest in issues of gender and of cultural hybridity, Marina S. Brownlee investigates late medieval and early modern examples of Spanish romance—Pedro del Corral's...

Transforming Work: Early Modern Pastoral and Late Medieval Poetry. Katherine C. Little. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013. Pp. vii+256.

<i>Transforming Work: Early Modern Pastoral and Late Medieval Poetry</i>. Katherine C. Little. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013. Pp. vii+256.

The Place of Relations in Hieronymus Pardo's Semantics of Propositions

I examine a sixteenth-century development of the anti-realist propositional semantics which is based on the notion of ‘mode’. Pardo uses this notion to offer a personal interpretation of the Buridanian criticism of complexe significabilia. He develops a middle way between the reduction of the significate of propositions to particular things and the postulation of non-standard entities which are only complexly signifiable. The key to this middle way is Pardo's understanding of the notion of ‘mode’ as connoting a relation between individual things. He offers a new interpretation of the signification of syncategorematic terms, and a definition of ‘comparative’ notions, by which something is known ‘relatively’ with respect to some other thing. And a real relational correlate is postulated for these relational ways of knowing. Relations are thus used to grant a specific significate of propositions, without renouncing the strict Buridanian rejection of any extra-categorial complexe significabilia. The role of relations in Pardo's propositional semantics consists in allowing a new (intensional) understanding of the significate of propositions.

The Ottoman origins of capitalism: uneven and combined development and Eurocentrism

AbstractThe history of capitalism's origins is unmistakably Eurocentric, placing sixteenth-century developments in politics, economy, culture, and ideology squarely within the unique context of Europe. And while the disciplinary remit of International Relations (IR) should offer a way out of such European provincialism, it too has been built on largely Eurocentric assumptions. In Eurocentric approaches, the Ottoman Empire has been absent, passive, or merely a comparative foil against which the specificity and superiority of Europe has been defined. And yet, the Ottoman Empire was arguably the most powerful actor in the Early Modern period. In this article, I argue that any history of capitalism's origins must therefore account for the historical importance of the Ottomans. In doing so, this article seeks to address the non-European blind-spot, both in theorisations of capitalism's origins and in IR theory, by reincorporating the material significance of the Ottoman Empire in historical processes, which led to the transition to capitalism. I do so by utilising the theory of Uneven and Combined Development, and in the process seek to defend its credentials as a non-Eurocentric social theory on the one hand and as a sociologically and historically sensitive theory of international relations on the other.

Erasmian Rhetoric of Dialogue and Declamation and the Staging of Persuasion in Antonio Brucioli's Dialogi della morale filosofia

AbstractThe Dialogi della morale filosofia by Antonio Brucioli (1487–1566), a Florentine humanist exiled in Venice, contain significant reworkings of Erasmian material. In the first edition (1526) Brucioli includes a dialogue version of Erasmus' declamation Encomium matrimonii; in the second edition (1537–1538) he recasts the colloquy Coniugium. While critics have discussed Erasmus' influence on Brucioli in the context of religious renewal, this article assesses the influence of Erasmian rhetoric on Brucioli's Dialogi from a literary perspective, namely in connection with early sixteenth-century developments of the dialogue genre in Italy. It argues that several of Brucioli's dialogues reveal an early application in the Italian literary context of Erasmian dialogical and declamatory strategies that exploit the mimetic value of the spoken exchange. Brucioli successfully valorizes these strategies to create a rhetorical “staging of persuasion” for the sake of the propagation of classical moral wisdom. The final part of this article establishes a connection between Brucioli's attempts to create a praxis of speaking on moral philosophy through dialogue and Erasmus' experiments with vivid spoken exchange in the Colloquia's earliest form as Familiarum colloquiorum formulae (1522).

Caring for Poor and Fatherless Children in London, c. 1350-1550

o what extent did formal developments in poor relief usher in significant changes in the experiences of poor children? Sixteenth-century developments in poor relief had direct implications for children, who were often the subjects of legislation. Poor laws authorized local authorities to bind poor children into apprenticeships, with the stated intention of equipping children for employ- ment in adulthood. 1 By the end of the sixteenth century, when support from parents or kin was lacking, parishes were responsible for maintaining poor children, whether they were orphaned, illegitimate, or simply destitute. Some of the larger towns also established municipal hospitals dedicated to the poor, including children, to replace charitable care formerly provided by religious houses. 2 Hospitals and poor relief legislation of the sixteenth century repre- sented efforts by public authorities to support poor children and to prepare them for adulthood. The origins of sixteenth-century developments in welfare have been dis- cerned in the perspectives and practices of local communities dating back to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. 3 Compulsory contributions and parochial administration of charity were distinctive features of the evolving national system of poor relief in England. But we need more detailed knowledge of the informal systems of support for children in the fifteenth century to assess the extent to which subsequent developments in poor relief represented significant changes for poor girls and boys. Who came to the assistance of poor children in later medieval England, and what sort of upbringing might they expect if their natal family dissolved through death, desertion, or poverty? What happened to illegitimate children whose fathers would not or could not pay maintenance or keep them? These are difficult questions to ask of medieval sources. We know, in broad outline, that kin, social networks, and religious houses all contributed to the care of destitute children. 4 But how such arrangements were made and

The history of be fixing to: grammaticization, sociolinguistic distribution and emerging literary spaces

ABSTRACTThe be fixing to structure not only has a long and fascinating history but also a highly contemporary presence in Internet communication. The rise of the futurate verbal periphrasis be fixing to + V shows an essentially textbook example of grammaticization, not so different in many ways from the development of be going to. However, there are some important differences too. While be going to has a wide distribution among speakers of Englishes in the world, having much to do with its sixteenth century development and subsequent global diffusion in the colonial period, be fixing to grammaticized in Southern US English in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a fact which resulted in a relatively small circumscribed geographical distribution in its earliest uses.

Sixteenth Century Divisions and Ecumenical Dialogue

SIXTEENTH-CENTURY DIVISIONS AND ECUMENICAL DIALOGUE The Eucharist. By Edward SchUlebeeckx. (New York: Burns and Gates, a Continuum imprint. 2005. Originally published 1968.Pp. 160. $18.95 paperback.) The in the Reformation. Incarnation and Liturgy. By Lee Palmer Wandel. (New York: Cambridge University Press. 2006. Pp. xii, 302. $70.00 clothbound, $24.95 paperback.) It has been remarked more than once that ecumenical dialogue risks failure when the appropriate historical studies are neglected, either not done or not taken into account when the possibilities of eventual communion between churches are discussed. Without these, the issues in dispute at the time of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations of the sixteenth century are not clarified, nor can it be seen what import they have for present ecumenical efforts and what relation they have to the Gospel and to the apostolic tradition. Both of the above books show careful historical research into sixteenth-century developments and questions. Schillebeeckx is concerned with more theological issues, historical and current. He bases his thoughts about present trends in Eucharistie theology on careful historical research into the Council of Trent. He then relates the issues debated by the Council to contemporary European ways of thinking about the symbolic. Wandel is more purposefully historical. She writes principally about how the Mass, Lord's Supper, or Holy Communion were celebrated by the communities that drew apart from each other in their understanding of what they did and what Christ commanded. Holding these two works in hand together is a reminder of how complex the issues were and of how quite varied aspects of dispute and schism need to be studied. They illustrate the distinction that has to be made between doctrinal and practical questions, as weE as the need to explore the relation between the two. They also make the reader sensitive to what is at stake in relating such matters to current thought, practice, and teaching. While that is not her intent,Wandel's book in particular should make it clear that no solution to ecumenical communion, such as a general policy of open communion table, is possible unless churches address the ways in which members of different traditions inevitably think differently about the meaning of the communion table. Even the existing agreed statements on the Eucharist, rich and important though they are, do not take the belief and feeling of participants in the liturgy into full account and so seldom address how to deal with popular and pastoral exigencies. The small book of Edward SchUlebeeckx, rather deceptively entitled The Eucharist, is a reprint of a 1968 book. When written it was not meant to be a full range Eucharistie theology. It might better have borne the title Presence in the Eucharist since it treated of then current trends in the discussion of Christ's presence in the in the light of the Tridentine doctrine given in the Decree on the Sacrament of the Eucharist. The work is still very relevant, both to historical studies on Trent and to the development of a theology of Eucharistie presence in the light of contemporary thinking and culture. Indeed, one might say that in Catholic circles Schillebeeckx's presentation surpasses much that has been written between then and now and students and scholars would benefit from returning to the careful and accurate thought of a Magtster in the field. We can be grateful to Continuum for the reprint. The book is divided into two parts, the one historical and the other a treatment of theological trends of the period before, during, and after Vatican Council II. In the historical section, Schillebeeckx's purpose is to clarify what was discussed and defined at the Council of Trent and to place its teaching into its proper historical and cultural setting. Contrary to the positions taken by some others, Schillebeeckx insists that the matters of Christ's presence and of transubstantiation were thought through in terms of the prevailing Aristotelian natural philosophy. …

Sixteenth-Century Farming

T-SHE sixteenth century is commonly depicted as the century during which the modern world emerged from the medieval. Those who divide history into stages of economic growth have usually found themselves in agreement, on this point, with those who divide it into periods of social and political change. According to this view the dissolution of feudal ties, the renunciation of allegiance to an oecumenical church, and the termination of a time-honoured method of expropriating the surplus value of labour made room for the emergence, in the course of the sixteenth century, of systems of thought and modes of action, in politics and administration, in production and distribution, in religion, science, and the arts, which settled the way in which things would develop until now. The sixteenth century has been regarded for so long as the natural frontier between medieval and modern in English history that it takes an effort of thought to realize that it is in fact no longer the frontier it was. Paradoxically enough, the weakening of this established division owes much to the work done by historians of sixteenth-century affairs whose intention was to strengthen it. So provocative were the claims they made for sixteenth-century developments that they roused the indignant opposition of historians who had been placidly content, hitherto, to ruminate in pastures which were unquestionably medieval without troubling themselves in the least with thoughts which went beyond the bounds of their normal interests. Having asked for trouble, they got it. They found themselves being challenged on their own ground with the result that familiar landmarks are fast disappearing from the historical landscape, and a frontier which was once so firmly established is now, at last, on the move. If we hear no more of the New Monarchy for the future that will be part of the debt we owe to the late K. B. McFarlane and to those who have followed where he led.' If we hear less than we did of the enormous accession of prestige and even of power that accrued to Parliament as a result of the use that Tudor monarchs made of it, we owe it to Prof. Roskell that we now see that the real break in the history of Parliament occurred very much later than the sixteenth century and in circumstances very different from those that prevailed then.2 And if the administrative changes made by Thomas Cromwell have now lost the fresh gloss of novelty and modernity that they once had that is surely because medievalists such as Mr Harriss have shown that when all Cromwell's reforms had been accom-