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In medieval Passion cycles represented in Czech, Slovak (former Hungary), and Polish murals dating from the fourteenth to the fifteenth centuries one may observe a number of-gestures which appear in respective scenes starting from the Entry into Jerusalem and ending with the Entombment (laying in the sepulchre). The most significant gesture in the entry scene is the outstretched hand of Christ riding a donkey. It is the language of gesture used since antiquity, transmitted through Byzantine and Italian art (including Giotto’s Entry into Jerusalem in his Arena Chapel frescoes), and transferred into art north of the Alps.

In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, successive archbishops of Salzburg attempted to consolidate their power and implement ecclesiastical reforms by means of commissioned printed liturgical books. Achieving uniform worship, however, proved difficult. In editions of the Missale Salisburgense, the revised musical mass prefaces required typographically challenging red notation. The addition or omission of coloured notes by printers and users reveals that the technical limitations of printing together with variable performance practices hindered liturgical uniformitas.

An exhaustive analysis of the very last words drafted by one of the most powerful noblewomen of the fifteenth century, Duchess Aldonza de Mendoza (d. 1435), reveals that her project to transform the Hieronymite monastery of Lupiana into a pantheon might have been connected to the birth of a child outside her marriage, more precisely, to a son who had remained hidden until the moment of Aldonza’s death. The aim of this study is to offer a new reading of the Duchess’s mausoleum, a pantheon planned to showcase her lineage by focusing exclusively on the female line. Further, this paper rediscovers two panels of the lost main altarpiece of the monastery of Lupiana commissioned by Aldonza de Mendoza and proposes an allegorical portrait of the Duchess represented as the wife of Pontius Pilate. Aldonza’s project reveals itself as crucial for understanding the self-fashioning mechanisms employed by late medieval women, as well as the ways in which visual culture was used in the shaping of female memorial programmes.

This article focuses on Maḥzor Vitry, a work considered the major source of the liturgical rite, laws, and customs of the lost Jewish communities of northern France and, more broadly, constituting a landmark of intellectual creativity in medieval Franco-Germany. Compiled sometime in the second half of the eleventh century by Simḥah ben Samuel of Vitry (d. 1105), one of Rashi’s (1040/1–1105) closest disciples, the original manuscript of the Maḥzor Vitry is now lost. However, thirteen copies of the work, dated between the mid-twelfth and the second half of the fourteenth century, are still preserved in public and private collections worldwide. The only surviving work of its kind (from the school of Rashi) to combine liturgy and law, this dual-natured work can be regarded as a liturgical-halakhic compendium, rather than a traditional maḥzor. The aim of this study is to examine the corpus of extant manuscripts, describing their legal content and textual transmission, as well as their internal organization. In addition, it will consider unrelated addenda from a gamut of literary genres that were appended to these manuscripts from the first half of the thirteenth century onwards. A sample list of eight comparable liturgical-halakhic compendia from Franco-Germany (thirteenth to fifteenth centuries) are also briefly described, demonstrating that the dual and encyclopedic nature of these liturgical-halakhic compendia are not limited to Maḥzor Vitry and, therefore, can be viewed as a highly popular genre, used by the rabbinical and intellectual elite of medieval Franco-Germany.

This article studies the use of what was known as grana (carmine dye from cochineal insects) in Western Andalusia during the fifteenth century. Through the value of grana which was used to obtain the precious red pigment for dyeing wool and silk, we will reflect on the connection between the ecosystem where this natural resource was collected, the peasants, the governance of cities and towns, as well as the role of the market.

espanolLa nocion de tributo justo, convertida en concepto clave del pensamiento fiscal bajomedieval, hubo de marcar la orientacion de la politica hacendistica de los nacientes Estados monarquicos, como sugiere una iniciativa desarrollada por la realeza castellana en el transito de los siglos XIV al XV, basada en el proyecto de consecucion de nuevas rentas a traves de la busqueda de minas y tesoros. Para ello, se parte de tres documentos del Archivo General de Simancas, que, aunque carecen de fecha, cabria situar hipoteticamente durante el reinado de Enrique III de Castilla (1390-1406), los cuales son contextualizados en el marco de la politica fiscal de la monarquia castellana y de las lineas de accion politica del tercer Trastamara. El estudio permite sugerir el interes de Enrique III por impulsar nuevas fuentes de renta, mas alla del incremento de los tributos, como garantia de una actuacion acorde al ideal regio bajomedieval. EnglishThe notion of fair taxation, which became a key concept in late-medieval fiscal thought, marked the focus of taxation policies in the new monarchical states, as suggested by an initiative developed by the Castilian royalty from the fourteenth to the fifteenth centuries. This initiative was based on a project to acquire new revenue by searching for mines and treasures. To this end, three documents from the Archivo General de Simancas are used as a starting point and although they are not dated they can be hypothetically traced to the reign of Enrique III of Castile (1390-1406). These documents are contextualised within the framework of the Castilian monarchy’s fiscal policy and of the course of political action of the third Trastamara king. The study suggests Enrique III’s interest in boosting new sources of revenue, beyond increasing taxes, as a measure to guarantee his political leverage in line with the royal ideal of the late Middle Ages.

Estudio del Hostal y la Casa adscrita a Blanca de Trastámara, infanta de Navarra y, tras su matrimonio con Enrique de Castilla en 1440, princesa de Asturias. Figura escasamente atendida por la historiografía, para la elaboración de este trabajo se ha reunido una importante documentación de archivo, en su mayor parte inédita, que ha permitido conocer los espacios de servicio curiales que atendieron a la joven princesa desde su niñez y profundizar en las intrigas que en su entorno se desarrollaron en el marco más amplio de las complejas relaciones políticas que Castilla, Navarra y Aragón mantuvieron durante la primera mitad del siglo XV.

Petrarch’s letter de Ascensu Montis Ventosi has long served as the founding document of “renaissance humanism”. Since thebeginning of renaissance studies in the mid-nineteenth century, the letter has become almost a talisman for summoning the new, secular spirit of humanism that spontaneously arrived in Italy in the fourteenth century, took hold of the hearts and minds of Europeans in the fifteenth century, and led to cataclysmic cultural, religious, and political changes in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. This reading, still common among non-specialists, especially in the English-speaking world, is overly simplistic and ignores Petrarch’s profound debt to classical and Christian tradition, obscuring the fundamentally religious character of the letter. This article examines how scholars came to assign the letter so much importance and offers an interpretation that stresses Petrarch’s continuity with tradition and his desire to revitalize rather than reinvent the traditions of Christian scholarship and contemplation.

Byzantine civilization did not know the printed book: it was a civilization of manuscripts and manuscript books (codices) made of papyrus, parchment, and paper. The ancient Greeks bequeathed to the Byzantines the word Logos (in multiple meanings – word, speech, mind, reason, supreme principle, the divine creative power, the word of God, the word as the bearer of life and light), as the greatest treasure. The Rhomaioi (Byzantines) polished the skill of use of words and the ability to persuade with words to their full glory. However, the use of words within Byzantine civilization flourished completely and reached its apogee in literature. An important feature of the Greek language in Byzantine times (the period from the fourth to the fifteenth century) is diglossia, i.e. the existence of two different varieties of a language used under different conditions within a community – a high, socially prestigious form, used for writing, and a low, simpler, everyday spoken form. For Christians, a sensitive issue was the attitude towards the ancient pagan heritage: they accepted what did not conflict with their dogmas, and rejected the rest. Today, there are about 55,000 Greek manuscripts in the world, of which about 40,000 are Byzantine. In order to be distributed to readers and preserved from decay, manuscript books were being transcribed in scriptoriums, in which not only monks but also secular people of various professions were working. Books were very expensive. There were public, imperial, patriarchal, monastic, and private libraries, with not large collections of manuscripts. As Byzantine civilization was approaching its decline, the migration of Greek manuscripts from Byzantium to the Latin world of Western Europe began. In that way, the great heritage of ancient civilization was preserved and transferred to European countries.

English regained its position as the preferred base language of administrative record to the detriment of Latin and French in England at the end of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth...

This paper identifies a neglected manuscript, Viterbo, Centro Diocesano di Documentazione (CeDiDo), Capitolare 51 (R), as the extant archetype of the Libri Romani version of the glossary of Placidus. It first demonstrates that R is the parent of the three witnesses to the Libri Romani text used by editors, and it considers the implications of the neglected manuscript for future editions of the text. It then corroborates the importance of R by tracing its travels in humanistic and antiquarian circles in Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This history provides a framework for future research on the textual transmission of the Libri Romani text of Placidus.

The particularities in the political development of medieval Anatolia after the arrival of the Seljuq Turks in the eleventh century resulted in a singular scenario in which a long but steady process of Islamization transformed medieval Anatolia with the majority Christian population into a mostly Muslim territory by the end of the fifteenth century. However, this process of conflict and accommodation affected not only the different religions present in the peninsula but also those confessions that coexisted and competed with each another within each of these religions. The religious diversity of the 13th to 15th cent. Anatolia has also reflected its textual production. Several significant works on kalam and fiqh, in addition to a variety of Sufi texts, were produced during this period. These works often deal with dogma, practices or traditions of their religious confession. But, generally, they do not offer much information on other religious confessions. The manuscript held at the Bibliothèque National de France (Supplément Turc 1120) contains a work which has been identified by Osman Turan as the Fustat al-‘adala and attributed to a certain Muhammad b. Muhammad al-Khatib. The uniqueness of this work is that a part of it is occupied with describing the different ‘heresies’ that were present in Anatolia at the time when the author lived, which appears to be during the lifetime of the last Seljuq Sultan of Rum, Ghiyath al-din Mas‘ud (d. 1308 AD). This introduction will look at this manuscript from both a codicological and thematic perspective. On the one hand, I will discuss certain aspects related to the production of the codex, its authorship and potential patronage. While on the other, the section on heresies contained in the text will be examined to explore what this work can tell us about the religious environment of medieval Anatolia.

The ʾAgur—a relatively obscure and occasionally derided Jewish legal compendium of the late fifteenth century—represents the first halakhic work truly of the printed age, in that it was not simply a printed manuscript, a book that utilized the production value of the printing press without changes to its substance or presentation, but rather an original text, written by its author during his lifetime, to be precisely suited for the opportunities presented by print. Jacob Landau, the author, was wholly aware of the cultural ramifications of print and adapted his work to these new circumstances and possibilities. He created a text that could be used by both scholars and nonscholars and would appeal to a variety of geographically specific traditions. It was also the first Hebrew book to contain haskamot, which later were commonly used and even required in some Jewish communities. As the first halakhic book printed during its author's lifetime, justification was necessary for its very existence.

The study presents the first two generations of professors at the University of Kraków in the fifteenth century. The first generation was made up of Polish, Czech, and German professors from the University of Prague, who in the year 1400 organized the university in Kraków. The second generation of professors in Kraków formed thanks to years of work on the part of masters who came to Kraków from Prague and other European universities. Both generations had a decisive influence on the development of the University of Kraków in the fifteenth century.

Studies of Cornwall, and the role of its governing officials in the fifteenth century, are still at a rudimentary stage. A cursory search of the British Library’s vast online catalogue, or the inde...

This article examines the manuscripts into which compilers bound Dominican letters of spiritual direction in fifteenth-century Italy. It argues that manuscript compilers sought to model Observant Dominican sanctity after Jerome's late antique practice of writing letters of spiritual direction to women. The paper aims to contribute to the growing conversation around the development and spread of an Observant Dominican identity by demonstrating that compilers modeled Observant beati after Jerome's authoritative persona in order to argue for the ancient precedent of the reformers’ often controversial agendas, chief among them their active ministry to women.

Book Review

The use of table decorations in the form of ship models, known as nefs, became a way of demonstrating prestige among the elite merchant class of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. One of the mo...

Summary This article discusses the interlinkage of medicine and the miraculous in the healing actions of living saints, based on the canonisation dossiers of St Francesca Romana (1440–53) and St Francesco di Paola (1512–17). These documents include a large number of miracles performed by saints during their lifetime, and in a large proportion of these cases, the holy person administered some kind of medical substance to an infirm devotee before or while performing the miracle. While the commissioners of canonisation inquests had to determine that the cure was of a miraculous origin, it appears that for the devotees the medical and miraculous acts were an inseparable part of the same continuum. Occasional conflicts arose with medical professionals, but the living saints also collaborated with them. The connection of a medicating saint and a miracle-performing saint is thus an essential aspect of the medical pluralism of late medieval and early modern societies.

In Portugal, a ‘studium generale’ was founded in the late thirteenth century by royal initiative, ecclesiastical plea, and apostolic sanction. This foundation belonged to the onset of the developme...

Much is to be learned from the ongoing and invigorating dialogue among art historical subdisciplines as well as archaeology and anthropology. This article therefore focuses on artistic responses in...

This study describes the linguistic and political significance of Jaume Gassull’s poem La brama dels llauradors written between 1475 and 1490 and published in Valencia in 1561. I argue that the defense of the language of the Valencian peasants in this poem is important for three reasons: first, it opposes the trend of linguistic prescriptivism of the Catalan language that had started in the second half of the fifteenth century after the Cancelleria reial in Barcelona had lost its linguistic authority. La brama opposes a linguistic prescriptivism carried out by authors such as Bernat Fenollar (1438-1516) that was based on a particular interpretation of the system of government known as pactisme. This interpretation undervalued the linguistic, social, and political role of the peasants, artisans, and artists. Second, La brama questions the description of the peasants carried out by Francesc Eiximenis (ca. 1327-ca. 1409) and demonstrates that by defending their own language the peasants could redefine the concept of pactisme so that every member of society could be represented. Finally, the defense of the language of the peasants underscored the historical continuity of the Catalan language, which had fallen into question at the time that the poem was published.

ES: El título introduce la pregunta de la que partimos: los libros del mercader Michele Da Colle pueden ser considerados el más antiguo ejemplo de la aplicación del método digráfico en Portugal? Michele fue un comerciante toscano, agente de la compañía Saviati-Da Colle de Pisa, que se estableció en Lisboa en la segunda mitad del siglo XV. El registro de los datos contables de los dos primeros años de su actividad en Portugal se conservan en dos libros, hoy custodiados en el Archivo Salviati, en la Scuola Normale Superiore de Pisa. Para responder al enunciado, procederemos a realizar un análisis detallado de las características de estas fuentes documentales, de manera que podamos percibir hasta qué punto cumplen los principios generales del método digráfico defendido por diferentes autores. Con este estudio de caso pretendemos contribuir al debate sobre la posible influencia italiana en la introducción del método de la partida doble en Portugal. Analizadas las características de los libros, puede concluirse que estamos ante un ejemplo de partida doble que, aunque no sea perfecto, se encuadra en el contexto de producción contable toscana de la época, que consiste en una fase de evolución y perfeccionamiento del método digráfico. Ante la falta de otros ejemplos, los libros de Michele pueden ser considerados los más antiguos registros de partidas dobles hechos en Portugal. Algunos indicios documentales que recogemos sugieren también la posibilidad de que los mercaderes italianos hubieran ejercido alguna influencia sobre los comerciantes portugueses en la adopción de este método. Sin embargo, aunque esa influencia se hubiera producido, no fructificó, ya que los diversos tratados portugueses de aritmética del siglo XVI no hacen mención al método de la partida doble, que solo comenzaría a ser empleado en Portugal de forma sistemática a mitad del siglo XVIII. title of this article puts forward the research question: can the books of the merchant Michele Da Colle be considered as the oldest example of the use of the double entry method in Portugal? Michele was a Tuscan merchant and agent to the Pisan Salviati-Da Colle firm, established in Lisbon as of the second half of the fifteenth century. The first years of his business activity in Portugal are recorded in two account books that are kept today at the Salviati Archive, in the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa. To answer the research question, this article thoroughly examines the characteristics of these documents. The aim is to determine if these records follow the general principles of double entry bookkeeping proposed by different scholars. This investigation thus seeks to contribute to the debate on the introduction of double entry in Portugal via Italian influence. The preliminary analysis of these books shows that we are, indeed, in the presence of double entry records. The example does contain formal imperfections, but it has strong similarities with the context of Tuscan accounting of the time, which can arguably mean that it represents a stage of evolution and development of the double entry method. Since we do not have any other examples, Michele Da Colle's account books can be considered the earliest records in double entry in Portugal. Evidence also suggests that Italian merchants exerted influence on Portuguese merchants for the adoption of this method, although it didn't last in the centuries to come. This explains why several Portuguese works on arithmetic from the sixteenth century fail to mention the double entry system, which was only regularly applied in Portugal as of the mid-eighteenth century.

This article presents preliminary results of codicological, historical and technological research into a medieval liturgical manuscript from the collection of the Diocesan Museum in Torun (inv. no. MDT-K-003), carried out thanks to grant no. 0122/NPRH6/H11/85/2018, ‘An Inventory of Torun’s Art’, part 1, ‘Sacred Art Heritage, Old Town Complex’. In the scant subject literature, this codex is identified as an antiphonary compiled for the parish church of SS John the Baptist and John the Evangelist in Torun (in the archive of which it remained until recently) and dated to the turn of the sixteenth century. In the present article, this book is identified as a Graduale de tempore used by the Teutonic Knights. The authors analyse the contents of the codex, discuss codicological issues related to its material structure and use, present a study of its decoration and draw new conclusions concerning its provenance. The book demonstrates very close analogies, with respect to both its original structure and the character of the later entries, to an incomplete Graduale de sanctis held in the Diocesan Museum in Pelplin (shelf mark L2). Both these manuscripts probably originated in the environment of Chelmza (Kulmsee) Cathedral Chapter (as is confirmed by comparative analysis with the decoration in the Pelplin Antiphonary L5–L6, compiled in 1419 at the request of Iohannes Copetz, dean of the chapter, in Chelmza (Kulmsee)). The two volumes can probably be dated to the second quarter of the fifteenth century. Our reinterpretation of an important but little-known handwritten source from the Torun collection shows considerable potential. Comparative studies may lead to the identification of a scriptorium operating in the first half of the fifteenth century at Chelmza (Kulmsee) Cathedral.

Towards the end of the twentieth century much UK public money for research was diverted to collaborative projects with specific research objectives, notably in the field of history. This distinguished the UK from other countries on the cutting edge of historical research, notably the USA which lags far behind, but not from Germany, which had long led the way when it comes to teamwork with a clearly defined theme, and where average budgets for historical research projects are still on a scale unimaginable on this side of the Channel. One of the greatest German historical enterprises is the Repertorium Germanicum. The project was conceived in the 1890s, and linked from the start with the German Historical Institute in Rome, from which so much fine work on papal history has emerged, notably by Protestant scholars. The first secretary of the DHI (Deutsches Historisches Institut) had the idea of creating a ‘search engine’ (Suchmaschine). It was to be and is organised within pontificates by the names of individuals who appear in documents in the Vatican Archives: a prosopographical structure. Though the individuals need a ‘German’ connection to be included, that is interpreted in the broadest sense, so that dioceses from Poland to Belgium find a place, as do any Germans who turn up in any other region, if the team happened upon them. Consultation online is now also possible, at http://194.242.233.132/denqRG/index.htm>, though the volumes under review did not seem to have been made available electronically at time of writing – and many will find the paper volumes easier to manage, where they are available. Ludwig Quidde, who conceived of the project, thought that it could be completed up to the end of the fifteenth century by a team of five within three years. He had no idea of the scale of the holdings in the archive. Furthermore, alongside the Repertorium Germanicum one must now place its precocious younger sister, the Repertorium Poenitentiariae Germanicum, which has (thanks to Ludwig Schmugge and his team) already overtaken the elder sibling with Repertorium Poenitentiariae Germanicum, XI: Hadrian VI,1522–1523, ed. Ludwig Schmugge (Tübingen 2018).

The following critical edition presents a late fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century fragment from the Vatican Library (MS Vat. ebr. 375, ff. 50r–51r), written in Catalanized Castilian in Hebrew script. It contains seventeen philosophical definitions that I identify as part of Ramon Llull's lists of centum formae (hundred forms) in his Introductorium magnae artis generalis (Introduction to the great general art; also known as Liber de universalibus, The book of universals). The edition is meant to make this material accessible to researchers interested in the study of Jewish-Christian intellectual relations in the Iberian Peninsula, particularly with regard to the reception of the work of Ramon Llull. It includes a reproduction of the Hebrew text, a transcription and critical edition with comparison to the known Latin manuscripts in the footnotes, and an English translation.

This paper commemorates Margarita Adol’fovna Poljakovskaja (1933–2020), the head of the Ural school of Byzantine studies and the respected authority in the history and culture of late Byzantium. The author makes the reader acquainted with Professor Poljakovskaja’s academic biography, the topics of her researches, and the results of her studies in various aspects of the Byzantine history from the thirteenth to fifteenth century. The paper has revealed a few key topics studied by Professor Poljakovskaja: monastic properties in late Byzantine cities; Byzantine rhetoric and epistolography; social and political thought; intellectual life; social structures in the Byzantine society; palace ceremonies and court culture; and the Byzantines’ emotional world and daily life. It has been stated that although Professor Poljakovskaja used abundant and varied methodology produced by historical and philological researches, she preferred the anthropological approach. Her attention concentrated on a person and the person’s notion of the time and self. Reconstructions of intellectual and social life in the period of decline of the Byzantine empire loomed large in the historian’s studies, and the key topic of her researches was the problem of the “person, society, and power”.

Item does not contain fulltext In the late Middle Ages, the Biblical biblical story of Abraham and Isaac formed an ideal platform to develop a discourse on absolute faith in God as well as on the hierarchical relationships within family and society. By considering how Feo Belcari’s Florentine sacra rappresentazione and the York Abraham and Isaac participated in — and contributed to — a broader and diversified ‘public theology’, this article argues that through the performance of dramas, lay people not only gained access to the Bible but also had agency in processes of appropriation and adaptation of its text and message. At the same time, it shows how these plays, as lay enterprises, were deeply embedded in the distinct fabrics of the societies that produced them. 36 p.

This paper is devoted to the analysis of the parallels between the ideas of the Western scholastics and Jewish philosophers of the XIV–XV centuries. Hasdai Crescas was one of the famous Jewish philosophers. Until the 60s of the XX century researchers considered the philosophy of Judaism in the framework of the Arab-Muslim philosophical tradition. However, with the release of the significant Sh. Pines’ paper this trend has changed. Indeed, it would be much more methodologically more accurate to consider the philosophical ideas of Jewish thinkers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries also in the light of the interaction of the latter with European scholastic thought. The key issues raised in the main Crescas’ work, The Light of the Lord, are close to the questions formulated and decided by the scholastics. The ideas of Creskas on the divine knowledge of future events, freedom of human will, reward and punishment for actions are parallels with the ideas of different representatives of scholastic philosophy.

This article is dedicated to Liesbeth van Houts, editor of theGesta Normannorum ducum, generous mentor, colleague, and friend.This article offers an analysis, edition, and translation of theBrevis cronica compendiosa ducum Normannie, a historiographical account of the dukes of Normandy and their deeds, written at the turn of the fifteenth century by the Norman jurist and man of letters, Simon de Plumetot (1371–1443). Having all but escaped the attention of modern scholars, this study is the first to examine and publish theBrevis cronica. It not only demonstrates that the work is of greater importance than its rather scrappy form might at first suggest, but it also looks to place the text within the broader context of Simon's literary and bibliophilic practices and to determine itsraison d’être. In doing so, it argues that theBrevis cronicawas perhaps created as part of a much larger historiographical project, namely an extended chronicle of Normandy, written in the vernacular, the text of which is now lost. By exploring these important issues, the article sheds new light on a wide range of topics, from early humanist book collecting to the writing of history in France in the later Middle Ages.

Reseña de: Boase, Roger, Secrets of Pinar’s Game: Court Ladies and Courtly Verse in Fifteenth-Century Spain, Leiden-Boston, Brill, 2017, 916 pp.

The purpose of this article is to explore the frictions and potentials endemic in combining microhistorical and field theory approaches, using popular religion in England in the long fifteenth century as an example. In two case studies, concerning basic catechetical texts and the last wills and testaments created by a wide spectrum of the population, the article analyzes how micro- and macro-historical investigation can be tied together. Crucially, micro examples do not simply illustrate but rather add to our knowledge of the general picture. Where micro examples offer a corrective to a general picture there is potential for friction. However, the article also proposes that it is valuable to use Bourdieusian concepts of the cultural field to inventorize the micro evidence in the process of understanding historical situations and transitions more broadly.

The article aims to explore the connections between the fifteenth book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and the Bellum civile sung by Eumolpus in Petronius’ Satyricon. Not only structural and thematic analogies, but also the recurrence of key-figures such as Hercules and Caesar support the thesis of a very close link between the two texts. Eventually, it will be shown that Ovid’s Metamorphoses represent for Petronius both an important model and «anti-model» in the construction of an epic poem which only apparently takes side against Lucan’s Pharsalia.

The status or role of Shanghan Lun (Treatise on Cold Damage Diseases) in Joseon is quite different compared to neighboring China and Japan. This is a unique aspect that distinguishes Joseon's medicine from other East Asian countries at that time. Prior studies have conducted research on non-professional books of Shanghan Lun; however, this study aims to analyze the transmission and utilization of professional books of Shanghan Lun. In the citations of medical books in the first half of Joseon period, the domestic introduction of professional books of Shanghan Lun used at the time occurred mostly from the mid-thirteenth century to the first half of the fifteenth century. In particular, the version of professional books of Shanghan Lun quoted in Euibangyoochui (Classified Collection of Medical Prescriptions) were centered on the Yuan edition. In other words, the acceptance of the theory of Cold Damage Diseases was based on the Yuan's medicine. Professional books of Shanghan Lun, which were published separately during the compilation or publication of Euibangyoochui, were intentionally selected. It is important to identify their characteristics. First of all, Shanghan Leishu (Classified Book of Cold Damage) was used as a textbook of Cold Damage in the first half of Joseon dynasty because the author of this book, Yang Shizhen and his practice acted as the basic text. The nature of Shanghan Leishu, which pursued the integration of "several symptoms of internal medicine" and "Cold Damage" instead of pursuing independent medicine of Cold Damage with different internal medicines, may have had some influence in forming the uniqueness of Joseon's medicine of Cold Damage. Shanghanfu (Harm Caused by Cold: A Poem) was an introduction for easy access to formal Cold Damage's content. Shanghanfu is presumed to be a medical book made out of prose poems, the core of Shanghanzhizhangtu. Non-professional books of Shanghanlun have also been cited in the first half of Joseon period's medical texts in relation to Cold Damage. However, these books were not used as textbooks in medical bureaucracy's education. The exclusion of major Cold Damage-related texts from the medical bureaucracy's education may have hampered the development of Joseon's Cold Damage medicine.

Comenius is considered by many scholars to be the father of modern education, a title that he has thoroughly earned. His ideas about universal education for all children foreshadowed modern pedagogical developments, and he dedicated more than forty years of his life to reforming education and society. The question guiding this research was: Why was Comenius so dedicated to reform efforts, and why were his ideas about education so peculiar for his time? Through a review of existing scholarship and Comenius’ own writing, namely the Labyrinth, Didactic, and the Orbis Pictus, it became clear that Comenius was inspired by the millenarian ideology prevalent during the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries in Europe as well as the effects that the turbulence of the seventeenth century had on his own life. These factors also led Comenius to believe that educational reform was the key to unlocking Pansophy, which would incite the Millennium, the golden age of peace and prosperity that would precede the second coming of Christ and the final judgement of God.

International audience; A wide circle of historians, lawyers, and secondary school teachers are interested in the Pravda Russkaia. This review analyses the historiographical situation around the study of this important artefact after the publication of The Short Pravda: The Origin of the Text (2009) by Oleksiy Tolochko, in which the author develops the opinion that the Short Pravda appeared later than the Expanded Pravda, which was expressed by prominent linguists and historians (E. F. Karskii, S. P. Obnorskii, A. I. Sobolevskii, etc.) in the first half of the twentieth century but later discarded by Soviet scholarship. By combining various methods from source studies, the author proves that the Short Pravda did not originate as a legal document in the eleventh century, but as a fragment of The Chronicle of Novgorod in the early fifteenth century. The review shows that specialists’ responses to Tolochko’s book are limited to a few journal publications, each of which criticises one or two of separate arguments but does not systematically consider the proposed holistic theory of the artefact’s origin (articles by K. Zukerman, P. V. Lukin, A. A. Gorskii, A. Y. Degtyarev, etc.). Any attempt at summarising the results of the controversy leads to the belief that the discussion is methodologically unsound. The analysis of an article from the Pravda that is taken out of context can lead to opposing interpretations depending on the choice of the parameters preferred by a given author at a given time. Considering the fundamental nature of the Pravda Russkaia for the history of medieval Russia, the reviewer concludes that it is necessary to make an effort (probably a collective effort) towards a systematic analysis of Tolochko’s hypothesis: the traditional isolated study of this most important legal document should be placed within the broader framework of a comprehensive study of the collections in which the short and expanded versions of the Pravda have been preserved.; Источниковедческий статус Правды русской (руской) интересует широкий круг историков и юристов, а также преподавателей средних учебных заведений. В обзоре анализируется историографическая ситуация, сложившаяся вокруг изучения этого важнейшего памятника после выхода в 2009 г. монографии А. П. Толочко «Краткая редакция Правды руской: происхождение текста», в которой автор развивает мнение о вторичности Краткой редакции по сравнению с Пространной, высказывавшееся в первой половине XX в. видными лингвистами и историками (Е. Ф. Карским, С. П. Обнорским, А. И. Соболевским и др.) и позже отброшенное советской наукой. Сочетая различные методы источниковедения, автор доказывает, что краткая Правда возникла не как юридический документ в XI в., а как фрагмент новгородского летописания в начале XV столетия. В обзоре показано, что отклики специалистов на книгу А. П. Толочко сводятся к немногочисленным коротким журнальным публикациям, в каждой из которых подвергаются критике один или два отдельно взятых аргумента автора, но не предпринимается систематического рассмотрения предложенной целостной теории возникновения памятника (статьи К. Цукермана, П. В. Лукина, А. А. Горского, А. Я. Дегтярева и др.). Попытка подвести итоги этой многолетней дискуссии приводит к убеждению о ее методологической несостоятельности. Результаты анализа вырванной из контекста той или иной статьи Правды оказывается возможным интерпретировать в противоположных смыслах в зависимости от выбора источниковедческих параметров, которым данный автор отдает предпочтение в данный момент. Учитывая структурообразующий характер Правды русской для истории Древней Руси, автор обзора делает вывод о необходимости предпринять усилия (которые, вероятно, должны быть коллективными) для системного анализа гипотезы А. П. Толочко, причем предлагается поместить традиционное изолированное изучение этого важнейшего юридического памятника в более широкие рамки всестороннего исследования сборников, в составе которых сохранились Краткая и Пространная редакции.

The Order of the Holy Trinity for the Redemption of Captives (or Trinitarian Order) is one of the least studied continental religious groups to have expanded into thirteenth-century England. This article examines shifting notions of Trinitarian redemption in late medieval England through the prism of the order's writing about Yorkshire hermit St Robert of Knaresborough (d. 1218). Against the Weberian theory of the routinization of charisma, it demonstrates that Robert's inspirational sanctity was never bound too rigidly by his Trinitarian hagiographers, who rather co-opted his unstable charisma in distinct yet complementary ways to facilitate institutional reinvention and spiritual flourishing in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

This study uses the collection of fifteenth- to twentieth-century travel literature from the BSA library to consider issues of (elite) mobility in the Aegean Sea. These texts contain a wealth of information on the routes chosen by travellers between various islands and mainland ports, and on the navigability of the Aegean basin. By using a combination of computational Proximal Point Analysis and Social Network Analysis, these routes are visualised, and discussion focuses on how navigation varied both between centuries and according to the traveller's place of origin. It is suggested that travellers were dependent on other sorts of networks, and that routes travelled were shaped greatly by the economics and politics of the day. It is also proposed that methodologies used in this paper offer great potential for engaging broad-scale sets of archive data.

This survey of intellectual endeavor in medieval Slavia orthodoxa proposes a different way to think through the problem of the “intellectual silence of Old Rus′,” first set forth by Georges Florovsky and explored by George Fedotov, Francis Thomson, Simon Franklin, and now Donald Ostrowski. It examines the resources and opportunities for secondary schooling and their apparent outcomes in Kyivan Rus′ from the eleventh through the thirteenth century, among South Slavs on Mount Athos in the later fourteenth century, and at the Kirillo-Belozerskii (Kirillov) Monastery in northern Russia in the later fifteenth century. It concludes that intellectual endeavor is not necessarily bound to an international language of scholarship (e.g., Greek), one the one hand, or to a particular religious mentalité (e.g., that of the Western Church), on the other. Rather, it is cultivated by “schematizing” (educational) institutions oriented upon academic (heuristic) interpretive strategies and—most importantly—supported by textbooks and teachers.

This paper shows how Islamic astronomy played a significant role in the education of one of the most important Christian figures in the history of culture between eastern and western Europe, promoter of a crusade against the Ottoman Turks, namely Cardinal Bessarion (1400/1408–72). While the Byzantine polymath has generally been considered a purist of Ptolemaic astronomy, his interest in Islamic astronomy can be traced back to his youth and persisted throughout his life, as is testified by several sources from his manuscripts collection. It is misleading therefore to consider him a ‘purist’ of Ptolemy. The paper provides a survey of the texts of Islamic astronomy among the manuscripts of Bessarion’s estate. These are compared to Ptolemaic astronomy in order to assess the importance of Islamic astronomy within the framework of Bessarion’s collection. The results shed new light not only on Bessarion’s astronomical interests, but also on the reception of Islamic astronomy in non-Islamicate contexts in the fifteenth century, such as the late Byzantine Empire, Rhodes, Crete, Venice, and European humanism.

By focusing on the known details of Laonikos Chalkokondyles’ biography, on his relation to Byzantine historiographical tradition, by comparing his historical work to that of contemporary intellectuals living under the Ottomans as well as those in the west, examining his portrayal of Mehmed II, his adoption of a Herodotean model, the revival of Herodotus in the Renaissance more generally, and the reception of the ᾿Aπόδειξις in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, I argue that Laonikos was writing for an elite circle of Byzantine émigrés and other intellectuals with access to classical Greek in the west, rather than for the post- Byzantine intellectuals associated with the Ottoman court.

The motif of "Moses as legislator", known since antiquity, was held in special esteem by Jews in Quattrocento Italy, though Christian authors also knew of it. This designation for Moses should be understood against the background of the revival of Platonic thought in the West, which led Jewish scholars, especially in Italy, to emphasize Platonic trends that had long characterized Jewish medieval thought. But Jewish authors of the period were also involved in debates with non-Jews, causing them to draw on classical and scholastic sources better known to Christians. Adapting Arabic-Jewish Platonic texts to Aristotelian humanistic thought eventually gave rise to a new understanding of politics – both practical and theoretical. At the end of the fifteenth century, this new mix of perspectives allowed Jewish and Christian scholars in Italy to interpret Mosaic legislation not only as a divinely revealed collection of moral and religious precepts but also as a model legal system for the modern age – a code that could give various forms of government in early modern Europe a basis in the political exegesis of biblical institutions.

The author of this article proves that literature plays a big role in forming the culture of the people. National literature consists of the main characteristics of the national mentality. Itis unique, and it helps people learn the national characteristics of different countries. National literature shows how other culture influences it and how it influences other cultures. The author writes that the study of the literature of Uzbekistan in China is just beginning. The project “One Belt, One Road” is working successfully in China. This project helps cultural exchange between China and Uzbekistan. Philologists from Uzbekistan and China are interested in the development of literature in both countries, while Scientists studying each other's art work. Today there are articles about the work of the poet Alisher Navoi and Lutfi. Some scholars write books on the folklore of Central Asia. In these works, they pay little attention to the folklore of Uzbekistan. Chinese scientists have identified three stages in the development of literature in Uzbekistan. The first stage begins in ancient times and ends in the fifteenth century, the second from the sixteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century, and the third from the twentieth century to some modern works in Uzbekistan literature. The author proved that in China there is little research on the literature of Uzbekistan. The Chinese reader does not know the literature of Uzbekistan well, whereas readers of Uzbekistan know Russian translations of literary works of China. Today in Uzbekistan, the books of Chinese writers are being translated into the national language. Considering its importance for cultural exchange between these two countries, the author believes that Chinese philologists should study the style, genre, and characters of Chinese art, and Scientists look for common ground in both literature works.