Suchergebnisse

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- List of Illustrations -- List of Contributors -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Sexual Transgression as Social Metaphor -- Part I: Defamed Buildings and Shamed Bodies -- 1 Adultery, Cuckoldry and House-Scorning in Florence: The Case of Bianca Cappello -- 2 Vincenzo Gonzaga and the Body Politic: Impotence and Virility at Court -- 3 Historical and Literary Contexts for the Skimmington: Impotence and Samuel Butler's Hudibras -- Part II: Impotence, Magic and Medicine -- 4 Impotence, Witchcraft and Politics: A Renaissance Case -- 5 The Satyr in the Kitchen Pantry -- 6 Impotence and Corruption: Sexual Function and Dysfunction in Early Modern Italian Books of Secrets -- Part III: Horns and Visual Innuendo -- 7 "Divine cuckolds": Joseph and Vulcan in Renaissance Art and Literature -- 8 Niklaus Manuel and Urs Graf: Cuckolds, Impotence and Sex Workers in Swiss Renaissance Art (c. 1510-1517) -- 9 The Cuckoldries of Baccio del Bianco -- 10 Picart's Browbeaten Husbands in 17th-Century France: Cuckoldry in Context -- Index -- Plates

Discourses on religious violence and armed clerics -- The contexts of monastic violence and warfare -- The fighting servants of the Buddha -- The teeth and claws of the Buddha: noble monks and monk-commanders -- Constructed traditions: sōhei and Benkei -- Sōhei, Benkei, and monastic warriors: historical perspectives

Monastic charitable provision in the later Middle Ages through to the Dissolution has often been described as inadequate in terms of both quantity and quality. It has been accused of ineffectiveness because of its allegedly indiscriminate nature. This article suggests that in fact the religious houses and hospitals of England were providing a greater amount of poor relief in a more assiduous manner than has previously been allowed. The core of evidence comes from the 1535 national tax assessment of the Church, the Valor Ecclesiasticus. This contains details of the charitable provision carried out by most monasteries and hospitals as recorded by Crown commissions. After allowances have been made for the bias in the survey, a statistical analysis is carried out which indicates that an upward reassessment should be made of the quantity of monastic charity. Qualitative evidence from both the Valor Ecclesiasticus and from other contemporary sources also suggests that the pre-Reformation Church was providing genuinely beneficial poor relief.

Architectural structures are often found in both in the monumen- tal and in the easel painting of Siena in the 15th century, but it is in the predella polyptychs that they enter into dialogue with human figures, creating harmo- nious compositions or original contrasts. In some works, they serve as a deco- rative background for narrative scenes, while in others they become integral parts of them. This article demonstrates that, despite the strong attachment of the Sienese artists of the Quattrocento era to the medieval tradition, it is in the predella polyptychs of the 15th century that innovations in the field of depicting architectural structures are adopted. Through the examination of a number of scenes from the predella of the sienese polyptychs, it became obvious that it was in the architectura picta that artists had greater freedom and depicted architec- tural innovations that had not yet been reflected in actual Sienese architecture. There are many predella fragments depicting architectural structures, but they have not been fully documented. The brief excursion reported in this study aims to review the most representative samples, organize them chronologically and analyze their evolution through almost the entire 15th century.

The representation of human beings in medieval chronicles in general and in Persian chronicles in particular is governed by a code of conventions. An individual historical figure is usually depicted according to his rank and to the role attributed to him by a historiographer. Although chronicles narrate actual events and depict real persons and therefore cannot technically be defined as fiction, nevertheless it is possible to distinguish the categorization of the images of historical figures which substantially departs from what must have actually been the case. The evolution of the image of the ideal monarch is of particular interest here. Authors of the earliest chronicles usually single out one or more ruler as an ideal manager of the general welfare. As a rule, historiographers were influenced in their choice of the ideal type by political considerations and tended to define a representative or the representatives of a ruling dynasty as the ideal.

AbstractIn this article, we bring together a variety of studies, both old and new, to examine continuity and change in population dynamics in Italy during the medieval millennium (476–1492 AD). Though the available data are often sporadic and should be interpreted with great caution, it is possible to clarify certain dynamics, which can be useful for guiding future research. First, population fluctuations were not impacted by migration into or out of Italy. Second, medieval Italy was characterized by a high‐pressure demographic regime: e0 was around 20 years, with high adult mortality, and the birth rate was around 50 per mill. Third, despite high mortality, the Italian population grew (+50 percent) from the ninth century to 1347, mainly—but not exclusively—due to the absence of plague. Fourth, the stagnant population of the periods between the sixth and the eighth centuries and the 14th and 16th centuries was determined by the recurrent outbreaks of plague. Fifth, the population stagnation during the first and the last medieval centuries is also partly related to the increase in age at first marriage, while the demographic growth between the ninth and mid‐14th century is possibly connected to the decrease in age at first marriage among women. Sixth, the vitality of the medieval Italian population was partly ensured by a high rate of remarriage among widows. Seventh, data on statures show that mortality levels were determined by epidemic factors, rather than living standards. Finally, when the plague ceased in Europe in the middle of the Early Modern Age, adult survival was significantly higher than in the ancient and medieval centuries, despite the fact that neither hygienic‐sanitary nor epidemiological conditions, and certainly not nutrition, were better than in the centuries preceding the Black Death.