The renaissance in Switzerland

The geographical position of Switzerland made contact with Renaissance manifestations in Italy and Germany easy even if the country was too small and poor for notable buildings or works of art. Participation in the wars in north Italy increased interest in military and governmental aspects of the Renaissance.Basel was an early centre for printing, and its presses, particularly when intelligently directed by the Amerbach family and by Froben, contributed largely to the availability of Greek and Latin texts.Erasmus lived for many years in Basel and attracted numerous scholars - Bär, Glarean, Capito, Beatus Rhenanus, Vadian, Oecolampadius, Zwingli and Myconius wrote near-classical Latin and all had some knowledge of Greek. Konrad Witz, Manuel, Urs Graf and Asper were painters of repute: Dürer and Holbein did some of their work in Basel.The Swiss cities, Basel, Zurich, St Gall, Glarus and Bern, encouraged scholarship and education: with Tschudi, Justinger, Schilling and Anshelm, a new approach to the writing of history was possible. Paracelsus and Gessner made contributions to medicine and natural science.     

Barbarian interest in the Excerpta Latina Barbari

Joseph Justus Scaliger dubbed the text of Parisinus Latinus 4884, the sole surviving witness to a Merovingian Latin translation of a now lost Greek world chronicle, the Excerpta Latina Barbari. The name was essentially a judgement on the linguistic abilities of the translator, but it is suggestive. What is there in the chronicle to appeal to the ‘barbarian’ inhabitants of Gaul? An answer to this question can offer some insight into the provenance of a neglected, but intriguing text. It will be proposed that the Greek original of the Excerpta was composed as a gift for the Austrasian king Theudebert I and was intended to elicit his aid in the war against the Ostrogothic rulers of Italy. The translation is another matter. It seems to have been undertaken about two centuries later in the context of the missionary push to the north and east from Frankish territory.     

Common usage,presumption and verisimilitude in sixteenth-century theories of juridical interpretation

The question of how common usage could be constitutive for the meaning of linguistic expressions has been discussed by Renaissance philosophers such as Lorenzo Valla, and it also played an important role in Renaissance theories of juridical interpretation. An aspect of the analysis of common usage in Renaissance theories of juridical interpretation that concerns the role of presumption has not yet found much attention. Renaissance jurists such as Simone de Praetis, Nicolaus Everardus, and Aimone de Cravetta saw that both the usage of Latin by practitioners of law and the vernacular common usage of ordinary people often differed from the technical definition of legal concepts as laid down by ancient jurists or modern legislators. In some cases, they ascribed both to Latin and to vernacular common usage the power of changing the meaning of juridical terms. Still, they were aware of the fact that matters of common usage involve always a degree of uncertainty. The methodological notion of presumption is one of the concepts that figured most prominently in Renaissance approaches to the problem of uncertainty, and, in particular, it was applied in the analysis of meaning-change of legal concepts through common usage.     

Heretical networks between East and West: the case of the Fraticelli

ABSTRACT

This article explores the links between the Franciscan heresy of the Fraticelli and the Latin territories of Greece in the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. It argues that the early involvement of Franciscan dissidents, like Angelo Clareno, with the lands of Latin Romania played an important role in the development of the Franciscan movement of dissent, on the one hand by allowing its enemies to associate them with the disobedient Greek Church and on the other by establishing havens where the dissidents were relatively safe from the persecution of the Inquisition and whence they were also able to send missionaries back to Italy to revive the movement there. In doing so, the article reviews all the known information about Fraticelli communities in Greece, and discovers two hitherto unknown references, demonstrating that the sect continued to exist in Greece during the Ottoman period, thus outlasting the Fraticelli communities of Italy.     

Laonikos Chalkokondyles and the rise of the Ottoman Turks

Abstract

While most Christian writers who described the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 regarded the disaster as divine retribution for the sins of its inhabitants, carried out through the agency of the barbaric and infidel Turks, the historical work of Laonikos Chalkokondyles takes a very different approach to the problem. It argues that nations rose or fell partly through luck, but also according the virtue they possessed, so that the Turks, rather than being mere agents, could in fact take the credit for their success. In this approach, Chalkokondyles reflects not classical Greek literature, but a western tradition to be found in Livy and Cicero, a strand of thought that he may have adopted as a result of contacts with Renaissance Italy.     

The agrarian history of Byzantium,from the origins to the twelfth century. The sources and problems

The relationship between conquerors and conquered in the Latin Empire of Constantinople has traditionally been understood as a relentlessly hostile one, particularly on the religious level. Whatever its merits, the dominance of this view has sometimes resulted in the gross misinterpretation of important pieces of evidence. This article examines two unusual liturgical texts that were treated by their discoverers as products of a Latin campaign of liturgical proselytism. The texts themselves are bilingual presentations of the Western rite of mass, with Greek and Latin text presented in an interlinear format. Most unusually, the Latin text is written in Greek characters. This article makes the case, due to internal evidence as well as the broader context of ecclesiastical relations in the Latin Empire, that these texts were created by Greek clerics rather than by Latin authorities, and that their purpose was entirely different from that imagined by their discoverers.     

Greek women in Latin households of fourteenth-century Venetian Crete

Of all the inhabitants, both Latin and Greek, of the colony of Crete, Greek women of the elite and the poorest unfree Greek women were the most vulnerable to the process of colonization after the Venetian conquest of the island in 1211. An examination of wills and marriage contracts from the fourteenth century offers evidence of the change brought about by the entrance of Greek women as wives into Latin households. The presence there of Greek servant women and slaves, who bore the illegitimate children of Latin fathers, also modified the character of Latin households. The sanctioned and non-sanctioned unions between Greek women and Latin men gave rise, in large part, to a colonial society whose constituent communities displayed more characteristics in common than has previously been thought.     

Milton,drama, and Greek texts: preface

ABSTRACT

This collection of essays explores the connection between Milton’s approach to drama and his engagement with Greek antiquity. Paying attention to early Christian and early modern interpretive traditions as well as Greek literature, it situates the power of this conjunction for Milton within the larger project of the northern Renaissance.     

Partial cranial trephination by means of Hippocrates' trypanon from 5th century BC Himera (Sicily,Italy)

The paper deals with a new case of partial cranial trephination found in one of the necropolises of the Greek colony of Himera in Sicily. It is one of the very few cases of cranial trephination of Greek classical age. Macroscopic as well as radiological investigations prove that the operation was perimortal as no growth of new bone could be detected, SEM‐EDS microanalysis of the piece revealed the traces left by the tool used during trephination. The review of ancient Greek and Latin medical and surgical texts permitted us to establish that the tool used in Himera was a (trypanon) mentioned by Hippocrates and named terebra by Latin authors. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Arabs,Latins and Persians bearing gifts: Greek translations of astrolabe treatises,ca. 1300 D. M. Angeliki E. Laiou

Abstract

Although translation of foreign literature was rare in Byzantium, in c. 1300 three Greek translations of treatises on using the astrolabe appeared, two from Latin and one from Persian or Arabic; all three are assessed in terms of Greek style and significance for Byzantine culture. The Islamic treatise translated by Shams al-Din al-Bukhari includes a translator's preface, edited in full and translated into English here for the first time. In the preface, Shams describes a deluxe astrolabe sent to Andronikos II with the treatise in the hope, it is argued, of some personal benefit in return.     

Renaissance and ‘Made in Italy’: marketing Italian fashion through history (1949–1952)

Until 1950, Italian fashion did not exist: there were able tailors and creative designers, but they were known only as individuals and not as part of a wider movement that identified with a specific Italian style. Despite the existence of advanced skills, with the potential to realize an Italian fashion in its own right, there was neither a cultural identity to bind them together nor an international legitimization that would allow the new form to compete with the dominant haute couture of Paris. The revival of the Renaissance and its invention as an intangible asset was fundamental in resolving this ‘dual’ absence, and it therefore became a key factor in the international success of Italian fashion. From the 1950s to today – the period of increasing international success of the ‘Made in Italy’ label – in the rhetoric of entrepreneurs, managers and marketing experts, the Renaissance has become almost an integral part of the DNA of Italian fashion, itself at times represented as the direct descendant and legitimate heir of the excellence of Renaissance taste. This is a link, now taken for granted, for which a term has even been coined: the ‘Renaissance effect’. The fundamental argument that supports this so-called Renaissance effect is in fact that of the continuity between the craftsmanship of the Renaissance age and today's fashion houses; a continuity, however, that has been elaborated through ‘manipulations’ of history which are in part simplistic and in part distorted.     

A “Crisis” in the Making: The Correspondence of Hans Baron and Paul Oskar Kristeller

This article summarizes and contextualizes the vast unpublished correspondence between Hans Baron (1900–1988) and Paul Oskar Kristeller (1905–1999), two of the most prominent twentieth-century scholars of Renaissance Humanism. It details how Baron and Kristeller came to take their first steps in Renaissance scholarship in Germany before political circumstances forced them into exile; it recounts the story of their emigration and their strategies for survival in Italy, Britain, and the United States; it reveals the impact of the American academy on their intellectual journeys and the extent to which they self-consciously stood for a methodology on the verge of extinction. Most important, the correspondence provides us with a personal etiology of the rebirth of Renaissance studies in the postwar period and of the concrete genesis of some of the books that brought it about.     

John-Jerome of Prague (1368–1440) and the Errores Graecorum: Anatomy of a Polemic Against Greek Christians

This paper discusses the anti-Greek writings of the Camaldolese John-Jerome of Prague from 1409 to 1433. It demonstrates how his varied experiences in Poland and the Middle East helped shape his views on eastern Christians, and how these views were further affected by the role Greek theology played in the thought of his great opponents, the Hussites. His hostile statements about the Greeks provide some indication of the depth of the antipathy between the two sides, as well as the limited knowledge of many in the Latin West about the details of ecclesiastical history and Greek theology on the eve of the Council of Florence. A discussion of his writings over a quarter century illustrates how John-Jerome's opinions about Greek Christians changed as he experienced different aspects of the relationship between the Latin and Greek churches. It is interesting to compare John-Jerome's views with two contemporaries whom he knew personally, the Camaldolese humanist Ambrogio Traversari and the Greek Dominican theologian Andrew Chrysoberges.     

18世纪欧洲关于古典世界历史的学术

18世纪欧洲的古史研究继承了文艺复兴的遗产,在文献搜集和整理、史实考订、考古学和碑铭学等领域都取得了一定的进展。法国和英国学者在此基础上,撰写了一批多卷本、大部头的古代史、希腊史和罗马史著作。虽然这些著述的质量无法与19世纪专业史学的成果相比,但它们为19世纪的讨论设定了问题的框架,提出了众多值得重视的看法。学者们经世致用的精神,为后世树立了良好榜样,对当时实际的政治生活和思想发展都产生了一定影响。     

文艺复兴时期人文主义者的两种城邦人口思想

古希腊城邦崇尚独特的有限人口论,这种以少为美的人口思想,与同样植根于城邦语境的理想国学说融合为一种思想范式,对后世影响深远。文艺复兴时期,本质上身为人文主义者的乌托邦社会主义者,多沿用该范式,构筑小国寡民的城邦蓝图。但与此同时,佛罗伦萨人文主义者却背离了该范式,歌颂本邦人口的增长。究其因,乌托邦社会主义者缺乏城邦公民的政治实践,其对小国寡民的坚守,出自学术传承和高尚空想;而佛罗伦萨人文主义者多参与城邦政治,目睹了列国纷争、大国入侵的危局,理解人口有限是制约城邦国力的现实因素。故而,继承有限人口论,体现了一类人文主义者对古希腊城邦人口思想的固守;挑战有限人口论,亦反映出另一类人文主义者为应对时势而做出的思想拓新:二者对于重新认识文艺复兴时期的城邦观念,均具有深刻意义。     

西方古典文献学的名与实

以希腊文、拉丁文为载体的西方古典文献学,希腊文作"philologia"。在近代西方各国学界在根据各自的语言整理、研究古文献藉以溯源其共同的"古代"过程中,西方古典文献学的名称与内容在不同历史时期、不同语境中均曾发生过变化,但总体上的沿革类似于中国古典文献学或传统文献学,即由校雠而校雠学而文献学,最终被冠之以"古典的"则意在强调"希腊、拉丁的"这一属性。     

The Implications of Analytic Philosophy of History for the Practicing Historian

An article by John O'Hagan and Elish Kelly in 2005 (see Historical Methods 38:118-25) discussed collecting information on visual artists that would allow a broad historical ranking based on "prominence." O'Hagan and Kelly collected these data to examine prominent artists' birth locations, work locations, and their consequential patterns of labor movement during several long periods. In this article, the authors examine artists' migration for four periods (based on their date of birth): Renaissance Italy, Europe in the first half of the nineteenth century, and the Western world in general for the periods 1850-99 and 1900-49. The data show that important artists clustered in all periods at a remarkably high level. Florence and Rome dominated in Renaissance Italy, with significant clustering because of the artists' birthplaces and domestic migration. Paris and London witnessed a marked clustering of artists born in the first half of the nineteenth century, with Paris continuing to dominate among artists born in the second half of the nineteenth century. Artists born in the first half of the twentieth century clustered in New York City, with all prominent American artists clustering there.     

On Martinus Crusius's collection of Greek vernacular and religious books

Abstract

The importance of Martinus Crusius's collection of Greek chapbooks for our knowledge of 16th century vernacular Greek literature can hardly be over-emphasised. Most copies of his collection are either extremely rare or even unique. Valuable and often unique is also the information about the texts and their authors, which Crusius collected and published in his Turcograecia (Basel 1584) or elsewhere.     

Riforma e Rinascimento,Protestantism and Catholicism in Antonio Gramsci's writings on Italian history, 1926 – 35

Abstract

This article readdresses Gramsci's use of Italian history, focusing on his judgement that the Italian Renaissance marked the start of a specifically Italian course of historical failure because it led directly to the Counter-Reformation, the Risorgimento and Fascism. It shows that Gramsci's political strategy after 1923 – on the need for a mass socialist movement – informed his historical opinions. His view of a regressive Renaissance contrasted the dominant historiographical consensus that saw it as the start of European modernity. Gramsci conceptualized modern European history according to a Reformation–Renaissance dichotomy that also determined his general sense of culture. By contrasting Catholic Italy (whose Renaissance had failed to lead to a Reformation) with the Protestant north (whose general Renaissance had formed a harmonious couplet with the Reformation), Gramsci reveals that his single greatest debt as a historian was to Weber rather than Marx or Croce.