scholarly journals War, Marriage, Tournament: Scottish Politics and the Anglo-French War, 1448–1450

2019 ◽  
Vol 98 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael H. Brown
Keyword(s):  
European History ◽  
Final Phase ◽  
Hundred Years War ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Political World ◽  
Internal Politics ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Courtly Life ◽  
Scottish Politics

The Scottish kingdom has often been portrayed as standing at the periphery of late medieval Europe. However, the events of 1448 to 1450 demonstrate that the Scots were capable of projecting their interests effectively at the courts of European rulers. These years witnessed the start of the final phase of the Hundred Years War culminating in the conquest of Normandy and Gascony by the French crown. Scottish historians have placed considerable stress on the marriage of King James II to Marie of Guelders in 1449 as an example of interactions between Scotland and European courtly life. This article demonstrates the interconnections between Anglo-Scottish warfare in the Borders, marriage diplomacy, the rapidly changing situation in the French kingdom, and the internal politics of Scotland. It shows that Scots and the Scottish kingdom were active participants in a wider political world at a defining point in European history.

Benedict XII and the Outbreak of the Hundred Years’ War

2019 ◽  
pp. 183-204
Author(s):  
Barbara Bombi
Keyword(s):  
Political Change ◽  
The Political ◽  
Diplomatic Relations ◽  
Hundred Years War ◽  
Administrative Practices ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Record Keeping ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Major Turning Point ◽  
Political Milieu

When questioning how far political change and conflict affected the growth of diplomatic and administrative practices in late Medieval Europe, and how human agency contributed to bureaucratic reforms, especially with regard to record-keeping, the outbreak of the Hundred Years’ War in 1337 ought to be considered as a major turning-point. This chapter specifically focuses on Pope Benedict XII (1334–42) to see how the outbreak of the conflict between England and France impacted on Anglo-papal diplomatic discourse and practice during his pontificate. First, it addresses the Anglo-papal diplomatic relations in the period 1335–42. Second, it focuses on the chancery records of the English crown, especially the Roman rolls and the so-called Treaty rolls, which enroll most of the diplomatic correspondence exchanged between England, the papal curia, the Empire, and France in the 1330s, as well as other diplomatic documents. These records will be investigated to question how diplomatic and administrative practices provided a satisfactory means to inform the diplomatic discourse between England and the papacy, especially within the political milieu that characterized the first few years of the Anglo-French conflict, itself notoriously subject to sudden changes of alliances.

Contesting the City

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian D. Liddy
Keyword(s):  
Urban Politics ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Urban Citizenship ◽  
Town Government ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Political Narrative ◽  
Classical Models ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The City

The political narrative of late medieval English towns is often reduced to the story of the gradual intensification of oligarchy, in which power was exercised and projected by an ever smaller ruling group over an increasingly subservient urban population. This book takes its inspiration not from English historiography, but from a more dynamic continental scholarship on towns in the southern Low Countries, Germany, and France. Its premise is that scholarly debate about urban oligarchy has obscured contemporary debate about urban citizenship. It identifies from the records of English towns a tradition of urban citizenship, which did not draw upon the intellectual legacy of classical models of the ‘citizen’. This was a vernacular citizenship, which was not peculiar to England, but which was present elsewhere in late medieval Europe. It was a citizenship that was defined and created through action. There were multiple, and divergent, ideas about citizenship, which encouraged townspeople to make demands, to assert rights, and to resist authority. This book exploits the rich archival sources of the five major towns in England—Bristol, Coventry, London, Norwich, and York—in order to present a new picture of town government and urban politics over three centuries. The power of urban governors was much more precarious than historians have imagined. Urban oligarchy could never prevail—whether ideologically or in practice—when there was never a single, fixed meaning of the citizen.

At the Edge of Reformation

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Linehan
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Black Death ◽  
The West ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
History Of ◽  
Portuguese Society ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church

This book springs from its author’s continuing interest in the history of Spain and Portugal—on this occasion in the first half of the fourteenth century between the recovery of each kingdom from widespread anarchy and civil war and the onset of the Black Death. Focussing on ecclesiastical aspects of the period in that region (Galicia in particular) and secular attitudes to the privatization of the Church, it raises inter alios the question why developments there did not lead to a permanent sundering of the relationship with Rome (or Avignon) two centuries ahead of that outcome elsewhere in the West. In addressing such issues, as well as of neglected material in Spanish and Portuguese archives, use is made of the also unpublished so-called ‘secret’ registers of the popes of the period. The issues it raises concern not only Spanish and Portuguese society in general but also the developing relationship further afield of the components of the eternal quadrilateral (pope, king, episcopate, and secular nobility) in late medieval Europe, as well as of the activity in that period of those caterpillars of the commonwealth, the secular-minded sapientes. In this context, attention is given to the hitherto neglected attempt of Afonso IV of Portugal to appropriate the privileges of the primatial church of his kingdom and to advance the glorification of his Castilian son-in-law, Alfonso XI, as God’s vicegerent in his.

Religious Norms, Human Capital, and Money Lending in Jewish European History

2011 ◽  
pp. 56-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maristella Botticini ◽  
Zvi Eckstein
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Southern Italy ◽  
European History ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Common View ◽  
Jewish Diaspora ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
History Of ◽  
Muslim Spain

Circa 1000, the main occupations of the large Jewish community in Muslim Spain and of the small Jewish communities in southern Italy, France, and Germany were local trade and long-distance commerce, as well as handicrafts. A common view states that the usury ban on Christians segregated European Jews into money lending. A similar view contends that the Jews were forced to become money lenders because they were not permitted to own land, and therefore, they were banned from farming. This article offers an alternative argument which is consistent with the main features that mark the history of the Jews: the Jews in medieval Europe voluntarily selected themselves into money lending because they had the key assets for being successful players in credit markets. After providing an overview of Jewish history during 70–1492, it discusses religious norms and human capital in Jewish European history, Jews in the Talmud era, the massive transition of the Jews from farming to crafts and trade, the golden age of the Jewish diaspora (ca. 800–ca. 1250), and the legacy of Judaism.

scholarly journals Venetian Trading Firm of the Soranzo Brothers (1406-1434) and Its Commercial Network

2019 ◽  
pp. 229-253
Author(s):  
Maria Ryabova
Keyword(s):  
Network Analysis ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Merchant Networks ◽  
Trading Firm ◽  
Commercial Network

This paper contributes to the discussion of merchant networks in late medieval Europe by presenting a case study of the Soranzo fraterna, a Venetian trading firm which comprised brothers Donado, Giacomo (Jacopo), Piero, and Lorenzo Soranzo and operated in the first half of the 15th century, specializing mainly in the import of raw cotton from Syria. The author applies the methodology of so-cial network analysis (SNA) in order to reconstruct the egocentric (ego-centered) network of ties linking the Soranzo firm (“the ego”) with its partners and clients (“alters”).

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