scholarly journals Biagio Pelacani’s Astrological History for the Year 1405

1998 ◽  
Vol 2 (01) ◽  
pp. 24-32
Author(s):  
Graziella Federici Vescovini
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Reference Point ◽  
Political Conflicts ◽  
Dark Ages ◽  
Political Game ◽  
The Middle Ages

The years between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance were troubled by political conflicts and plots generated by an unbridled ambition for power. In those dark ages the figure of the astrologer stands out as a firm reference point in the shrewd and often merciless political game. Biagio Pelacani of Parma perfectly embodies this character of learned adviser. The actions of the powerful men of the time depended on his predictions.

Monks, Bailiffs, Constables, and Others

2021 ◽  
pp. 26-50
Author(s):  
Clive Emsley
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Significant Degree ◽  
Market Regulation ◽  
Dark Ages ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
Appointed Administrators ◽  
The Middle Ages

This chapter discusses how, during the period known as the Dark Ages and then the Middle Ages, a few policing institutions began to be developed, but often their existence could be brief and limited in scope. Throughout the period, princes had to fight to gain or maintain territory, and ensuring the safety of frontiers meant that they appointed administrators and/or warriors to protect territory, or to bring in soldiers and revenue as and when necessary. The warriors, increasingly known as knights, established themselves as hereditary rulers over the territory granted to them by the prince. Municipalities could acquire a significant degree of independence from the local prince, and they were permitted to establish their own laws; they also recruited men to enforce those laws, which included market regulation, the supervision of abattoirs, watching for fire, and ensuring the safety and tidiness of the streets. The municipal guards, often backed by all fit men in a town, might also be called upon occasionally to defend the walls and outlying territory. The chapter then considers the role of warrior monks, clergy, and feudal municipalities. Ultimately, officers such as bailiffs, sheriffs, or constables, and institutions such as the watch, emerged across medieval Europe, but they were not police officers in the sense of people seeking to prevent crime or regularly gathering information about offences and pursuing offenders beyond their boundaries.

Epilogue

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Moralee
Keyword(s):  
Urban Planning ◽  
Urban Environment ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Physical Space ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Affective Engagement ◽  
Dark Ages ◽  
The World ◽  
The Middle Ages

The epilogue traces the afterlife of the Capitoline Hill’s late antique history, the unresolved tension between the valuation and devaluation of the Capitol’s multiplying and variegated histories into the Middle Ages. The Capitol was a physical space that structured the lives and urban environment of postclassical Rome, and it was an imaginary location that animated an affective engagement with the hill’s traditions as well as Christian polemics against the materiality of pagan cults. It became one of the Seven Wonders of the World, a notable stop for sightseeing tours, and the location of an incredible collection of statues called the Salvatio Civium. In the Middle Ages, the Capitoline Hill became even more mystically charged than it had ever been in its long history. What ended the hill’s ancient legacy was not the so-called Dark Ages but Fascist urban planning and modern assertions of the value of heritage.

«A’ quai Lucan seguitava». Su Boccaccio lettore della Pharsalia

2020 ◽  
pp. 93-114
Author(s):  
Niccolò Gensini
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Reference Point ◽  
Literary Production ◽  
Different Ages ◽  
The Middle Ages

Lucan was one of the most widely read and studied classical authors during the Middle Ages, a reference point for teaching, historiography and literature. The essay attempts to outline Giovanni Boccaccio’s profile as a reader of Pharsalia in the different ages of his literary production and in his critical judgment, placing him in the context of fourteenth-century reception. The different ways of reading Lucan’s masterpiece, from the almost literal imitation of some scenes in the Filocolo, to the punctual references to situations, images and characters in the works of maturity, testifies the inexhaustible attention of Boccaccio towards the poet of «plus quam civilia bella».

scholarly journals XXVIII. A Historical and Critical Introduction to an Enquiry into the Revival of the Greek Literature in Italy, after the Dark Ages

1826 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 389-406
Author(s):  
Patrick Fraser Tytler
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
Greek Literature ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Dark Ages ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Middle Ages

A history of the revival of literature in Europe, after its extinction in the middle ages, has been long a desideratum in the annals of human knowledge; and from the wide, and almost untravelled field, which such a history would embrace, and the recondite sources of information which must be consulted, it will perhaps be long before any individual is found with sufficient learning to estimate its difficulties, and yet hardy enough to attempt to overcome them.

Writing the clock: the reconstruction of time in the late Middle Ages

2003 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 453-474 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN SCATTERGOOD
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Reference Point ◽  
Northern Italy ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Moral Behaviour ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Better Than ◽  
The Middle Ages

For most of the Middle Ages, diurnal timekeeping depended on sundials, water-clocks, and occasionally flame-clocks. However, towards the end of the thirteenth century, the mechanical clock, weight driven and regulated by a verge escapement and foliot mechanism, was developed. The earliest mechanical clocks appeared in Northern Italy but rapidly spread throughout Europe. In Jacques le Goff’s words, ‘Henceforth the clock became the measure of all things’. Early clocks were neither particularly accurate nor reliable, but the machine, because it was better than anything that had preceded it, acquired the reputation for perfect regularity and dependability. This paper seeks to show how the clock came to be regarded as a model and a reference point, invoked by writers in relation to the ordering of the universe, the nature of a well-regulated society, and as an image of proper moral behaviour.

scholarly journals Darkness as a metaphor in the historiography of the Enlightenment

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 20-25
Author(s):  
Janne Tunturi
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Dark Ages ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Middle Ages

This paper concentrates on darkness as a metaphor in eighteenth century historical writing. In contrast to the celebration of light as a symbol of knowledge and progress, the interpretations of the meaning of darkness varied. For many historians, it symbolised backwardness, or decline, which culminated in medieval society. Yet, the relationship between eighteenth century historiography and the Middle Ages was not as explicit as the usual suspects such as Voltaire and Edward Gibbon suggest. First of all, the understanding of the culture or texts of the Dark Ages signalled the skilfulness of the interpreter. Secondly, some supposed features of the medieval culture, such the free use of the imagination, gradually became more appreciated.

scholarly journals Magnum miraculum est homo. . . . The Phenomenon of Man in the Light of Hermetic Excerpts: Lactantius, Div. inst. 7.13.3

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 707-734
Author(s):  
Agata Ewa Sowińska
Keyword(s):  
Characteristic Feature ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Reference Point ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Dual Nature ◽  
Corpus Hermeticum ◽  
Range Of Influence ◽  
The Middle Ages

The aim of this paper is to present the question of human nature in a hermetic approach based on the source texts of Asclepius and Corpus Hermeticum. As the reference point for a research on hermetic anthropology serves one of the hermetic fragments found in Lactantius’ Divinae institutiones (i.e. Div. inst. 7.13.3), who focused on a characteristic feature of every human being: their dual nature – both divine and hylic. The analysis of Div. inst. 7.13.3 is preceded by a short study, based on the anthology by M.D. Litwa, of the range of influence of hermetic texts on literature from antiquity to the Middle Ages.

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