This volume brings together twenty original essays by distinguished scholars on the life, works, and cultural context of Antoine Busnoys (c.1430-1492), musician to Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, and one of the most celebrated composers of the fifteenth century. The chapters offer a wealth of new information about musical culture in the late middle ages.
Early Music History is devoted to the study of music from the early Middle Ages to the end of the seventeenth century. It demands the highest standards of scholarship from its contributors, all of whom are leading academics in their fields. It gives preference to studies pursuing interdisciplinary approaches and to those developing novel methodological ideas. The scope is exceptionally broad and includes manuscript studies, textual criticism, iconography, studies of the relationship between words and music and the relationship between music and society. Articles in volume six include: On the question of psalmody in the ancient synagogue; Music and grammar: imitation and analogy in Morales and the Spanish humanists; and a Florentine chansonnier of the early sixteenth century.
This magisterial annotated bibliography of the earliest mathematical works to be printed in the New World challenges long-held assumptions about the earliest examples of American mathematical endeavor. Bruce Stanley Burdick brings together mathematical writings from Mexico, Lima, and the English colonies of Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New York. The book provides important information such as author, printer, place of publication, and location of original copies of each of the works discussed. Burdick’s exhaustive research has unearthed numerous examples of books not previously cataloged as mathematical. While it was thought that no mathematical writings in English were printed in the Americas before 1703, Burdick gives scholars one of their first chances to discover Jacob Taylor’s 1697 Tenebrae, a treatise on solving triangles and other figures using basic trigonometry. He also goes beyond the English language to discuss works in Spanish and Latin, such as Alonso de la Vera Cruz's 1554 logic text, the Recognitio Summularum; a book on astrology by Enrico Martínez; books on the nature of comets by Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora and Eusebio Francisco Kino; and a 1676 almanac by Feliciana Ruiz, the first woman to produce a mathematical work in the Americas. Those fascinated by mathematics, its history, and its culture will note with interest that many of these works, including all of the earliest ones, are from Mexico, not from what is now the United States. As such, the book will challenge us to rethink the history of mathematics on the American continents.
This book presents an overview of the later medieval trinitarian theology of the rival Franciscan and Dominican intellectual traditions, and includes detailed studies of thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, John Duns Scotus, William Ockham, and Gregory of Rimini.
The book offers a renewed study of the life and works of one of the most famous popular preachers and sermon authors of Renaissance Italy, providing a reference work on the figure of Roberto Caracciolo and a reading of his times.
This book explores the intersection between medicine and literature in medieval Iberian literature and culture. Its overarching argument is that thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Iberian authors revalorized the interconnection between the body, the mind, and the soul in light of the evolving epistemology of medicine. Prior to the reintroduction of classical medical treatises through Arab authors into European cultures, mental disorders and bodily diseases were primarily attributed to moral corruption, demonic influence, and superstition. The introduction of novel regimens of health as well as treatises on melancholia into academic institutions and into the cultural landscape provided the tools for newly minted authors to understand that psychosomatic illnesses stemmed from malfunctions of the body's biochemical composition. This book demonstrates that the earliest books written in the Iberian vernaculars contain the seeds that effect the shift from a theocentric worldview to a humanistic one. The volume features close readings of multiple texts, including medical treatises and religious writings, and King Alfonso X's Cantigas de Santa Maria, Juan Manuel's Conde Lucanor, and Juan Ruiz's Libro de buen amor. Even though these texts differ in literary genre, rhetorical strategy, and even purpose, this study argues that they collectively employ humoral pathology and melancholic discourses as a means of underscoring the frailty and transience of human life by showing how somatic conditions sicken the body, mind, and soul unto death.
Peter Martyr was one of the central Dominican saints of the thirteenth century, in some cases eclipsing Dominic himself. Born in Verona around 1206 to those with Cathar sympathies, he became a convert to Catholicism. As one of the first generations of Dominicans, he represents aspects of their primitive history both as a spellbinding preacher and as one of the earliest and most famous papal inquisitors. In 1252, shortly after his official appointment to the post of inquisitor for Lombardy, Peter was assassinated at the hands of a cabal of Milanese heretics. That there is no modern monograph on Peter represents a considerable lacuna in the study of medieval saints. This work therefore fills a very important gap, in both thirteenth century hagiographical studies, and studies of the interrelationship of heresy and imperial politics in the mid-thirteenth century. The first half of the book is a systematic study of the stages in the life, miracles and posthumous cult of Peter of Verona. Part One deals with many controversial issues of Peter's life, such as his role in the growth of the Dominican order and related confraternities in Lombardy and Tuscany, his status as papal inquisitor and his preaching. Part Two explores the cult of Peter Martyr. The brief time which elapsed between death and canonization makes Peter Martyr an especially interesting case in the field of cult study as for him, life led immediately to cult: a cult dominated by those who knew him personally. The second half of the book is a translation into English of the major primary sources concerning Peter. These will be of interest to students of papal canonization, the Dominican order, the Inquisition, hagiography, and local history.
The history of the Black Sea may be considered as alternating between an “inner lake,” when a single empire establishes control over the sea and its surrounding areas, and that of an open sea, in which various continental or maritime powers compete for the region’s resources. By taking into account the impact both of major powers and minor political actors, this volume proposes a long-term perspective of regional history. It offers a deep understanding of the political and commercial history of the Black Sea between the 14th and the 16th centuries, and provides insights into the political and economic developments of the region.
