History Commons^™

"Bishop Avitus Of Vienne And Teh Burgundian Kingdom, A. D. 494-518", Harry Rosenberg

Quidditas

Late antiquity provides the matrix for the complex historical development of early medieval church-state relations. Old values and social structures were eroded and replaced by new ones in the Germanic kingdoms established within the fragments of the western Roman Empire.

The Zodiac Man In Medieval Medical Astrology, Charles Clark

Quidditas

A naked male figure was a familiar illustration in many medieval and Renaissance manuscripts. Standing with his legs and arms slightly spread, the twelve images or names of the zodiac were superimposed on his body, from his head (Aries) to his feet (Pisces). Used as a quick reference by physicians, barber-surgeons, and even laymen, the figure indicated the part of the body which was "ruled" by a specific sign of the zodiac. Once the correct sign was determined for the particular part of the body, the proper time for surgery, bloodletting, administration of medication, or even the cutting of hair …

"The Wyclyf" — Thrills And Dangers Of Editing A Medieval Text, Allen D. Breck

Quidditas

In 1983 we shall be observing the six hundredth anniversary of the death of one of England's great contributors, along with William of Ockham and John Duns Scotus, to the thought, learning, and literature of the fourteenth century. John Wyclyf died at the comparatively advanced age oof sixty-four after two years' illness attendant upon a stroke, on St. Sylvester's day, December 31, 1384. He had been stricken a second time while hearing Mass said by his curate in his parish church at Lutterworth, some thirteen miles northeast of Coventry. We know nothing about his burial, save that in accordance with …

On The Syntax Of The Provençal Possessives, Frede Jensen

Quidditas

It is well-known to anyooone involved in the pursuit of foreign language study that possessive adjectives serve to express a variety of relationships which are often far removed from the basic notion of possession. A Frenchman calls "his" not only the things he owns (ma maison, ma voiture, mes livres, mon argent) and the ingredients that constitute the physical, mental or moral make-up of his personality (ma vigueur, ma bonté, mon intelligence, mon calme, etc.), but he also extends his ownership, as it were, to the circle of people he comes into contact with and to a variety of …

From Medieval To Renaissance: Paradigm Shifts And Artistic Problems In English Renaissance Drama, John Boni

Quidditas

In describing the change from Medieval to Renaissance, Theodore Spencer writes;

There finally came a time when realism, at first connected inextricably with religion, was used for its own sake. What we call the Renaissance began at that moment.

For Spencer, "realism" denotes an increased concern with depicting the actual world itself. As an illustration, one may cite the exclamation attributed to Paolo Uccello, "What a wonderful thing is this perspective!", an exclamation over a technique which aided him in more accurate representation of the world as he had begun to perceive it.

The Elizabethan Clerk Of The Privy Council, F. J. Platt

Quidditas

One of the least understood facts of Elizabethan administrative history is the importance of the clerkship of the Privy Council. Considered a position of "no small esteem," this "office was singularly rich in men of distinction." Indeed, with the exception of a select few privy councilors, it was the Council clerks who handled the lion's share of the day-to-day business of English government.

Antonio Possevino, S.J. As A Counter-Reformation Critic Of The Arts, John Patrick Donnelly S.J.

Quidditas

The Protestant Reformation called into question many traditions and practices of the Church, including the traditional relation of art to religion. Many Protestant theologians, for instance Calvin and especially Zwingli, condemned religious statues and art as idolatrous or superstitious, partly on the basis of Old Testament prohibitions. Luther and Lutherans approved of religious paintings but rejected the cult of the saints that had figured so largely in medieval and Renaissance religious art. In the Lutheran tradition religious art was more closely tied to the Bible, another manifestation fo the sola scriptura principle. In Catholic circles as well there arose lively …

Vegetable Love: Metamorphosis And Morality In Hesperides, Frances M. Malpezzi

Quidditas

Recent critics of Hesperides, less content than their predecessors with the plucking of but one of Herrick's golden apples, the examination of its beauty, and the savoring of its sweetness, have attempted the task of surveying the landscape of the entire garden, elucidating the pattern of its design, and identifying the various species of plants growing therein. The emphasis now is on seeing Hesperides as an integrated and thematically unified construct. The studies by Whitaker, Chambers, Deming, Rollin, and DeNeef are concerned with the ceremonial mode that pervades the poems in Hesperides. The consensus of these writers is …

Shakespeare's And Plutarch's Brutus: Shakespeare's Dramatic Strategy To Undercut The Noble Image, Shirley Rish

Quidditas

Modern critics of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar frequently challenge the view that Brutus was in fact "the noblest Roman of them all,' but only rarely do they completely repudiate Brutus' characterization as a patriotic idealist. They are of course aware of ironic and ambiguous elements in the tragedy, but they fail to take the step that would seem obvious: to note how Shakespeare undercut Brutus' noble image by carefully manipulating materials from the principal source for the play, Sir Thomas North's English translation of Plutarch's Lives.

Full Issue

Quidditas

No abstract provided.

England's King Henry I And The Flemish Succession Crisis Of 1127-1128, Sandy B. Hicks

Quidditas

Historians have long appreciated the political significance of the Flemish Succession Crisis of 1127-28 upon the development of both Flanders and Capetian France. Anglo-Norman specialists, though, have generally overlooked the critical impact this crisis had upon the latter years of the reign of King Henry I and, indeed, upon the future direction of the Anglo-Norman state. This paper will examine why Henry judged the crisis as a threat to the very survival of his own realm, how he responded to it, and why is was of such importance to England and Normandy.

Front Matter

Quidditas

No abstract provided.

Medieval Studies In America And American Medievalism, Herwig Wolfram

Quidditas

As far as one can tell, Ernst Robert Curtius appears to have been the first Central European so fascinated by American interest in the Middle Ages that he promised a study on the subject. He called this particular interplay oof academic, amateur, and popular interest "American Medievalism." According to his bibliography, the projected work never appeared, but a lecture he was asked to present to an American audience in 1949 was published in both the North American and Hispano-American editions of his famous book European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages.

The Christian Context Of Rebirth In La Naissance Du Chevalier Au Cygne, George L. Evans Jr.

Quidditas

The technique of composition through analogy, a distinctive trait of the Old French romance as affirmed by Eugene Vinaver in the Rise of Romance, is a major feature of La Naissance du Chevalier au Cygne, which is structured by the epic laisse. Written in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century to serve as a preface to the Old French Crusade Cycle, the NChCy recounts the birth of the Swan Knight, the legendary grandfather of Godefroy de Bouillon, hero of the First Crusade. The poem also relates the metamorphosis of the future Swan Knight and his five …

Catharsis In Aristotle, The Renaissance, And Elsewhere, Thomas Clayton

Quidditas

In an essay on "Shakespeare and the Kinds of Drama," Stephen Orgel presents an appealing and sympathetic view of Renaissance dramatic-generic theory and practice as original, capacious, and flexible, concluding that, "like Scaliger, Shakespeare thought of genres not as sets of rules but as sets of expectations and possibilities." In relation to this finding, we should perhaps be content to be "unclear about tragic catharsis," because "at least we know it is there, convincing us that tragedy works—even if we do not know how or on whom" (p.120). As the Renaissance read Aristotle, "tragedy achieved its end by purging …

Matrimony And Change In Webster's The Duchess Of Malfi, Margaret L. Mikesell

Quidditas

Profound changes occurred in the institution of marriage during the Renaissance. Love was gradually replacing fiscal and dynastic considerations as the foundation considered crucial for a binding union. The love marriage was largely a middle-class phenomenon, born of the changing relationship between the family and the state, articulated and refined by Protestant divines, and diffused through aristocratic society. Drama of the period is much concerned with this shift. The bourgeois conjunction of love and marriage triumphs in the aristocratic societies of many a romantic comedy. The weddings at play's end promise a new social order. The disintegration of the old …

Who Cast Donne's Tolling Bells?, J. X. Evans

Quidditas

The following paragraph from a funeral sermon written in 1620 by Charles Fitz-Geffrey (1575-1637), an Anglican clergyman, contains imagery so much like John Donne's celebrated figure in Devotion XVII (1624) that it should come to the attention of readers interested in Donne and the literature oof Jacobean England:

Do they who close the eyes and cover the face f the Dead consider that their eyes must be closed, and their faces covered? Or they who shroud the Coarse remember that they themselves shortly must be shrouded? Or they who ring the Knell consider that shortly the Bels must goe the …

The Liberation Of The "Loathly Lady" Of Medieval Romance, Robert Shenk

Quidditas

In his conclusion of The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell, the anonymous poet asks "Jhesu" to

Help him oute of sorrowe that this tale did devine,

And that nowe in alle hast,

For he is beset withe gailours many,

That kepen him fulle sewerly,

With wiles wrong and wraste. (842-846)

Although the poet then repeats his cry for help two additional times, this ending has never been seriously considered as an important part of the romance. One critic puzzles as it by saying, "Oddly, the romance ends on a note of pathos," but it is usually ignored …

Vision And Experience In Machaut's Fonteinne Amoureuse, R. Barton Palmer

Quidditas

Guillaume de Machaut's narrative verse, much honored and imitated by his peers, has met with a generally indifferent reception from modern critics. There are, it seems to me, two reasons for this. First, Machaut's heavy indebtedness to Guillaume de Lorris has made inevitable a comparison between the two which leaves the imitator, though exploring the form for a different purpose, at a disadvantage. Unlike his model, Machaut does not infuse allegorical narrative with either a sharp reading of psychology or his own quite genuine joy in experience. Allegory is for him a two-dimensional device to serve a didactic end: the …

A Reexamination Of The Development Of Protestantism During The Early English Reformation, John K. Yost

Quidditas

G.R. Elton's recent investigations of the relation between humanist reform and reformist government during the 1530's leave us with no uncertainty about Cromwell's beliefs regarding Protestantism. Elton concludes from an anonymous letter fo 1538, which he ascribes to the eminent civil and canon lawyer John Oliver, that "as early as 1531 or 1532, therefore, Thomas Cromwell was thinking along reformed lines and lines of evangelical theology...." Moreover, he reports how Cromwell "told the prior of Kingswood: by him 'the Word of God, the gospel of Christ, is not only favoured but also perfected, set forth, maintained, increased and defended'."

The Dynamics Of Pietas In Ben Jonson's Catiline, Wilson F. Engel Iii

Quidditas

Ben Johnson's Catiline, the exemplary Renaissance tragedy, has only recently been studied in detail for its menacing statement about Republican politics, and since no thorough reading of the play appeared until the 1950s, no received critical opinion need stand between the reader and the text. The disadvantage of this state of affairs is clear—any reading is liable to partake of the imbalance of contemporary criticism lamented by Richard Levin in New Readings vs. Old Plays. After Ellen M. T. Duffy demonstrated that Jonson made the most of Renaissance scholarship in his use of the classics, a number of …

The Celestial Sign On Constantine's Shields At The Battle Of The Mulvian Bridge, Charles Odahl

Quidditas

Most scholars now accept the reality and sincerity of Constantine's conversion to Christianity during his military campaign against Maxentius for control of Rome in A.D. 312—provided that "conversion" is understood in terms of the superstitious religious environment of the times. The ancient pagan and Christian sources that described the campaign all agreed that the war was waged in an atmosphere of intense religious fervor, even superstitiosa maleficia as one source described it, and that each commander appealed to divine power for aid against his enemy. Christian accounts of the campaign reported that Constantine turned to the Christian God at this …

Some Observations Of The Deposition Of Archbishop Theodulf Of Orleans In 817, Thomas F. X. Noble

Quidditas

Theodulf of Orleans, called by Ann Freeman "one of the brightest lights of the Carolingian Renaissance," is one of the most fascinating individuals in the history of the eighth and ninth centuries. He was a fine poet, perhaps the best of the Carolingian era, and more than 4,000 of his verses survive. His Paranesis ad iudices and his work on the filioque dispute indicate that he was a skilled controversialist. Finally, his authorship of the Libri Carolini, the massive Carolingian treatise against the positions on icons taken by the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, reflects a theological knowledge …

The Virtues Of The Heart: The Beatitudes In Patience, S. L. Clark, Julian N. Wasserman

Quidditas

The heart as an enclosure, changeable over time, and, like the communal chalice, capable of being emptied only to be filled again, proves to be one of the most complex symbols in Patience. The Pearl-Poet repeatedly focuses on the heart, from his inclusive plural reference to "herttes" in the poem's prologue (I. 2), to his conception of the Beatitudes as virtues of the heart (II. 13, 21, 23, 27), to his subsequent observations over the course of the narrative concerning the various states of the human – and even divine – heart. In fact, in the skillful hands …

Full Issue

Quidditas

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

Quidditas

No abstract provided.

The Meaning Of Symmetry, S. K. Heninger

Quidditas

(An Address Delivered to the 1979 Meeting of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association)

The Book Index: Plutarch's Moralia And John Donne, John Shawcross

Quidditas

Thomas Carew's elegy on John Donne points up an important fact (and distinction); Donne little employed allusions to classical literature and learning such as authors like Edmund Spenser and John Milton did, much to the glee of teachers and the bane of students. But glosses on Donne's works also turn up relatively few contemporary or near-contemporary references to informational volumes, whether in English or in Latin. He knew Galileo's Siderus Nuncius, 1610, and he owned and used such works as Nicholas Harpsfield's Dialogi Sex contra Summi Pontificatus, Monasticae Vitae, Sanctorum, Sacrarum, Imaginum Oppugnatores, et pseudo-martyres, 1566, and …

Report On The 1979 Meeting Of The Association, Harry Rosenberg

Quidditas

The range of topics covered in the papers presented at Flagstaff in April amply testify to the extraordinary variety of life and thought in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The papers are a tribute, too, to the vigor of contemporary scholarly interest in these two great historical-cultural epochs. (This review, it should be noted, is based upon the full paper in some instances and in others on both the paper and the pleasure of having been present at the time it was delivered, yet there are also several papers reported here of which I have seen only an abstract.)

The Problem Of Distinguishing Religious Guilt From Religious Melancholy In The English Renaissance, Noel L. Brann

Quidditas

What is the essential difference between natural melancholy and the guilt-stricken conscience of the sinner? This is the question posed by Ben Jonson (1573-1637) in his poetic plain To Heaven:

Good, and great God, can I not thinke of thee,

But it must, straight, my melancholy bee?

It is interpreted in me disease,

Thaat, laden with my sinnes, I seeke for ease?

Here Jonson points up the perennial quandary of homo religioso. At stake in its solution is not only the health of the body, but also the salvation of the soul. For if spiritual guilt cannot be …