History Commons^™

De Libero Conscientia: Martin Luther’S Rediscovery Of Liberty Of Conscience And Its Synthesis Of The Ancients And The Influence Of The Moderns, Bessie S. Blackburn

Liberty University Journal of Statesmanship & Public Policy

One fateful day on March 26, 1521, a lowly Augustinian monk was cited to appear before the Diet of Worms.[1] His habit trailed behind him as he braced for the questioning. He was firm, yet troubled. He boldly proclaimed: “If I am not convinced by proofs from Scripture, or clear theological reasons, I remain convinced by the passages which I have quoted from Scripture, and my conscience is held captive by the Word of God. I cannot and will not retract, for it is neither prudent nor right to go against one’s conscience. So help me God, …

Plague Persistence In Western Europe: A Hypothesis, Ann G. Carmichael

The Medieval Globe

Historical sources documenting recurrent plagues of the “Second Pandemic” usually focus on urban epidemic mortality. Instead, plague persists in remote, rural hinterlands: areas less visible in the written sources of late medieval Europe. Plague spreads as fleas move from relatively resistant rodents, which serve as “maintenance hosts,” to an array of more susceptible rural mammals, now called “amplifying hosts.” Using sources relevant to plague in thinly populated Central and Western Alpine regions, this paper postulates that Alpine Europe could have been a region of plague persistence via its population of wild rodents, particularly the Alpine marmot.

Review Essay: Petrarch, Francesco. Petrarch's Songbook: Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta. A Verse Translation By James Wyatt Cook. Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, Vol. 151, Joseph Rosenblum

Quidditas

Petrarch, Francesco. Petrarch's Songbook: Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta. A Verse Translation by James Wyatt Cook. Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, vol. 151. Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, Binghamton, N.Y., 1995. 445 pp. $30.00

Petrarch's "Trionfo Dell'eternità": Aesthetics Of Conversion, John S. Smurthwaite

Quidditas

As the first of Petrarch's six Triumphs, the "Trionfo del Tempo," comes to an end, the poet affirms time's apparent victory over all things in the sublunar world. Not even fame is able to endure time's unrelenting and ultimately disintegrating onslought:

che è questo però che sì s'apprezza?

Tutto vince e ritoglie il Tempo avaro;

chiamasi Fama, ed è morir secondo,

ne più che contra 'l primo è alcun riparo;

così il Tempo trionfa i nomi e 'l mondo!

("Trionfo del Tempo," vvs. 141-45_

What is this that is so highly valued? Greedy Time overcomes and steals all away. …

Review Essay: Hans Baron, Petrarch's "Secretum": Its Making And Its Meaning, Ronnie H. Terpening

Quidditas

Hans Baron, Petrarch's "Secretum": Its Making and Its Meaning, Medieval Academy of America, 1985. $22.00

Chaucer And The Three Crowns Of Florence (Dante, Petrarch, And Boccaccio): Recent Comparative Scholarship, Madison U. Sowell

Quidditas

Chaucer and the Italian Trecento. Ed. Piero Boitani. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. 313 p. $49.50.

Howard H. Schless, Chaucer and Dante: A Revaluation. Norman, OK: Pilgrim Books, 1984. 268 p. $85.00.

R. A. Shoaf, Dante, Chaucer, and the Currency of the World: Money, Images, and Reference in Late Medieval Poetry. Norman, OK: Pilgrim Books, 1983. 313 p. $39.95.

Petrarch's Rhetorical Reticentia As Politics, Lucia Re

Quidditas

A discussion of Petrarch's politics must take into account the historicity of politics itself: political science, as distinct from other disciplines, is generally believed to originate with Machiavelli. It would therefore be anti-historical to attribute to Petrarch a systematic political vision (as it is understood today). The modern claim for the independence of political theory and practice is as alien to Petrarch as the possibility of a theologically integrated political vision: Petrarch could not and would not have written either Il Prinicpe or Dante's De Monarchia. Nevertheless, I will speak of Petrarch's politics not only because, at a very …